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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Girl of the Klondike, by Victoria Cross
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Girl of the Klondike
+
+Author: Victoria Cross
+
+Release Date: December 4, 2007 [EBook #23732]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Annie McGuire and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE
+
+By
+
+VICTORIA CROSS
+
+"_Quid non mortalia pectora cogis
+Auri sacra fames?_"
+
+NEW YORK
+THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+_A Girl of the Klondike is now issued
+in America for the first time
+by arrangement with the author._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                        PAGE
+
+  CHAPTER I     A NIGHT IN TOWN            9
+
+  CHAPTER II    AT THE WEST GULCH         49
+
+  CHAPTER III   KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS      99
+
+  CHAPTER IV    GOD'S GIFT               167
+
+  CHAPTER V     GOLD-PLATED              211
+
+  CHAPTER VI    MAMMON'S PAY             265
+
+                L'ENVOI                  314
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A NIGHT IN TOWN
+
+
+Night had fallen over Alaska--black, uncompromising night; a veil of
+impenetrable darkness had dropped upon the snow wastes and the
+ice-fields and the fettered Yukon, sleeping under its ice-chains, and
+upon the cruel passes where the trails had been made by tracks of blood.
+Day by day, as long as the light of day--God's glorious gift to man--had
+lasted, these trails across the passes, between the snowy peaks, the
+peaks themselves, had been the theatre of hideous scenes of human
+cruelty, of human lust and greed, of human egoism. Day by day a slow
+terrible stream of humanity had wound like a dark and sluggish river
+through these passes, bringing with it sweat and toil and agony, torture
+and suffering and death. As long as the brilliant sun in the placid
+azure of the summer heavens above had guided them, bands of men had
+laboured and fought and struggled over these passes, deaf to all pity or
+mercy or justice, deaf to all but the clamour of greed within them that
+was driving them on, trampling down the weak and the old, crushing the
+fallen, each man clutching and grasping his own, hoarding his strength
+and even refusing a hand to his neighbour, starving the patient beasts
+of burden they had brought with them, friends who were willing to share
+their toil without sharing their reward, driving on the poor staggering
+strengthless brutes with open knives, and clubbing them to death when
+they fell beneath their loads with piteous eyes, or leaving them to
+freeze slowly where they lay, pressing forward, hurrying, fighting,
+slaughtering, so the men went into the gold camps all the summer, and
+the passes were the silent witnesses of the horror of it all and of the
+innocent blood shed. Then Nature herself intervened, and winter came
+down like a black curtain on the world, and the passes closed up behind
+the men and were filled with drifts of snow that covered the bones and
+the blood and the deep miry slides, marked with slipping tracks where
+struggling, gasping lives had gone out, and the river closed up behind
+the men and the ice thickened there daily, and the men were in the camps
+and there was no way out.
+
+And now, in the darkness of the winter night, in the coldness in which
+no man could live, there was peace. There was no sound, for the snow on
+the tall pines never melted and never fell, the water in the creeks was
+solid as the rocks and made no murmur, there was no footfall of bird nor
+beast, no leaf to rustle, no twig to fall.
+
+But beyond the silent peaks and the desolate passes, beyond the rigid
+pines, low down in the darkness, there was a reddish glow in the air, a
+strange, yellowish, quivering mist of light that hovered and moved
+restlessly, and yet kept its place where it hung suspended between white
+earth and black sky. All around was majestic peace and calm and
+stillness, nature wrapped in silence, but the flickering, wavering mist
+of light jumped feverishly in the darkness and spoke of man. It was the
+cloud of restless light that hung over the city of Dawson.
+
+Within the front parlour of the "Pistol Shot," the favourite and most
+successful, besides being the most appropriately named saloon in Dawson,
+the cold had been pretty well fought down; a huge stove stood at each
+end of the room, crammed as full as it would hold with fuel, all windows
+were tightly closed, and lamps flared merrily against the white-washed
+walls.
+
+At this hour the room was full, and the single door, facing the bar,
+was pushed open every half minute to admit one or two or more figures to
+join the steaming, drinking, noisy crowd within. It was snowing outside.
+As the door swung open one could see the white sheet of falling flakes
+in the darkness; the air was full of snow--that cruel, light, dry snow,
+fine and sharp like powdered ice, borne down on a North wind. The
+figures that entered brought it in with them, the light frosty powder
+resting on their furs and lying deep in the upturned rims of their seal
+caps.
+
+There had been a successful strike made that afternoon, and the men were
+all excited and eager about it. Every one pressed to the "Pistol Shot"
+to hear the latest details, to discuss and gossip over it. There was as
+much talk as digging done in Dawson. Men who had no chance and no means
+to win success, who owned no claims and never saw gold except in another
+man's hands, loved to talk work and talk claims and talk gold with the
+rest. It was exhilarating and exciting, and there was only that one
+topic in the world for them. They were like invalids in a small
+community afflicted by a common disease who never meet without
+discussing their symptoms. They were all invalids in reality, all
+suffering from the same horrible plague and fever, the gold fever that
+was eating into their brains.
+
+At one end of the bar counter, between it and the back wall, a girl was
+standing idly surveying with indifferent eyes the animated crowd that
+moved and swayed round her, the men jostling each other in their efforts
+to push up to the thickly surrounded counter. She was tall rather than
+short, and her figure well made, showing good lines even in the rough
+dress she was wearing; long rubber boots came to her knees, where they
+met her short buckskin skirt, and above this, in place of bodice, she
+wore merely a rough straight jacket drawn into the waist by a broad
+leather belt, in which was stuck, not ostentatiously but still
+sufficiently conspicuously a brace of revolvers. Her hair was cut short,
+and only a few dark silky rings showed themselves beneath the edge of
+her sealskin cap, pushed down close to her dark eyebrows. The dark eyes
+beneath looked out upon the scene before her with a half-disdainful,
+half-wearied expression which deepened into scorn now and then as she
+watched the bar-tender rake over the counter double and three times the
+price of a drink in the generous pinch of gold dust laid there by some
+miner almost too drunk to stagger to the bar. She had a very attractive
+face, to which one's eyes would wander again and again trying to
+reconcile the peculiar resolution, even hardness of the expression with
+the soft, well-moulded features and the sweet youthful lips full of
+freshness and colour. The miners took very little notice of her, and she
+certainly made no effort to attract it, leaning listlessly against the
+bar with one elbow on the counter, a silent and motionless spectator of
+all this excited eager humanity. There was no thought in their mind, no
+word on their lips just then but gold. Gold! gold! The thought possessed
+them with a grip on their brains like the grip of fever on the body, and
+the word sounded pleasant as the sweetest music to their ears. Gold! The
+syllable went round and passed from mouth to mouth, till the very air
+seemed to be getting a yellow tint above the grey fumes of tobacco.
+
+Amongst the last batch of incomers was a slim young fellow of twenty odd
+years, and when he had worked his way with difficulty up to the crowded
+counter, he found himself near the girl's corner. She looked at him,
+letting her dark eyes wander critically over his face. He formed a
+strong contrast to the figures around him, being slight and delicate in
+build, with a pale good-looking face that had a tender sympathetic
+expression like a woman's. Feeling the girl's gaze upon him, he glanced
+her way, and then having looked once, looked again. After a series of
+glances between drinks from his glass, the furtive looks began to amuse
+the girl, and the next time their eyes met she laughed openly, and they
+both spoke simultaneously.
+
+"You're a new comer, aren't you?" she said.
+
+"I haven't seen you here before," was his remark.
+
+"You might have done, I should think," answered the girl carelessly;
+"but I don't come here very often, although my father is running this
+place."
+
+"Are you Poniatovsky's daughter?" he asked in surprise, unable to
+connect this splendid young creature with the ugly little Pole he knew
+as the proprietor of the saloon.
+
+The girl nodded. "Yes, Katrine Poniatovsky is my name--what's yours?"
+
+"Stephen Wood," he answered meekly.
+
+"What have you come here for--mining?" she asked next. Although her
+queries were direct there was nothing rude in the fresh young voice
+making them.
+
+The young fellow coloured deeply, the rush of blood passed over his face
+up to his light smooth hair and deep down into his neck till it was lost
+beneath his coat collar.
+
+"No--yes--that is--well, I mean--I do mine now," he stammered after a
+minute.
+
+The girl said nothing, and when Stephen glanced around at her he saw she
+was regarding him with astonished eyes under elevated eyebrows. This
+expression made the pretty oval face fairly beautiful, and the young
+man's heart opened to her.
+
+"I came with the intention of doing some good here amongst the
+people--in a missionary, religious way I mean, but"--and he stopped
+again in painful embarrassment.
+
+Katrine laughed.
+
+"For the present you've laid religion aside and you're going to do a
+little mining and make a fortune, and then the religion can be taken up
+again," she said.
+
+The young fellow only flushed deeper and turned his glass around
+nervously on the counter.
+
+"That's all right," the girl said soothingly, after a second. "This
+place is a corner of the world where we all are different from what we
+are anywhere else. As soon as men come here they get changed. They
+forget everything else and just go in for gold. It's a sort of madness
+that's in the air. You'd be able to missionise somewhere else all right,
+but here you are obliged just to dig like the rest, you can't help it.
+Got a claim?"
+
+The young man's face paled again.
+
+"Yes," he answered in a low tone. "It was the claim that tempted me.
+It's one of the best, I believe, over in the west gulch, only about ten
+miles from here."
+
+There was a pressing movement round them as some fresh miners came
+pushing their way through to the bar, and Stephen and Katrine moved
+away, to make room for them, towards the wall of the room; they put
+their backs against it and looked over the mass of moving heads towards
+the door.
+
+"Look at this fellow coming in now," Stephen said to his companion
+suddenly, as the door swung open, to a mist of whirling whiteness, and
+two or three men entered: "Henry Talbot. He has the claim next mine in
+the gulch. He has just struck a fresh lot of gold, and he'll soon be one
+of the richest men here."
+
+The girl craned her neck to get a good view between the intervening
+heads, and though she had not been told which of the incoming figures
+to look at, she fixed her eyes as if by instinct on the right one. A man
+of rather tall, slight figure, pale face, and marked features. He made
+his way towards the bar, and then catching Stephen's signals to him, he
+smiled and came their way.
+
+"What are you doing down here?" he said, speaking to Stephen but looking
+at Katrine, who in her turn was scanning his face closely.
+
+"Why, enjoying Miss Poniatovsky's society," answered Stephen, with a
+bow. His friend bowed too, and then they all three laughed and felt
+instinctively they were friends. There is nothing truer than the saying,
+"Good looks are perpetual letters of introduction." These three carried
+their letters of introduction on their faces, and they were all mutually
+satisfied.
+
+"I know your father quite well," remarked Talbot to her. "This 'Pistol
+Shot' has been an institution longer than I have been here, but I never
+knew he had a daughter."
+
+"No," said Katrine, tranquilly, "I daresay not. Father and I quarrelled
+a little while ago, and since then I have been living by myself in one
+of those little cabins in Good Luck Row. Do you know it?"
+
+"No," answered Talbot. "I come into town very seldom, only when I want
+fresh supplies. I stay up at the claim nearly all the time. Do you live
+all by yourself then?" he added, wondering to himself as he looked at
+her, for her beauty was quite striking, and she was certainly not over
+twenty, yet there was something in the strong, noble outlines of her
+figure, in the tranquil calm of her manner, the self-reliance of her
+whole bearing, and the business-like way those pistols were thrust in
+her belt, that modified the wonder a little.
+
+"Quite," she said, with a laugh. "Oh, I've always been accustomed to
+take care of myself."
+
+"But don't you feel very dull and lonely?"
+
+"Sometimes," answered the girl; "but then I would much rather live alone
+than with some one I can't agree with."
+
+Both the men knew the drunken habits of old Poniatovsky, so that they
+silently sympathised with her, and there was a pause as they watched
+other miners coming in.
+
+"Well," said Katrine after a few seconds, straightening herself from her
+leaning attitude, "I think I will go home now; this place is getting so
+full, we shan't be able to breathe soon."
+
+The men looked at each other, and then spoke simultaneously: "May we see
+you as far as your cabin?"
+
+Katrine smiled, such a pretty arch smile, that dimpled the velvet cheeks
+and illumined the whole face.
+
+"Why yes, do, I shall be delighted."
+
+They all three went out together: the cold outside seemed so deadly that
+Talbot drew his collar up over his mouth and nose, unable to face it;
+the girl, however, did not seem to notice it, but laughed and chatted
+gaily in the teeth of the wind, as they made their way down the street.
+It was still snowing--a peculiar fine powdery snow, light and almost
+imperceptible, filled the whole air. Katrine walked fast with springing
+steps down the side-walk, and the two men plunged along beside her. Such
+a side-walk it was: in the summer a mere mass of mud and melted snow and
+accumulated rubbish--for in Dawson the inhabitants will not take the
+trouble to convey their refuse to any definite spot, but simply throw it
+out from their cabins a few yards from their own door, with a vague
+notion that they may have moved elsewhere before it rots badly,--now
+frozen solid but horribly uneven, and worn into deep holes. On the top
+of this had been laid some narrow planks, covered now by a thick glaze
+of ice, which rendered them things to be avoided and a line of danger
+down the middle of the path. Katrine made nothing of these slight
+inconveniences of the ground, but went swinging on in her large rubber
+boots, and talking and jesting all the way. At the bottom of the street,
+at the corner, there was a large wooden building, a double log-cabin
+turned into a saloon. Lights were fixed outside in tin shades, and the
+word "Dancing" was painted in white letters on the lintel. Katrine
+stopped suddenly.
+
+"Let's go in and have a dance," she said, and turned towards Talbot, as
+if she felt instinctively he was the more likely to assent.
+
+"If you like," he answered from behind his collar. "But can you dance in
+those boots?"
+
+"Oh, I can dance in anything," said Katrine, laughing.
+
+"Oh, don't go in, come on," remonstrated Stephen, trying to push on past
+the saloon.
+
+"Why not?" said Katrine; "it's too early to go to bed. Come in, I'll
+pay," and before either of them could answer she had pushed open the
+door, and was holding it for them with one hand, while with the other
+she laid down three quarters on a small trestle inside, where an old man
+was sitting as doorkeeper.
+
+It was a large oblong room, with a partition running half-way down the
+middle, dividing it into the front part, where they were standing and
+where the bar was, and the back part, which was strictly the dancing
+portion. Stephen sat down on a bench that faced the inner portion, with
+the determination of a man who was not to be moved from his seat. At the
+other side of the room was a low raised platform, where some very
+seedy-looking musicians were sawing out a jerky tune from their feeble
+violins. The room was fairly full, and a more heterogeneous collection
+of human beings Stephen thought he had never seen. There were miners in
+the roughest and thickest clothing, labourers, packers, a few Indians,
+some youths in extraordinary attempts at evening dress, some negro
+minstrels with real dress shirts on and diamond studs, girls with old
+velvet skirts and odd bodices that didn't match; and here and there,
+idling against the wall, looking on with absent eyes, one could find a
+different figure--that of student, or artist, or newspaper
+correspondent, or gentleman miner; one need not despair of finding
+almost any type of humanity in that room.
+
+Talbot looked at the girl's bright sparkling face as they entered, and
+then without a word slipped his arm round her waist and they started
+over the rough wooden floor.
+
+"You dance fine," observed Katrine, after a long silence, in which they
+had both given themselves up to the pleasure of mere motion. "I guess
+you have had lots of practice before you came out here."
+
+Talbot smiled down into her admiring eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said, thinking of the foreign embassies, the English
+ball-rooms, the many polished floors his feet had known, "in England."
+
+"My! I expect you're a great swell!" remarked the saloon-keeper's
+daughter.
+
+"All the same," he answered, laughing, "I have never had a partner that
+danced so perfectly as you do."
+
+"Now that's real kind of you," answered Katrine, with a flush of
+pleasure, and then they gave themselves up to silent enjoyment again.
+
+At the end of the dance they came back to Stephen, and found him in the
+same corner, watching the room with a doleful sadness on his face.
+Katrine, flushed and with sparkling eyes, sat down on the corner of the
+step beside him.
+
+"You look so miserable," she said. "Come and have a dance with me to
+cheer you up."
+
+"I can't dance," said Stephen, shortly.
+
+"I'll teach you," volunteered Katrine, leaning her chin on her hands and
+looking up at him.
+
+Stephen flushed angrily.
+
+"It's not that--my conscience won't allow me to."
+
+"I'll make you forget your conscience," with a very winning smile on her
+sweet scarlet lips.
+
+Stephen turned towards her and looked at her with a sudden horror in his
+eyes. The girl looked back at him quite undisconcerted and unmoved. She
+saw nothing in what she had said. To her, conscience was a tiresome
+possession, that might, she knew, trouble you suddenly at any time, and
+if any one could succeed in making you forget you had one, he was surely
+entitled to your gratitude. Words failed Stephen, he only looked at her
+with that silent horror and fear growing in his eyes. Katrine waited
+what she considered a reasonable time for him to reply or to accept her
+offer, and then she rose and turned to Talbot, who had been standing
+looking down upon them both with amusement.
+
+"I'm very thirsty, let's go and have a drink," she said, and they both
+strolled across the room, and then down into the farther end where the
+bar was. They elbowed their way to the counter and stood there waiting
+to be served. Most of the men seemed to know Katrine and made way for
+her, and she had a word of chaff, or a nod, or a smile or laugh or
+friendly greeting, for nearly all of them. Talbot noted this, and noted
+also that though the men seemed familiar, none of them were rude, and
+though rough enough, there was apparently no disrespect for her. Talbot
+wondered whether this was due to her morals or her pistols.
+
+"Who's your friend?" asked two or three voices at her side while they
+stood waiting.
+
+"Mr. Talbot--one of the lucky ones!" replied Katrine promptly. "He has a
+claim up the gulch that's bringing him in millions--or going to," she
+added mischievously. The men looked Talbot up and down curiously. Even
+in his rough miner's clothes, he looked a totally different figure from
+themselves. Slim and tall and trim, with his well-cut head and figure,
+with his long neck and refined quiet face, he was a type common enough
+in Bond Street, London, or on Broadway, New York, but not so common in
+the Klondike.
+
+"Well, if that's so, pardner," slowly observed a thick-set, crop-haired
+man, edging close up to him, "you won't mind standing a drink for us?"
+
+"Delighted," returned Talbot, with a pleasant smile. "Give it a name."
+
+The result of taking votes on this motion was the ordering of ten hot
+whiskies and two hot rums, the latter for himself and Katrine. Talbot
+never drank spirits at all, and the terrible concoctions of the cheap
+saloons were an abomination to him. He took his glass, however, to show
+his friendliness, had it filled nearly to the brim with water, and then
+could hardly drink it. The fluid seared his throat like red-hot
+knife-blades. Katrine took hers straight as it was handed across the
+counter and tossed it down her throat at one gulp, seeming to enjoy it.
+
+"Well, Jim," she said to the young miner next her, "what luck have you
+had lately?"
+
+"None," he replied gloomily. "Since I left the old place, I've lost all
+along in the 'Sally White.'"
+
+Talbot thought they were speaking of claims and that the man was
+referring to his work, and the next minute when Katrine turned her head
+to him and said rapidly, "The 'Sally White' is the third in the next
+street," he was rather mystified. He came so little into town, and
+mixed so little with the uncongenial life and company it offered, that
+he was ignorant of its prevailing fashion, pastime, and vice--gambling.
+Fortunes were made and lost across the trestle tables of the saloons
+quicker and easier than up on the claims. He did not now take much
+notice of what she had said, nor ask her for an explanation. The girl
+was handsome and a beautiful dancer, but the company at the bar he did
+not appreciate at all, and his only idea was to withdraw her from it.
+
+"Are you not ready for another dance?" he said, as the violin began to
+squeak out another tune.
+
+Katrine nodded, and they had already turned away, when a voice said over
+her shoulder, "You won't quite forget me this evening, will you?"
+
+Katrine, without turning her head, answered, "You shall have the next,
+if you come for it."
+
+Then they started, and for the next ten minutes Talbot tried to forget,
+to be oblivious of the sordid common scene around him, to get a glimpse
+back into his old life, which seemed so far away now, as one tries to
+re-dream a last night's dream.
+
+Stephen, sitting in his corner, whence he had never stirred, watched her
+sullenly. She was not dancing with Talbot now. Stephen could see that
+he, too, was watching her from the other side of the room, standing with
+his back to the wall. She was waltzing with a man Stephen had not seen
+before, evidently a stranger in every way to the place and the
+surroundings. He was a young fellow, sufficiently good-looking, and
+danced with as much ease as if he were in a New York ball-room. His left
+hand clasped Katrine's and drew it high up close to his neck and
+shoulder, his right arm enclosed her waist and drew her to him so firmly
+that the two figures seemed fused into one as they glided together over
+the imperfect floor. Katrine was giving herself up wholly to the
+pleasure of the dance. Stephen saw, as her face turned towards him, that
+her eyes were half closed, and a little smile of deep satisfaction
+rested on her lips. The young fellow's face showed he was equally
+absorbed and lost to his surroundings, and there was something in its
+expression, coupled with the peculiar ease and sway of the two blent
+forms, which raised a savage and jealous anger in Stephen's breast. To
+an absolutely unprejudiced eye, and one that saw only the extreme grace
+of the movement, which neither their rough clothes, the uneven floor,
+nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious
+and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now
+darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a
+sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the
+second time, still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes
+fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him,
+he started up as if to plant himself in their way, then checked himself,
+and when they had passed went across the room to where Talbot was
+standing.
+
+"You see her dancing?" he said excitedly, without any preface.
+
+Talbot nodded.
+
+"Did you notice how they are dancing? that's what I mean."
+
+Talbot laughed slightly. "That's not dancing, that's--"
+
+Stephen flushed a dull red. "It's disgraceful; I'm going to stop her,"
+he muttered.
+
+"My dear fellow, remember you only met her this evening."
+
+"I don't care; she ought not to dance like that."
+
+"I don't like it myself," answered Talbot, "but _you_ can't interfere."
+
+"I'm going to."
+
+"You'd much better not make an ass of yourself," returned Talbot,
+putting his hand on the other's arm.
+
+"Leave me alone," said Stephen, roughly shaking it off, as the two
+delinquents, still in the same manner, came moving up towards them.
+
+Stephen waited till they were just opposite him, then he stepped forward
+and seized the girl's arm and dragged it down from the level of the
+young fellow's neck where he had drawn it. Both the dancers stopped
+abruptly, and the man faced Stephen with an angry flush and kindling
+eyes.
+
+"What the devil do you mean, sir?" he said angrily, advancing close to
+Stephen, who had his eyes fixed on Katrine's face, all warm tints and
+smiling, as a child's roused from a happy dream.
+
+He ignored the man and addressed her.
+
+"You are not going to dance any more to-night," he said with sombre
+emphasis.
+
+The young man's face went from red to purple. He put his hand to his hip
+with an oath, and had half drawn his pistol, when Katrine sprang forward
+and seized his wrist.
+
+"Now don't be silly; I'm tired anyway, Dick. I'll dance with you
+to-morrow night. This is Mr. Stephen Wood. Mr. Wood--Mr. Peters. Now
+let's go and have some drinks. I'm not going to have any fighting over
+me."
+
+She put herself, smiling, between the two men, who stood glaring at each
+other in silence. She was annoyed at the dance being broken off, but she
+saw in Stephen's interference the great tribute paid to her own
+attraction, and therefore forgave him. At the same time she had no wish
+to have her vanity further gratified by bloodshed. There was a certain
+hardness but no cruelty in her nature. She turned from the men and
+strolled very slowly in the direction of the bar, and they followed her
+as if her moving feet were shod with magnets and theirs with steel.
+Talbot went too, and in a few minutes the four were standing at the
+counter with glasses in their hands.
+
+Peters kept close beside Katrine, and he and Stephen did not exchange a
+word. Katrine kept up the chatter between herself and the two other men.
+
+"May I see you home?" Peters said abruptly to her, interrupting the
+general talk.
+
+"No," returned Katrine, lightly; "to-morrow night, not to-night. I have
+my escort," and she smiled at Stephen and Talbot.
+
+"I will say good-night then," and Peters, after a slight bow to Talbot,
+withdrew, taking no notice of Stephen, who since the girl's surrender of
+the dance had looked very self-contented and happy, and was now standing
+glass in hand, his eyes fixed upon her face.
+
+"I think I really will go home now," she said. "We've had a jolly time.
+I only wish you'd have joined us. Are you always so very good?" she said
+innocently to Stephen. He flushed angrily and said nothing.
+
+A few seconds later they were on the way to Good Luck Row. One of the
+neatest-looking cabins in it had a light behind its yellow blind, and
+here Katrine stopped and thanked them for their escort. They would both
+have liked to see the interior, but she did not suggest their coming in.
+She wished them good-night very sweetly, and before they had realised it
+had disappeared inside.
+
+They walked on down the row slowly, side by side. The next thing to do
+was to find a lodging for the night, and they both felt about ready to
+appreciate a bed and some hours' rest.
+
+"There's Bill Winters," said Stephen, after a moment's silence. "He said
+he'd always put us up when we came down town; let's go and try him."
+
+"Do you know where his cabin is?"
+
+"I think so. Turn down here; now it is the next street, where those
+little black cabins are."
+
+They walked on quickly, following Stephen's directions, and made for a
+block of cabins that had been pitched over and shone black and glossy in
+the brilliant moonlight. When they got up to them the men were puzzled,
+each was so like its neighbour, and Stephen declared he had forgotten
+the number, though Bill had given it to him.
+
+"Well, try any one," said Talbot, impatiently, as Stephen stopped
+bewildered. They were standing on the side-walk, now a slippery arch of
+ice, between two rows of the low black cabins. There was no light in any
+of them; it was two o'clock; the moon alone shone up and down the
+street. Talbot felt his moustache freezing to his face, and his left eye
+being rapidly closed by the lashes freezing together, and that's enough
+to make a man impatient. Stephen did not move, and Talbot went up
+himself to the nearest cabin and knocked at the door. They waited a long
+time, but at last a hand fumbled with the catch inside, and the door was
+opened a little way; through the crack came out a stream of warm air,
+the fumes of tobacco and wood smoke; within was darkness.
+
+"Is this Bill Winters'?" Talbot asked, and the door opened wider.
+
+"I guess it is," said a voice in reply. "Why, it's Mr. Talbot and Mr.
+Wood--come in, sirs."
+
+Talbot and Wood stepped over the threshold into the thick darkness, and
+the door closed behind them. There was a shuffling sound for an instant
+as Mr. Winters groped for a light, then he struck a match and lighted up
+a little tin lamp on the wall. The light revealed a good-sized cabin
+with a large stove in the centre, round which, with their feet towards
+it, four or five men rolled up in skins or blankets were lying asleep.
+
+"You want a bed for the night, I expect," Winters went on; "we've all
+turned in already, but I guess there's room for two more."
+
+Wood and Talbot both expressed their sense of contrition at disturbing
+him, but Winters would not listen.
+
+"Oh, stow all that," he said, as he set about dragging forward two
+trestles and covering them with blankets. "You two fellows are so damned
+polite, you don't seem suited to this town, you don't seem natural here,
+that's a fact."
+
+He was stepping over and about amongst the prostrate forms, and
+sometimes on them, but none of them roused themselves sufficiently to do
+more than utter a sleepy ejaculation and turn into a fresh position.
+Wood and Talbot stood waiting close against the door. It was
+half-an-hour before Bill had prepared their beds just as he wanted them,
+extinguished the lamp again, and retreated to his own corner. Then
+darkness and stillness reigned again over the smoky interior.
+
+The low trestles on which the men lay were hard and unyielding, and a
+doubled-up blanket makes a poor mattress; the air of the cabin was thick
+and heavy, and the stove, which was close to Talbot's head, having been
+stuffed to its utmost capacity with damp wood that it might burn through
+the night, let out thin spirals of acrid smoke from all its cracks.
+Stephen did not close his eyes long after they had lain down, and there
+was utter silence in the place except for heavy breathings. He lay with
+open eyes staring into the thick darkness, a thousand painful wearying
+thoughts stinging his brain. Talbot, tired and worn out with bodily
+fatigue, but with that mental calm that comes from an absolute
+singleness of aim and hope and purpose, fell into a deep and tranquil
+sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. He lived now but to work;
+the night had come when he could not work, therefore he slept that he
+might work again on the morrow.
+
+When the faint grey light of morning came creeping into the low and
+narrow room, which was not very early, as the nights now were far longer
+than the days, Talbot was the first of the sleepers to awake. He
+refilled the stove, which had burned down in the long night hours, and
+then let himself out.
+
+When he returned Bill and the other men were all stirring, and Stephen
+sitting up on his trestle rubbing his red and weary-looking eyes.
+
+"Well, pardner, what are you going to do to-day?" he asked a few minutes
+later, when they had the cabin to themselves for a moment.
+
+"Going to do?" replied Talbot in astonishment, looking up from turning
+the coffee into the coffee-pot, according to Bill's orders. "Why, if we
+collect together all the stores we want, and get back to the diggings
+this afternoon, we shall have about enough to do."
+
+"Oh, I meant about the girl."
+
+"What girl?" queried Talbot, now standing still and staring Stephen in
+the face.
+
+"The girl you danced with last night--the saloon-keeper's daughter,
+Katrine Poniatovsky--do you want any more identification?" returned
+Stephen, sarcastically, opening his heavy lids a little wider.
+
+"Well, _what_ about her?" returned Talbot, looking at him expectantly.
+
+"Oh, well, I didn't know; I thought perhaps we wouldn't go back to-day,
+that's all," answered Stephen, rather sheepishly.
+
+To his sympathetic, impulsive nature, open to every new impression,
+easily distracted like the butterfly which may be caught by the tint of
+any chance flower in its path, the incident of last night was much. To
+Talbot, self-concentrated, determined, and absorbed, it was nothing. He
+looked at his friend now with something like contempt.
+
+"She's so handsome, and dances so well," Stephen went on hurriedly,
+feeling foolish and uncomfortable before the other's gaze.
+
+"I did not come here to dance with girls," remarked Talbot shortly,
+going over to the stove, and the entry of the other men at that moment
+stopped the conversation.
+
+They had breakfast together at the rough wood table in the centre of the
+room. The coffee was the redeeming feature of the meal: from that bright
+brown stream of boiling liquid the men seemed to gain new life; they
+watched it lovingly, expectantly, eagerly, as Bill poured it out into
+their thick cups.
+
+The moment the meal was over Talbot crushed his hat on to his eyes, but
+before he left the cabin he glanced at Stephen, who was standing
+irresolutely by the stove.
+
+"I shall get all I want," he said, "and be back here by two at the
+latest. If you're here then, we can start up together; if not, I shall
+go ahead;" and he went out.
+
+Stephen lingered by the stove, then he and Bill drifted into a
+discussion over some of the latest discoveries of gold in Colorado, and
+they both fell to wondering how much more had been found since their
+last news, seven months old; and they had a pipe together, and then Bill
+thought he'd drop down to the "Pistol Shot," and Stephen crushed on his
+fur cap as determinedly as Talbot had done and went out--to Katrine's
+number in Good Luck Row.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+AT THE WEST GULCH
+
+
+Talbot made his start back to the cabin later than he intended; he had
+knocked at Winters' cabin before leaving the town, but all the occupants
+were out, and there had been no response.
+
+It was afternoon, and already the uncompromising cold of evening had
+entered into the air; the sky was grey everywhere, and dark, almost
+black, in front of him; it seemed to hang low, frowning and ominous,
+over the desolate snowy waste that stretched before him: there was no
+snow falling yet, only the threat of it written in the black and dreary
+sky that faced him. His cheeks and chin felt stiff and frozen already,
+as if a thin mask of ice were drawn over them, and his eyes were sore
+and tired from the continuous glare of the snow. The little pony beside
+him plodded along the path patiently, and his master at intervals drew a
+hand from a comfortable pocket to lay it encouragingly on his neck, at
+which familiar caress the pony would throw up his head and step out
+faster for some paces. Talbot felt sorry for the little beast toiling
+along under his heavy though carefully packed burden of stores, cans of
+oil, loaves, and every sort of miscellaneous provisions, and would have
+spoken cheeringly to it, but his lips felt too stiff and painful to form
+the words, and so man and brute toiled along in silence over the trail
+under the angry sky. As he walked, Talbot's thoughts went back
+involuntarily to the picture of Stephen sitting smoking by the stove in
+the snug interior of Bill Winters' cabin; he felt instinctively, as
+surely as if he had seen it, that he would so sit through the
+afternoon, and by evening he would be finding his way down to the
+nearest saloon and pass the hours there with Katrine; and he compared
+him vaguely with himself, tired with tramping through the town from
+store to store, half frozen while he stood to pack the pony, and now
+labouring up alone to his cabin in the gulch.
+
+He wondered dimly whether it would turn out that he should ever realise
+a reward for his toil, whether he should live to get out of this icy
+corner of the world, or whether he should die and rot here, caught in
+this great snow-trap, in this open grave, where the living were buried.
+He wondered a little, but his mind was not one inclined to abstract
+thought. He spent very little time in retrospection, reflection, and
+contemplation, very little time in thinking of any sort, and on this
+account possessed so great a stock of energy for acting. Each human
+being has only a certain amount of energy supplied him with which to do
+the work of his life. Thinking, speaking, and acting are all portions of
+this work, and whatever of his energy he consumes in any one, so much
+the less has he for the others. Thinking, the formation of ideas, is
+hard work; speaking, the expression of ideas, is hard work; and acting,
+the carrying out of ideas, is hard work. It is false to suppose that the
+first two are natural, instinctive, involuntary movements of the brain,
+and that only the last requires effort.
+
+Talbot thought very little and spoke very little. His ideas came to him
+in simple form; they were not elaborated in his mind nor in his speech,
+they turned into actions immediately or died quietly without giving him
+any trouble or wasting his time. A decision once made he carried out. He
+never thought about it afterwards, or frittered away his strength in
+hours of torturing doubt as to whether it was a good one to have made,
+or whether some other might not have been better. Once made, he kept to
+it, good or bad, leaving it to chance whether he died or succeeded in
+his attempt to carry it out. And this conservation of energy in all
+other mental processes resulted in a splendid strength for action and a
+limitless endurance in the carrying out of his decisions.
+
+And as he walked now he thought very little, except in a resigned way,
+of the physical discomfort he was enduring, and of the time when he
+should reach his cabin. Dusk had already fallen before he came to the
+gulch, and he had to strain his eyes to find the narrow trail which
+descended the side of the gorge. His log cabin, carefully and solidly
+constructed, stood half-way down the northern slope of the gulch, on a
+sort of natural platform formed by the vagaries of the now narrowed
+stream in its younger and wilder days. Beneath the cabin stretched his
+claims, 500 feet of dry soil on the slope of the hill, 100 feet this
+side of the stream and fairly in the creek, and 100 feet on the farther
+side, a stretch of 700 feet in all, and of a quality that made it at
+that time the richest claim for fifty miles round. Shafts, reaching down
+to bed rock, were sunk all over it, and great mounds of frozen gravel
+beside them showed how untiringly they had been worked. In addition to
+these, the man's native energy had prompted him to drive a tunnel
+horizontally for some distance into the side of the hill that rose
+steeply behind the cabin. The tunnel pierced the hill for 100 feet, and
+at the end a shaft had been sunk to bed rock, and it was from here at
+present that the highest grade ore was coming. Moved by an instinct to
+protect what he intuitively felt would be his richest possession, Talbot
+had built his tunnel in one solid block with the cabin, and closed its
+outer end with a huge door, well provided with bars and bolts. So long
+as this door was successfully held, no claim-jumper could penetrate into
+the tunnel or reach the shaft at the end. By this means, too, a double
+protection was afforded the living cabin, though of this he thought
+comparatively little, for the face of the cabin presented nothing but
+its one small window and this huge solid door. Upon opening this you
+found yourself in the tunnel; if you kept straight on you reached the
+shaft; if you entered the small door upon your left hand you found
+yourself in the interior of the living cabin.
+
+The gulch ran east and west, and at sunset at some times in the year a
+red light from the dying sun would fall into it, like a tongue of flame,
+and the whole gulch would seem on fire. At such moments Talbot would
+cease his work and stand looking up the gorge, with the red light
+falling on his face and banishing its careworn pallor. No one knew what
+he was thinking of in those moments, whether he was recalling Italian
+or Egyptian skies that had been as fair, or whether for a moment some
+vanished face seemed to look at him from out those brilliant hues, or if
+merely the great sheets of gold that spread above the gulch brought
+visions of that wealth he was giving his best years to attain. No one
+who met him knew much about him, except that he was an Englishman, had
+travelled much and experienced many different forms of life, and finally
+come to the Klondike,--but why this last? He was believed to have been
+rich before he came: was it merely to increase his wealth, or was there
+some other reason? Was there any one awaiting his return? There were
+several portraits in his cabin of soft and lovely faces, but then the
+number was confusing, and the most curious of the men who worked under
+him could not come to any satisfying conclusion. All they knew was that
+he worked harder than any common miner, that his reserve was unbroken,
+and his life one continual self-denial. There were thirty men in all who
+worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than
+liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence
+of ingenuousness and frankness of character, that prevented any
+affection growing up amongst the men for their master, and his attitude
+towards them was summed up in the answer he gave to an acquaintance who
+once asked him how he got on with his men, if he had any friends amongst
+them. Talbot had raised his dark, marked eyebrows and merely said
+coldly, "I don't make friends of miners."
+
+Stephen Wood's cabin was a little higher up the gulch by several yards,
+and the claims of the two men had been staked out side by side. A great
+friendship had grown up between the two, such a friendship as common
+danger, common privations, common aims, and Nature's awful loneliness
+drives any two human beings in each other's proximity into. But besides
+this friendship there was a quiet liking on Talbot's part for this weak,
+impulsive, boyish character, so unlike his own, and on Stephen's side a
+warm admiration for all Talbot's qualities that he could not and yet
+wished to emulate. He, as others, was completely excluded from the elder
+man's confidence, and knew nothing of his past or what was likely to be
+his future; but then Stephen was one of those people always so deeply
+absorbed in himself, his own aims and views, that he really never
+noticed that his manifold confidences were never returned in the
+smallest degree. He would come over to Talbot's cabin in the evening,
+seat himself on the opposite side of the fire, and talk incessantly.
+Talbot would allow him to do so until he felt too much bored, when he
+would rise and quietly tell him to go. Stephen would hastily apologise
+and retire, to return the following night quite unabashed, with more
+views and aims to impart. In the first week of their acquaintance Talbot
+had heard all about his home life--about the little English village, and
+the red brick, ivy-covered school-house, where he had been master since
+he was eighteen; of the village schoolmistress he had loved, because she
+was so good, and had abandoned, presumably for the same reason; of his
+doubts, fears, hopes, wishes, and intentions,--and after ten months he
+knew no more of Talbot than he did the day of their first meeting.
+
+The cabins of the men employed by both Stephen and Talbot were dotted
+over the gulch, some higher and some lower than their own; while a
+number of the men lived some distance off, a few of them even having
+lodgings in the town.
+
+When at last Talbot reached his cabin door this evening darkness had
+completely fallen; there was no light from within to guide him, but
+with his half-frozen fingers he managed to unlock the outer door, and he
+and his tired beast went in together. The first thing he thought of when
+he had closed the great door behind him and lighted up the passage, was
+to unpack the animal and put him up in the stable which he had built
+opposite his own cabin door; and it was fully an hour before, having
+seen the beast comfortably installed, he turned into his own room and
+struck a light. Here there was only one living thing to greet him, and
+that was a shabby little black cat that leaped off the bed in the corner
+and came purring to meet him. One morning he had found this cat lying on
+his claim with a broken leg and carried it back to his cabin, where he
+had set the leg and nursed the miserable little creature into recovery.
+Denbigh, his foreman, who had seen Talbot sitting up for two whole
+nights to watch the helpless animal, had carried away the impression
+that the cold, quiet, hard and selfish man, as he appeared to the
+miners, had another side to his character that they never saw. It was
+this other side that the kitten was familiar with, and she came mewing
+and purring with delight towards him. Talbot, who was ready to sink to
+the floor with exhaustion, stooped and stroked the animal, which
+followed his steps everywhere as he set about lighting up his stove. It
+was very quiet, there was absolute silence all round him, and every step
+of his heavy boots on the wooden floor, every crackle of the igniting
+wood in the stove, seemed a loud and important sound in the stillness.
+It was always very quiet at the gulch, Nature's own solemn quiet, except
+in the summer time, when she filled it with the laughing voices of a
+thousand streams and rills.
+
+That evening, when his domestic arrangements were all put into working
+order, his fire blazing, his coffee boiling on the hob, and his table
+laid, he sank back in his chair with a weary sigh, his hand idly
+stroking the cat, which had jumped purring on his knee. It seemed lonely
+without Stephen, and he foresaw that probably many evenings would pass
+now without his society.
+
+The next morning, when it was yet barely light, and the gulch was
+holding still all its damp black shadows of the night, Talbot was out
+tramping over the claims, showing his men where to start new fires, and
+carefully scanning the fresh gravel as it was thawed and dug out. All
+his men had a pleasant salutation for him as he passed by, except one,
+who merely leaned over his work and threw out his spadeful of gravel
+savagely, as Talbot stopped by the fire. He took no notice apparently of
+the man, and after a second's survey passed on to the next fire. The man
+looked after him a moment sulkily and returned to his work. He was a
+huge fellow, some six feet four, and with a massive frame and head to
+suit his height. He had been working for many months with Talbot now,
+and was a valuable labourer on account of his great strength and
+capacity for work. At first he had been rather a favorite with Talbot,
+and there hung now in his cabin a first-class six-shooter, the gift of
+his master when he first came up to the gulch.
+
+Dick Marley had had a devoted admiration for Talbot until the last few
+months, when it had turned into a bitter, sullen resentment over a
+matter with which in reality Talbot had absolutely nothing to do. Dick,
+being a hard and constant worker, had managed to save out of his liberal
+wages quite a considerable sum, and this he had entrusted to a man on
+his way to Seattle to invest for him in securities. After a time the man
+disappeared, and Dick discovered his securities had never been bought,
+and that he was in fact robbed and cheated. In his first rage and
+disappointment he cast about unconsciously in his mind for some one
+besides himself to lay the blame upon, and finding no one he grew daily
+more and more morose. Hour after hour, as he worked upon the claims, his
+thoughts would revolve sullenly round his loss, and the offender being
+beyond his reach, his anger burned against any and every man near him,
+and apparently chiefly against his employer.
+
+A week passed before Stephen reappeared at the gulch, then one evening
+after dark, when Talbot was sitting back in his chair, dozing after the
+cold and fatigue of the day's work, a loud banging came on his outer
+door, and when he opened it, Stephen, looking very flushed and animated,
+came into the quiet little room, laden with packages and with a general
+air of city life about him.
+
+"Well, old man, how are you? Hello, Kitty!" this as he stumbled over the
+little black cat at his feet. "Well, I've had such a glorious time! I
+wish you'd stayed down there too: that girl is just the finest creature
+I've ever seen. Have you anything for a fellow to eat?--I'm perfectly
+famished. Look here, I've brought you up some cans of things and a
+bottle of rye, the very best. I say, you look dreadfully blue--what's
+the matter?"
+
+"Life in the west gulch in the winter isn't particularly exhilarating,"
+answered Talbot, quietly, as he went about his preparations for
+Stephen's supper.
+
+"How have the men been--all right?" questioned Stephen, as he took off
+his coat and settled himself in the best chair.
+
+"They have been working pretty steadily, but I notice a difference in
+them since that fellow Marley has been here. He has been stirring them
+up, doing a lot of mischief, I think."
+
+"You must assert your authority, I suppose," remarked Stephen
+pompously, stretching his feet out comfortably in the cheerful blaze.
+"Perhaps he doesn't know who's master here."
+
+"He will very soon find out then," returned Talbot, so grimly that
+Stephen looked at him sharply. "Well, what's all your news?" asked
+Talbot, as if desirous to get away from the question of his men.
+
+"I don't know that there is much, except I've been having a good time.
+You've looked after my ground and seen to the workings, haven't you?
+Thanks, I knew you would, and so I felt I could stay down town a little:
+you're a better hand at managing men than I am, any way,--women too, for
+that matter; do you know that you impressed Katrine awfully? She has
+talked about you to me--you are so good-looking, so distinguished, she
+wants to know whether you are a Count or a Prince in disguise, and all
+sorts of things."
+
+Talbot smiled. "It is extremely kind of her," he said quietly.
+
+"Oh, I know she's not the kind of girl you admire," said Stephen, in
+rather a nettled tone. "You wouldn't look at a saloon-keeper's daughter
+simply because she _is_ a saloon-keeper's daughter; you like a girl in
+your own rank, all grace and dignity and good manners, and awfully
+clever and intellectual, and gifted and educated, and all that."
+
+Talbot merely laughed and remained silent, a habit he had which
+successfully baffled questions, innuendoes, and suppositions alike.
+
+"And any way your passions are engaged somehow, somewhere."
+
+"How do you know that?" asked Talbot, with a hardening of his mouth.
+
+"Know it! why, otherwise you could not lead this dog's life as you do,
+and you could not be indifferent to a beautiful girl like Katrine,--for
+she is beautiful, she's not 'pretty' or 'nice,' but she's downright
+beautiful," returned Stephen, emphasising his remarks by striking the
+table.
+
+Talbot said nothing, but put more wood in the stove in silence.
+
+"Your supper is ready now; if you are famished, as you said, you'd
+better have it, and discuss Miss Poniatovsky afterwards," he remarked.
+
+Stephen turned to the table. "Won't you have something too?" he said.
+
+Talbot shook his head. "No, thanks; I'm not hungry."
+
+"You ascetic creature, you never are," replied Stephen, as he began to
+carve into the cold bacon.
+
+"Well, you know how I detest her surroundings," he began again after a
+few minutes, "and drinking, and saloons, and almost everything she does,
+but then I can't help liking her. She's so different from any girl I've
+ever seen. She attracts me, she holds my thoughts so, and if I could get
+her to give up all that, if I could alter her views--"
+
+"You would be doing away with that difference from others that is the
+basis of your attraction," put in Talbot, dryly.
+
+"Well," returned Stephen after a minute, in a sulky tone, "we are all
+like that,--a man falls in love with a girl, because she _is_ a girl,
+and then immediately wants to turn her into a married woman."
+
+Talbot laughed. "Good!" he said. "You are quite right."
+
+"It's the altering process we like, and we want to do the alteration
+ourselves. I showed her my pocket Greek testament yesterday," he
+continued.
+
+"And was she interested?" inquired Talbot, dryly.
+
+"Not so much as she was in the shooting gallery," admitted Stephen. "I
+told her how a bible at a man's heart had often saved his life, and she
+said a pistol had done that too, and she'd rather trust the pistol."
+
+Talbot laughed. "You say you like altering. I should think in Katrine
+you've a splendid field. If you want to get her down to the
+schoolmistress pattern, you've employment for a lifetime!"
+
+Stephen flushed, as he always did at any allusion to the girl he had
+loved as the type of all virtues, and yet had tired of. Good people are
+always more or less interested in and attracted by the wicked, while the
+wicked are not generally the least interested in nor attracted by the
+good. Stephen was drawn towards this reckless daughter of the saloons
+partly through the sense of her general badness, it formed unconsciously
+a sort of charm for him, whereas his goodness did not act at all in the
+same way upon her. To her eyes it was his one great drawback, an
+overwhelming disadvantage.
+
+He finished his supper in silence, and the two men drew in close to the
+fire to smoke. That is to say, Stephen did the smoking, as he did the
+talking. He consumed Talbot's tobacco, and filled Talbot's cabin with
+its fumes. Talbot himself did not smoke.
+
+Stephen's return to his own claim freed Talbot from the double share of
+work he had been doing for the last week, and he remained on his own
+claims all day, tramping from one end to the other, directing where a
+new shaft should be made, overseeing closely all the work that went on,
+and doing a good deal of it himself; and in those days he became more
+clearly conscious than ever of the difference that was growing up in his
+men's manner towards him. There was a veiled insolence in their replies
+to his questions, a certain want of promptness in obeying his orders,
+which caused a curious gleam to come into the quiet grey eyes as,
+apparently without noticing it, he passed on.
+
+He did not speak of it, not even to his foreman, Denbigh, the man whom
+he liked and trusted most. He was accustomed to manage his own affairs,
+and rarely took counsel with any one. He was one of those men who are
+born with the gift of governing others. He was an organiser, an
+administrator, by nature. Had he been born to a throne, his kingdom
+would have been well ruled from end to end, and rarely if ever embroiled
+with other nations; and the same spirit that would have ruled a kingdom
+showed itself here in the ruling and management of his seven hundred
+feet of ground.
+
+He never bullied, never swore, no one had ever seen him in a passion. He
+gave his orders in a pleasant friendly voice, his manner was quiet, even
+to gentleness, but he had a way of getting those orders invariably
+carried out that was hard to analyse. If he said a thing was to be done,
+it was done, and no one knew of an instance where it was not. He never
+countermanded an order, and never receded from a position once taken,
+even if in his own heart he recognised later it was an unwise one. But
+the forethought and caution, the deliberation in decision that were his
+by nature, made the occasions on which he regretted an order very
+seldom, and if such there were, no matter, the order stood. He himself
+looked upon his word as irrevocable, whether given in promise or
+command, and instinctively all who came in contact with him looked upon
+it in the same light. The men, when they made engagements with him and
+stipulated certain terms for certain work, and other details, never
+asked for paper, and even refused it when offered. Whatever came from
+those silent, resolute lips they knew unalterable, unanswerable, final,
+and absolute; they all trusted his word completely, and it passed
+amongst them as other men's bond.
+
+Everything on the claims was well organised, all was kept in smooth
+working order. The men had exact hours of work, exact time for changing
+off, each his specified work and place on the ground, each his tools,
+for which he was accountable as long as he worked there.
+
+Talbot's forethought even went far enough to provide for the
+happy-go-lucky and mostly ungrateful creatures who had no idea of
+providing for themselves. He established a sick fund, and to this each
+of the men who worked for him was obliged to subscribe a trifle out of
+his weekly wages. Then in their not infrequent sickness there was
+alleviation and comfort waiting for them. If the miners were not his
+friends they were his dependents, and as such he cared for them and
+looked after them. He was always friendly in manner to them, always
+ready to help and assist them, to attend to their wants, to listen to
+their complaints, and settle the frequent disputes amongst themselves,
+which they invariably brought to him for decision. If he had not
+instilled affection into them, they felt an unlimited faith and
+confidence in his absolute justice.
+
+"He's hard, real hard," they said amongst themselves, "but he'll never
+go back on you;" and that was the received opinion amongst them.
+
+Although he was conscious now of the feeling growing up amongst his men,
+he appeared to ignore it entirely. As long as his instructions and
+commands were carried out, he affected to be in ignorance whether it was
+with a smiling or a scowling face. He felt certain that the disaffection
+owed its origin to the man Marley, and he expected every day that some
+matter would bring this man and himself into a personal conflict, in
+which he meant to conquer, and he preferred to wait for this to happen
+than to, in any way, take an initiative step in bringing the covert
+hostility to light.
+
+It was his method. On the same principle, when one of his debtors,
+having completely lost his head in blind rage against a quiet order that
+he should pay what was due, shook his fist in the other's face and
+threatened to wipe the floor with him, Talbot did not knock the man
+down, as some might have done. He simply remarked in his dryest tone,
+"You'd better try it," and for some reason or other the man did not.
+Shortly after the money was paid.
+
+So now he simply stood his own ground, saw that his work was properly
+done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the
+meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness
+of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and
+quite incapable of understanding his employer, grew elated and
+triumphant.
+
+Stephen had been back at the gulch a fortnight or more, when Talbot
+found late one afternoon some of his tools broken, and this, combined
+with other work he had to do in town, decided him to go down that
+afternoon and return the following day before daylight failed. He got
+ready, locked up his house, and called upon Stephen to say he was going.
+Stephen looked quite surprised, Talbot went to town so seldom, and then
+began to chaff him upon his motives and intentions.
+
+"As it happens, I'm going about some mending of spades," Talbot
+returned.
+
+"Are you sure it's not the breaking of hearts?" Stephen laughed back
+from the fire by which he was sitting. "Well, you'll see Katrine any
+way. Tell her--"
+
+"My dear fellow," interrupted Talbot, impatiently, "I'm not going to see
+her. I shall have as much as I can do to be back here before mid-day
+to-morrow," and he went out before the amazed Stephen could say another
+word.
+
+"Going down town and not going to see Katrine! why, he must be mad,"
+ejaculated Stephen mentally; "wonder what his own girl's like anyway."
+Then he tossed himself back on the rug and looked at a little
+postage-stamp photograph Katrine had given him of herself, which he had
+stuck on the fly-leaf of his Greek testament.
+
+The following morning, before it was fully light, found Talbot toiling
+up to the west gulch on foot. He had made an early start, as he wanted
+to be back before the men began work, and the air hung round one and
+against one's cheek like a sodden blanket in the dusky dawn. It took him
+over three hours to make the distance, and when he reached his cabin he
+felt chilled through. All his muscles were stiff and numb from the long
+climb. He felt a longing to sit down and rest and get a little warmth
+kindled in his half-frozen limbs. The first thing that encountered him
+at the main door, which led into the block composed of his own cabin and
+the tunnel, was a sheet of smooth ice, only an inch deep perhaps, but
+glazing over the ground from where he stood to his own door. He saw at
+once what had happened: the waste water from the workings had been
+diverted from its proper outlet, and had simply run freely at its own
+will over the level ground. Talbot's face darkened as his eyes rested on
+it. It was Marley's business to see that the egress for the water was
+kept free and unblocked with ice, and only yesterday he had given him
+orders to attend to it. It was the second or third time he had returned
+to find the entrance to his own house almost impassable. Crossing over
+with difficulty the frozen stream, he looked into his cabin. There was
+about a foot of muddy water and ice covering the floor and floating his
+slippers and some pairs of socks he had left by the hearth. The fire was
+out, and the lower part of the stove filled with mud and water. The bed
+was completely soddened, the blankets and quilt dabbling in the water.
+He did not go beyond the threshold. After a minute's survey he turned
+and walked down the tunnel leading to the shaft where he knew the men
+were working.
+
+"Marley!" he called down the shaft.
+
+"What is it?" came up from below in a surly tone.
+
+"You have allowed the waste to run into the tunnel again, and my cabin
+is flooded."
+
+"Well, clean it out then!"
+
+"I think that is your business," answered the dry cutting tones from
+above. "Come up at once, and see to it."
+
+"I'm not going to swab out your blasted, dirty old cabin," shouted
+Marley hoarsely from the bottom of the shaft. "Do it yourself."
+
+A strange look came over Talbot's quiet face. It whitened and set in the
+darkness. He knew his men were gathered about Marley, listening to what
+passed, and this open defiance of his authority, this public insult
+before them, angered him excessively. He made his answer very quietly,
+however, only his voice was peculiarly hard, and the words seemed to
+drop like ice on the men standing listening below.
+
+"I allow no one to speak to me like that here," he said. "This is the
+last day that you work on the claim."
+
+"I'll work here as long as it suits me," retorted Marley, with an oath.
+"You can't turn me out."
+
+"We will see about that," returned Talbot, in the same even, frigid
+tone, and he turned away from the pit and walked back to his flooded
+cabin.
+
+He found Denbigh had arrived there. It was close to the luncheon hour by
+this time, and he was doing what he could to get rid of the water. He
+looked up, and saw at once from the other's face there had been some
+unusual incident.
+
+"What's up?" he inquired, standing still, with his mop in his hand.
+
+"That fellow Marley is making all the trouble he can," returned Talbot.
+"I have just told him he has got to get out, that's all."
+
+Denbigh's face fell. "I think it's a bad job," he remarked after a
+minute. "You know what a desperate devil he is; he would kill you, I
+believe, if he had to give up his work."
+
+"Well, he has been trying to boss this business for some time now,"
+returned Talbot, "and I am tired of it. To-day he finished with a gross
+insult before a lot of the men, and it's time, I think, to show him and
+them who is boss here."
+
+"Couldn't you overlook it?" replied Denbigh, tentatively, with a scared
+look on his thin face.
+
+"I have no wish to," replied Talbot, coldly. "There is bound to be
+trouble some time. It may just as well come now as later."
+
+Denbigh opened his mouth to make a further protest, but Talbot stopped
+him.
+
+"Don't let us discuss it any further, please," he said curtly, and
+Denbigh closed his mouth and dropped back on his knees to his
+floor-mopping.
+
+Talbot drew out his pistol, glanced over it, and buckled it round his
+waist.
+
+When the room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the
+two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to
+swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with
+such absolute command over his passion, anger was with him, like a flame
+at white heat, rushing through his veins.
+
+As they sat they heard the miners tramping by the cabin door, and saw
+their heads pass the window as they went out to get their mid-day food.
+Denbigh himself, as soon as he had finished, made an excuse and
+departed. He was eager to join his companions before they came back to
+work and hear some more delectable details of the row than he could get
+from Talbot. When all his men had filed out from the tunnel, Talbot went
+into the passage and walked up to the heavy wooden door and shut it,
+barring it with a steady hand. This was the main entrance to the shaft,
+and at the present time the only one. The door was never, under ordinary
+circumstances, closed, but stood open all day for the men to pass in and
+out to their work. When he had fastened it he walked back, turned into
+his own cabin, and took up his place at the window. From here he could
+see the men as they came back. They began to return earlier than was
+their wont, knowing that trouble was in the air, and each one was
+anxious to be on the spot for the crisis. All through the lunch hour
+Talbot's words and the possibility of Dick Marley being obliged to
+"quit" was the sole topic of conversation.
+
+Dick talked largely, and with a great many of the miners his oaths, and
+the imputations of cowardice he heaped on his employer, carried the day.
+Some of the others, quieter men with keener perceptions, merely listened
+in silence, and shook their heads when appealed to for an opinion.
+
+"I dunno. He's got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and
+bacon, in response to a sanguinary burst of Dick's.
+
+"He's a slip," answered Dick, contemptuously.
+
+"But a dead sure shot."
+
+"He'd funk it," said Dick, his face paling a little. "He'd never stand
+up to me. He's got no fight in him. Why, he's managed that claim there
+now for two years and he's never so much as fired a shot over it. Now
+that fellow Robinson wot's got the claim a mile farther up the creek,
+he's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was
+trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five
+corpses over it."
+
+He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring assent.
+
+The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.
+
+"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as butter as long as you
+know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to
+try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."
+
+Dick took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.
+
+As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their
+employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprised when
+they passed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut.
+Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up,
+shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of
+things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they
+encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment,
+and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards
+the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened
+again.
+
+"'E's waiting for Dick to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one
+of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in
+Dick's shoes when he do come."
+
+There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the
+men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of
+the coming contest.
+
+At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the
+window. Talbot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles.
+He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. Dick fell back a
+step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round
+the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.
+
+"You can't come in," and the sentence had an accent of inflexibility
+that made it seem like a drawn sword across the entrance.
+
+"To hell I can't!" returned Dick, a dull red flush coming over his face.
+
+"No, you can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that
+contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of the other.
+
+"Oh well, I guess I'm coming in any way," answered Marley, and he made a
+step forward. A slight motion of Talbot's right hand to his belt was his
+only answer.
+
+Marley stopped, put his own hand, half involuntarily, to his hip,
+remembered he had no revolver with him, and turned pale and red in
+confusion.
+
+By this time the loud voices and talking at the door had brought the
+remainder of the men upon the scene. Those who had already passed into
+the shaft left their work and came up behind Talbot in the tunnel; those
+in front pressed a little nearer. Talbot stood now completely surrounded
+by the crowd of rough working men. Marley's adherents were in full
+force. He was quite alone. He did not glance round them. He did not
+think of himself, nor of his own danger should two or three of them back
+up their fellow and commence to hustle him. He felt nothing but a cool
+though intensely savage determination to subdue this burly brute, to
+defend his position and title, though it cost him his life.
+
+"There can be only one boss here," he said coldly, as Marley hesitated
+before him. "If you are not satisfied who it is, go to your cabin and
+get your six-shooter, and we will settle it here on the dump."
+
+There was a movement and a murmur of satisfaction amongst the men. Now
+this was coming down to business and giving them something they could
+understand. Here was a man willing to defend his rights in a good,
+square stand-up fight on the spot, and they one and all agreed in their
+own minds that he was the right sort. They glanced at Dick expectantly,
+and some said to themselves he weakened. They were not going to take
+sides with either party. One of the men was their friend and
+fellow-worker, the other was their employer. The two had a difference,
+and they could settle it between themselves. They had no business to
+interfere. All they had to do was to stand round and see a square fight
+and "with'old their judgment," as they said afterwards, talking it over
+in the bar of the "Pistol Shot." They waited, and Dick hesitated. He
+felt his opponent's eyes upon him; he glanced round the men, they were
+watching him.
+
+"Fetch your six-shooter," commanded Talbot again, with increasing
+sternness, and Dick, feeling he must do something, nodded sullenly and
+turned away towards his cabin. He strode up the incline in the direction
+of the miners' dwellings, and Talbot, whose brain seemed to himself half
+splitting with nervous, angry excitement, began to pace up and down a
+short length before the door, waiting for him to come back. He did not
+order his men away, and they stayed in their places.
+
+The excitement was intense amongst them as they waited; not one of them
+shifted his place on the log or bank where he had sat down; they hardly
+seemed to draw their breath. All their eyes were fixed upon Talbot. He
+walked up and down in front of the door, his arms folded, his revolver
+still in its case on his hip. The men watched him curiously. His face
+was very white and exceedingly determined.
+
+The afternoon was placid and lovely. The temperature was not within many
+degrees of zero, but the gold of the sunshine was bright, and the air
+dazzlingly clear. It was absolutely still, not a leaf rustled, not a
+breath stirred. Nature was in her calmest, gentlest mood; nowhere could
+there have been a more tranquil arena to witness the passions of men.
+There was perfect silence, except for the crack of the ice sometimes as
+it split beneath the firm, resolute steps of the man pacing up and down.
+His face was set as a stone mask, as immovable and as calm, but the
+passion of anger increased within him as he waited; a mad impatience for
+his adversary to return grew at each step that he walked to and fro,
+with the insult of the morning echoing in his ears.
+
+At last he stopped in his walk and fixed his gaze on the road which led
+to the miners' cabins. All the men's eyes followed his, and they saw
+the figure of their fellow-worker coming slowly down towards them. A
+huge, hulking form, contrasting strongly with the slim one of the man
+waiting for him. Some of the miners glanced up at Talbot, wondering
+silently if he "funked it," but there was something in that attitude and
+that iron countenance that reassured them and stirred a dull admiration
+in their hearts. Talbot ceased to walk up and down. He planted himself
+directly in front of the wide open door and waited there. Passion and
+excitement had dilated his pupils until the usually calm light grey eyes
+looked black; his nostrils quivered slightly as he watched his enemy
+coming up. As Marley drew nearer, the miners noted with satisfaction his
+enormous six-shooter swinging in his belt; the sunlight caught the steel
+at every other step forward he made. Their hearts beat fast with keen
+anticipation. There would soon be some fine shooting, and one dead man
+perhaps, or two, for Marley meant business; and as for the other, he
+looked like the devil himself as he stood there. And he was a fine shot,
+there was no mistake about that. Denbigh stared hard at him with round
+fixed eyes. He was thinking of the nights when he had watched Talbot
+teaching Dick to shoot straight--teaching the very man he had sent off
+now to get his pistol to shoot himself with! He remembered how Talbot
+had stood with Marley at this very tunnel's mouth and showed him how to
+snuff a candle at thirty yards! And Denbigh stared and glowed with
+admiration. Marley drew nearer down the path, his heavy crunching steps
+echoing through the serene and frosty air. A few minutes more and he was
+close upon the eager, expectant, silent circle; the men watched him with
+their breath suspended. On he came, sullenly, filled with a sort of
+dogged, brutal animosity against the man he had wronged and insulted. He
+stepped between the men, who made a short line, and then into the clear
+open space, facing Talbot.
+
+For the first time he looked him full in the face, with a fugitive,
+fleeting glance, and his eyes shifted away. His pace slackened, but he
+did not stop; his feet dragged loosely over the rough snow and gravel,
+his huge form seemed to shrink together, to lessen; while to the
+fascinated eyes of the men watching the two, that slight figure at the
+doorway, motionless as a statue, seemed to dominate the scene. Marley
+felt a peculiar, sick paralysis stealing over him, a curious tugging
+back of his muscles when he tried to get his hand to his hip, a
+strangling feeling in his throat: that glance seemed petrifying him. The
+absolute fearlessness, the indomitable will that filled it, seemed to
+overcome him.
+
+The very fact, perhaps, that Talbot had not even yet drawn his pistol,
+the extreme coolness that relied upon the swiftness of his wrist to
+draw it at a second's notice, staggered and scared him. He remembered
+the skill that had long been his admiration, and that he had at last
+learned to imitate, the sureness of aim and eye, the dexterity and
+quickness of that hand, and his tongue fairly cleaved to the roof of his
+dry mouth. He struggled to draw his revolver, but his arm refused to
+obey his will. Yet it was not wholly cowardice that swept over him in a
+sickly tide. As he had met those scornful, indignant eyes, there had
+rushed back to his mind a thousand small benefits conferred upon him by
+this man, a thousand instances of friendliness, the memory of the first
+days they had worked together, how he had slept under his roof, fed at
+his table, how, more than all, he had been given by him and instructed
+in the use of this very weapon that now would be turned to the giver's
+own breast. A horror of killing this man, of wounding him, firing upon
+him, combined with his terror of being killed, swept over him, and
+between these he felt cowed and beaten, unable to stand up and face him,
+unable to do anything but drag one trembling foot behind the other and
+go by, keeping watch from the side of his eye that that deadly pistol
+was not drawn upon him. But Talbot never moved, simply stood and watched
+him too, with fixed eyes; and Marley, overwhelmed by some power he did
+not understand, as if dragged forward against his will, without another
+look at his opponent, passed by them all and went on slowly down the
+road leading to the town. Not a word was spoken, not a breath was drawn,
+no one moved. They watched his retreating figure, some half hoping, half
+expecting, some half fearing, he would turn and shoot from a
+distance,--all wondering greatly, and a little overawed. Then, as he
+neither turned nor looked back, but kept steadily ahead, his large
+figure well outlined against the stretches of white snow, his
+six-shooter glistening in the sun, his head hanging down, till at last
+by a turn in the road he was lost to view, there was a long-drawn breath
+of surprise and wonder, a general turning of the eyes to Talbot. It was
+a victory, though a bloodless one, and they felt it. Each one felt that
+the conqueror was before them. Talbot said nothing. He simply stood
+aside from the door, to let the miners who were outside enter. The men
+took it as a signification that they were to recommence work, and
+hastened to obey. They did not dare to speak to him, not even to
+congratulate him. They were awed into submissive silence before him. Not
+a sound was uttered. The men filed silently into the tunnel like cowed
+sheep into their pen, leaving their master standing motionless in the
+sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS
+
+
+Good Luck Row was a little row of small, insignificant cabins towards
+the back of the city, and at right angles to the direction of the main
+street. Dawson faces the Yukon, and its main thoroughfare lies parallel
+with the river. In the summer, when the Yukon and the Klondike, that
+joins it just above, are free, the waters of the two rivers united come
+rolling by in jubilant majesty, tossing loose blocks of ice, the
+remnants of their winter chains, on their swelling tide. They form a
+little eddy in front of the city, and their waters roll outward and
+swirl back again to their course, as if the great stream made a bow to
+the city front as it swept past. Here in the summer, with the steamboats
+ploughing through the rocking green water, and the sun streaming down
+upon the banks crowded with active human beings, glinting on the gay
+signs of the saloons and the white and green painted doors of the
+warehouses, with the brilliant azure sky stretched above, and far off
+the tall green larches piercing it with their slender tops,--in the
+summer this main street is a pleasant, cheerful sight; but now, with the
+river solid and silent, the banks black and frozen, and the bleak,
+bitter sky above, it looked more desolate than the inner streets of the
+town, more uninviting than Good Luck Row, which had little cabins on
+each side, and where the inhabitants overlooked their opposite
+neighbours' firelit interior instead of the frozen river. The side-walks
+of the row were like the other side-walks of the city, a wealth of soft
+mud and slush and dirt through the warm weather, and now frozen hard
+into uneven lumps, big depressions, and rough hummocks. The cabins were
+uniform in size, small, with one fair-sized window in the front, beside
+the door, which opened straight into the main room, where the front
+window was. At the back there was another smaller room with a tiny
+window, looking out over a black barren ice-field, for Good Luck Row was
+on the edge of the town.
+
+Katrine lived at No. 13. This cabin had been the last to be occupied on
+account of its unlucky number, but Katrine only laughed at it, and
+painted it very large in white paint upon the door. Here Katrine lived
+alone, though her father, the little stunted Pole who kept the "Pistol
+Shot," was one of the richest men in the city.
+
+And because she lived alone some of her neighbours declared she was not
+respectable. As a matter of fact, she was more respectable than many of
+the married women living in the row, and Katrine knew many a story with
+which she could have startled an unsuspecting husband when he came into
+town after a week or two's absence prospecting or at work on the claims;
+but she did not trouble about other people's affairs; she gave her
+friendship to those who sought it, and heeded not at all those who
+condemned her.
+
+On an afternoon about three weeks after her first meeting with Stephen,
+Katrine stood in front of her little glass in the corner of her cabin,
+smoothing her short glossy hair; when this was flattened with
+mathematical exactness to her well-shaped head--for Katrine was always
+trim and neat in her appearance--she turned to the table and wrote on a
+slip of paper, "I'm next door;" this she pinned to the outside of her
+door, and then locking it went into the next cabin in the row. She had
+grown quite accustomed to Stephen's visits now, and generally left a
+note on her door when she went out, in case he should come unexpectedly
+in her absence. The cabin she entered presented a different appearance
+from her own. There was the same large stove opposite the door, the same
+rough table in the centre and wooden chairs round, but the floor was
+dirty and gritty, quite unlike Katrine's, which always maintained a
+white and floury look from her constant attentions, and the stove looked
+rusty and uncleaned. The small square panes of the window, too, hardly
+let in any light, they were so obscured by dust inside and snow frozen
+on to them without. By the stove sat a young woman, in whose face
+ill-health and beauty struggled together for predominance. Her hair,
+twisted into a loose knot at the back of her head, was of the lightest
+gold colour, like a young child's, and her face brought to one's mind
+the idea of milk and violets, the skin was so white and smooth and the
+eyes so blue. This was the beauty which no disease could kill, but
+ill-health triumphed in the livid circles round the eyes, the drawn
+lines round the faded lips. Katrine entered with her brightest smile.
+
+"Well, Annie, are you better to-day?" she asked.
+
+The woman rose with an unsteady movement from the chair, and before she
+could answer burst suddenly into a rain of tears. "Better? Oh, Katie, I
+shall never be any better! But I wish I could go home to die!"
+
+Katrine advanced and put her arms round her, drawing the frail
+attenuated form close against her own warm vigorous frame.
+
+"What nonsense!" she said gently. "You are not going to die at home or
+anywhere yet. Why, Will is going to make a big strike, and take you home
+to live in style all the rest of your life."
+
+"No," sobbed the girl,--for she was no more than a girl in age,--falling
+back in her chair again. "No, it won't come in time for me."
+
+"Where is Will?" asked Katrine, looking round.
+
+"He's just got a job up at the west gulch on Mr. Stephen Wood's claim,"
+returned the other. "Oh, I am that thankful he's found some one to
+employ him at last."
+
+"Yes, it's delightful," returned Katrine, absently, as she sat down on
+the other side of the rusty stove and looked round the dirty, cheerless
+room. It was due to her urgent pleading with Stephen that Will had
+obtained the place on the claim, but his wife did not seem to know, and
+Katrine did not tell her.
+
+"But then it don't lead to nothing," continued Annie, despairingly. "He
+can't look out for himself if he's working another man's ground."
+
+"Well, he only does a few hours' work, I believe, and has the rest of
+the day to look round for himself," returned Katrine.
+
+"It don't amount to much, anyway; this time of the year there ain't no
+day to speak of," replied the other, gazing plaintively through the dim
+glass of the window. "And then if he do see a bit of land he fancies,
+why, he can't buy it, he's got no money."
+
+"I think Mr. Wood will advance him enough to buy any ground he thinks
+well of," replied Katrine, gently.
+
+"Mr. Wood!" repeated Annie, opening her sunken eyes wide with the first
+display of interest she had shown. "Why should he help my man along?"
+
+"I don't know," returned Katrine, evasively, with heightened colour;
+"but he told me he would do so, and I know he will. How is Tim to-day?"
+she added suddenly, to divert the conversation.
+
+The mother looked round.
+
+"Tim!" she called; "where is that child? Katie, you go and look if you
+can see him in the wood-shed."
+
+Katrine crossed the room to the lean-to attached to the cabin and looked
+in. On the floor of the wood-shed, with the happy indifference to the
+cold usually displayed by Klondike infants, little Tim sat on the floor
+with a pile of chips beside him. Great icicles hung from the rafters
+above him, and his tiny hands were blue with cold, but he was
+contentedly and silently piling up the wood on the frozen ground.
+Katrine picked him up and carried him into the next room, and put him by
+the fire at his mother's feet. He did not cry nor offer any resistance,
+but when put in his new location looked round for a few minutes, and
+then calmly leaned towards the stove and began to play with the cinders
+in place of his vanished wood chips.
+
+"What a good little fellow he is!" said Katrine, leaning over him.
+
+"Yes; he's his mother's darling, that's what he is!" returned the other,
+stooping to smooth the curly head that was only a shade lighter than
+her own.
+
+"Will you have some coffee?" asked Annie presently, looking helplessly
+towards the dirty stove, where a feeble fire was burning sulkily amongst
+the old wood ash.
+
+"No," returned Katrine, cheerfully; "you must be getting tired of
+coffee. I brought you some tea for a change," and she extracted a neat
+little packet from one of her pockets. "May I do up the fire and make
+some for you?"
+
+"Why, it will make you so dirty; that stove is in an awful state,"
+replied Annie, looking over the other's neat dress and figure dubiously.
+
+"I don't mind that. Pick up the baby," Katrine answered, rolling up her
+sleeves and displaying two rounded muscular arms white as the snow
+outside. "You'd better move farther out of the dust," she added, going
+down on her knees before the stove. Annie picked up the child and
+retreated to a chair by the window, from where she watched the other
+with a sort of helpless envy.
+
+"Lord! I've grown that weak lately I can't do nothing," she said after a
+minute. "You know how nice I used to keep the place for Will when we
+first came."
+
+Katrine nodded in silence, and two bright tears fell amongst the wood
+ash she was taking from the stove. She did remember the bright, active
+young wife, the united little family moving into the cabin next her only
+a year ago; she remembered the interior that had always been so neat and
+clean and cheerful to receive Will when he came home, the unceasing
+devotion of his wife, and the mutual love and hope that had buoyed them
+up and made them face all hardships smilingly. Then she had watched
+sorrowfully the gradual deterioration of the man under the constant
+disappointment; she had met him more and more frequently in the
+saloons, less and less at his home. She had seen day by day the rapid
+decline of the bright, beautiful young creature he had brought with him
+into this poor faded wraith dragging herself about in the neglected,
+cheerless cabin.
+
+"You'll get stronger again in the warm weather," she said after a
+minute, when her voice was steady.
+
+"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen what I saw on the snow this morning
+when I'd been coughing there back of the wood-shed," returned Annie,
+drearily leaning her tired head against the dingy pane.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Katrine, looking up apprehensively. "Blood?"
+
+The other nodded in silence, and there was quiet in the cabin except for
+the crooning of the child. Then Katrine rose from the hearth impulsively
+with a flushed, lovely face and the ash dust on her hair and dress. She
+went over to Annie and drew her head on to her strong, warm bosom.
+
+"Oh, you poor, poor thing! What can we do?" she said desperately.
+
+"Nothing," murmured Annie, closing her eyes in the girl's soothing
+embrace, "unless you could persuade Will to take me home, and nobody
+could do that now, he's so set upon the gold. That's the second bleeding
+from the chest that I've had this month; now the third'll do for me."
+
+She shivered as if from cold, and Katrine kissed her and hastened back
+to her work at the fire. It is not a pleasant nor an easy thing to do to
+clean out a stove that has been left to itself for a week or more and
+fresh fires kindled on the old ashes every day, but in a few minutes
+Katrine had the work completed and the fresh wood crackling and filling
+the stove with red flame. Then she made the tea rapidly, and neither of
+them spoke again till Annie held a great tin mug of it to her white
+lips. Katrine pulled her chair close to the stove again, and took Tim on
+her own lap, where he found a new toy in her cartridge belt. Annie
+sipped from her mug and gazed absently into the flames.
+
+"Lord, we were so happy," she said musingly, a little colour coming into
+her face under the influence of the hot tea and the warmth from the
+re-invigorated fire. "We had the nicest little home down in Brixham. I
+daresay you don't know where that is?" Katrine shook her head. "It's
+just the prettiest, sweetest village in the world, down in Devonshire;
+and we had a cottage there, quite in the country, with pink roses all
+over the front,--I can smell those roses now. Oh, it was lovely; and
+Will had regular work all the time, and he was the best husband woman
+ever had. He used to bring his wages in Saturdays, and say to me,
+'Annie, old girl, ain't there enough there to get you a new ribbon for
+Sunday or a fresh sash for the baby?' He never spent a penny for drink
+nor tobacco. And Sunday we'd go out on the downs and stand looking at
+the sea; it do come in so splendid there, and the wind from it seems to
+put new life in yer. We was as happy and as well as could be, all of us;
+and then them newspapers got to printing all those tales of the gold in
+the Klondike, and Will he just got mad like, and nothing would do but he
+must sell the house and come out here. He thought he'd come back so
+rich; well, so he may, but he won't have no wife to go back with."
+
+She lay back in her chair, and Katrine, gazing at her white face and
+transparent hands, said nothing.
+
+"I'm glad I stuck to Will, though," the woman went on softly after a
+minute, "and didn't let him come out here alone. A wife's place is by
+her husband wherever he goes, and I'd rather die with him than be
+separated. But there, I do hate the name of gold. It broke up our home,
+it's broke up our lives, and it's just killed me, that's what it's done.
+And what's the good of it? Why, as I said to Will before we came, 'We
+can't be no more than happy, and we're that now.'"
+
+Katrine said nothing. She was one of those women who in society would
+have gained the name of a good conversationalist, for she always
+listened attentively and spoke hardly at all.
+
+It grew rapidly darker outside and began to snow a little, the peculiar
+sharp, small snow of Alaska. The two women could hardly see each other's
+faces in the gloom, when Katrine rose and offered to light the lamp.
+
+"There ain't no oil left," returned Annie, drearily. "I just sit in the
+dark most of the time; I don't mind as long as I have a bit of fire. It
+do seem more lonesome though when you've no light," she added with a
+sigh.
+
+"Haven't you any money to buy it with?"
+
+Annie shook her head. "Not till Will comes back."
+
+"Well, here's enough to keep you in oil for the next three months," said
+Katrine, taking a little object from her belt which looked like a
+well-filled tobacco pouch and putting it on the shelf above her head.
+
+"What's that? dust?" said Annie. "Where-ever do you get so much money?"
+she added, staring at her.
+
+"I won that last night," returned Katrine, lightly. "I do have such
+luck. I wish you could come, Annie, and see the fun we have down town of
+a night, instead of moping up here; and I do have such luck," she
+repeated again with a half sigh. "I don't know what I'd do if it should
+change. I'd have to be bar-keep for a living, I suppose. Think I'd make
+a good bar-keep?" she said, getting up and stretching her arms above her
+head. All her full lissom figure was revealed to advantage by the
+attitude, and the firelight fell softly on the gay, bewitching face,
+slanted over to one shoulder as she put the question.
+
+"I do that," replied Annie, with emphasis. "Your bar would always be
+crammed by all the chaps in the place, my dear."
+
+Katrine laughed. "I'm glad you think so. I'll bring you some of my oil
+to burn for to-night, and then I must be off earning my living."
+
+She went into her own cabin and brought back a can of oil with her,
+trimmed and cleaned and lit Annie's lamp, and then with a kiss bade her
+good-bye till next day, and took her way down to the main street. She
+had only a little dust in her belt, just enough to start playing with,
+and if luck should go against her she would have to return empty handed;
+but then she always trusted to luck, and it had never forsaken her. Her
+mode of life, precarious and uncertain, dangerous and unsatisfactory as
+it might seem to an onlooker, never troubled her. She was in that state
+of glorious physical health and strength which lends an unlimited
+confidence to the mind, a sense of being able to cope with any
+difficulty which might suddenly present itself, when every present or
+possible trouble looks small, and when mere life itself, the mere
+sensation of the blood being warm in one's veins, is a joy. She loved
+the excitement, even the uncertainty of her life, and she had more
+friends in the town than she could count, who would be glad to lend her
+all she needed if her luck failed.
+
+That night, when Katrine lay fast asleep in her small inner room, her
+curly head tucked down comfortably under the rugs, she dreamed she heard
+a knocking on her door. The sound seemed faint at first, but grew
+louder, and after a minute she woke up, lifted her head, and listened.
+Yes, there was a tapping on her door, she heard it quite distinctly.
+She got up immediately, slipped into her fur coat and boots, and taking
+one of her pistols in her hand, went to the door. That there was danger
+in answering such a summons at such an hour she knew quite well, but
+that did not hinder her. She was accustomed to live with her life in her
+hand, and she felt instinctively confident of being able so to hold it,
+and meant to keep a tight grip on it. When she opened the door it was to
+a vivid moonlight, clear and brighter than day; the whole white world
+was shining under it.
+
+"Annie!" she exclaimed as her eyes fell on the slight, feeble figure
+muffled in a blanket that stood on her steps. "What is the matter? Come
+in," and she put the door wide open and stood back for her to pass.
+
+"Oh, Katie," she said, seizing the other's hands when they stood inside
+the room, "forgive me for waking you, but I want Will. I feel I'm going
+to die to-night, and I can't without him--I can't," and she burst into a
+flood of tears broken by short sobbing coughs. She had slipped to her
+knees and was holding Katrine's hands in a feverish clutch. The blanket
+had fallen from her head and shoulders, and showed to Katrine that she
+was still in her day dress; it did not seem as if she had been to bed at
+all. There was a dark, half-dried stain upon the front of her bodice.
+
+"I'm dying! Oh, Katie, it's so dreadful all alone there. Will you go and
+bring Will to me? Oh, do."
+
+Katrine looked down upon her as she tried to raise her to her feet. The
+fire was still burning brightly and filled the room with light. Many
+people older than Katrine would have laughed at the woman's statement in
+face of her ability to come to them and make it, but Katrine's keen
+perceptions read much, too much, in the bright glazed eyes that looked
+up at her, in the hoarse grating tones that came from the sunken chest,
+and the feverish grasp of those burning fingers. She stooped down and
+put her arms round the kneeling figure and drew her up.
+
+"Why, of course I will. I will bring him to you. But you are only ill,
+dear; you're not dying."
+
+"Oh, I may not, I know; but if I should, and he not here! Katie, can you
+go now?--it's so late, and so cold, and so far. I don't see how you
+can."
+
+"He's working up on Mr. Wood's claim at the west gulch. I suppose if I
+go to Mr. Wood's cabin he can tell me where to find Will."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," returned Annie, eagerly, a crimson flush now lighting up
+each cheek; "go straight to Mr. Wood and ask him for Will. One of Will's
+ponies is down here, back of our house; you can take him and ride up.
+Oh, it may kill you to go; I ought not to ask it. Oh, what shall I do?"
+
+Katrine laughed. "Kill me!" she said. "It would take more to kill me
+than that, I think. I shall be up there and Will down here before you
+know where you are. Now you've just got to drink this brandy while I go
+and get some things on. You're just fretting for Will, that's what is
+the matter with you. I believe you will feel all right when you see him
+again."
+
+She put the trembling woman into a chair, and went back to her room to
+put her clothes on. She noticed that her boots, which had been damp the
+night before, had frozen to the ground, and she had to break them from
+it by force.
+
+"I shall be lucky if I get back with my feet unfrozen," she thought to
+herself, looking regretfully at the warm bed she had left; but it never
+once, even remotely, occurred to her to refuse the unwelcome mission.
+She put on all her thickest garments, buckled her pistols on her hip,
+and went back to Annie, who was crouching over the fire in the next
+room.
+
+"I had better take the pony," she said; "he'll get me there and back
+quicker than I can walk, if you think the little animal is up to it."
+
+Annie nodded. "He's well fed," she said, "and has had nothing to do
+since Will's been gone."
+
+Katrine shut the stove up, and the two women went out together.
+
+It was a still dead cold without, the sort of night on which your limbs
+might freeze beyond recovery, and without your knowing it, so insidious
+and so little aggressive was the cold.
+
+"You go in and keep warm," said Katrine; "I'll find the pony and manage
+him," and she pushed Annie gently within her own door, and went round to
+the shed at the back of the cabin where the pony was. Her hands in that
+short time had grown so stiff with cold she could hardly put the saddle
+on and fasten the girth and straps. The pony knew her, and pricked his
+ears and snorted while she was getting him ready; he had been idle in
+his stable two days, and by this time was willing to welcome any change
+in the monotony of life. When she had adjusted everything carefully by
+the light of the strong moon falling through the little window, she
+threw herself cross leg upon his back and rode him out of the shed.
+Annie had her face pressed eagerly against the back window of her cabin,
+watching for her to appear. Katrine smiled at her, lifted her fur cap
+above her head for an instant as a man would do, and then the next
+moment was cantering away over the snowy waste that stretched behind
+Good Luck Row. She went at a good pace, urged on by that last glimpse of
+the pale face, with the terrible look of haunted fear on it, pressed to
+the window.
+
+The temperature was very low, but the absence of wind and dampness in
+the air made the cold bearable. Katrine, haunted by the fear of
+frostbite, kept pinching her nose and pulling her ears and banging her
+feet against the pony's side to keep the blood stirring in them. Inside
+the first half-hour she was away some distance from the lights of
+Dawson, and nothing but great snowy stretches lay around her.
+
+That night up at the west gulch it happened that neither Stephen nor
+Talbot had gone to bed. There is little to choose between night and day
+there, since half of the day hours are dark as the blackest night, and a
+man can sleep in them as profitably or more so than in the moonlit hours
+of the night. Three o'clock in the morning had come, and the two men
+were still sitting talking on each side of the stove, with an opened
+whisky bottle on the table between them, in Stephen's cabin, when the
+dull sound of a horse's footfall broke the blank silence of the gulch.
+Both sprang to their feet on the instant, and Talbot drew his pistol
+from his belt and stood listening with it in his hand.
+
+"I always said we oughtn't to keep our gold up here," said Stephen, and
+his face whitened.
+
+Talbot held up his hand to enjoin silence, and they waited while the
+sound of hoofs moving slowly over the treacherous and uneven soil came
+nearer. Then there was a pause, which seemed to the men inside endless.
+Then two distinct taps at the door. Talbot, who was nearer it, made a
+forward movement, but Stephen caught his arm.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he whispered.
+
+"Open it and fire," returned Talbot, laconically, and he pushed back the
+latch and raised his revolver as he opened the door.
+
+Stephen was close behind him, and Talbot almost stepped upon him as he
+drew back with astonishment the next instant. Katrine jumped from the
+pony's back and stepped over the threshold without invitation.
+
+"How lucky I am to find you up!" she exclaimed, and then seeing Talbot's
+hastily lowered revolver in his right hand she burst out laughing. "So
+you were going to shoot, were you?" she said, drawing out her own.
+"Well, I was quite ready; I have been all the ride. I am sorry I
+frightened you."
+
+"Frightened us!" repeated the two men in a breath, with an indignant
+glance.
+
+"Oh no, of course I didn't mean that," rejoined Katrine, laughing.
+"Disturbed you, I should say. Oh, Stephen, give me some of that whisky;
+I am almost dead with cold."
+
+Her face did indeed look frozen white with cold under her fur cap, and
+her dark eyes shone in it with a liquid splendour that made Stephen's
+heart beat tumultuously against his side. He poured out some of the
+spirit for her and pushed her gently into a chair, commencing to pull
+off her thick gloves for her.
+
+"I want Will Johnson," she said, with her customary directness.
+"Stephen, I've come up to fetch him. He's one of your men. Tell me where
+I can find him."
+
+"What do you want with him at this time of night?" questioned Stephen,
+while Talbot silently extracted a plate of bread and bacon from the
+cupboard and put it on the table at her elbow.
+
+"I don't want him for myself," she answered mischievously. "His wife has
+sent me up to find him; she thinks she is dying, and wants to see him
+to-night. Where can I find him?"
+
+"His cabin is a little higher up the gulch, but you mustn't go there; I
+will go after him," said Stephen hastily.
+
+"I don't know," replied Katrine; "I'd better ride up there and then take
+him on home with me, hadn't I?"
+
+"Ride back again to-night!" exclaimed Stephen. "What madness! It was
+bad enough to make the ride once. She mustn't think of it, must she,
+Talbot?" and he turned to his friend for corroboration.
+
+"Certainly not, I should say," returned Talbot, in his quiet but final
+way. "I will ride up to Johnson's place and send him down home, and you
+can make Katrine comfortable here."
+
+The girl sprang to her feet.
+
+"Why, what an idea!" she said, with a flush on her pale cheeks. "I only
+came to you to find Will. Of course I can't stay here all night."
+
+"Your mission will be accomplished, won't it, if Will goes to his wife?"
+returned Talbot quietly. "There is no need to risk your life again.
+There is no good in it; besides, it will save time if you let Will have
+the pony at once to take him back. You can have one of ours in the
+morning."
+
+She looked up at him. She admired Talbot exceedingly. His voice was so
+invariably gentle and quiet, so different from all the voices that she
+heard round her daily. Stephen's, though his resembled it, had not the
+same curious accent of refinement. His manner, too, had the same extreme
+gentleness; and yet beneath this apparent softness she knew there
+existed a courage that equalled any in the whole camp. He looked very
+handsome too, she thought, at this moment, as she met a soft smile in
+his eyes, and her tones were more hesitating as she repeated--
+
+"I think I ought to return."
+
+"Well, I'm going to despatch Will for you," replied Talbot, turning
+away. "I leave it to you, Stephen, to persuade her to stay," and he
+walked out. A second later they heard the pony's hoofs going up the
+narrow trail past the cabin.
+
+"You can have my room; I'll sleep here on the floor," remarked Stephen.
+
+The girl got up.
+
+"No," she said in her most decided tone. "I'll stay if you let me sleep
+here on the floor, or I'll go home. Turn you out of your own comfortable
+bed I will not."
+
+"Go home you can't," said Stephen in an equally decided tone, "so I'll
+make you up a bed here just in front of the stove."
+
+He went into the next room, and Katrine, left alone, drank up her whisky
+and gazed round the cabin. It was not at all an interesting interior,
+and had not the faint suggestions of artistic taste that redeemed
+Talbot's. A few prints were on the walls, seemingly cut from illustrated
+papers and principally consisting of views of cathedrals and school
+buildings, which Katrine's eyes wandered over without interest. At the
+farthest end from her there were some stout shelves nailed against the
+wall, and on these rested a row of flat tin pans; between the pans were
+pushed one or two books, and she recognised amongst them his Greek
+testament. She rose and strolled over to the shelf, and standing on
+tiptoe looked into the pans. As she thought, they contained thin layers
+of gold dust. She was standing there looking into them when Stephen
+returned and came up behind her.
+
+"They look fine, don't they?" he said. "That's a thirty dollar pan."
+
+Katrine turned, and looking up was startled by the eager light in his
+face and the greed written in every line of it. For herself, reckless,
+happy-go-lucky gambler that she was by nature, gold had little value for
+her except to toss by the handful on the tables to buy half-an-hour's
+excitement. With a sudden movement she seized the fullest pan by the rim
+in one hand and the Greek testament beside it in the other, and danced
+away from him to the other side of the room. Stephen turned with an
+involuntary cry, and followed her with anxious eyes.
+
+"Now which would you rather lose?" she said, laughing.
+
+His eyes were fixed upon the pan, which was heavy and as much as she
+could support with one hand. He dreaded each minute to see it tip up and
+its golden treasure pour out on the floor.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Don't be foolish," he said in a vexed tone.
+
+Katrine sidled up to the window.
+
+"Answer, or I'll--"
+
+Stephen turned white. He felt she was capable of doing any mad thing
+when he met those mocking, sparkling eyes.
+
+"Oh--I--I--would rather lose the book," he stammered, in an agony to see
+the gold safely put back. "I could replace that, you know."
+
+Katrine advanced to him, balancing the pan as if weighing it.
+
+"Stephen, this is very heavy," she said, looking him straight in the
+eyes.
+
+"Let me take it from you," he said, eagerly stretching out his hands.
+
+"Do you know what makes it so?" she said, still balancing it and still
+looking at him. "Your soul is in it!" and she gave it back to him.
+
+Stephen reddened angrily, and took both the book and the gold from her
+and replaced them sulkily on the shelf. Katrine had turned her back and
+walked over to the fire, humming.
+
+"What a royal couch you've made me!" she remarked, breaking the awkward
+silence that followed, and looking down on the pile of red blankets he
+had spread in front of the stove.
+
+He had, in fact, stripped his own bed and collected blankets from every
+corner to make a comfortable resting-place for her. Before Stephen could
+answer he was summoned to the door. Talbot looked in upon them, but
+would not come inside.
+
+"I've sent Will off," he said; "he swore like anything, but he is gone.
+No, thanks, Steve, I won't come in. I'm tired, and going to my own cabin
+now. See you at breakfast. Good-night," and before Katrine could thank
+him he was gone.
+
+The two thus left entirely alone in the deep quiet of the gulch to pass
+the night together looked at each other for a moment with a shade of
+silent embarrassment. But the girl, accustomed as she was to take care
+of herself in all sorts of situations and surroundings, and endued with
+a certain fierce chastity of nature, recovered herself instantly and
+spoke quite naturally.
+
+"I feel tired too, and would like to go to sleep now, if I may."
+
+"Certainly," said Stephen. "You have this room to yourself. The stove
+will burn till daylight, and you have the whisky if you feel cold in the
+night. Good-night."
+
+His tone was very formal, for he would so much have liked it to be
+otherwise, and without looking at her he took a match from his pocket
+and went into the other room, shutting the door after him. The girl
+waited a moment, then she shut the door of the stove and threw herself
+down on the soft pile of blankets, and drawing one of them over her to
+her ears, drew a deep, contented sigh, and was peacefully asleep in a
+few seconds.
+
+The next morning Stephen rose stiff and cramped from his denuded bed.
+When he was completely dressed he silently opened his door and crept
+noiselessly into the adjoining room. The girl was not yet awake, and he
+stole softly over to the bed on the hearth and looked down at her. She
+lay warm and sleeping comfortably amongst the blankets. She was fully
+dressed, just as she had been the previous evening, except that two or
+three buttons were unfastened at the collar of her dress, and allowed
+the solid white neck to show beneath the rounded chin. The little head,
+with its mass of dark silky curls, lay inclined towards the stove, and
+the curled rosy lips had a softer smile than they generally wore in the
+daytime. Stephen leaned over her, entranced and breathless. As his eyes
+followed the dark arch of the eyebrows, the sweet delicate contour of
+the cheek, he forgot the horror he felt of her sometimes in her waking
+moments, forgot the hideous background of the saloons, forgot all the
+evil there might be in her, and bowed before that supreme power that
+human beauty has over us; he worshipped her as he had never worshipped
+his God. For a few seconds it was enough for him to gaze on her, then
+came an overwhelming impulse to stoop and kiss the soft youthful lips,
+to touch them even if ever so lightly. If he could without awakening
+her! But no, she was his guest, under his roof and protection. All that
+was best in his nature rose and held him motionless like a hand of
+iron. After a few seconds Katrine stirred, and Stephen, feeling she was
+about to awake, would have moved away, but his eyes seemed fixed and as
+impossible to remove from her face as one's hands are from an electric
+battery. The next minute her lids were lifted, and her eyes, two wells
+of living light, flashed up at him.
+
+"Good-morning," she said, sitting up. "How dreadfully pale you look,
+Stephen! What is the matter?"
+
+"Do I?" he answered, with a forced laugh, feeling the blood, which had
+seemed to rest suspended in his veins for those few seconds, rush to his
+heart again in great waves.
+
+"You do indeed," she said, getting up. "I expect you want your
+breakfast. Tell me what I can do to make myself useful."
+
+She shook her hair straight, fastened the collar of her bodice, and, was
+dressed. She needed no toilet apparently, but looked as clean and fresh
+as a rose waking up in its garden.
+
+"Nothing," returned Stephen hastily. "Go over and tell Talbot to come in
+to breakfast, if you like; I'll have it ready when you come back."
+
+Katrine looked round regretfully, as if she would have liked to stay and
+help him; then concluding she had better do as she was told, she took up
+her fur cap and went out.
+
+The west gulch looks magnificent in the first early light, with all
+degrees of shadows, some black, some dusky, some the clearest grey,
+lingering in its snowy recesses, and the first glimpse of gold falling
+down it from the east. Katrine stopped and gazed up at the impressive
+beauty above and around her: trees in the gulch, now covered with a
+thick snowy mantle, stood assuming all sorts of grotesque forms, and
+extending their arms as if calling the spectator to their cold embrace.
+It was beautiful, but to Katrine it seemed so silent, so overawing, and
+so death-like, that she shivered as she looked up and down from the
+flat plateau where she stood, and hurried on the few necessary yards to
+Talbot's cabin.
+
+When they came back together they found Stephen had all in readiness,
+the fire blazing on the hearth and the breakfast waiting on the table.
+He made Katrine sit at the head and pour out the coffee for them, which
+she did with pleased, smiling eyes. Talbot said good-bye to her and went
+out to his claim immediately it was over, and Katrine and Stephen were
+left alone. He said he would go and get a pony for her and Katrine rose,
+but then Stephen hesitated and did not go after all. He turned to her
+instead, and came back from the door to where she was standing.
+
+"Will you listen to something I want to say to you?" he said, his heart
+beating wildly.
+
+"Why, certainly I will," the girl answered simply, and she sat down in
+the chair behind her and folded her hands. Then she looked up
+inquiringly, waiting for him to begin, but Stephen's voice was dried up
+in his throat. He stood in front of her, one damp hand nervously
+clasping the back of a chair, unable to articulate a word. Confusion and
+excitement overwhelmed him, and he stood turning paler and paler,
+staring at the proud, handsome face framed in the living yellow sunshine
+before him. At last he felt he could not even stand, and he turned away
+with a groan and sank down on the nearest chair with his face in his
+hands. Katrine, who had been watching him anxiously for the last few
+seconds, sprang up and went over to him.
+
+"What is the matter?" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Are
+you ill?"
+
+"No, oh no," said Stephen, catching the little hand in both of his. "No,
+I want to tell you I love you. Do you care for me? Will you marry me
+right away, and come up and live here with me?"
+
+His voice had come back to him all right now, and he turned and gazed
+eagerly up at her.
+
+Katrine did not answer immediately, but she did not withdraw her hand
+that he was pressing hotly between his own, and a faint smile that came
+over her face showed she was not displeased; and here Stephen missed his
+cue--he should have taken the hesitating figure into his arms and kissed
+the undecided lips. In the sudden awakening of womanly feeling, in the
+momentary excitement, in the glimpse into passion, Katrine would have
+consented, welcoming as her nature did any new emotion; but Stephen was
+embarrassed and afraid. Fear and uncertainty held him back, the kiss
+burned ungiven on his own lips, and Katrine uninfluenced by passion
+could think clearly.
+
+What! come up here and live in this deathly quiet, away from even such
+amusement as the camp offered? Submit to all his tiresome religious
+conversations, and, above all, give up those feverish nights of
+excitement? the hazard and the stimulus of the long tables and the
+little heaps of gold dust? and her free life, her incomings and
+outgoings, with no one to question her? No, it was an impossibility.
+
+The next thing Stephen knew was that she was smiling and looking down
+into his eyes, shaking her head.
+
+"No, Stephen, I can't do that. I like you awfully, and should like you
+to come and see me; but I wouldn't do for your wife at all, and if you
+knew all about me you wouldn't want it either."
+
+Stephen clung fast to her hand.
+
+"What is it that I don't know?" he said desperately, putting, as people
+always do, the worst construction he could upon her words, and at the
+same time feeling he would forgive her everything, and in a sort of
+background in his brain contemplating the figure of the forgiven
+Magdalen at the feet of Christ.
+
+Katrine dragged her hand away suddenly. She was not going to tell him
+she was a gambler and devoted to the excitement of the tables. She knew
+that if she did their pleasant talks in the evenings would be at an end.
+He could never come to see her without thinking it his duty to try to
+reform her; and as she knew she was not going to reform, what would be
+the good of it?
+
+"What does it matter to you? I am not your wife, and am not going to be;
+I am an acquaintance. If you like me as I am, very good; if you don't,
+no one cares."
+
+Stephen got up and faced her. He was as white as the snow outside.
+
+"You make me think the worst by refusing to confide in me."
+
+Katrine laughed contemptuously.
+
+"I don't care a curse what you think! Haven't I just told you so? Great
+heavens," she added, with a burst of conviction, "it would never do for
+us to marry! Never! Your one idea is to curtail a person's liberty."
+
+"No," answered Stephen quietly, "not liberty in a general way; only the
+liberty to sin and do evil, the liberty to be ignorant and do things
+which have terrible consequences that you don't know."
+
+He looked very well at this moment, his pale ascetic face and
+sympathetic eyes lighted up with enthusiasm. Katrine looked at him and
+then smiled with her quick, impulsive smile.
+
+"Stephen, you are a good man, and perfectly charming at times; but I am
+not a good woman, and don't want to be, and we should never get on. So
+don't let's bother any more about this question at all."
+
+An exceedingly pained expression came over Stephen's face, and Katrine
+was quick enough to feel that from her words he judged her errors to be
+other than they were. In a few words she might have cleared his mind
+from the idea of her actual immorality, but she was too proud to stand
+upon her own defence before him; besides, if her faults were not of that
+class, he would want to know what they were, and in his eyes a girl that
+gambled and drank and swore, and preferred the dance halls and variety
+shows to the mission church any day, was quite bad enough; so she
+concluded in her thoughts, "It doesn't matter if he is mixed."
+
+Stephen at the moment was afraid to press her further, and did not know
+quite how to treat her; but he was not wholly discouraged, and he
+thought it best to retain the ground he already had.
+
+"Well, I shall be in town in a few days," he said, "and I shall come to
+see you as usual, mayn't I?"
+
+"Of course," returned Katrine, and they did not speak again till they
+were outside and she was mounted at the head of the trail.
+
+What a morning it was! The crisp air was like a bath of sparkling
+sunlight; the untrodden snow glittered everywhere. Far above the trail a
+ridge of dark green pine broke against the pale azure of the sky.
+Stephen leaned against the pony's side and gazed into the warm, lustrous
+eyes.
+
+"Good-bye, my darling--my own darling perhaps some day."
+
+"I don't think so," she answered, with a mischievous smile, and set the
+pony at a trot down the trail.
+
+She had to pass Talbot's cabin on her way back, and as she approached
+she saw him a little way up the creek surrounded by his men. She reined
+in her horse to a walk as she passed, and contemplated him. His figure
+always pleased and arrested her eyes--it had a certain height and
+strength and grace that marked it out distinctly from others; and then
+what an advantage it was, she thought, he had no religion and believed
+in none of those things, and, in short, was quite as bad or worse than
+she herself was. She walked her horse on slowly, thinking. Somehow it
+seemed to her that life in his cabin would be far more piquant and
+amusing than in Stephen's. Yet he neither drank nor gambled, and as for
+the dance halls and theatre,--well, he had told her he liked dancing;
+and what a waltz that had been they had had together! But life with
+Stephen! He would be too good for her, and too stupid. She had a vague
+sense that what she lived for, excitement, he condemned in all its
+forms. Just what she cared for in drink, in play, in the dance, the
+electric pleasure of them, was just what he shrank from as a wile of the
+Evil One. Even the religious services of the High Church he condemned
+for the same reason. No, it would never do; life with him would be as
+cold as the snow around her. She was glad that her answer had been as it
+had. There was a level place in the trail here, and she put the horse
+to a gallop, and so came into town with her cheeks stung into rich
+crimson by the keen air, and her spirits exhilarated and ready for any
+mischief going.
+
+She went at once to No. 14 in the row, and found Will sitting by his
+wife's bedside like a model husband. The girl was lying down, her weak
+white hand clasped in and nearly hidden by the swollen, rough red hand
+of the miner. She gave a little cry as Katrine entered, and buried her
+head under the blanket.
+
+"You are not angry with me for sending you up when it wasn't really
+necessary?" came a smothered voice.
+
+Katrine flung herself on her knees beside the bed and put her arms
+impetuously round the thin form under the coverlet.
+
+"Angry with you for not dying!" she said, between laughing and crying.
+"Why, I think you're the best girl in the world, and Will's a pretty
+good doctor, too!" she added, glancing up at him.
+
+Will coloured and looked a little uneasy, remembering his oaths of last
+night when he was roused to a ten-mile ride; but Katrine couldn't or
+wouldn't notice anything amiss. She said sweet things to both of them,
+and then, unwilling to rob Annie of any part of Will's company, she
+withdrew to her own cabin.
+
+Two or three weeks passed, and dreary weeks they were. The temperature
+fell below the zero mark and stayed there, the sun hardly ever shone,
+the whole sky being blotted out as behind a thick grey curtain. The few
+hours of daylight that each twenty-four hours brought round was little
+more than a dismal twilight. Times were dreary, too, provisions ran
+scarce and very high, and the cheerless cold and darkness seemed to
+paralyse the energies of the strongest and lay a grip upon the whole
+town. Many months of the winter had already gone by, and strength and
+spirits were beginning to flag; health and courage had worn thin, and
+men who had faced the bitterness of the cold with a joke when it had
+first set in felt it keenly now like the rest. In Good Luck Row matters
+were worse than anywhere else in the town; the occupants were mostly
+very poor, and the pressure of the high prices was sharpest upon them.
+In addition to all else they had to suffer, typhoid broke out amongst
+them, and another horrible fear was added to the terror of the cold. In
+the universal gloom that hung over the city, under the mantle of
+darkness, want and starvation and fear and disease wrangled together,
+while Death walked silently and continually about the darkened streets.
+During all this time Katrine was about the only one who kept up her
+spirits and courage. She was the light and comfort of the row, there was
+not a cabin in it that had not been brightened and cheered by her
+smiles and benefited by her gifts. She was absolutely without fear
+herself. The quality seemed to have been left out of her composition, or
+perhaps it was only that her great physical health and strength made her
+feel unconsciously that it was impossible for any harm to come to her.
+She went in and out of the fever-stricken cabins all day, doing what she
+could for each one of the inmates, and always with her brilliant smile,
+which was a tonic in itself, and half the night she would sit gambling
+in the saloons, winning the money to spend upon her sick patients the
+following day.
+
+As soon as Stephen learned that typhoid had broken out in the row, he
+came down to her and urged her to marry him and come away to the west
+gulch, if only as an asylum. But Katrine simply laughed and joked, and
+would not listen to him. Then he begged her to look upon herself merely
+as his tenant; he and Talbot would share the same cabin, and she could
+occupy his in perfect peace and security, and be safely away from the
+depressing influences of the town and its disease-laden atmosphere. Then
+she grew very grave, and said simply in a sweet tone that echoed through
+all the chambers of his heart--
+
+"Dear Stephen, you are very good to be so anxious for me, but I'm not a
+bit anxious for myself. I should feel like a coward if I went away from
+the row now. These people are so dependent upon me, and I can do so many
+little things for them. I feel it's a duty to stay here, and I'd rather
+do it;" and Stephen had kissed her hand passionately and gone back to
+the gulch, more in love with her than ever.
+
+She saw very little of him, and was too busy to think about him or note
+whether he came or not, having so many anxieties on her mind just then,
+of which the heaviest was the girl-wife Annie in the next cabin. Since
+the semi-crisis in her illness, over which Katrine had helped her, there
+seemed to be little change in her condition from day to day. That is,
+the change did not show itself externally; within the delicate
+structure, the disease, aided by the cold, the foul damp air of the
+town, and hopeless spirits, crept steadily and quickly on, but gave
+little or no outward sign, and Katrine hoped against hope that she could
+possibly tide her over the time till Will perhaps made a strike and
+could take her away. She knew how the sick woman clung to this idea. For
+months now she had been shut off from all communication with the outer
+world, she never saw a paper or a book, she could not move from her
+cabin, her whole sphere was bounded now by its four rough walls, and so
+the one idea that was left to her starved brain and heart was that Will
+should make a strike. And as a weed runs over a bare and neglected
+garden, so will one single idea completely absorb and fill a neglected
+brain, and grow and grow to gigantic strength. This was Annie's one
+idea; she brooded over it, pondered over it, nursed it, slept with it,
+and talked to Katrine of it with burning eyes, till the latter felt if
+it could only be fulfilled the joy of it would almost cure her. And it
+might be fulfilled, she knew, any day. It was early days in the Klondike
+then, and plenty of good ground lay around waiting to be discovered. She
+heard from Stephen that Will was steady and energetic, had given up
+drink, and was set upon the idea of prospecting for land of his own.
+Katrine's heart beat hard with pure sympathy as she heard, and she
+begged Stephen as the one thing he could do for herself to facilitate
+Will's efforts in every way and aid him for her sake. Meanwhile, her own
+care was to keep the fragile creature who was living upon hope still on
+this side of the Great Divide. And to this end she worked night and
+day. She kept her cabin clean and well lighted and well warmed. She
+bought and made soup, and gave fabulous prices for meat and wine, and
+sat with her long hours cheering her with stories heard in the saloons
+and picked up in the streets, and scraps of news from the gulch and
+farther points.
+
+The disease seemed so quiescent that Katrine began to hope more and more
+that she should be rewarded, and one morning a hurried note scribbled in
+pencil was brought in to Annie while Katrine was scrubbing the cabin
+floor, telling her in a few ill-spelt words that Will thought he might
+get in to town that night. A bright flame of colour leaped over the
+woman's pale face, and then the next moment faded as her hands with the
+note in them fell listlessly to her lap.
+
+"He ain't made no strike yet," Katrine heard her mutter to herself.
+
+"You don't know," rejoined Katrine, looking up flushed and warm from her
+hard work. "He may have some good news to tell you any way."
+
+Annie merely shook her head and gazed out of the window.
+
+"He'd have told me," she murmured, and that was all.
+
+Katrine had a long and heavy round of visits to make that day, and for
+two long hours she sat motionless by a dying woman's bedside, fearing to
+withdraw her hand, to which the poor terrified enterer into the Valley
+of the Shadow was clinging. In her arms, and with her tired head on
+Katrine's young bosom, the woman drew her last breath; and Katrine,
+feeling her own soul wrenched asunder and her body aching with strain
+and shock, came round in the afternoon to Annie. She would not say a
+word to her of the death-bed from which she had come. With an effort she
+talked of cheerful things, of the spring-time that was on its way to
+them, of the pleasure of seeing Will again, and so on, till her head
+ached. She did a few domestic offices for the girl, and then feeling she
+must break down herself if she stayed longer, she said she needed sleep,
+and if Annie could take care of herself for a time she would go and lie
+down. Annie noticed how heavy the lids were over her eyes and begged her
+to go at once, though a strange fear, like a child's of the dark, came
+over her.
+
+"Will will be soon with you now--the best company," Katrine said, with a
+tired smile; "and if you want me, a knock on the wall here will bring me
+to you," and Annie was left alone.
+
+As the afternoon closed in her cough seemed to grow more and more
+troublesome; the pain in her chest, too, had never been so bad; she had
+to keep her hand there all the time as she laboured round the room
+putting everything to rights, making sure that the cabin was neat and
+tidy against Will's return. At last she sat down in the circle of hot
+light round the fire, and little Tim crawled into her lap. She put her
+arms round him and held him absently. She was thinking over Katrine's
+words. The Spring! were they really near it? "so near," she had said,
+"it was almost here." Her eyes looking upwards to the darkening windows
+caught the old and smoke-hued almanac pinned up to the wall beside it.
+She set the child down, and getting up walked slowly over to it and ran
+one trembling finger down the dates. Each one from December, when they
+had first hung it up, had a heavy black line against it, where she had
+scratched it out with eager fingers; only the last days had no mark
+against them. She had been too weary, too heart sick, to note them any
+longer. What did it matter to her when the Spring came? the almanac for
+her would have come to an end before that. But now a fresh gleam of
+hope seemed to have entered her heart, and with a feverish movement she
+drew the old stump of pencil from her pocket and scratched off the
+unmarked days, and then stood gazing at the date of that day; they were
+still far, far from the Spring--too far. Oh, to go back in the Spring,
+to escape from this prison of darkness, this country of horror and
+starvation and misery, to be back once more in her home in the Spring!
+Her mind fled away from the dreary interior of the darkening cabin. She
+stood once more in the rich grassy meadow with the golden sunlight of an
+evening summer sky warm around her, the song of the birds in her ears,
+the hot scent of the meadow-sweet in her nostrils, before her the little
+narrow path leading to the cottage that seemed to bask sleepily in the
+yellow glow. She made a step forward with dilated eyes, then the cough
+seized her, the vision dissolved and fled. Again the cabin with its
+blackened rafters enclosed her. She turned from the calendar. What was
+the Spring's coming? It might come, but they would not go back. What
+right had she to think of it? They had made no strike, and had not Will
+sworn he would never go back without the gold? This accursed gold! If
+they could but have found it as others had! She put her hands to her
+head to drive away the thoughts, they were familiar and so useless. She
+had thought them over and over again so often. As she went back to the
+fire she noticed one of Will's woollen shirts lying on a chair. Why,
+that was the one she had meant to wash that morning! How could she have
+forgotten it? And now perhaps she would not get it done before he
+returned. Her heart began to beat, her limbs trembled. How weak and
+queer she felt this afternoon! Still, she would do it somehow. There was
+hot water on the fire that Katrine had put there. She lifted with an
+effort the great iron kettle from the fire, and with that in one hand
+and the shirt in the other she went into the adjoining sloping roofed
+compartment that served as scullery, wood-shed, pantry, and wash-house.
+It was many degrees colder here, and the long iron nails that kept the
+boards together overhead had sparkling icicles on them that glittered as
+the firelight from the inner room touched them, and she could hardly
+draw her breath. Nevertheless she walked over to the wash-tub and poured
+in the water, and set to work with shaking hands. "Had ever shirt seemed
+so large?" she wondered vaguely, and her thin arms moved slowly, lifting
+it up and down with difficulty. It seemed getting so dark, too. She
+should have lighted the candles, it wouldn't look so cheery for Will if
+he came back to find the cabin dark. But was this only the twilight
+falling? No, it was in her eyes. She leaned heavily on the edge of the
+wooden tub, trembling, the floor unsteady beneath her, a strangling
+suffocation in her throat, a swimming darkness before her eyes. A sense
+of terrible loneliness pressed in upon her, and then suddenly she knew
+that in the chill of that dark twilight she was alone with Death. He had
+come for her at last.
+
+Oh, to have had Will's strong arms round her, a human breast to lay her
+head down upon, and so die! A nameless terror possessed her, overwhelmed
+her; she started from the wash trestle. There was a sudden cry, "Will!
+Will!" and she fell forward on the damp flooring, a little eager scarlet
+stream of blood pouring out from the nerveless lips to stain the
+soap-suds under the trestle.
+
+The child sitting playing in the ring of warm firelight in the adjoining
+room heard that last cry, and startled, dropped his toys, looking with
+round eyes to the blackness beyond the open door. He listened with one
+tiny finger in his mouth for many minutes, but no further sound came to
+disturb him from the wash-house, and he went on playing.
+
+An hour passed perhaps before Will set foot in Good Luck Row, and he
+tramped up it with a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the
+blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had elastic springs in
+their soles. Yet he carried an extra weight with him. There was
+something in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand as if it
+had been red-hot iron when he touched it. As he came to No. 14 and saw
+the windows dark he merely hurried his pace, and hardly stayed to lift
+the door latch, but just burst through the half-opened door and brought
+his huge burly frame over the threshold.
+
+"Well, Annie, my girl, we've struck it at last," he shouted at the top
+of his voice, "and you shall come home right away. Where are you, Annie?
+Didn't I say wait a bit for me?"
+
+He had entered by the wash-house, but the darkness was thick, almost
+palpable, before his face and revealed nothing. He went forward to the
+open door, beyond which the burned-down fire gave only a faint red
+light, and his foot kicked something heavy on the floor. With a curious
+feeling gripping his heart, he stopped dead short where he stood and
+fumbled for a match. Then he struck it, and in its sickly glare looked
+down. "Annie, my dear!" he called in a shaking voice, and bent down
+holding the match close to the upturned face. The light played for an
+instant upon it and went out. "Annie!" he called again, and the word
+broke in his throat.
+
+A thin wail went up from little Tim in the dusk of the inner room. Where
+the man stood was silence and darkness. His strike had come too late.
+His wife was dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half-an-hour later a man burst into the "Pistol Shot." It was between
+hours, and the bar-tender was just going round lighting the lamps; the
+place was nearly empty, only a few miners were standing at the end of
+the counter, talking together. The new customer staggered across the
+floor as if already under the influence of drink, kicking up the fresh
+sawdust on the ground; then he reached the counter and demanded drink
+after drink. He tossed the whiskies handed to him down his throat, and
+then retreated to a bench that stood against the wall and sat down
+staring stupidly in front of him. The little group of men looked at him
+once or twice curiously, and then one said--
+
+"Why, it's Bill Johnson, who's just made a strike. Come up, boys, let's
+congratulate him."
+
+The men moved up to the motionless, staring figure, and one of them
+slapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Say, Bill, old man, you're in luck, and we'll all drink your health.
+Got any gold to show us?"
+
+The sitting figure seemed galvanised suddenly out of its stupor. Will
+raised his head with a jerk, and the men involuntarily drew back from
+the glare of his bloodshot eyes. He put his hand to his pocket and drew
+out a small dirty buckskin bag. He dashed it suddenly on the ground with
+all his force, so that the sawdust flew up in a little cloud.
+
+"Curse the gold!" he said, and got up and tramped heavily out of the
+saloon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+GOD'S GIFT
+
+
+They buried Mrs. Johnson very soon. As one of the neighbours sensibly,
+if rather crudely, remarked, "Their cabins were too small for them to
+keep corpses knocking around in them." And so the second day after her
+death, in a flood of thin, sweet sunshine, they buried her who had so
+loved the light and the sun, and had longed so wearily for them through
+so many days.
+
+Katrine and Talbot stood side by side at the open grave. He had been in
+the town that day and met Katrine on the street, learned from her where
+she was going, and accompanied her. He knew something of all she had
+done for the dead woman, and he watched her now with interest and
+surprise at her composure. Katrine's face was unmoved, and her eyes
+were dry through it all.
+
+"Another that gold has killed," she said to him as they turned away, and
+her face looked grave and grey in the flood of the cold sunlight.
+
+Will was not present. He was down at the "Pistol Shot." He had been on a
+big drunk for the past two days, not even returning to his cabin at
+night, and the body of his wife would have lain unguarded had not
+Katrine brought her fur bag and slept beside it each night on the
+deserted hearth. Little Tim had been taken in by a neighbour, all the
+mothers round seeming anxious for the honour after it was known that
+Will had "made his strike."
+
+They walked in absolute silence for some time up the incline. Talbot was
+going back to the west gulch, and Katrine said she would walk a little
+of the way in that direction too. The afternoon was bright and clear,
+and the air singularly still, so still that the intense cold was hardly
+realised. The rays of sunshine struck warmly across the snow banks piled
+on each side of the narrow path they were treading. The sky was pale
+blue, and the points of the straight larches on the summit of the ridges
+cut darkly into it like the points of lances. There was something in the
+atmosphere that recalled a day in late autumn in England. They were
+nearing the top of the ridge, and both had their gaze bent on the narrow
+ascending path before them, when suddenly a tiny object darted into the
+middle of it and ran up the opposite bank. On the instant Katrine drew
+one of the pistols from her belt and fired. The little dark form rolled
+down the bank, dropped back into their path, and lay there motionless.
+It was a fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards
+from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her
+with startled admiration. He himself never shot except for food or
+other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise,
+but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious
+that they compelled him to an involuntary admiration.
+
+"You are a good shot!" he exclaimed, looking at the bright, clear-cut
+face beside him, warmed into its warmest tints by the keen air and the
+continuous mounting of their steps.
+
+"But not a good woman," she answered shortly, quickly reading the
+thoughts that accompanied his words. She did not look at him, but
+straight ahead.
+
+"You might be both," he said, with a sudden impulse of interest and
+regret.
+
+Katrine laughed.
+
+"I don't know," she said lightly. "Good women are not usually good
+shots. You don't generally find them combined. But any way, what have I
+to do with goodness? I don't need it in my business."
+
+He did not answer, and they walked on in silence till they came up to
+the little dark lump in the road. It was a small marmot. Katrine glanced
+at it and passed on. Talbot stooped and picked up the scrap of
+blood-stained fur.
+
+"What did you do it for?" he asked curiously.
+
+"Practice, that's all," she answered.
+
+"Don't you feel sorry to kill merely for the sake of practice?"
+
+"No. I should have been sorry if I had wounded it; but it's a good thing
+to be dead, I think. I wouldn't have shot unless I had been almost
+entirely sure I should kill it."
+
+There was another silence, and then she said suddenly, "One must keep up
+one's practice here, going about as I do in all sorts of places and
+making my living as I do. These," and she tapped her pistols, "are my
+great protection. Only last night a great brute leaned over me and
+wanted to kiss me--would have done, only he saw I should shoot him if he
+did."
+
+"Would you shoot a man for kissing you?" replied Talbot in an astonished
+tone, elevating his eyebrows.
+
+"Yes. Why, I'd rather be shot than kissed!" exclaimed the girl fiercely,
+with an angry flush on her smooth cheek.
+
+Talbot looked at the contemptuous, curling lips, at the whole beautiful
+hard face beside him, and walked on in silence, wondering. Her momentary
+anger was gone directly, and they were good comrades all the rest of the
+way.
+
+At the point where she stopped to say good-bye to him, she held out her
+hand: "Thank you for coming to the burial with me, it was good of you,"
+and she pressed his hand with a grateful smile.
+
+It was about a fortnight later on, one of those dreary grey afternoons
+of late winter, nearly dark already, though still early by the clock,
+and the mercury in the thermometers had gone out of sight and stayed
+there. Katrine came tripping along a side street on her way back to the
+row, warm in her skin coat, and her face all aglow and abloom under her
+fur cap. She had turned into the "Swan and Goose" saloon on her way up,
+had put in half-an-hour over a game, and won a fat little canvas bag
+stuffed with gold dust; had thinned it out somewhat in hot drinks across
+the bar, and now, warmed through with rum, and light-hearted, she was
+returning with the bag still well lined in her waist-belt.
+
+She had recovered from the great shock of Annie's death. Her nature,
+though essentially kind, was not of that soft, tender stamp that
+receives deep and painful impressions from other's sufferings. She would
+exert herself strenuously for another, as she had done for Annie, but
+it was not in her nature to sorrow long or deeply for the irrevocable.
+There was a certain hardness and philosophy in her temperament that her
+life and surroundings and all her experience had tended to develop. And
+in Annie's death there was nothing striking or unusually sad in this
+corner of the world, so crowded with scenes of suffering, so filled with
+pathos of every form. There were women hoping and waiting, and longing
+and starving, in every street of the town, she knew; sickness and sorrow
+and death looked her in the eyes from some poor face at every corner.
+Annie had been but one poor little unit in the crowd of sufferers, but
+one example of the misery of the town, the plague-stricken town, the
+town stricken with a curse--the curse of the greed of gold.
+
+Matters had brightened very much in Dawson lately, a new feeling of hope
+and fresh life had gone through the town. The weather was less severe,
+the days were lengthening, the skies were brighter, the sickness had
+died out, and people went about their work looking cheerful again; and
+Katrine, freed from her anxieties and nursing, felt her elastic spirits
+bound upwards in response to the general brightness of the camp.
+
+She came along humming behind her closed lips, and then suddenly turning
+a corner, stopped dead short with a horrified stare in her eyes. She had
+come round by one of the lowest dens in the city. Katrine knew it both
+inside and out, for there was no place from hut to hut in Dawson that
+she was afraid to enter. The door was standing open. It opened inwards,
+and there was a group of men, some inside and some outside, and amongst
+them they were forcing into the street a drunken woman. The entry to the
+place was beneath the level of the ground, and reached by a few uneven,
+miry steps, and up these the unfortunate was blindly stumbling under a
+rain of blows, pushes, and curses. She was old, and her hair streamed in
+ragged streaks across her bloodshot eyes, her tawdry skirt was long, and
+got under her unsteady feet. Just as she had managed to totter to the
+topmost step, a young man in the group behind her struck her a heavy
+blow between the shoulders. She tripped in the long skirt and trod on
+it, tearing it with a ripping sound from the waist, and fell forward,
+striking her face on the uneven frozen ground. Katrine sprang forward,
+but before she could reach her the woman had staggered to her feet and
+turned to face her tormentors, the blood streaming now from her cut
+lips, her trembling hands vaguely grasping at her torn skirt and trying
+to keep it to her waist. A roar of laughter burst from the men at the
+pitiful sight, and then died suddenly as they recognised Katrine. She
+stepped in front of the old woman, and faced them with a scorn in her
+eyes beyond all words. Then she turned in silence, put her arm round the
+helpless creature's waist, and supported her frail, tottering steps over
+the slippery, uneven ground. For an instant the men stood abashed and
+ashamed, then when the spell of those great fearless, scornful eyes was
+removed, their natures reasserted themselves, and a general laugh went
+round.
+
+"Birds of a feather!" shouted one, mockingly, as the two retreating
+figures disappeared in the gathering darkness. Katrine heard it, and
+winced; but she did not relax the hold of her supporting arm, and by
+gentle and repeated questioning managed to elicit from the helpless old
+being where she lived. Katrine turned her steps in the given direction,
+and drawing out her handkerchief wiped the blood from the old woman's
+face, and smoothed her straggling grey hair back behind her ears. When
+they reached her cabin at last, Katrine saw that the stove was black
+and empty. There was no light of any sort in the place, and the freezing
+darkness of the interior chilled her through. She would not leave the
+old woman until she had lighted a fire and candle for her and got her to
+bed; then, without waiting to listen to the mumbled and incoherent
+thanks showered upon her, she went out gently and on to her own place.
+She felt in a very serious mood as she made her cup of coffee and cooked
+herself a plate of bacon, and then sat down in the red glow of her
+well-tended hearth to her solitary meal.
+
+"Birds of a feather!" that hateful sentence echoed round her, until the
+silent walls themselves seemed taunting her. Was she not, after all,
+really akin to that old woman, and might she not some day end like her?
+What was all her own drinking and card-playing and knocking about in the
+saloons to end in? She shivered, and threw a frightened glance round
+her. This girl, who would have laughed all sermons, advice, and
+admonitions scornfully aside, was almost startled now into a sudden
+reformation by the chance object-lesson of this afternoon. She could not
+forget it, and in the silence the whole scene rose up vividly before
+her. She began to long for Stephen to come and break the silence, and
+glanced impatiently at the clock many times. He was coming in to town
+that night, she knew. It was a relief such as she had never experienced
+when at last he arrived, and she had not her own company only any
+longer.
+
+She was unusually silent all the evening. Stephen did not try to force
+her into conversation; he was content to sit on the opposite side of the
+hearth and let his eyes rest upon her in silence. She was paler, he
+thought, as he watched the orange light from the flames play over the
+oval face and throw up its regular lines. She was sitting sideways to
+him, gazing absently into the heart of the glowing coals, and her
+shadow, formed by the lamp between her and Stephen, fell strongly and
+clearly outlined upon the opposite wall. Stephen sat in his corner and
+gazed at it through half-closed eyes. He had been working hard all day,
+and in the keen, biting air; the warmth and the rest were grateful to
+him. The silence in the room had lasted so long that he began to feel
+drowsy under the influence of this quiet warmth. He watched the shadow
+sleepily, and dreamy fancies floated across his brain. The clean-cut,
+delicate profile was magnified to colossal proportions on the blank
+wall. So it seemed to Stephen that beautiful presence would dominate his
+life, fill in completely the blank of his colourless existence, as the
+large shadow filled the wall. Then, as his gaze followed its outlines,
+he saw what his eyes had not found before: a huge upright line of shade,
+formed by her chair back, ran up beside and mingling with the other
+lines. It seemed to curve over towards her shoulder, and then a few
+seconds more, and to Stephen's drowsy gaze, the harsh line expanded into
+a hideous grotesque figure. Out of those few shades upon the wall there
+leaped a picture to his eyes: the girl, and at her side, bending over
+her, a hideous devil, a strange vampire, hovering nearer or farther, in
+blacker or lighter shades, as the flames in the fire rose and fell.
+Stephen watched in a fascinated stupor, and then suddenly, as the light
+died down in the grate and the shade leaped out nearer and blacker, he
+started to his feet with a sudden exclamation.
+
+The girl started too, and looked up. "What is it?" she asked.
+
+Stephen pointed to the wall. Katrine turned, the blaze sprang up on the
+hearth, the shadows were gone, the illusion vanished.
+
+"What is it?" she said again, wonderingly.
+
+"Oh, nothing--a hideous shape on the wall," stammered Stephen. "I was
+watching your shadow, and another seemed to come up and threaten it.
+Imagination, I suppose--perhaps I had fallen into a dream," he added
+hurriedly, fearing she would laugh at him.
+
+But Katrine did not laugh: she looked at him gravely and in silence. In
+her mind she was pondering a question, hesitating, half fearing to speak
+to him, half impelled to, and half held back, and the equal opposite
+forces acting on her mind kept her silent.
+
+Stephen, unused to her present mood, felt perhaps she was annoyed or
+wearied, and drew out his watch. It was past ten.
+
+"I will say good-night," he said, rising.
+
+Katrine got up too. Her face paled yet more, her bosom rose and fell
+quickly. "Take me away from here," she said abruptly and suddenly.
+
+She had been thinking all the evening how she would approach the subject
+with him, and then at last his leave-taking had startled away all her
+circuitous phrases and left her only the crudest words at her command to
+express her meaning.
+
+Stephen was startled and confused, but his voice was very tender as he
+took her hand in his and said, "I don't understand, dear; what do you
+mean?"
+
+He felt her hand tremble in his. She looked up at him appealingly. Her
+eyes seemed frightened and uncertain. She was more womanly at this
+moment than she had ever been. To Stephen she was infinitely more
+fascinating than she had ever been. Accustomed to her bright, fearless
+independence, admire that as he might, in this weakness, whatever its
+cause, she was irresistible.
+
+"Well, I mean," she said, speaking nervously, but with an effort to
+control her excitement, "the other day you spoke of our being married,
+and I said I couldn't stand a quiet life. Stephen, I will marry you now,
+and go anywhere with you. I will be content with any life, any
+monotony--only take me from here at once! I loathe this place, this
+life." She stopped suddenly, and a wave of crimson blood swept over the
+white face. "I want to be taken away," she repeated.
+
+Stephen looked at her a moment in silence, with a sense of apprehension
+and alarm. He could not do as she asked; he was not free--his claim held
+him.
+
+"I don't know quite what you mean," he said, a little stiffly, though he
+felt he did know. "It would be quite impossible for me to go away now;
+my whole heart's in the work, and I've sunk all I had in it."
+
+"Yes; and your soul too," said Katrine suddenly, looking at him with
+shining eyes and a calm face. "You're a slave now to your gold, the
+same as we all are here--a community of slaves," and she laughed.
+
+Stephen grew red, and looked confused, alarmed, and angry, all at the
+same time.
+
+"Nobody would go now," he said, remonstratingly, "and leave ground like
+that. It would be insanity. Ask Talbot, ask anybody if they would."
+
+"Talbot!" repeated Katrine, scornfully; "he's the worst slave of all;
+but then he never preached about his soul, and wanting to reform
+people."
+
+"No one can reform you if you won't reform yourself," replied Stephen,
+coldly; and there he spoke the truth.
+
+"Who was it who has put in our prayer, 'Lead us not into temptation, but
+deliver us from evil'? Here I live in temptation: I am always thrown
+into evil. If I were not--" Her voice was very quiet, and had a strange
+pathetic note in it. It ceased, and then there was silence.
+
+Stephen felt as if a hand were laid on his lips and crushed down the
+voice that kept struggling from his heart. A second more, and then the
+girl laughed suddenly.
+
+"Oh, I was stupid! I did not know what I was saying, did not mean it
+anyway. It's quite right for you to stick to your claim and the idea you
+started with, and so on. You will make a great success if you do, and
+that is all you want!"
+
+Her tone was jesting and cynical as ever now--the usual hardness had
+come back to her face. The moment of submission, of confidence, of
+repentance, had passed--a moment when she could have been moved and won
+to any life he wished, and he had lost it. He felt it. Yet how could he
+have done otherwise?
+
+"Forget what I said--quite," she added; "and go now. It's getting late,
+and I want to get down to the saloons."
+
+A thrill of horror went through Stephen, as she knew it would. He gazed
+at her blankly with a horrible feeling, as if he were murdering
+somebody, clutching at his heart.
+
+"What are you waiting for?" she said, impatiently. "Why don't you hurry
+back to your claim?"
+
+"Katrine ... I--" he stammered, staring at her, but even as he looked a
+great wall of gold seemed to rise between them and shut her from him.
+"Forgive me," he muttered brokenly; "I can't give it up now."
+
+"Good-night," said Katrine, and he turned and fumbled for the door
+handle and went out.
+
+When he was gone Katrine turned to her small square of looking-glass
+that hung beneath the lamp on the wall.
+
+"What a fool I was to-night!" she said, looking at the sweet reflection
+and smiling lips.
+
+A few minutes after Stephen had gone, a slight figure, muffled up to the
+eyes, slipped out of No. 13 and hurried with quick steps down the
+uneven footway of Good Luck Row.
+
+That night Stephen climbed to his cabin with his head on fire and a
+singing in his ears. A terrific struggle was going on in his breast. He
+felt the path of duty was clear to him now, and equally that he did not
+want to follow it. He had tried to shut his eyes to it; tried to believe
+that it was not clear, that he did not know what was right or necessary
+to do, and therefore that he might be excused if he did not do it, but
+he could close his eyes no longer. They had been dragged open to-night,
+and he could not wilfully close them again. As he strode up the narrow
+little snow path leading to his cabin he felt that he knew his duty, and
+he groaned out aloud in the silent icy night.
+
+To leave now meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, the million
+dollars that he felt in a month or two he could take out of his claim;
+and to stay meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, a human soul! A
+million dollars, a human soul! These two ideas possessed him. A million
+dollars, a human soul! the two thoughts rang alternately through his
+brain until it seemed as if voices were crying them out upon the
+soundless air. According to his religion, spirits combated for the soul
+of man, and it seemed to Stephen that night as he mounted the solitary
+path under the far-seeing eyes of the frosty stars above him, that
+spirits really fought around him, good and evil, for the victory. "A
+million dollars!" shouted the evil ones, "do not throw them away." "A
+human soul!" wailed the others, "do not let it fall into evil." His
+sensitive, excitable mind trembled before the crisis. His own soul
+shuddered and sickened, for he seemed to see the hosts of greed of gold,
+and they were stronger than the hosts of light. And Stephen himself now
+was badly equipped for the conflict. He felt and recognised with dismay
+he had not the strength and the fervour now that had brought him
+through former battles. He was as a warrior that has fallen asleep and
+awakened to find his arms grown rusty while he has been sleeping.
+
+Gradually for the last six months the lust for gold had been eating into
+his spirituality and destroying it. You cannot serve God and mammon: had
+he not entered into the services of mammon, and been held there by the
+rich rewards?
+
+He thought of the rich pans he had been getting out. There was no claim
+like his in the camp. There was no man more envied nor considered more
+lucky than he. Yes, mammon had paid him well in the six months he had
+served it, showered upon him more than God had done in six-and-twenty
+years; and here was God's gift, a human soul, a sweet human life, he
+could save and make his own--and Stephen groaned again, for he felt that
+the gold was dearer to him. How could he have so changed, he wondered.
+A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of a million dollars being
+a bribe for him to sin. He looked into his heart now and found there was
+nothing there but a passion for gold, gold! It was a yellow rust that
+had eaten into his Christian's sword.
+
+Then his thoughts strayed to the girl he had just left, and her bright
+fresh face seemed to sway before him as he walked. His excited fancy
+painted it upon the snow banks at his side. She was so young, she seemed
+so fresh and lovely, it was impossible to think of her as tainted
+already with vice and sin. It was only if she were kept in this
+snow-bound prison, this mournful land of darkness and suffering, where,
+as she said, she had no place nor aim, that she would fall as those
+bright meteors were falling now far in the distant darkness. He could be
+her deliverer, her saviour, if--if he could.
+
+In the icy cold of that arctic night, great drops of sweat broke out
+hotly on Stephen's forehead as his brain was wrenched to and fro in the
+struggle. He tried to bribe even himself, tried to let his thoughts
+dwell on his passion for the girl, tried to think of the mere human
+sweetness that would go hand in hand with his victory over evil. If he
+won that bright clean soul for God, would he not also win that loved
+human form for himself? But even the voice of passion was drowned in the
+clamour of the greater greed.
+
+The next morning, as soon as it was light, Stephen went out to his
+claims. None of his men had come up to work yet. Stephen stood and
+looked over the stretch of ground beneath which he believed his fortunes
+lay. A light covering of snow had fallen on it during the night and lay
+about a foot deep in one unbroken sheet, not even the mark of a bird's
+foot disturbed its blank evenness: the claims looked very cold and
+drear in the dull dusky grey light of the dawn under that leaden sky.
+But Stephen's heart beat quickly as he gazed upon them. What did it
+matter that cold, dreary, surface, when the gold lay glowing underneath!
+
+Stephen felt as only a man of his sensitive conscience could feel his
+defeat of the previous night. His heart, all his better nature was
+crushed under a sickening load of mortification, and he sought
+desperately to find relief and justification for himself in
+contemplating the treasure for whose sake he had accepted it. As in
+other circumstances a man would solace himself for all sacrifices by
+gazing on the face of a mistress for whom he had relinquished worldly
+ambitions, and find excuses for himself in her beauty, telling himself a
+hundred times she was worth it all; so Stephen now gazed upon his
+claims, for which he had given up his scruples, his principles, his
+conscience, and his God, and tried to hug to himself the comfort that
+they were worth it. After a few seconds he tramped across the frozen
+snow to the line marked out by the banks of gravel where they had been
+at work the previous day.
+
+That evening he could not stay in his cabin, he felt restless and ill at
+ease. A nervous sense of anxiety hung over him. He seemed to himself to
+be expecting some misfortune. His nerves, weakened by the lonely life he
+had been living for the past months, and exhausted by the sleepless
+hours of the previous night, kept presenting picture after picture of
+possible ills. He looked over both his revolvers, to make sure they were
+in good order for defence if he were attacked that night. Then he drew
+his fur cap tightly down on his forehead and went out. The stillness of
+his own cabin and the clamour of his own thoughts were unbearable. The
+night was still and starlit, the air keen and thin as a knife-blade.
+Stephen strode along the narrow frosty path, and took the road down into
+the town. On his way he passed Talbot's cabin. It was lighted up. The
+little window made a square of yellow light in the darkness; the blind
+over it was drawn only half-way down. Stephen stepped up over the bank
+of frosted snow and looked in. The great fire lighted up the whole of
+the small interior, and threw its red light up to the cross logs in the
+roof. In the centre of the room, at a table. Talbot sat working. There
+were some sheets of paper before him, and he held a pen in his hand with
+which he was checking off some figures. His face was turned to the
+window; it looked pale and tired, but there was a curious expression of
+extreme tranquillity upon it--a settled, serene patience that struck the
+onlooker. He sat there working on steadily, motionless, calm as a figure
+in stone; and poor Stephen, torn in the struggle of his desires,
+slipping into the cold slough of self-condemnation, and burnt with the
+fever of greed, groaned aloud as he stood outside. Then he turned from
+the window and plunged back through the snow to the path that led to the
+town. He wanted to see Katrine, and yet he hated the thought of facing
+her after their parting of last night. What must she think of him? With
+her quick mental perceptions she would have seen through and through his
+miserable mind; seen that the gold had got hold of him, held him now,
+and that his boasted religion had no power against it. No, he thought,
+he could not face her--he was still some distance from the town; then as
+he drew nearer, the unappeasable desire to see her and hear her fresh
+bright voice came over him. When he reached Good Luck Row he went
+straight to No. 13. He might have saved himself the trouble of his
+decisions. Katrine had decided for him whether he should see her that
+night or not. The window was dark; he tried the door, it was fastened;
+she was evidently not there. A chill ran over Stephen from head to foot,
+and then he recognized how much he had really wanted to see her. He
+stood outside the door a long time; the row was quiet, there were few
+passers. He waited, hoping to see her come up each minute--perhaps she
+had only gone out on some errand; but the minutes passed and he grew
+cold standing there, still she did not come. At last Stephen moved away
+from the door and wandered disconsolately down the row. He went on
+mechanically, not heeding where his footsteps took him, and found
+suddenly that he had reached the main street down by the river. There
+was no darkness nor quiet here, all the stores had their windows wide
+open, and the light from them poured out upon the black slippery mass of
+ice and melted snow that lay over the frozen ground. The saloons were in
+full blast, brilliantly lighted and filled with noisy crowds of miners.
+The dance halls, of which there were some dozen along the street, seemed
+doing a good business. A shooting gallery that had been fixed up in a
+tent was not only filled inside, but a crowd of men and some women were
+gathered round the tent entrance, pushing and pressing each other in
+their efforts to get in; the glare from the flaming lights inside fell
+on their faces, and Stephen glanced eagerly over them to see if Katrine
+was amongst them. He passed on, disappointed. There was another tent a
+little farther on, where a cheap band was playing, and a board outside
+announced in pen-and-ink characters the attraction of a "Catherine Wheel
+Dance." The crowd here was even larger, and lights were fixed outside
+flaring merrily in the frosty air. Stephen walked on, past the stores
+and warehouses, past the noisy crowded saloons, past the brilliant dance
+halls and the variety show tents. It was to him all a hideous, tawdry,
+glaring mockery of merriment; and on the other side of him was the
+sullen blackness of the frozen river. He walked on until he had
+outwalked the town front, outwalked the straggling tents, till he had
+left the noise, and light, and laughter behind him. When he glanced
+round he saw he had nothing but the river and a waste of darkness beside
+him. There was an old log in his path; he sat down upon it and looked
+back to the mist of light that hung over the town, then his gaze
+wandered back disconsolately and rested on the ice-bound river.
+
+Katrine had passed that day wretchedly too. She had been down idling in
+one of the saloons through the afternoon, but the old resorts seemed to
+have lost their charm. The old pleasure had gone, and the stimulus would
+not come back. The cards looked greasy and dirty and revolted her, and
+the drink seemed to turn to carbolic acid in her mouth. She left at
+last, and went home to her lonely cabin and flung herself down in the
+dark in the chimney corner and tried to sleep, but horrible faces danced
+before her, and women with grey hair and wrinkles, with her own face,
+stared at her from the walls.
+
+She was still lying face downwards on the skins, half dozing now after
+that long conflict with horrible visions, when a light and very timid
+tap came on the door outside. She got up and went straight to it; her
+face was flushed and tear-stained, and her hair ruffled and in disorder,
+but she never thought to go first to the little square mirror that hung
+in the corner to improve her appearance before admitting visitors. As
+she threw open the door, the stream of hot light showed Stephen upon the
+threshold white as a spectre, chilled almost to death by his vigil at
+the river, with a strained smile on his lips and a great hunger in his
+eyes. His conscience reproached him: he knew he had not come bravely
+with his hands full of the sacrifice, having conquered himself, and
+ready to lay down all for her sake; but like a coward, still in the
+thrall of his money-lust and yet longing to attain her too, unable to
+give her up. He knew all this, and stood timidly as the friendless dogs
+will gaze through an open hut-door, wistfully, expecting to be driven
+away with blows; but Katrine met him with neither harsh words nor looks,
+she just simply put out both her warm hands and drew him in over the
+threshold. The welcome, the smile, the warm touch overcame him.
+
+"Katrine," he muttered suddenly, as she closed the door and barred it,
+"if I--if--I gave--up," and then the words died, strangled in his
+throat. Katrine held up her hand.
+
+"Don't begin to talk about anything like that," she said, gently pushing
+him down on the chair by the hearth, "till you are warm again. Where
+have you been freezing yourself like this?"
+
+She was busy lighting the lamp and setting her little old blackened
+coffee-pot over the flames. Stephen told her of his long lonely tramp by
+the river, and watched her with keen eager eyes as she made the coffee
+and poured him out a cup.
+
+"Now drink it all quick," she said imperatively, handing him the boiling
+mixture, from which the steam came furiously.
+
+"It's like the ordeal by fire," answered Stephen, meekly taking the cup.
+With a heroic effort he swallowed three parts of it, and colour began to
+come back to his face.
+
+Katrine observed this, and sat down contentedly on the floor in front of
+the ambitious fire, that seemed trying to leap up the chimney through
+the roof.
+
+"Stephen," she said very slowly and gently after a minute, "it was
+selfish of me to ask you to leave your claims. I've been thinking of it
+all day. I won't do it, and I will come and help you work them."
+
+Stephen felt the room whirl round him as he heard. Was he not in some
+rich, warm dream that would dissolve and leave him suddenly? His claims,
+those golden claims! and Katrine too--he seemed to see her dressed in
+gold, framed in gold, gold in her eyes and hair. Her movement, as she
+turned to look at him, brought him back to realities.
+
+"Do you mean it?" he said, stooping over her and catching her hands
+almost roughly in his. She met his feverish eyes with a bright, tranquil
+smile. He looked at her keenly for an instant, and involuntarily an
+exclamation broke from his lips: "Katrine! it's too much happiness for
+any man!"
+
+Perhaps the gods above, who eye jealously the lives of mortals, here
+made a note of this remark in their pocket-books.
+
+Katrine knitted her brows angrily. "I don't think so," she said. "You
+had better hear what sort of girl I am."
+
+Stephen turned pale, and leaned down over her as she sat on the hearth,
+her head against his knees. The cabin was full of the warm red
+firelight, that leaped over the walls and up to the rough blackened
+rafters above them. It glistened on the silky dark hair beneath his
+hand, and fell ruddily over the smooth oval face turned up to him.
+Stephen looked down at her and felt content.
+
+"No, no," he said hastily; "never mind anything in the past; we will
+efface it all; we make a fresh start from to-night." He would have
+stooped and silenced her with a kiss, but an arrogant look came over her
+pale face, and she pushed him back with her hand.
+
+"No, I don't like that idea. We must have things cleared up and tidy
+before we marry. You must know the truth from me, and then you will
+know how to meet any one who comes to you with talk about me afterwards;
+and they may come, for I'm known in all the saloons of Dawson."
+
+Stephen shuddered.
+
+"If they keep to the truth about me, you must just accept it; if they
+tell lies, you'll just shoot them."
+
+Again a cold thrill passed through her lover. To talk of
+shooting--taking a human life--murder--as though it were no more than a
+snapping of the fingers! His mind flew on a sudden bound of remembrance
+back to the little school teacher in the village of Arden, who could not
+bear the sight of a rabbit's blood on the trap, and whose quiet days
+were spent between the village schoolroom and the village church; yet he
+knew he had never loved that little teacher as he loved Katrine, that
+she could never rouse him as this woman did whom he believed to be an
+epitome of evil, who, as she lay now in the firelight by his feet,
+reminded him of the emblem of sin that crept into man's Eden. Yet it was
+a pleasure--what pleasure to be near her, to touch that smooth skin! But
+what was this pleasure?--was it also evil? What was this passion? His
+thoughts flew onward feverishly, and then Katrine's voice struck across
+them and brought him back to outer consciousness again.
+
+"Listen," she was saying, "while I tell you all, and _then_ we can start
+afresh, as you say."
+
+Stephen put his hand over his eyes, and waited in silence. He dreaded
+unspeakably what he thought he was going to hear, and with a man's moral
+cowardice would have deferred her confession, slurred over and tried to
+forget her wrong-doing, rather than hear and forgive it. They had
+changed places since he had asked her that morning in his cabin to
+confide in him.
+
+"Well, to begin with," went on her clear, soft voice, "I drink--I like
+drinking. You think it wrong to drink anything but water; I like wine
+and spirits, anything that excites me, and I can drink with any man in
+town. But I have never been drunk, Stephen, you understand that. Then I
+like all kinds of gaiety, and like to spend all my time dancing and
+laughing, and what your friend Talbot calls 'fooling.' And I gamble,"
+Katrine paused a second before she said the decisive words, and then
+went on rapidly, "oh, Stephen, you don't know, I haven't told you, but I
+love the tables. I can sit up all night and play with the boys; I love
+excitement, I love the winning and raking in the gold dust. I spend all
+my nights playing; it's what I live for in this awful place."
+
+There was silence, then Katrine's voice broke it again--
+
+"Now you think that so wicked, I bet you don't want to marry me now."
+
+There was a half laugh with a sad ring in it as she looked up to his
+covered face. Now Stephen heard, but the words fell on his ears dully;
+he was waiting in strained painful tension for what was to come. It was
+true he loathed gambling as a hated vice, and but for the apprehension
+that gripped his mind her confession so far would have been horrible to
+him. Still it was as a Christian that he abhorred these things. What he
+expected to hear he would have abhorred as a man and a lover; and the
+former abhorrence is considerably milder than the latter.
+
+"Go on," he said at last, in a stifled voice.
+
+"There is nothing more," returned Katrine, dejectedly.
+
+She thought she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a
+cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bent over, clasping
+his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing,
+and drew her up to him.
+
+"Is there nothing?" he whispered eagerly in her ear. "Have you nothing
+more to confess to me?"
+
+Katrine gave herself up to his embrace, a delicious sense of peace and
+protection and warm comfort stealing over her such as she had never
+known.
+
+"Nothing," she murmured, with her soft lips close to his ear and her
+silky curls touching his neck. She felt Stephen grasp her close to him,
+and a tremor ran through his whole frame.
+
+"Have you never lain like this in a man's arms before? never felt a kiss
+on your lips?" he persisted, holding her to him with a fierce intensity
+of growing passion.
+
+"Never, never," Katrine answered, opening her calm dark eyes and looking
+straight up to his.
+
+Stephen met their gaze for one long second, a proud, tranquil, fearless
+look that sunk deep into his soul and poured balm into every wound she
+had ever made there. The next moment she felt a torrent of hot kisses on
+her face, a pressure that almost stifled her on her breast, a murmur of
+"Darling, my darling," and knew nothing very clearly any more except
+that she was loved and very happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GOLD-PLATED
+
+
+The next afternoon, when Stephen returned to the west gulch and Talbot
+heard his news, he said he was glad, and meant it. Life at the gulch was
+very desolate and dreary, and such a bright glad presence as the girl's
+would alleviate the monotony and disperse the gloom.
+
+For the following week both men were busy preparing Stephen's cabin for
+her reception and trying to impart to it a bridal appearance. The hands
+were left to do the work on the claims, and Talbot and Stephen were too
+busy indoors to even oversee them. The cabin was large and well built.
+It stood looking across the gulch, and half-way down it, over the tops
+of the dark green pines and facing towards the western horizon, where
+the pink lights played and the little sundogs gambolled in the fall of
+the short grey snowy afternoons. Stephen was down in town once in the
+week, and came back with his pony laden with mysterious packages, and
+when Talbot came in in the evening he found Stephen on his knees,
+tacking down strips of carpet by the bed in the inner room. Narrow
+curtains had also been nailed up beside the window, and altogether the
+cabin presented a luxurious appearance.
+
+"This is quite magnificent," remarked Talbot, strolling about with an
+admiring air.
+
+"D'ye think so?" replied Stephen in a pleased tone, lifting a flushed
+face from his tacks and sitting back on his boot heels. "She's awfully
+handsome, isn't she? Say, it's strange to come to a hole like this and
+meet the handsomest girl you've ever seen!"
+
+"She is very handsome," assented Talbot, sitting down by the stove and
+stretching out his frozen feet before it. He was in the other room, but
+close to the open door leading into the bedroom, and facing Stephen as
+he sat on the floor with the screw of tacks by his side that had been
+paid for in gold.
+
+"And good, too, eh? good at heart, don't you think? Only not exactly
+religious, of course," he continued.
+
+"No, she's not very religious," returned Talbot, with the dry, hard tone
+in his voice that his subordinates knew and hated.
+
+"But it's not every one who says, 'Lord, Lord, that shall enter the
+kingdom of heaven,'" quoted Stephen; "you remember, Christ said that,"
+he pursued in an anxious tone, peering up at the other for
+encouragement.
+
+Talbot gave his slight, quiet laugh.
+
+"You've got the handsomest girl in the place," he said, "and a very
+nice, charming one, too. I don't see what more you want."
+
+To his strong, determined character this perpetual straining after a
+religion that was cast to the winds first at the temptation of gold, and
+then at a saloon-keeper's daughter's smile, was rather contemptible.
+
+"And 'there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,' etc.,"
+Stephen continued, anxious to persuade himself into a comfortable frame
+of mind.
+
+"Has Miss Poniatovsky repented?" asked Talbot, still more dryly.
+
+"Why, yes; I told you all she said. She won't gamble any more."
+
+Talbot was silent; through his mind was running a line of Latin to the
+effect that wool once dyed scarlet can never recover its former tint,
+but he said nothing.
+
+It did not take Katrine long to prepare for her wedding. There was no
+such thing as buying a trousseau in Dawson. She gathered together her
+coarse woollen underclothes, her stout short dresses, and thick boots,
+and packed them in two flat cases, such as can be strapped to a burro's
+side, and these were to be all she would take up to the cabin in the
+gulch besides her wealth of natural beauty. She did go to many of the
+stores around, buying trifles such as might happen to find themselves
+there and suit her: a small looking-glass here, a ribbon or a piece of
+lace there, and as she leaned across the rough trestle counter she
+generally remarked to the storekeeper, "I'm going to be married." She
+said it in the shyest, happiest tone imaginable, and a little blush
+stole over her smooth cheeks. In this way the news got round to
+Katrine's old friends and associates. She would have liked to have told
+them herself, but the old hunting grounds were forbidden to her now, and
+Stephen's wishes made a barrier between her and the entrance of all the
+saloons. He had tried to make her give him a solemn promise never to
+enter one again, but this Katrine would not do.
+
+"I can't be tied like that," she had said. "Something might occur to
+make it necessary for me to go into one of those places; and if I had
+promised you in this way, I could not. You have said you don't wish me
+to go; I have said I won't. Isn't that enough?" And Stephen had looked
+into the clear dark eyes and had said "Quite."
+
+The day of Stephen's marriage, the day when Katrine was to arrive as a
+bride at the west gulch, was calm and still. There was no wind and no
+snow falling. The sky stretched black and gloomy above the plains of
+snow; it was a day of the Alaskan winter, but still a good day for that.
+Stephen had gone down the previous day, and slept the night in Dawson.
+Talbot was waiting at the cabin to receive them on their return. As he
+stood at the little window that overlooked the trail, waiting for the
+first glimpse of them, and staring across the dismal waste that ran into
+grey and dreary mist in the distance, a great revolt stirred in his
+usually calm and philosophic breast--a sudden longing swept over him for
+the blue skies and warm air of the lands he was accustomed to, and a
+wilder longing still for a glimpse of the sunlight held in two eyes that
+were fairer than any sky. He shut his teeth hard, and his hand closed
+tightly on the window frame. "Only a little longer," he muttered to
+himself, and then far in the distance came a soft silvery tinkle of
+bells. Recalled to himself, he relaxed his face in a pleasant smile, and
+went to the door and opened it. In a second or two they came in sight,
+riding single file up the narrow trail, the girl first and Stephen
+following. She wore a large skin coat of some shaggy fur which concealed
+her figure, though not its splendid upright pose, and on her head was a
+small fur cap of some light colour, white fox or rabbit. Beneath showed
+her dark glossy hair curling upwards over the brim, and her glowing
+face rich and fresh as a Damascus rose.
+
+Talbot was greatly struck. The realisation of her beauty came home to
+him very forcibly in this cold, envious light of open day. "Stephen's
+not such a fool, after all," was his inward comment as he went forward
+to meet them. As he lifted her from her pony and bade her welcome to the
+cabins and the west gulch, she smiled down upon him. What a mysterious,
+magic thing human beauty is, and the human smile! It seems to light the
+dreariest sky, people the loneliest landscape. Where there is a human
+smile to reflect one's own, not even a desert seems desolate, not even a
+prison cell seems cold. Talbot felt this very strongly in that moment.
+As the warm, bright, laughing, youthful face looked into his, the sun
+seemed to have suddenly burst out upon that dreary snowy plain, and as
+the two men escorted her over the threshold it seemed to both that they
+were throwing open the door not only to her concrete self but to the
+abstracts, warmth and light, and gaiety and laughter, and that these all
+flowed in with her into the simple rough interior, transforming and
+illumining it.
+
+Katrine was delighted with her new home; she walked about examining
+every detail and showing her joy and pleasure in each little trifle that
+had been prepared for her. She had a very soft voice and manner when she
+chose,--she was too young yet for her gambling, drinking, and rough
+associates to have spoiled,--and Stephen stood in the centre of the
+room, flushed and silent with the fulness of his pleasure, following her
+eagerly with his eyes. After all, in this world of ours, everything
+stands in such close relation to its surrounding objects and
+circumstances that there is no absoluteness left. Or you may consider it
+the other way, that the feelings are absolute and always the same. A
+millionaire bridegroom could not receive more pleasure from the
+pleasure of his bride when viewing the mansion he had prepared for her,
+than Stephen did now from Katrine's approval of his log hut, and her
+thanks and smiles were as sweet over a little wooden shelf tacked
+against the wall, as if a two thousand dollar chandelier had called them
+forth.
+
+Then Stephen took her arm and drew her into the next room, and here she
+was so shy and nervous she could not look about at all. Stephen took off
+her cloak and all her outer wraps, and then made her come and see her
+reflection in a little square looking-glass that he had obtained for her
+at quite a high price; but Katrine could not face the mirror, and hid
+her blushing cheeks and downcast eyes on his shoulder instead. Stephen
+put his arm round her. "You don't regret what you have done?" he asked
+in alarm, pressing her close to him.
+
+"No, oh no, dear Steve, only it's all so strange; let's go back to the
+other room."
+
+They returned, as she wished, and found that Talbot had laid the dinner
+for them,--a dinner he had spent all the morning in preparing,--and they
+sat down to it with a gaiety that made up for the shortness of supplies.
+After dinner they drew close round the fire and prolonged the roasting
+and eating of chestnuts and drinking whisky throughout the
+afternoon,--for whisky was there, strongly as Stephen objected to see
+her drink it; still it was their wedding day, and he let it pass. As
+darkness came down a whirling snow-storm swept through the gulch; they
+could see the thin sharp flakes fly past the window on the cutting wind,
+and hear the whistling roar of the storm as it struck and beat upon the
+cabin. They only flung more logs into the stove, and gave a backward
+glance over their shoulders from time to time towards the window. By
+nine in the evening, when Talbot was leaving them to go to his own
+cabin, it had calmed down a little, though the wind still moaned in the
+hollows of the gulch.
+
+Stephen and Katrine stood at the window a second after he had gone,
+looking out into the curious misty whiteness and blackness commingled of
+the night.
+
+"I am sorry there should be such a storm the first day you are here,
+darling," said Stephen softly, putting his arm round her waist.
+
+"Why, what does that matter? I do not mind, I have you to protect me.
+You will always now, Steve, won't you, from everything? I don't want
+ever to go back to that gambling life again."
+
+He drew her into his arms.
+
+"Of course, of course I will," he said, kissing her. "I will always take
+care of you."
+
+Her arms were interlaced about his neck, they looked into each other's
+eyes, and neither knew any more whether it was a storm or a calm in the
+night outside.
+
+For the first few weeks after their marriage Katrine was more than
+happy, and it seemed to those lonely beings, sheltered from the savage
+siege of Nature only by those frail little cabins built by their own
+hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had
+blossomed for them suddenly--a perfect spring in winter. The girl's
+wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and
+she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to
+smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless
+existence. Nothing seemed to have the power to disturb her, the most
+irritating and annoying incident never even brought a frown to her face;
+it filled her with consternation for the men, and an immediate desire to
+smooth it over for them, if possible to prevent their being ruffled by
+it. For herself, she seemed above the reach of any circumstance to
+disconcert. One morning the men had an instance of this. They were all
+three living together in Stephen's cabin now. That is to say, Talbot
+took all his meals there, and used it as his own home in every way,
+except that he still went back to his cabin to sleep. It had seemed
+cheerless to both Katrine and Stephen for Talbot to be eating alone a
+few yards from them, and though it gave the girl more work, and for that
+reason Talbot was slow to accept the arrangement, she herself coaxed him
+into it. They came in late from the claims to lunch, and found her
+bending over the fire, with flushed cheeks and happy eyes. She was
+stirring a great saucepan of inviting looking and smelling stew, that
+she had spent the whole morning in preparing. The large handle of the
+pan projected from the stove some distance, and as Stephen threw off his
+overcoat he managed in some way to tip up the saucepan with a sudden
+jerk that sent the contents half into the fire, half over the girl's
+bare arm, from which her sleeve was rolled to the elbow. She did not
+utter a sound as the scalding liquid ran burning over her flesh, but
+Talbot saw her face grow deadly pale with the sickening pain. After a
+second of agony, when she found her voice, and Stephen was remorsefully
+spreading fat over the blistered, cracking flesh, the first thing she
+said, with her eyes full of disappointed tears, was, "Oh dear! how
+unlucky! Now you won't get anything hot for lunch." And as soon as a
+bandage was twisted round her scalded arm, she was over at the cupboard
+collecting all the best of her cold supplies and laying them out on the
+table.
+
+There was not a word of anger or reproof to Stephen for his
+carelessness, not a word of her own pain. The great sorrow that she was
+anxious to smooth over and atone for to them was that they would have to
+put up with a cold luncheon!
+
+Her one idea, the sole thought that occupied her, was to make these two
+men happy, at any cost to herself. All day she studied how she could
+make their life, so hard and rough smoother for them, how she could
+alleviate the labour and monotony of it. She rose in the morning long
+before either was awake, and had the fires blazing, wood brought in,
+water melted out, and the coffee made by the time they came into the
+sitting-room, looking white and sleepy in the flare of the common
+candles. All the house work they had formerly found hard, when counted
+in addition to their outside labour, she took entirely upon herself, and
+insensibly they both felt the relief very great. There was no coming
+home now, worn out and frozen, to a cheerless cabin, and being obliged
+to chop wood and light fires and split ice before they could get warm
+and rested. A glowing hearth, a laid table, a smiling face, always
+awaited them. Often coming up from the dump at the lower end of the
+claim, they could see the square patch of red light flung out from the
+window on the snow, bidding them hurry in to the welcome warmth and
+light inside.
+
+The daylight only lasted them now from ten to two, and for these hours
+the men worked out of doors. During their absence the girl went out on
+shooting expeditions of her own. She had invented a modified snow-shoe,
+broad and short, with slightly curved-up ends, and with these strapped
+on to her lithe feet, her fur coat fastened up to her chin, and her fur
+cap drawn over her ears and to her brows, she defied the fall of the
+mercury, and skimmed over the snow as silently and swiftly as a shadow
+moving.
+
+She enjoyed these long, lonely excursions, with her heart kept warm by
+the hope of discovering something she could bring down with her pistol
+or her shot-gun, and carry back as a surprise and a treat for the men
+for supper. There was not much indeed to be found; but a small breed of
+snow-bird was prevalent, and quite a flock of these would very often
+follow or precede a snow-storm, and whenever Katrine's keen eye caught
+sight of the little dark patch that a cluster of them made against the
+snow, she would glide swiftly over in that direction, and have eight or
+ten of them swinging at her belt to take home. They were small, but
+cooked as she knew how to cook them, they were a delicacy beyond price
+to the men who for months had tasted little but beans and hard bacon.
+Katrine felt quite happy if she could return through the suddenly
+falling gloom of the afternoon and cross the darkened threshold just as
+the men came back, half frozen, from the creek, and show her cluster of
+victims swinging by their long-necked heads from her waist.
+
+She thought of them, planned for their comfort, and worked for them all
+day; while to her husband she was absolutely devoted, and one would
+think that for such devotion a few smiles, a kiss, and some kind words
+was a small price to pay. Yet after the first few weeks, and even during
+them, Stephen, who worked all day to secure his mining gains, would not
+even exert himself to that degree to return the affection that was worth
+all his claims put together. One kiss given before he went out to his
+work in the morning would have made Katrine happy all day, one tender
+inquiry on his return would have amply rewarded her for all her labours,
+yet he invariably went out to the claims without bestowing the one, and
+returned without making the other. Hard work, privations, loneliness,
+even the absence of all the amusements she had delighted in, would not
+have broken her spirits; she would have accepted them all cheerfully, if
+her husband had only thrown over them the little light and warmth of his
+affection that she longed for. Each day she hoped it might be
+different; but no, he grew more and more absorbed by the gold fever that
+was eating away his heart and brain, and the girl grew more and more
+depressed and resentful. "It would be no trouble to him," she murmured
+to herself over and over again, as she stood at the wash-tub, wringing
+out his shirts, or knelt on the floor of the cabin scrubbing the boards,
+"just a kiss or a smile."
+
+She did not in the meantime relax any of her attention to him. Her smile
+for him was always as sweet when he returned, her efforts to please him
+as untiring, but in her heart her thoughts turned more and more
+constantly day by day to the idea of leaving him, of returning to her
+own life, where at least she had not been tormented by this perpetual
+hope and expectation and disappointment.
+
+Stephen never dreamed that the girl's thoughts were as they were; though
+if he had done so, he probably would not have altered his own
+course--for Katrine in several angry outbursts had appealed to him, had
+told him how she hungered after, not great and difficult proofs of his
+love, but the little ones, the trifles, how he was starving and killing
+her love for him by his neglect of it, and he either could not, or would
+not, understand. But that she contemplated ever leaving him never
+crossed his brain, any more than the conception of the passionate hate
+she felt for him at times when he left undone some trifling thing, that
+if done, would have roused an equally passionate access to her love. He,
+jaundiced with this mental yellow fever, thought his rich claims, his
+great wealth, had probably had some influence on the daughter of the
+Polish Jew when she accepted him. He relied, in fact, on his wealth, and
+on the material advantages she would gain by clinging to him, to hold
+her to him. And with Katrine this was a rope of sand. She cared no more
+for Stephen's wealth and for his claims than if they had been ash
+heaps. There was not a touch of avarice, of calculating greed, in her
+whole character, and to gratify her own impulse she would have cast all
+material advantages aside. From Stephen she wanted love, and that only,
+and this was the only chain that could hold for an instant her proud,
+independent, reckless will.
+
+There were the makings of a splendid character in the girl, all the
+foundations of all the best qualities in her: a little care, a little
+culture bestowed on them, and she would have developed into a fine and
+noble woman; but Stephen's eyes were blinded by the glare of the gold he
+saw in his visions, and the far greater and more wonderful treasure, the
+living human soul, that chance had given over to his care, unfolded
+itself slowly before him in all its beauty, and he could no longer see
+it. To Talbot it seemed incredible that Katrine through her mere
+physical beauty did not obtain a greater hold upon him, that she seemed
+so unable to absorb him, that she could not triumph over him by the road
+of the senses. Talbot himself was absorbed in his work, but even he, the
+onlooker, the outsider, felt the influence of this brilliant young
+presence that had come suddenly into their sordid life, like the sun
+rising in radiant majesty over a barren plain. The common table at which
+they sat seemed no longer the same now that she was at the head, with
+her beautiful figure rising above it, and her laughing, lovely
+nineteen-year-old face looking down it. To him, those liquid flashing
+eyes, and arching brows, and curled red lips seemed to light, positively
+light, the small and common room. But the eye grows accustomed to beauty
+and ceases to heed it, just as it grows accustomed to, and ceases to
+heed, ugliness and deformity, especially where there is no standard, no
+measure for it, no comparison with other objects. Just as any
+shortcoming, any mental or physical defect that a man hardly notices in
+a woman he loves, when alone with her, becomes painfully apparent to him
+when he sees her surrounded by others, so does her beauty strike him
+when reflected in other eyes, and pass unheeded when seen only by his
+own. Katrine was alone, there was no other woman's face to either rival
+or be a foil to hers, and after the first six weeks her beauty ceased to
+sting and surprise Stephen's senses. She, as it were, became the
+standard, since there was no other. And there is no absoluteness about
+beauty, nor our admiration for it. When we say we admire a woman because
+she is beautiful, we mean we admire her because she is more beautiful
+than other women. If all others were the same as she, she would cease to
+be called a beautiful woman, and if there were none others than she,
+then she would simply be a woman for us. We could not know whether she
+was beautiful or not. Man's senses are made not to perceive, but to
+compare, and he cannot judge except by comparison. Talbot knew all this,
+and he could not help feeling sorry that a girl such as this should be
+so isolated with them, and that the man who possessed her should realise
+his good fortune so little. He suggested often, for the girl's sake,
+excursions down into the town; but Stephen, partly from his religious
+views, and more from his anxiety not to waste a minute of his literally
+golden time, always frowned down the question, and though the girl
+looked at him wistfully she never complained against his decisions. She
+seemed to have completely accepted the idea that her marriage meant the
+renunciation of all the things she had delighted in, and if her marriage
+had given her more of what she had hoped for, she would have been
+contented with the change.
+
+One evening, when Stephen was out in the shed at the back of the cabin
+stacking up some wood by the light of a candle stuck in a chink of the
+logs, Talbot and the girl were sitting idle on each side of the stove,
+and somehow, though Talbot seldom opened his lips on such matters,
+seldom in his life offered opinion or advice to others, they had now
+been speaking of her marriage, and Stephen's attitude towards her.
+
+There were tears in her great eyes, and her under lip quivered and
+turned downwards like a wet rose-leaf.
+
+"He is so _very_ wrapped up in all this digging business, why did he
+want to marry me at all?" she said, in a sort of helpless childish
+wonder.
+
+Talbot was silent, looking at her, and then instead of answering her
+question, said--
+
+"Why don't you make him notice you more? why can't you appeal to him?"
+
+"Appeal to him!" she repeated; "it's no use. Why, he is
+gold-plated--eyes, ears, touch, everything, all plated over; you can't
+reach him through it."
+
+"Have men nothing like affection in them?" she said, after a minute.
+"Have they nothing between their mad bursts of passion and a cold
+incivility? What do they do with all the charming ways they have before
+they possess a woman? Stephen was so gentle, so nice, so interested,
+when he used to visit me down town; and now you see how rude and hateful
+he is very often. Why do they change? I have not changed. I am still as
+attentive, as eager to please him, more so, than when he came to my
+cabin. Oh," she added, after a minute, "I'm getting so tired of it all,
+I feel I'd like to throw it all up and go back to my own life and
+freedom. All the men are so civil and so nice and so devoted as long as
+a woman does nothing for them," she said simply, not fully realising
+perhaps the terrible ironical truth she was half-unconsciously uttering.
+
+"I could love him immensely," she added, stretching out her arms; "oh,
+he could have such a love from me, if he wanted it; but as it is, I
+don't see much use in my staying with him. I feel I'd like to go back to
+my own life and forget I ever married him."
+
+"Oh, you must not do that," said Talbot, startled out of his usual calm,
+and fixing his eyes on her; "pray don't think of such things."
+
+"Do you think he would care?" she said, opening her eyes in her turn.
+
+"I'm sure he would," Talbot answered, with so much emphasis and decision
+that the girl sat silent and impressed for some seconds.
+
+"Why is he not more amiable then?" she asked.
+
+"It's men's way," returned Talbot, not knowing exactly what to say, and
+accidentally hitting the truth completely.
+
+"They're fools," replied Katrine, angrily, while the hot tears fell
+thickly into her lap.
+
+Stephen came in at the moment, and though Katrine made no attempt to
+conceal the fact that she was crying, he took no notice of her, but
+began talking to Talbot about the wood.
+
+"We shall have to take the sleigh to-morrow and go up the gulch and get
+some more wood somehow, if we can. There's only a few bundles left," he
+said, blowing out the candle and dragging some heavy logs over to the
+fire.
+
+"Can I come with you?" asked Katrine, looking at him with her soft
+pathetic eyes, still brimming with tears.
+
+"Why--yes--I suppose so," returned Stephen, slowly opening the stove and
+looking in.
+
+"I shall enjoy it so much," answered Katrine, her face beginning to
+sparkle with its accustomed smiles. "We have not had a sleigh ride
+together once, have we? I'd like to go with you better than anything.
+You'll like it too, won't you?"
+
+"I don't know; it's a confounded nuisance having to leave the claims a
+whole afternoon, I think."
+
+Katrine got up suddenly from where she was sitting and walked into the
+next room without a word. Her tears were dried, her smiles killed.
+
+The following day was clear and bright, and a cold, pinky-looking winter
+sunlight filled the air. Katrine and Stephen started early, and Talbot
+did not expect them back till dark. He was out on the claims all the
+morning, and came in to his lunch late and did not go out again
+immediately. It was a day for a half-holiday, and all his men left
+early; the claims were deserted, and Talbot found himself in solitary
+possession of the gulch. He felt restless and unsettled, and walked
+about his little bare room in an aimless way quite unusual to him, and
+the early part of the afternoon had passed away before he realised it.
+
+In one of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The
+gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and
+desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour
+by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day.
+It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges
+and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and
+listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and
+oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's
+figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly
+where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence and loneliness, that
+Talbot started a little with sheer surprise; and then another appeared,
+and another. They were coming, one behind the other, singly, round the
+corner of the house, and as they emerged into view on the level platform
+in front of it Talbot looked them over and saw at a glance to what order
+they belonged.
+
+"As tough a crowd of claim-jumpers as I have seen," he murmured to
+himself as he watched their movements. They did not seem very decided or
+certain, nor well agreed amongst themselves. There were six in all, and
+they advanced towards the house in a loitering way, pausing once or
+twice to talk with each other, and glancing over the cabin. They were
+all dressed alike, in large slouch hats, thick boots and high leggings,
+and short coats with a belt round the waist, from which depended their
+enormous six-shooters. As they finally, in their loitering fashion,
+neared the door, Talbot walked to it, threw it wide open, and asked them
+what they wanted. They hung back from the door a little and looked at
+each other, and then one said he had a lease on the claims from General
+Marshall.
+
+"I am the only person who has power or authority to give a lease on
+these claims," returned Talbot in a short, hard voice.
+
+The men hesitated. Talbot looked pretty tough himself as he stood there
+facing them, clothed in buckskin from head to foot, his head nearly
+touching the lintel of the doorway above him, his revolver on his side,
+and behind him looming the tunnel, a gaping mouth of blackness.
+
+The men shuffled their feet on the snow and grinned at each other
+uneasily. It did not seem they could work the game of bluff here that
+they had thought out in the town.
+
+"Well, that's your opinion," returned the leader in a bantering tone,
+while the others closed in nearer the threshold in a jeering circle;
+"but a lease from General Marshall's good enough for us, and I guess
+we're coming in."
+
+"You'd better try it," returned Talbot, and he slammed to the heavy door
+in their faces, and fastened it on the inside.
+
+He expected them to force it, and he hastily dragged together some sacks
+of rich dirt that were lying in the tunnel and piled them up, forming
+quite a respectable barricade. Behind these he took his stand, his
+revolver in his hand. With six against one he felt they must win in the
+end, but he thought he could put a bullet through half of their number
+as they advanced, and he'd sell his claim and his life dear.
+
+He waited some moments, but nothing happened. There was silence outside,
+and after a second or two he stepped back to his sitting-room and looked
+out of the window. A council of war was taking place seemingly. The men
+had all withdrawn to a little distance, where there was some old tin
+piping. They had seated themselves on this, and were now in earnest
+conversation. Talbot stood at the window and watched them with a dry
+smile. He could tell their talk almost from their expressions and their
+gestures. It was one thing to come up and bluff a man out of his
+property, and walk in and take it as he walked out; and another to force
+a narrow tunnel against the straight, steady fire of a fearless devil
+like this. They could overpower him in the end, there was no doubt of
+that; but then when they walked in it would be over his dead body, that
+was clear, and several others besides him, for he was known to be the
+quickest, straightest shot in the district, and could certainly get away
+with some of them. It was this part they did not like, for each man felt
+he might be the one to be picked off and stretched stiff in the tunnel.
+So there was considerable parleying and hesitation amongst them, and
+Talbot stood motionless at the window watching them as they sat there,
+and noting the length of their six-shooters that dangled down the sides
+of their legs. At last there was a concerted movement amongst them: they
+got up with one accord, and without another glance at the cabin walked
+slowly away across the plateau in front of the house and round the
+corner of it towards the town trail, the way they had come. Talbot
+watched them disappear in the grey light of the gulch with surprise, and
+then drew a deep breath. He hardly knew whether he felt relieved or
+disappointed. His blood was up then, and he would have liked to send a
+bullet through a few of them. He roamed about restlessly for some time,
+and went to the back of the house to a little square window, and from
+there watched the last of them mount the trail and disappear from the
+gulch. Then all was silence and solitude again, in the swiftly falling
+darkness. He turned into his sitting-room, and stirred the fire into a
+blaze and lighted up the lamps--his lamps always burned well and
+brightly, being kept scientifically clean and trimmed with his own
+hands,--then he flung himself into a chair and sat there gazing into the
+flames, his revolver beside him on the table. He half expected the men
+to return, and his ears remained attentive to the slightest sound
+without. But there was nothing, absolute stillness reigned all around
+him; not a crackle of the frosted snow nor the fall of a leaf broke the
+grave-like silence.
+
+When the other two came in, he told his afternoon's adventure in the
+quietest, simplest way possible, and the fewest words. The girl listened
+with flushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
+
+"What fun!" she said at last when he had finished, and kicking off her
+snow-laden boots as she sat by the stove. "And you held off six men by
+the 'power of your eye?' what a convenient eye that is! I don't see
+you've any need to carry a six-shooter! I wish they'd come back
+to-night, we'd give them something of a reception."
+
+Talbot laughed, and looked pleased at the praise from her bright young
+lips. Stephen only looked anxious.
+
+That night they sat up rather later than usual, and Katrine was quite in
+a pleased state of expectation. No visitors made their appearance,
+however, and at last Talbot left to go to his own cabin.
+
+"Now, if they come in the night," remarked Katrine, laughing, as she
+said good-night, "don't slay them all with your eye, mind, but give me a
+chance."
+
+Talbot promised to use his eye mercifully, and Katrine and Stephen put
+their lights out and went to bed.
+
+It seemed to Katrine she had been asleep some time, when she awoke
+suddenly and put her hand on her husband's arm. "Steve, I hear steps."
+
+"Nonsense," murmured Stephen, drowsily; "it's your fancy. Go to sleep."
+
+But Katrine's ears were like those of a wild animal, quick and not to be
+deceived.
+
+"Go to sleep yourself, if you can," she retorted, and sprang up in the
+darkness, found her day clothes, and hustled them on. There was silence
+now outside, but Katrine hurried all she could, and then with one
+revolver in her belt and one in her hand went into the other room.
+Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, there was a crash, a sound
+of tearing and splitting wood, and the door was crushed inward, letting
+in a blast of icy air. There was pitch darkness within and without.
+Katrine answered immediately by two shots fired in succession; there was
+a heavy groan, a muttered curse, and some shuffling of feet outside.
+Katrine, standing flat against the wall to avoid offering a mark for
+wandering shots, chuckled inwardly and waited. A second later a shot
+came in return, but the bullet went high. Katrine heard it whizz into
+the wood somewhere between the wall and roof.
+
+She stood motionless, listening. Just in front of her, on the other side
+of the room, was the stove, and in this there still glowed an
+unextinguished portion of log, making one small spot of blood red in
+the surrounding darkness. Katrine fixed her eye on this glowing spot. To
+enter farther into the cabin the men must pass between it and her. She
+raised one of her revolvers into a line with it. When that spot was
+obliterated, she would know, however silently they moved, the enemy had
+advanced, and in that second she meant to fire; the stove was high, and
+a man passing in front of it would have that red spot in a line with his
+heart.
+
+With her heart beating fast with exultation, and not a tremor in her
+steady fingers, she waited motionless as a statue against the wall. She
+was not a girl of a cruel nature, but her husband lay behind that slim
+partition on her right, and unarmed, for Stephen would never carry a
+pistol, and she would have shot unhesitatingly each man in succession
+that tried to pass her to him. There seemed to be some talking outside
+and a trampling of feet on the broken wood of the door, and then
+suddenly the soft red fire spot was eclipsed in the total darkness
+around, and on the instant Katrine's finger had pulled the trigger.
+There was no groan this time after the shot, only a heavy thud and a
+crash as a falling body struck some fire-irons by the stove. The red
+spot glowed out of the darkness again and stared Katrine cheerfully in
+the eyes. There was a confusion of voices outside: Katrine could hear
+the thick oaths and one man apparently enjoining another to come out of
+there and have done with the business. Katrine smiled as she heard. She
+guessed that the man addressed was the one that lay now between her and
+the stove, and his ears were for ever closed. In the same moment she
+heard the inner door open, and for an instant Stephen appeared, pale and
+in his night clothes and with a flaring candle in his hand. With a
+spring like a leopard Katrine had reached him and put her hand over the
+flame of the candle, crushing it out beneath her palm. The darkness she
+knew was their only shield. By their voices and their footsteps she
+could tell the men without numbered not less than four or five. Once let
+a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl,
+they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible
+pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such
+precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin
+was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It
+was the fears of the besiegers now simply that was protecting the
+besieged.
+
+"Go back," she said, with her lips on his ear, "unless you can find a
+pistol, and be ready to shoot," and she pushed him within the door
+again.
+
+She stood as before, in an even line with the red bull's-eye of the
+stove, and listened; there was still a scraping of feet and muttering
+of voices outside, but not so near the door, and she wondered if the
+enemy were going round the cabin to attack it from another side.
+Suddenly a shot rang out in the stillness outside, then another, and the
+ball came through the window behind her and passed over her shoulder;
+there seemed to be a rush and stampede towards the door. She turned and
+faced it, raising both revolvers, and as she heard the wood of the
+fallen door split under the trampling feet, her fingers had almost drawn
+the triggers to welcome the incomers, when out of that cold blackness
+beyond the door came a slight cough. Katrine's hand dropped to her side,
+a sick, cold horror came over her as she realised what she would have
+done in the next instant. That was Talbot's cough. One second more of
+silence, one more step forward, and her shot would have found his heart.
+She reeled where she stood, against the wall, with the sickness of the
+thought. She could not shoot again now: he was there outside amongst
+them--and Stephen, was he there too, or inside? Talbot, she supposed,
+roused by the noise, had come out and attacked them between the two
+cabins. Then what she had said to Stephen recurred to her. Suppose he
+had searched and found a gun, and should come out from the inner room,
+he would not count upon Talbot's presence any more than she had done; he
+would naturally shoot at the first who crossed the threshold, as she
+herself had done; he would shoot in the dark, by her orders. The
+thoughts flashed quicker than lightning through her brain. The horror of
+the situation, this uncertainty, this killing blindly in the confusion
+and the darkness, was too great to be borne. The danger now was greater
+than even the light could bring. She dropped the pistols on to a stool
+beside her, drew a match from her pocket, and heedless of the perfect
+mark she herself offered now, struck it and held it over her head. In a
+second, the body across the hearth, the wrecked door, and two pale faces
+looking in at her from the opening, leaped into sight; the enemies, the
+living ones, were gone. A pool of blood beyond the threshold, and blood
+on the splintered wood, and their dead companion, only remained. For a
+moment the three faces, all pale with fear and anxiety, not for
+themselves, but for each other, stared nervously into each other's eyes
+in silence. Then Katrine broke it with a laugh, and brought down the
+match from over her head and put it to the lamp on the table.
+
+"Oh, you frightened me so," she said, as she turned up the wick and made
+it burn, and the men stepped over the door and came in. "I thought I
+might kill you."
+
+She looked up at them both in the lamplight, as if to reassure herself
+they were really there alive.
+
+Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.
+
+"You frightened me," he returned, jestingly. "I wouldn't come under that
+straight fire of yours for anything. The men outside were easier to deal
+with, they got so scared with you shooting in here and me shooting in
+their rear; they thought we were a band of a dozen at least."
+
+"I'd no idea you were there," murmured Katrine, shuddering still, as she
+moved from the lamp to the fire, and began drawing the half-burnt logs
+together.
+
+"Stephen climbed out of the back window and came round to me, but the
+first shot had already wakened me; I was getting my clothes on when he
+came," answered Talbot, walking over to where the dead man lay between
+the hearth and the door, and surveying him. "Some of your good work, I
+see," he said, after a minute. "This is one of the lot that came up
+yesterday afternoon. Tough-looking chap, isn't he? Well, you see I did
+not kill them all. I gave you the chance you asked for," he added,
+looking at her with admiring eyes.
+
+"And haven't I made the most of it?" she returned, lifting her flushed
+face, sparkling with smiles, from the fire.
+
+Stephen had crept in, pale-faced as the corpse itself, and stood now
+staring at it in a dumb horror. He could not understand how Talbot and
+his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless
+between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he
+wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of
+mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with
+herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the
+flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred,
+as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold. Stephen,
+reassured for her, let his eyes travel to the corpse, and then, with a
+sort of groan of horror, sank back on a chair with his face covered in
+his hands. Katrine looked up quickly from the fire, and then went over
+to him, putting an arm softly round his neck.
+
+"What is it, Steve, dear? you weren't hurt, were you?"
+
+"Oh, to have killed him! to have killed a man, how horrible!" muttered
+Stephen, without lifting his head.
+
+Katrine looked amazed. "Well, but he would have killed us if he could,"
+she answered. "You kill a mosquito if it annoys you, and that's right.
+You only kill a man if he tries to kill you, that's quite fair."
+
+"But a murderer!" and Stephen shuddered. She felt the shiver of horror
+under her hand.
+
+"Isn't it better to be a murderer than murdered?" she asked, with a
+little smile, feeling she had an unanswerable argument.
+
+"Murdered, your body is killed, murderer, your soul," came back in the
+same stifled voice.
+
+Katrine was silent. She was thinking what a nuisance it was to have a
+soul that needed so much looking after, never seemed to do any good, and
+was always obtruding itself and spoiling your best moments of fun in
+this life.
+
+"We'll take him away," she said softly, after a minute, noticing that
+Stephen kept his fingers closely locked over his eyes, as if to shut out
+some fearful sight. "Talbot, let's take him out," she said to their
+companion, who stood with his back to the fire watching them. Stephen
+made no sign.
+
+Talbot and the girl walked over to the body. It was stiffening rapidly,
+and the wide-open eyes glared up glassily to the black rafters of the
+cabin.
+
+"Might this be useful?" said Talbot, stooping over the man and half
+drawing the second large revolver from his belt.
+
+"No, take nothing," answered Katrine, hastily; "we want nothing."
+
+Talbot let the weapon slide back to its place, and they both bent down
+and lifted the corpse between them. Talbot walked backwards over the
+cabin door behind him. It was dark outside--a thick, pitchy darkness,
+with only a grey glare close to the ground from the snow.
+
+"Let's take him to the gulch," whispered Katrine, "and send him down it;
+it will worry Stephen so if he sees him again."
+
+It was only a few yards to the edge of the ravine; they moved towards it
+cautiously and stopped upon the brink.
+
+"Are you ready?" Talbot asked in a low tone, and Katrine whispered back
+"Yes." There was a heavy thud, then a soft rolling sound, and then
+silence, as the drift snow in the bottom of the gulch received and
+closed over its gift. They waited a second, then Talbot stretched out
+his hand towards her, found her arm in the darkness, and they both
+walked back together.
+
+"It's a pity Steve is so sensitive," said Katrine, plaintively. "I just
+saved him, and his house, and his precious gold, and everything,
+to-night, and he does not like me a bit for it."
+
+"I think you are a very brave little girl," said Talbot, softly.
+
+"Do you?" returned Katrine, in a pleased voice; and Talbot felt that she
+turned her face and looked up at him in the darkness. "Steve and I don't
+fit very well, do we?" she added, with a sigh; "and he does not fit this
+life. Somehow, I don't believe we shall ever leave this place alive--I
+have a presentiment we shan't. You will--you'll make a success and go
+back; but we shan't."
+
+Talbot did not answer, as they were at the cabin.
+
+Stephen met them at the door as they came in, with a white stricken
+face. "Where have you put it?" he asked in an awed, trembling whisper.
+
+"Down the gulch," replied Katrine, composedly. "Now, Steve, you're not
+to worry about it any more--it was a necessity."
+
+She glanced round the room and saw that Stephen had been too much shaken
+to think of putting it in order. The coffee-pot stood where she had left
+it, and the coffee was boiling over and wasting itself in the fire. She
+ran to it, took it off, and began pouring it into the cups on the table;
+as she did so the men noticed blood dripping from her wrist into one of
+the saucers.
+
+"Oh, yes," she said indifferently, in answer to Stephen's startled
+exclamation, "I thought I felt my sleeve getting very damp and sticky;
+there's a graze on the shoulder, I think, and the blood has been
+crawling slowly down my arm, tickling me horribly. Let's see how it
+looks!"
+
+She unfastened her bodice and took it off, seemingly unconscious of
+Talbot's presence. He stood silently by the hearth watching her, and
+thought, as he saw her bare white arms and full, strong white neck, how
+well she would look in a London ball-room. Stephen, all nervous anxiety,
+was examining her shoulder. A bullet had gone over it, leaving a furrow
+in the flesh, where the blood welled up slowly. Katrine turned her head
+aside and regarded it out of one eye, as a bird does. Stephen bent over
+her and kissed her, murmuring incoherent words of remorseful sorrow.
+Katrine flung her arms round him and laughed.
+
+"Why, I am delighted! it's been quite worth it, the fun we've had
+to-night. That's all right--it will be healed in a couple of days; just
+tie it up with your handkerchief."
+
+It was an easy place to bind, by passing the bandage under the arm, and
+this, by Katrine's directions, Stephen did, with trembling fingers.
+Talbot had turned away from them, and occupied himself by fixing up the
+door and stuffing the chinks where the wood had broken. When this was
+done and the bandaging finished, Stephen brought a shawl from the other
+room and wrapped it round the girl's shoulders, and they all drew in
+round the fire in a close circle with their cups in their hands.
+
+Their common danger and the sudden realisation of how much they were,
+each of this lonely trio, to the other; how easily any one of them might
+have been taken from the circle that night, and how irreparable would
+have been the loss, drew them all closely together as they had never
+been before--that delicious chord of sweet human sympathy that lies deep
+down, but ever present, in the human breast, vibrated strongly in their
+hearts, and they sat round the cheery blaze, talking and laughing
+softly, and looking at one another, and then smiling as their eyes met,
+for mere lightheartedness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MAMMON'S PAY
+
+
+This little excitement quite delighted and pleased Katrine. She had
+spoken just the truth when she said she wished something like it would
+happen every day; and the only thing that spoilt the fun of it was
+Stephen's dejection and the persistently depressed way he looked and
+felt over it. After a day or two the pleasant sense of life having
+something worth living for passed away again, and the time seemed
+heavier and slower than ever. Day followed day in a dreadful monotony,
+and the girl visibly lost health and spirits. She changed a good deal,
+and both men noticed it. She lost her wonderful sweetness and evenness
+of temper and her bright smiles, and became fretful and irritable,
+discontented, and sharp in her replies. In the long winter mornings now
+she would not spring up in the early darkness as formerly, but try to
+fall asleep again after waking, and put her arm across Stephen and tell
+him there was no use of getting up, that the day was long enough anyway,
+and it was too dark to do anything; and then she would abuse him if he
+insisted on getting up in spite of her, and let the breakfast wait so
+long, that after a time the men drifted into the habit of having it
+alone, and going out without seeing her. Katrine had grown to hate the
+day, to hate every minute in fact when she was not sleeping, and to try
+to make the night last as long as possible. Stephen noticed all this,
+and spoke to Talbot about it in distress. Talbot merely said, "Perhaps
+it's her health; you'd better ask her." Stephen did so, and found there
+was a reason for her apparent illness, which delighted and consoled him;
+but when Katrine flew into a passion, declared it was detestable, that
+it would take away her freedom and her power to ride and enjoy herself,
+Stephen was shocked and grieved, and said he was disappointed in her;
+whereupon Katrine replied she hated him, and Stephen quoted scripture
+texts to her till she ran out of the cabin and rushed across to Talbot's
+in a passion of sobs and tears. At least, she knew he would not quote
+texts to her. Talbot did all he could to smooth out matters between the
+two, and after that Katrine spoke very little; she took refuge in a
+dejected silence, and grew paler each day. It was only when the men had
+gone out to work, and she was left alone with a great pile of things to
+mend, work which she hated, that she would go to the door and stand
+looking out over the grey waste under the snow-filled lowering sky, with
+the tears rolling silently down her checks. From where she stood she
+could see, through the greyish air, the men working far down at the
+other end of the claims, and the long line of trenches and the banks of
+frozen gravel; sometimes, in the light fog, made of the tiny sharp
+snow-flakes, sifting through the air, they would look misty, like ghosts
+or shadows; and sometimes the dulled click and scrape of the spades
+would reach her.
+
+"Slaves, slaves, just like slaves," she would think, watching the
+muffled-up figures continually bending over their work; "and they're
+digging graves, graves." And she would think of Annie, and the grave
+Will had been digging for her while he dug for gold. A red sun, dull as
+copper, hung above them, and sometimes the great Northern Lights would
+send up a red flame behind the horizon; and to Katrine it seemed like a
+blood-covered sword held up by Nature to warn them off a land not fit
+for men. One afternoon, when the sun looked more sullen and the sky more
+threatening than ever, and the men moving at the end of the claim
+looked no more than mere blots in the cold mist, she stood watching the
+steady red blade shoot up in the ashen sky, and began comparing its
+colour to other things. "It's as red," she said to herself softly, "as
+Hearts and Diamonds;" and then her thought wandered to the cards
+themselves, and she thought of the hot saloons at nights crowded with
+faces, and the tobacco smoke in the air, and the jabber of voices, and
+the laughter of the miners, and their oaths and jokes and stories, and
+their friendly ways to her, and the admiration on their rough and
+sometimes honest faces, and the long tables and the spat, spat of the
+falling cards as they were dealt, and the chink of the glasses and the
+hot spirits burning your throat, and then the feeling of jollity, and
+then the warmth and life and cheeriness of it all. Her eyes brightened
+and her chest heaved a little as she leaned against the lintel. If she
+could have one night of it again! And here, what would it be when the
+men came back? Supper, and then Talbot and Stephen talking of their
+work, and the probable value of the claims, and the pans they could
+make, and what the dirt would run to, and then dismissing the whole
+subject as impossible to decide till the spring came and they could wash
+the gravel, and then having so dismissed it, they would fall to
+speculating again what the spring would show them the dirt was worth,
+and so on all over again from the beginning. Oh, she had heard it so
+often, nothing, nothing but the same topic night after night, and after
+that, cups of coffee, of which she was sick, or water, and then reading
+a chapter of the Testament, and then going to bed, and Stephen too dead
+tired to give her a good-night kiss. If they had had a game of cards in
+the evening now, all together, and become interested in that and
+forgotten to talk of their claims, and some good whisky after it, or
+cleared out one of the cabins and had a dance there with some of the
+hands who lived near, and a man to whistle tunes for them if there was
+no other orchestra; but no! Stephen thought that cards were wrong and
+wouldn't have them in his house, and whisky too, and dancing worst of
+all, and only the sin of avarice and the lust of gold was to be connived
+at there. As she stood there, the thought slipped into her mind quite
+suddenly, so suddenly that it surprised herself, "Why not go down to
+town and have a good time as she used?" Her heart beat quickly, and the
+old colour came into her cheek. She glanced at the dull, coppery sun
+growing dimmer and dimmer behind the thickening snow fog, and the pink
+light flickering on the horizon, at the dim figures of the men and the
+grey wastes on every side. There was a thick silence, broken only by a
+faint far-off click of a shovel from the trenches. There would be
+half-an-hour's more daylight, half-an-hour before the men returned to
+miss her. She would get a good start anyway. She turned into the cabin
+again, her face aglow and her eyes sparkling. She knew that Stephen
+would be fearfully angry with her--she had not been once to the town
+since her marriage--but she had a stronger nature than Stephen's, and
+felt no fear of his anger.
+
+"He thinks I am a reformed character," she muttered contemptuously to
+herself, as she put on her thick rubber boots. "Well, I told him there
+was only one chance to reform me, and that was to take me away from
+here, and he wouldn't do it."
+
+She built up the fire in an enormous bank, and left the men's slippers
+and dry socks beside it. Then she slipped into her long skin coat, and
+crushed the fur cap down on her eyebrows and pulled it over her ears. As
+she went out she took a long look at the claims--the men were still busy
+there. "Slaves," she muttered. She closed the door with a sharp snap and
+left the key hanging on it, as was usual when she was inside. Then she
+turned her face to the town trail, and set off at a long steady stride
+through the dead silent air. The town was within easy walking distance
+for her, and though it would be dark before she reached it, that
+mattered very little, her eyes were strong and almost as good as a wild
+cat's in the dark. On every hand the sky seemed to hang low and
+threatening over the earth, and the air had the grip of iron in it, but
+Katrine pushed on at the same even pace without even an apprehensive
+glance round. Her spirits rose as she walked. She felt the old sense of
+gladness in her youth and strength and health, and in her freedom, and
+she bounded along over the hard, glittering snow, full of a mere
+irresponsible animal pleasure, such as moves the young chamois in his
+bounds from rock to rock. Darkness had come like a blot upon the earth
+before she had done half the distance, but now she had the twinkling
+lights and the reddish haze of Dawson before her. Her own eyes
+brightened as she caught sight of them, and she hastened her steps. By
+the time night had fairly settled down she came into the side streets of
+the town. Dawson is an all-night town, and things were in full
+blast--saloons, shooting-galleries, dance-halls, and dog-fights going on
+just as usual. She noted with satisfaction that nothing seemed to have
+altered a little bit since she saw it last, and as she turned into Good
+Luck Row, to walk down it for old acquaintance' sake, a big,
+disreputable old yellow dog she had fed through last winter, came
+bounding up and leaped all over her in delighted recognition. Katrine
+was pleased at this welcome, and spent quite a time at the corner with
+him, asking how many dog-fights he had had lately, and being answered
+with short triumphant barks that she took to mean he had demolished all
+the small dogs of that quarter. Then she went on and passed her own
+former house, and saw to her surprise it was vacant, and so was Annie's
+next it. That looked as if Dawson was not pressed for space. As she was
+turning out of the row she saw ahead of her another old acquaintance,
+this was a human one, and Katrine felt as if she had quite slipped back
+into her own life as she hailed him.
+
+"Sam!" she called gently. "Hello, Sam!"
+
+The miner turned, and as soon as he saw her a broad, genial smile
+overspread his countenance and stretched his mouth from one edge of his
+fur ear-flaps to the other.
+
+"Why, Kate, you down here again; you've cut the parson fellow, eh?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Katrine hastily, reddening a little; "I'm just in town
+for a day or so. How's your wife?"
+
+"Well," answered Sam slowly, as he put himself at her side and slouched
+heavily along the side-walk with her. "She's all right--leastways I
+reckon she ought to be; she's in 'eaven now."
+
+"Oh, Sam!" said Katrine, in a shocked voice, "is she dead? How did she
+die? when?"
+
+"Why, I reckon it was the cold like, she kind of froze to death. When I
+got home one night the fire was out, and she was just laying acrost the
+hearth; the room was awful cold, and there warn't no food neither--I
+'spect that helped it. I'd bin away three or four days, and the food
+give out quicker than I thought, and the firin'. I arst a doctor here
+wot it was, and he said it was sincough or sumthin'."
+
+"Syncope?" suggested Katrine.
+
+"Yes, that's what 'e said; but I sez it was just the cold a ketchin' of
+her heart like, and stopping it."
+
+"What were you doing?" asked Katrine.
+
+"Why, I was out arter gold, o' course."
+
+Katrine shivered. They passed the "Sally White" at that moment, with
+its flaring lights and noise of merriment within.
+
+"Let's go in, Sam, and get a drink. Your tale has pretty near frozen
+me."
+
+They turned in, and as Katrine pushed open the door there was a shout of
+recognition and welcome from the men round the bar. The door fell to
+behind them, shutting out the icy night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the light failed, and the night had come down on the claims like a
+black curtain let fall suddenly, the men left the ground, and stiff with
+cold, their muscles almost rigid, plodded slowly and silently back to
+the cabin. The hired men dispersed in different directions, some going
+down town and some to their cabins near. When Stephen and Talbot entered
+they found the fire leaping and crackling as if it had just been tended,
+and both men sat down to change their boots in the outer room. The door
+into the bedroom was shut, and they supposed Katrine was within. They
+were too tired and frozen to speak, and not a word was exchanged between
+them. After a time Stephen got up and went into the inner room; there
+was no light in it, and the door swung to behind him. Talbot, with a
+white drawn face, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
+
+When Stephen entered he thought Katrine was probably asleep upon the
+bed, and crossed the room to find a light. When the match was struck and
+a candle lighted, he stared round stupidly--the room was empty. He
+looked at the bed, Katrine was not there; then his eyes caught a little
+square of white paper pinned on to the red blanket. He went up to it,
+unpinned it slowly, and read it with trembling fingers. Talbot, waiting
+in the other room, hungry and thirsty, got up after a time and began to
+lay the supper. This done, he made the coffee, and when that was ready
+and still Stephen had not reappeared, he rapped at the door. There
+seemed a muffled sound from within, and Talbot pushed the door a little
+open. Inside, he saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at
+the paper in his hand.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Talbot.
+
+Stephen handed him the paper in a blank silence, and Talbot took it and
+held it near the candle. This is what he read:--
+
+"I have gone down to the town to get a little change and to relieve the
+dreadful monotony of this life. Don't follow me; just leave me alone,
+and I'll come back in a day or two. There's no need to be anxious. You
+know I can take care of myself."
+
+Talbot laughed quietly, and walked back into the sitting-room.
+
+"Well, she gives you good advice," he said; "I should follow it. Let her
+have a day or two to herself--a day or two of liberty. She'll come back
+at the end all the better for it."
+
+Stephen followed him into the firelight; his face was the colour of wood
+ash, and his eyes looked haggard and terrified. With all his faults he
+really loved his wife, in his own narrow, limited, selfish way,
+intensely.
+
+"Oh, Talbot! to think she's gone back to it all! How awful!"
+
+Talbot gave a gesture of impatience. He understood the girl so much
+better than Stephen ever had that his methods seemed unreasonably
+foolish to him. And now he was excessively tired and cold and hungry,
+and his supper seemed of more importance than a world full of injured
+husbands.
+
+"You can't wonder at it, old man," he said. "This life must be
+intolerable for a girl like that."
+
+"Why? how?" questioned Stephen, blankly.
+
+"Oh, so quiet; no excitement."
+
+"But women ought to like quiet, and excitement's sinful," returned
+Stephen hotly, becoming the Low Church missionary school-teacher at
+once.
+
+Talbot merely laughed and shrugged his shoulders, but his laugh was not
+friendly, and there was an angry light in his eyes.
+
+"What am I to do?" asked Stephen mechanically, still standing, the
+pallor and the horror of his face growing each minute.
+
+"I've told you. Let her have the few days' enjoyment she asks for; then
+her heart will reproach her, and she will come back to you."
+
+"But she might think me indifferent," murmured Stephen, his voice almost
+choked in his throat.
+
+"I shouldn't leave her long. If she does not return the day after
+to-morrow, then you might go; but if you go now and attempt to force her
+back, you'll probably make a mess of it."
+
+"But think--my wife--"
+
+"That's all right," returned Talbot, looking at him and understanding
+what he was thinking of. "In one way, at least, you know she is a good
+girl. She will only gamble a little and drink and get very jolly, and
+she'll come back to you in a day or two with no harm done--what are you
+doing?" he broke off suddenly, as Stephen began to tear off his slippers
+and socks and get his thick wet boots on.
+
+"I'm going after her," he said sullenly, in a thick voice, "to bring her
+back home here--alive or dead."
+
+"It will be dead probably, and you'll be exceedingly sorry," returned
+Talbot in a cutting tone.
+
+Stephen made no answer, but continued fastening his boots.
+
+"You'd better have your supper before you go out again," remarked
+Talbot, sarcastically.
+
+Stephen made no reply. When he had his boots on he put an extra
+comforter inside his fur collar, put his cap on, and walked over to the
+door. There he hesitated and looked back. Talbot sat unmoved by the
+fire, his profile to the door. Stephen stood for an instant, then came
+back to the hearth.
+
+"Talbot!" he said, standing in front of him.
+
+The other looked up. "Well?"
+
+"Come with me. Help me to find her and bring her back."
+
+Talbot compressed his lips.
+
+"Aren't you capable of managing your own 'wife yourself?" he asked.
+
+"You have so much influence with her," said Stephen, pleadingly.
+
+"I suppose I only have that influence because I am not quite a fool,"
+returned Talbot angrily, commencing to pull off his slippers.
+
+He was angry with Stephen, and feeling excessively wearied and
+disinclined for further effort. He hated to turn out again, and his
+whole physical system was craving for food and rest. But he was not the
+man to resist an appeal in which he saw another's whole soul was
+thrown, and angry and annoyed as he was with Stephen, he still disliked
+the idea of letting his friend go out alone in the Arctic night on such
+an errand. It seemed to him supremely ridiculous for Stephen to have to
+call in another man's aid in these personal matters, but then he was
+more than twice Stephen's age, and had got into the habit of making
+excuses for him. So, tired and exhausted though he was, he dragged on
+his frozen boots again, and prepared to accompany Stephen.
+
+"You'd better have some of this first," he said, pouring out a cup of
+the coffee he had made, which stood ready on the stove.
+
+They each took a cup standing, and then turned out of the cabin, locking
+the door behind them. The atmosphere and aspect, the whole face of the
+night, had changed since the girl started. The fog had lifted itself and
+rolled away somewhere in the darkness. The air was now clear and keen
+as the edge of steel. The stars were of a piercing brilliance, and all
+along the black horizon flickered and leaped a faint rosy light. The two
+men, stiff, tired, and aching, took much longer to accomplish the
+distance than the girl had done with her light, eager feet, and when
+they got down to the town the night was well on its way. At the bottom
+of Good Luck Row, which is, as explained already, one of the first
+streets you come to, on the edge of the town, they halted and took
+counsel as to where they would be most likely to find the object of
+their search.
+
+"Perhaps she's gone up to the 'Pistol Shot,'" suggested Stephen. "We'd
+better go up to old Poniatovsky."
+
+"She hasn't come down to see her father, I should imagine," remarked
+Talbot, in his dryest tone.
+
+But Stephen persisted she might be there, and so they tramped straight
+across towards the main street and turned into the "Pistol Shot." They
+pushed their way unheeded through the idle, lounging, gossiping crowd
+within, found their way behind the bar, and asked for Poniatovsky. The
+little Pole came out of his back parlour and met them in the passage. He
+listened to their story, his long pipe in one hand, his mouth open, and
+his own vile whisky obscuring and clouding his brain.
+
+"Wot! she haf run away?" he exclaimed, as Stephen paused; "and who is de
+cause? Is it this shentleman here?" and he stared up at Talbot's slight,
+tall figure, imposing in its furs, and at the finely-cut, determined
+features that presented such a contrast to Stephen's weak boyish face.
+
+"No, no," said the latter angrily; "she hasn't run away at all. She has
+only come down here for an hour or so. I thought she might have come
+here to see you."
+
+"No," replied the Pole deprecatingly, shrugging his shoulders and
+spreading out his hands, "I haf not seen her. If she come here, I shut
+the door upon her. I say, 'I vil haf no runaway wives here.' My fren,
+before you vos marrit did not I say, a truant daughter make a truant
+wife. She haf left me first, now she haf left you."
+
+He had taken Stephen by the front of his coat, and was pushing in his
+words by the aid of a dirty forefinger.
+
+Talbot abandoned Stephen to argue the matter out with his drunken
+father-in-law, and strolled back through the passage, through the
+bar-room, and then stood, with his gloved hands deep in his fur-lined
+pockets, at the saloon door, looking up and down the street. Presently
+one of the wrecks of the night came drifting by, a girl of nineteen or
+so, with her cheeks blue and pinched in the terrible cold under their
+coat of coarse paint. He signalled to her, and she drifted across to
+him, and stood, with her hands thrust up her sleeves, in the light from
+the "Pistol Shot."
+
+"I expect you've seen the inside of most of the drinking-houses
+to-night," he said, speaking in a kind voice, for the pitiful, cold face
+of the girl touched him; "have you seen anything of Katrine Poniatovsky,
+a girl who used to live here?"
+
+"Wot's she like?" the girl asked sullenly. She was so hoarse that she
+could hardly make the words audible.
+
+"A tall girl, dark, and very handsome."
+
+"Yes, I seed her, not more'n an hour ago, in the 'Cock-pit.' She's
+a-makin' more money in there than I can make if I walk all night. Curse
+her! She sits there, and the devil sits behind her, a-playing for her, I
+know; but she'd better look out--you don't play with that partner long."
+
+"The 'Cock-pit.' That's on the other side, isn't it, away from the
+river?" Talbot's heart sank a little as he recognized the name of the
+worst den for gambling in the whole town.
+
+"Go down here, and turn to your left. Any one will tell you where the
+'Cock-pit' is," said the girl, with a hollow laugh.
+
+Then she lingered in the light, and looked at Talbot wistfully. He put
+some money into her hand. "Go into the warmth," he said kindly, "and get
+yourself something."
+
+Then he turned back into the saloon to find Stephen. He met him, having
+broken away at last from the fatherly advice of the Pole, and brushing
+the front of his coat down with his hand. He was very flushed and angry.
+
+"You'd better waste no more time," remarked Talbot, calmly. "She is down
+at the 'Cock-pit,' playing."
+
+Stephen gasped. "How did you find out that?" he asked.
+
+"I've just been told by one of the habitués. Come along at once." Both
+the men went out, and Talbot, following the girl's directions, marched
+on decidedly, scarcely noticing Stephen's questions, which he could not
+answer.
+
+"I don't know," he said, for the fiftieth time, to Stephen's last absurd
+query as to how long she had been there.
+
+The houses became poorer and shabbier as they walked. Even in log-cabins
+there is a great difference marked between the respectable and the
+disreputable. And the figures that passed them from time to time, though
+more rarely here in this quarter, looked of the toughest, most
+cut-throat class.
+
+"How can she like to come here alone?" exclaimed Stephen, with a
+shudder. "I wonder she is not afraid. I'm surprised she has not come to
+some harm long ago."
+
+Talbot smiled to himself inside his fur collar and said nothing. The
+girl's absolute fearlessness was the point which he admired most in her
+character, and the immunity from danger seemed in her case, as in
+others, the natural accompaniment of it. Fortune is said to favour the
+brave. Misfortune certainly seems to spare them.
+
+"I think this is the place," said Talbot at last, and they stopped
+before a large, but old and dirty-looking cabin. It was sunk beneath the
+usual level of the ground, and reached by some crooked, slippery steps.
+At the foot of these steps was a sort of yard, which you had to cross
+before reaching the cabin door itself. What was in the yard, or what its
+condition was, it was too dark to see, but a sickening smell came from
+it as the men descended the steps, and the ground seemed slippery or
+miry in places above the frozen snow. The windows of the cabin in front
+gave out no light whatever, but that there was light inside, and very
+bright light, was evidenced by that which burst through the chinks all
+over it.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I stumbled over a corpse next," muttered Talbot,
+as he slipped and almost fell in the darkness on a slimy something under
+his feet that reminded him of blood. They got up to the door and tried
+the latch. It would not yield; then they thumped on it with their gloved
+fists.
+
+The latch was drawn back by some hand inside, and the door opened just
+wide enough to admit them, and was pushed to again. Stephen and Talbot
+found themselves in a crowd of loiterers inside the door, who apparently
+took no notice of them beyond a sodden stare.
+
+It was a long, low room that they entered, so low that it seemed to
+Talbot the ceiling was almost upon their heads. The atmosphere was
+stifling, evil-smelling beyond endurance, and so clouded with tobacco
+smoke that they could not see the farther end.
+
+A long table covered with green cloth took up the centre of the room,
+and all round the walls were ranged smaller ones. The place was full
+when the two men entered, all space at the centre table was occupied,
+the side tables were filled, and men standing up between blocked the way
+up the room. The windows at the end were barred and shuttered, not a
+breath of outer air could enter. The cheap lamps nailed at intervals
+along the grimy walls were mostly black and smoking, adding their acrid
+fumes to the thick atmosphere. There were very few women present, some
+painted, worn, unhappy-looking creatures, hovering like restless
+phantoms round the tables where the thickest crowds were, that seemed
+all. Stephen looked round on every side with haggard face and anxious
+eyes. She was nowhere near the door, and after a hurried survey of all
+those lower tables they forced and pressed and pushed their way towards
+the other end. At last they caught sight of her. She was sitting at a
+small table, with her face turned towards the room, intent upon the
+game. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. She had flung her fur cap
+aside, and her ruffled black hair lay loose upon her forehead. The
+collar of her bodice was open and turned back a little from her round
+white neck. She looked, with her soft young face, like a fresh flower
+dropped by chance into this evil, tainted den. Talbot gave her a keen
+scrutiny as they approached, and understood Stephen's infatuation. As
+for Stephen himself, his heart went out to her, and he was filled with a
+bitter self-reproach and sudden resolutions. His love and his darling!
+How could he have let her be found here! His claims and his gold, they
+might all go. He would take her away in safety at once. He would not
+hesitate again.
+
+When they reached the table they saw there was a large stake on the
+cloth between the two players. Her companion was a youngish man,
+seemingly a miner, dressed in the roughest clothes. Neither looked up
+till both men were close by them and between them and the lights. Then
+Katrine raised her eyes and started violently as she recognised them.
+Her face flushed deeper, and her eyebrows contracted with annoyance.
+Stephen went round to the back of her chair and laid his hand on her
+shoulder.
+
+"Come away; oh pray, come away," he said, in an imploring tone. It was
+all he seemed able to articulate.
+
+"I'm just in the middle of a game," she answered petulantly. "You
+mustn't interrupt me."
+
+"But it isn't safe for you to be here."
+
+"Stuff! I used to be here every night before I married you!"
+
+A death-like pallor overspread the man's face as he heard. He could not
+believe her, could not realise it. Had she indeed been here night after
+night?
+
+"Why do you come here and interfere?" she continued pettishly, looking
+up from Talbot to his companion. "I always have such luck, and I'm
+likely to lose it if you worry me."
+
+The young miner sat back in his chair, thrust both hands in his pockets,
+and stared rudely at the intruders. He did not mind the interruption as
+much as she did, since he was losing, and had been steadily ever since
+he sat down to play with Katrine, and doubts and angry questionings of
+his opponent's methods began to stir in his dull, clouded brain, as
+toads stir the mud in some thick pool.
+
+"You ought not to be here at all," said Stephen hotly.
+
+"Well, why shouldn't I make money as well as you?" returned the girl
+quickly, with a flash of scorn in her dark eyes, and Stephen whitened
+and winced.
+
+"Haven't you made enough for one night, in any case?" interposed Talbot
+quietly.
+
+"Yes, I think I have," she answered, with a glance at the glistening
+pile on the cloth. "I'll come," she added suddenly, "if Jim's no
+objection. What do you say, Jim?" she asked, looking across to the young
+fellow, who had been a sulky, silent spectator of the whole scene.
+"Shall we quit for to-night?"
+
+"If you give me back my money," he answered. "That's mine," he said,
+pointing to the pile. "It's my money, gentlemen; she's been winning all
+the evening."
+
+"Yes, I always do have luck," retorted Katrine. "I told you so when we
+began."
+
+"You may call it luck; I don't," muttered the miner, his face turning a
+dusky purple.
+
+"And what do you call it?" returned Katrine, white with anger in her
+turn at the insinuation, while Talbot, who saw what was coming, tried to
+draw her away.
+
+"What does it matter? Come away; leave him the money."
+
+No one in the room noticed what was going on in their corner. The others
+were all too busy with their own play, absorbed in their own greed;
+besides, squabbles over the tables were of such common occurrence, they
+ceased to excite any curiosity.
+
+"I shan't," returned Katrine, shaking herself free.
+
+The oily, smoky light from above fell across her face; it seemed to
+bloom through the foul, dusky air like a rose.
+
+"It's my money--I won it."
+
+"Yes, by cheating," shouted the miner, forgetting everything but the
+approaching loss he foresaw of the shining pile.
+
+"You lie," said Stephen, hoarsely. "She has not cheated you."
+
+The miner staggered to his feet, and before any of them realised it he
+had drawn his pistol and fired. His hand was unsteady from drink and
+rage, and the ball passed over Stephen's shoulder and went into the
+wall behind him. Talbot tried to draw Stephen to one side. The miner,
+blind with anger, half conscious only of what he was about, and drawing
+almost at random, turned his revolver on Talbot. Like a flash Katrine
+interposed between them, and Jim's bullet found a lodgment in her lungs.
+She had fired also. The shots had been simultaneous, and the miner fell,
+without a groan, without a murmur, forward across the table, carrying it
+with him to the floor. The gold pile scattered amongst the filthy
+sawdust on the ground. Katrine sank backwards into Talbot's arms, and
+her head fell to his shoulder like that of a tired child falling to
+sleep.
+
+In an instant they were surrounded by an eager inquiring throng. All the
+tables, with some few exceptions, were deserted; the players all crowded
+up to the end of the room, and Stephen and Talbot were carried back to
+the wall by the pressing crowd. Some of the men raised the body of the
+miner; he was dead. The people pressed round, and one glance at the set
+face told them. A momentary awe spread amongst them, and the men who had
+raised the body carried it to a bench and laid it there. Stephen, pallid
+as the dead man himself, looked round in desperation on the staring
+crowd.
+
+"Is there a surgeon or a doctor here?" he asked.
+
+Katrine heard him, and raised herself a little in Talbot's arms; he was
+standing against the wall now. She turned her eyes towards Stephen and
+stretched out her hand.
+
+"It's no use, Steve, dear," she said; "I'm done for. Don't worry with a
+doctor. I shall be gone in five minutes."
+
+Stephen dropped on his knees and seized the little soft brown hand
+extended to him, covering it with kisses.
+
+"Oh no, no, don't say it," he said in a voice suffocated with anguish,
+heedless of the staring faces around. Some of the mob looked on with
+interest, some turned back to their own tables, others went down on
+their hands and knees to scrape up the scattered gold dust that had
+mixed in the trampled sawdust.
+
+"Lay me a little flatter," she murmured to Talbot, and he sank on one
+knee and so supported her, her head resting on his arm.
+
+"If we could get her to the air," Stephen exclaimed.
+
+"No, the moving pains me; let me be," she replied. "I tell you I'm
+dying."
+
+Stephen groaned.
+
+"Pray then, pray now. Oh, Katie dear, pray before it is too late. Aren't
+you afraid to die like this, in this place?"
+
+Katrine shook her head wearily. "No, I don't think I've ever been
+afraid," she murmured.
+
+"Did I kill him?" she asked a second later, opening her eyes.
+
+Talbot looked down and nodded. Stephen's voice was too choked for
+utterance.
+
+"I'm glad of that," she murmured, letting her eyes close again; "I never
+missed a shot yet."
+
+"Oh, Katie, Katie," moaned Stephen. The room was black to him; it seemed
+as if he saw hell opening to swallow up for ever his beloved one.
+
+Katrine opened her eyes at his agonised cry.
+
+"Now, Steve, it can't be helped; I'm dying, and it's all right. I only
+don't want you to worry over it. Nothing is worth worrying for in this
+world. And I guess we'll all meet again very soon in a warmer place than
+Alaska."
+
+Stephen, utterly broken down, could only sob upon her hand.
+
+Talbot felt a sort of rigor passing through the form he held, and
+thought she was dying. He was stirred to the innermost depths of his
+being by her act. She had stepped so calmly between him and death, given
+up her life with the free generous courage of a soldier or a hero.
+
+"Why did you come between us?" he asked, suddenly bending over her; "why
+did you do it?"
+
+The calm light eyes looked down into the dark passionate depths of the
+dying girl's pupils, and a long gaze passed between them. What secrets
+of her soul were revealed to his in that instant when they stood face to
+face with only Death between? Then Katrine turned her head wearily.
+
+"I don't know," she answered faintly; "mere devilry, I think." And she
+laughed.
+
+The laugh shook the wounded lung. Her face turned from white to grey,
+her teeth clenched. There was a spasm as of a sudden wrenching loose
+from the body, then it sank back, collapsed, motionless, against
+Talbot's breast.
+
+The two men carried her out between them. The crowd made way for them,
+standing on either side in respectful silence. Such incidents were not
+uncommon, and excited nothing more than a dull and transient interest.
+They took her out, and the gold for which two lives had been sacrificed
+was left unheeded, scattered in the dust. They went out the way they had
+come, through the noisome court, up the narrow flight of rotten,
+slippery stairs into the pure icy air.
+
+Stephen turned to Talbot and took the girl's body wholly into his arms.
+
+"I want to carry her up to my cabin," he said in a choking voice, and
+the other nodded.
+
+The night was glorious with the deadly glory of the Arctic regions; the
+air was still, and of a coldness that seemed to bite deep into the
+flesh; but overhead, in the impenetrable blackness of the sky, the
+stars shone with a brilliance found only in the north, throwing a cold
+light over the snowy ground. To the south and east, low down, burned two
+enormous planets, like fiery eyes watching them over the horizon.
+
+Slowly the two men walked over the hard ground. Not another living being
+was within sight.
+
+Stephen walked first with heavy, uneven steps, and his breath came
+quickly in suppressed and sobbing gasps. Talbot followed closely, deep
+in painful thought. All had happened so suddenly. The whole horrible
+tragedy had swept over them in a few minutes; she had passed away from
+them both for ever. His brain seemed dazed by the shock. He could not
+realise it. He saw her dark head lying on Stephen's shoulder. It seemed
+as if she must lift it every second. He could not believe that she was
+lifeless, lifeless, this creature who had always been life itself, with
+her gay smiles, and light tones, and quick movements. Now, she and they
+were blotted out for all time. She had died against his breast, and for
+him. That was the horrible thought; it came into his brain after all the
+others, suddenly, and seemed as if it must burst it. And why, why should
+she have done it? Her last words rang in his ears, "mere devilry." So
+she had always been; reckless, open-handed, generous, she had often
+risked her life for another, and now she had given it for him. And in
+her last words she had tried to minimise her own act, tried to relieve
+him of the burden of a hopeless gratitude. But for all that he would
+have to bear it, and it seemed crushing him now. That she should have
+given her life, so young, less than half his own, so full of value and
+promise, for his! It seemed as if a reproach must follow him to the end
+of his days.
+
+He walked as in a dream. He had no sense of the distance they were
+going, hardly any of the direction, except that he was following
+mechanically Stephen's slow, uneven, halting footsteps, and watching
+that little head that lay on his shoulder. Once when Stephen paused, he
+stretched out his arms and offered to take the burden from him, but
+Stephen repulsed him fiercely, and then the two went on slowly as
+before, how long he did not know, it seemed a long time. Suddenly, in
+the middle of the narrow pathway before him, Talbot saw Stephen stagger,
+fall to his knees, and then sink heavily sideways in the snow, his arms
+still tightly locked round the rigid body of the girl. Talbot hurried
+forward and bent over him, feeling hastily in his own pockets for his
+flask. Stephen's eyes were wide open and gazed up at him with a
+hopeless, despairing determination that went to Talbot's heart and
+chilled it.
+
+"I can't go any farther, not another step," he muttered.
+
+Talbot had been searching hurriedly through all his pockets for the
+flask he always carried.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed, "I haven't got it; I must have dropped it
+coming up here, or they stole it in that hell down town."
+
+Stephen feebly put up his hand.
+
+"Don't trouble, I don't want it. I am just going to lie here and wait
+with her. Was she not lovely?" he muttered to himself, raising himself
+on his knees and laying the body before him on the snow.
+
+The sky above them arched in pitchy blackness, but the starlight was so
+keen and brilliant that it lighted up the white silence round them.
+Stephen, on his hands and knees, hung over the still figure and gazed
+down into the marble face. The short silky black hair made a little blot
+of darkness in the snow, the white face was turned upward to the
+starlight. Talbot, looking down, caught for an instant the sight of its
+pure oval, its regular lines, and the sweet mouth, and the passionate,
+reasonless face of the man crouching over it, and then looked
+desperately up and down the narrow lonely trail. They were five miles
+from the town, a little over three from the cabins. Glistening whiteness
+lay all around, till the plains of snow grew grey in the distance;
+overhead, the burning, flashing, restless stars; and far off, where the
+two planets guarded the horizon, the red lights of the north began to
+quiver and flicker in the night.
+
+The man on the ground noticed them, and straightening himself suddenly,
+looked towards them.
+
+"The flare of hell!" he muttered, with staring, straining eyes; "it's
+coming very near."
+
+Talbot saw that his reason had gone, failed suddenly, as a light goes
+down under a blast; he was delirious with that sudden delirium born of
+the awful cold that seizes men like a wolf in the long night of the
+Arctic winters.
+
+For a second the helplessness of his situation flashed in upon Talbot's
+brain--alone here at midnight on the frozen trail, with a madman and a
+corpse!
+
+He saw he must get help at once, and the cabins were the nearest point
+where help could be found. He could get men who would carry Stephen by
+force if necessary, but would he ever live in the fangs of this pitiless
+cold till they could return to him? He stood for one moment irresolute,
+unwilling to leave him to meet his death, and that horrible fear that he
+read in those haggard eyes watching the horizon, alone; and in that
+moment Stephen looked up at him and met his eye, and the madness rolled
+back and stood off his brain for an instant. He beckoned to Talbot, and
+Talbot went down on his knees beside him on the snow.
+
+"My claims," muttered Stephen; "those claims will be yours now, do you
+understand? I've arranged it all with that lawyer Hoskins, down town.
+They were to be hers if anything happened to me, but we shall both go
+to-night, and they will be yours. She said I had sunk my soul in them,
+Talbot; she was right. The gold got me, I neglected her; I let her slip
+back into evil; I've murdered her for the claims. They are the price
+hell paid me. But you keep them. All turns to good in your hands. They
+can't harm you. Keep them. They are my grave."
+
+"Stephen, rouse yourself! You are alive! you've got to live," said
+Talbot desperately, shaking him by the shoulder. "I am going now to
+bring men back with me to help you home. You've got to live till I
+return, do you hear?"
+
+Stephen had turned from him again and put his arms round the motionless
+form before them.
+
+"They are coming nearer," Talbot heard him mutter; "but they shall burn
+through me first, little one;" and he stretched himself across the
+corpse as if to shield it from the approaching flames, and far off the
+red eyes of the planets sank nearer the horizon, but still seemed to
+watch them across the snowy waste.
+
+Talbot felt the only one thin thread of hope was to go as fast as his
+fatigue-clogged feet could move up to the cabins, and he rose and faced
+the homeward trail. He felt the hope of saving Stephen was just the
+least faintest flicker that ever burned within a heart; still there was
+the chance--the chance that, even should he be already in the sleep that
+ends in death when he returned, they could rouse him from it and drag
+him into life again. He forced his heavy feet along, and with a great
+effort started into a run. His limbs felt like lead, and all his body
+like paper. The long hours of cold and fatigue, the excitement, the rush
+of changing emotions he had gone through, had been draining his
+vitality, but he called upon all that he had left and put it all into
+the effort to save his friend. He knew that any one second lost or
+gained might be the one to turn the balance of life or death, and he
+urged himself forward till a dull pain filled all his side, and his
+temples seemed bursting, and the great lights before him swam in a
+blood-red mist.
+
+Stephen, left alone, raised his head and gazed round him once, then he
+laid his cheek down on the cold cheek, pressed his lips to the cold
+lips, and his breast upon the cold breast just over where the bullet had
+ploughed its way through the flesh and bone. The night gripped him
+tighter and tighter, and slowly he sank to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+_L'ENVOI._
+
+
+Noontide in June. A sky of the clearest, palest azure, and a rollicking,
+swelling, tumbling sea, full of smooth billowy waves chasing each other
+over its deep green surface--waves with their white crests blown
+backwards, throwing their spray high in the air and seeming to laugh and
+call to each other in gurgling voices; and between sea and sky the
+liquid golden sunlight filling the warm, throbbing air, spreading itself
+in dazzling sheets upon the water, and glinting in ten thousand
+glittering points on the flying spray thrown up by a steamer's screw. It
+was the steamer _Prince_, homeward-bound from Alaska, carrying
+passengers and a cargo as rich and yellow as the sunshine. And as if it
+knew of its precious and costly charge, the steamer cut proudly through
+the turbulent water, cleaving its straight passage homeward, homeward.
+On the deck of the boat, leaning back idly in a long chair, his calm,
+grey eyes fixed on the receding shores, where the golden sunshine seemed
+palpitating on their perilous loveliness, Talbot was sitting, with the
+freshening breeze stirring his hair and bringing to him the breath of a
+thousand spring flowers on the land. He was returning, and returning
+successful, with his work accomplished, his toil over, his aim achieved,
+and amongst all the lines of pain stamped on his pale and quiet face
+there was written a certain triumph, that yet perhaps was not so much
+triumph as relief. It was just four months since that terrible night
+when he had lost both his comrades, just a little less than four months
+since he had seen them both laid side by side in their lonely grave in
+the west gulch; and those four months would ever be a blot of horrible
+blackness on his life. Should he ever be able to forget the blank
+desolation that had closed in upon him night after night as he sat by
+his lonely hearth or paced the floor, his steps alone breaking the awful
+stillness? Yet he had forced himself to stay and face it, had continued
+his work and his method of life unchanged. His men had noted little
+difference in him. He had stayed the time he had appointed for himself,
+had accomplished his self-appointed task, and at last, when the summer
+burst in upon the gulch and loosened all Nature's fetters, he found
+himself also free; and now, like a black curtain rent in twain and torn
+from the bright face of a picture, the clouds of the past seemed falling
+away, leaving his future clear to his gaze. It stretched before him
+bright as the laughing sunlit sea beneath his eyes. If they could but
+have shared his joy, if they could have had their home-coming, his
+fellow-toilers, his fellow-prisoners! and the salt tears stung his lids
+until he closed them, shutting out the vivid yellow light, as he
+thought of the desolate grave in the gulch.
+
+The fresh, cool air fanned his face and the sun smiled upon him, a loose
+piece of canvas of an awning near him flapped backwards and forwards
+with a monotonous musical sound, the plash and gurgle of the tumbling
+waves fell soothingly on his ears. Gradually sleep came over him gently,
+and enwrapped his strained, wearied body, his sore bruised mind.
+
+When he opened his eyes again it was afternoon. The steamer was still
+flying onward, but the sea was quiet and smooth, and lay still on every
+side in the sun's rays as a pool of liquid gold, and the shores of
+Alaska had vanished, lost in a burnished haze of light.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Girl of the Klondike, by Victoria Cross
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Girl of the Klondike, by Victoria Cross
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+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
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+Title: A Girl of the Klondike
+
+Author: Victoria Cross
+
+Release Date: December 4, 2007 [EBook #23732]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE ***
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+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>VICTORIA CROSS</h2>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<p>
+<br />
+<i>Quid non mortalia pectora cogis</i><br />
+<i>Auri sacra fames?</i><br /><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK</h3>
+<h3>THE MACAULAY COMPANY</h3>
+
+<h4><i>A Girl of the Klondike is now issued</i></h4>
+<h4><i>in America for the first time by arrangement</i></h4>
+<h4><i>with the author.</i></h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I. A NIGHT IN TOWN</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II. AT THE WEST GULCH</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III. KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV. GOD'S GIFT</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V. GOLD-PLATED</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI. MAMMON'S PAY</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LENVOI"><b>L'ENVOI.</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>A NIGHT IN TOWN</h3>
+
+
+<p>Night had fallen over Alaska&mdash;black, uncompromising night; a veil of
+impenetrable darkness had dropped upon the snow wastes and the
+ice-fields and the fettered Yukon, sleeping under its ice-chains, and
+upon the cruel passes where the trails had been made by tracks of blood.
+Day by day, as long as the light of day&mdash;God's glorious gift to man&mdash;had
+lasted, these trails across the passes, between the snowy peaks, the
+peaks themselves, had been the theatre of hideous scenes of human
+cruelty, of human lust and greed, of human egoism. Day by day a slow
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>terrible stream of humanity had wound like a dark and sluggish river
+through these passes, bringing with it sweat and toil and agony, torture
+and suffering and death. As long as the brilliant sun in the placid
+azure of the summer heavens above had guided them, bands of men had
+laboured and fought and struggled over these passes, deaf to all pity or
+mercy or justice, deaf to all but the clamour of greed within them that
+was driving them on, trampling down the weak and the old, crushing the
+fallen, each man clutching and grasping his own, hoarding his strength
+and even refusing a hand to his neighbour, starving the patient beasts
+of burden they had brought with them, friends who were willing to share
+their toil without sharing their reward, driving on the poor staggering
+strengthless brutes with open knives, and clubbing them to death when
+they fell beneath their loads with piteous eyes, or leaving them to
+freeze slowly where they lay, pressing forward, hurrying, fighting,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>slaughtering, so the men went into the gold camps all the summer, and
+the passes were the silent witnesses of the horror of it all and of the
+innocent blood shed. Then Nature herself intervened, and winter came
+down like a black curtain on the world, and the passes closed up behind
+the men and were filled with drifts of snow that covered the bones and
+the blood and the deep miry slides, marked with slipping tracks where
+struggling, gasping lives had gone out, and the river closed up behind
+the men and the ice thickened there daily, and the men were in the camps
+and there was no way out.</p>
+
+<p>And now, in the darkness of the winter night, in the coldness in which
+no man could live, there was peace. There was no sound, for the snow on
+the tall pines never melted and never fell, the water in the creeks was
+solid as the rocks and made no murmur, there was no footfall of bird nor
+beast, no leaf to rustle, no twig to fall.</p>
+
+<p>But beyond the silent peaks and the desolate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> passes, beyond the rigid
+pines, low down in the darkness, there was a reddish glow in the air, a
+strange, yellowish, quivering mist of light that hovered and moved
+restlessly, and yet kept its place where it hung suspended between white
+earth and black sky. All around was majestic peace and calm and
+stillness, nature wrapped in silence, but the flickering, wavering mist
+of light jumped feverishly in the darkness and spoke of man. It was the
+cloud of restless light that hung over the city of Dawson.</p>
+
+<p>Within the front parlour of the "Pistol Shot," the favourite and most
+successful, besides being the most appropriately named saloon in Dawson,
+the cold had been pretty well fought down; a huge stove stood at each
+end of the room, crammed as full as it would hold with fuel, all windows
+were tightly closed, and lamps flared merrily against the white-washed
+walls.</p>
+
+<p>At this hour the room was full, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> single door, facing the bar,
+was pushed open every half minute to admit one or two or more figures to
+join the steaming, drinking, noisy crowd within. It was snowing outside.
+As the door swung open one could see the white sheet of falling flakes
+in the darkness; the air was full of snow&mdash;that cruel, light, dry snow,
+fine and sharp like powdered ice, borne down on a North wind. The
+figures that entered brought it in with them, the light frosty powder
+resting on their furs and lying deep in the upturned rims of their seal
+caps.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a successful strike made that afternoon, and the men were
+all excited and eager about it. Every one pressed to the "Pistol Shot"
+to hear the latest details, to discuss and gossip over it. There was as
+much talk as digging done in Dawson. Men who had no chance and no means
+to win success, who owned no claims and never saw gold except in another
+man's hands, loved to talk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> work and talk claims and talk gold with the
+rest. It was exhilarating and exciting, and there was only that one
+topic in the world for them. They were like invalids in a small
+community afflicted by a common disease who never meet without
+discussing their symptoms. They were all invalids in reality, all
+suffering from the same horrible plague and fever, the gold fever that
+was eating into their brains.</p>
+
+<p>At one end of the bar counter, between it and the back wall, a girl was
+standing idly surveying with indifferent eyes the animated crowd that
+moved and swayed round her, the men jostling each other in their efforts
+to push up to the thickly surrounded counter. She was tall rather than
+short, and her figure well made, showing good lines even in the rough
+dress she was wearing; long rubber boots came to her knees, where they
+met her short buckskin skirt, and above this, in place of bodice, she
+wore merely a rough straight jacket drawn into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> waist by a broad
+leather belt, in which was stuck, not ostentatiously but still
+sufficiently conspicuously a brace of revolvers. Her hair was cut short,
+and only a few dark silky rings showed themselves beneath the edge of
+her sealskin cap, pushed down close to her dark eyebrows. The dark eyes
+beneath looked out upon the scene before her with a half-disdainful,
+half-wearied expression which deepened into scorn now and then as she
+watched the bar-tender rake over the counter double and three times the
+price of a drink in the generous pinch of gold dust laid there by some
+miner almost too drunk to stagger to the bar. She had a very attractive
+face, to which one's eyes would wander again and again trying to
+reconcile the peculiar resolution, even hardness of the expression with
+the soft, well-moulded features and the sweet youthful lips full of
+freshness and colour. The miners took very little notice of her, and she
+certainly made no effort to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> attract it, leaning listlessly against the
+bar with one elbow on the counter, a silent and motionless spectator of
+all this excited eager humanity. There was no thought in their mind, no
+word on their lips just then but gold. Gold! gold! The thought possessed
+them with a grip on their brains like the grip of fever on the body, and
+the word sounded pleasant as the sweetest music to their ears. Gold! The
+syllable went round and passed from mouth to mouth, till the very air
+seemed to be getting a yellow tint above the grey fumes of tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the last batch of incomers was a slim young fellow of twenty odd
+years, and when he had worked his way with difficulty up to the crowded
+counter, he found himself near the girl's corner. She looked at him,
+letting her dark eyes wander critically over his face. He formed a
+strong contrast to the figures around him, being slight and delicate in
+build,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> with a pale good-looking face that had a tender sympathetic
+expression like a woman's. Feeling the girl's gaze upon him, he glanced
+her way, and then having looked once, looked again. After a series of
+glances between drinks from his glass, the furtive looks began to amuse
+the girl, and the next time their eyes met she laughed openly, and they
+both spoke simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a new comer, aren't you?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't seen you here before," was his remark.</p>
+
+<p>"You might have done, I should think," answered the girl carelessly;
+"but I don't come here very often, although my father is running this
+place."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you Poniatovsky's daughter?" he asked in surprise, unable to
+connect this splendid young creature with the ugly little Pole he knew
+as the proprietor of the saloon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The girl nodded. "Yes, Katrine Poniatovsky is my name&mdash;what's yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stephen Wood," he answered meekly.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you come here for&mdash;mining?" she asked next. Although her
+queries were direct there was nothing rude in the fresh young voice
+making them.</p>
+
+<p>The young fellow coloured deeply, the rush of blood passed over his face
+up to his light smooth hair and deep down into his neck till it was lost
+beneath his coat collar.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;yes&mdash;that is&mdash;well, I mean&mdash;I do mine now," he stammered after a
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>The girl said nothing, and when Stephen glanced around at her he saw she
+was regarding him with astonished eyes under elevated eyebrows. This
+expression made the pretty oval face fairly beautiful, and the young
+man's heart opened to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I came with the intention of doing some good here amongst the
+people&mdash;in a missionary,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> religious way I mean, but"&mdash;and he stopped
+again in painful embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"For the present you've laid religion aside and you're going to do a
+little mining and make a fortune, and then the religion can be taken up
+again," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The young fellow only flushed deeper and turned his glass around
+nervously on the counter.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," the girl said soothingly, after a second. "This
+place is a corner of the world where we all are different from what we
+are anywhere else. As soon as men come here they get changed. They
+forget everything else and just go in for gold. It's a sort of madness
+that's in the air. You'd be able to missionise somewhere else all right,
+but here you are obliged just to dig like the rest, you can't help it.
+Got a claim?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man's face paled again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered in a low tone. "It was the claim that tempted me.
+It's one of the best, I believe, over in the west gulch, only about ten
+miles from here."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pressing movement round them as some fresh miners came
+pushing their way through to the bar, and Stephen and Katrine moved
+away, to make room for them, towards the wall of the room; they put
+their backs against it and looked over the mass of moving heads towards
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at this fellow coming in now," Stephen said to his companion
+suddenly, as the door swung open, to a mist of whirling whiteness, and
+two or three men entered: "Henry Talbot. He has the claim next mine in
+the gulch. He has just struck a fresh lot of gold, and he'll soon be one
+of the richest men here."</p>
+
+<p>The girl craned her neck to get a good view between the intervening
+heads, and though she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> had not been told which of the incoming figures
+to look at, she fixed her eyes as if by instinct on the right one. A man
+of rather tall, slight figure, pale face, and marked features. He made
+his way towards the bar, and then catching Stephen's signals to him, he
+smiled and came their way.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing down here?" he said, speaking to Stephen but looking
+at Katrine, who in her turn was scanning his face closely.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, enjoying Miss Poniatovsky's society," answered Stephen, with a
+bow. His friend bowed too, and then they all three laughed and felt
+instinctively they were friends. There is nothing truer than the saying,
+"Good looks are perpetual letters of introduction." These three carried
+their letters of introduction on their faces, and they were all mutually
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"I know your father quite well," remarked Talbot to her. "This 'Pistol
+Shot' has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> an institution longer than I have been here, but I never
+knew he had a daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Katrine, tranquilly, "I daresay not. Father and I quarrelled
+a little while ago, and since then I have been living by myself in one
+of those little cabins in Good Luck Row. Do you know it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Talbot. "I come into town very seldom, only when I want
+fresh supplies. I stay up at the claim nearly all the time. Do you live
+all by yourself then?" he added, wondering to himself as he looked at
+her, for her beauty was quite striking, and she was certainly not over
+twenty, yet there was something in the strong, noble outlines of her
+figure, in the tranquil calm of her manner, the self-reliance of her
+whole bearing, and the business-like way those pistols were thrust in
+her belt, that modified the wonder a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," she said, with a laugh. "Oh, I've<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> always been accustomed to
+take care of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you feel very dull and lonely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," answered the girl; "but then I would much rather live alone
+than with some one I can't agree with."</p>
+
+<p>Both the men knew the drunken habits of old Poniatovsky, so that they
+silently sympathised with her, and there was a pause as they watched
+other miners coming in.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Katrine after a few seconds, straightening herself from her
+leaning attitude, "I think I will go home now; this place is getting so
+full, we shan't be able to breathe soon."</p>
+
+<p>The men looked at each other, and then spoke simultaneously: "May we see
+you as far as your cabin?"</p>
+
+<p>Katrine smiled, such a pretty arch smile, that dimpled the velvet cheeks
+and illumined the whole face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why yes, do, I shall be delighted."</p>
+
+<p>They all three went out together: the cold outside seemed so deadly that
+Talbot drew his collar up over his mouth and nose, unable to face it;
+the girl, however, did not seem to notice it, but laughed and chatted
+gaily in the teeth of the wind, as they made their way down the street.
+It was still snowing&mdash;a peculiar fine powdery snow, light and almost
+imperceptible, filled the whole air. Katrine walked fast with springing
+steps down the side-walk, and the two men plunged along beside her. Such
+a side-walk it was: in the summer a mere mass of mud and melted snow and
+accumulated rubbish&mdash;for in Dawson the inhabitants will not take the
+trouble to convey their refuse to any definite spot, but simply throw it
+out from their cabins a few yards from their own door, with a vague
+notion that they may have moved elsewhere before it rots badly,&mdash;now
+frozen solid but horribly uneven, and worn into deep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> holes. On the top
+of this had been laid some narrow planks, covered now by a thick glaze
+of ice, which rendered them things to be avoided and a line of danger
+down the middle of the path. Katrine made nothing of these slight
+inconveniences of the ground, but went swinging on in her large rubber
+boots, and talking and jesting all the way. At the bottom of the street,
+at the corner, there was a large wooden building, a double log-cabin
+turned into a saloon. Lights were fixed outside in tin shades, and the
+word "Dancing" was painted in white letters on the lintel. Katrine
+stopped suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go in and have a dance," she said, and turned towards Talbot, as
+if she felt instinctively he was the more likely to assent.</p>
+
+<p>"If you like," he answered from behind his collar. "But can you dance in
+those boots?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I can dance in anything," said Katrine, laughing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't go in, come on," remonstrated Stephen, trying to push on past
+the saloon.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" said Katrine; "it's too early to go to bed. Come in, I'll
+pay," and before either of them could answer she had pushed open the
+door, and was holding it for them with one hand, while with the other
+she laid down three quarters on a small trestle inside, where an old man
+was sitting as doorkeeper.</p>
+
+<p>It was a large oblong room, with a partition running half-way down the
+middle, dividing it into the front part, where they were standing and
+where the bar was, and the back part, which was strictly the dancing
+portion. Stephen sat down on a bench that faced the inner portion, with
+the determination of a man who was not to be moved from his seat. At the
+other side of the room was a low raised platform, where some very
+seedy-looking musicians were sawing out a jerky tune from their feeble
+violins. The room was fairly full, and a more heterogeneous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> collection
+of human beings Stephen thought he had never seen. There were miners in
+the roughest and thickest clothing, labourers, packers, a few Indians,
+some youths in extraordinary attempts at evening dress, some negro
+minstrels with real dress shirts on and diamond studs, girls with old
+velvet skirts and odd bodices that didn't match; and here and there,
+idling against the wall, looking on with absent eyes, one could find a
+different figure&mdash;that of student, or artist, or newspaper
+correspondent, or gentleman miner; one need not despair of finding
+almost any type of humanity in that room.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot looked at the girl's bright sparkling face as they entered, and
+then without a word slipped his arm round her waist and they started
+over the rough wooden floor.</p>
+
+<p>"You dance fine," observed Katrine, after a long silence, in which they
+had both given themselves up to the pleasure of mere motion. "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> guess
+you have had lots of practice before you came out here."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot smiled down into her admiring eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, thinking of the foreign embassies, the English
+ball-rooms, the many polished floors his feet had known, "in England."</p>
+
+<p>"My! I expect you're a great swell!" remarked the saloon-keeper's
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"All the same," he answered, laughing, "I have never had a partner that
+danced so perfectly as you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that's real kind of you," answered Katrine, with a flush of
+pleasure, and then they gave themselves up to silent enjoyment again.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the dance they came back to Stephen, and found him in the
+same corner, watching the room with a doleful sadness on his face.
+Katrine, flushed and with sparkling eyes, sat down on the corner of the
+step beside him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You look so miserable," she said. "Come and have a dance with me to
+cheer you up."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't dance," said Stephen, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll teach you," volunteered Katrine, leaning her chin on her hands and
+looking up at him.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen flushed angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not that&mdash;my conscience won't allow me to."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make you forget your conscience," with a very winning smile on her
+sweet scarlet lips.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen turned towards her and looked at her with a sudden horror in his
+eyes. The girl looked back at him quite undisconcerted and unmoved. She
+saw nothing in what she had said. To her, conscience was a tiresome
+possession, that might, she knew, trouble you suddenly at any time, and
+if any one could succeed in making you forget you had one, he was surely
+entitled to your gratitude. Words failed Stephen, he only looked at her
+with that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> silent horror and fear growing in his eyes. Katrine waited
+what she considered a reasonable time for him to reply or to accept her
+offer, and then she rose and turned to Talbot, who had been standing
+looking down upon them both with amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very thirsty, let's go and have a drink," she said, and they both
+strolled across the room, and then down into the farther end where the
+bar was. They elbowed their way to the counter and stood there waiting
+to be served. Most of the men seemed to know Katrine and made way for
+her, and she had a word of chaff, or a nod, or a smile or laugh or
+friendly greeting, for nearly all of them. Talbot noted this, and noted
+also that though the men seemed familiar, none of them were rude, and
+though rough enough, there was apparently no disrespect for her. Talbot
+wondered whether this was due to her morals or her pistols.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's your friend?" asked two or three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> voices at her side while they
+stood waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Talbot&mdash;one of the lucky ones!" replied Katrine promptly. "He has a
+claim up the gulch that's bringing him in millions&mdash;or going to," she
+added mischievously. The men looked Talbot up and down curiously. Even
+in his rough miner's clothes, he looked a totally different figure from
+themselves. Slim and tall and trim, with his well-cut head and figure,
+with his long neck and refined quiet face, he was a type common enough
+in Bond Street, London, or on Broadway, New York, but not so common in
+the Klondike.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if that's so, pardner," slowly observed a thick-set, crop-haired
+man, edging close up to him, "you won't mind standing a drink for us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Delighted," returned Talbot, with a pleasant smile. "Give it a name."</p>
+
+<p>The result of taking votes on this motion was the ordering of ten hot
+whiskies and two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> hot rums, the latter for himself and Katrine. Talbot
+never drank spirits at all, and the terrible concoctions of the cheap
+saloons were an abomination to him. He took his glass, however, to show
+his friendliness, had it filled nearly to the brim with water, and then
+could hardly drink it. The fluid seared his throat like red-hot
+knife-blades. Katrine took hers straight as it was handed across the
+counter and tossed it down her throat at one gulp, seeming to enjoy it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Jim," she said to the young miner next her, "what luck have you
+had lately?"</p>
+
+<p>"None," he replied gloomily. "Since I left the old place, I've lost all
+along in the 'Sally White.'"</p>
+
+<p>Talbot thought they were speaking of claims and that the man was
+referring to his work, and the next minute when Katrine turned her head
+to him and said rapidly, "The 'Sally White' is the third in the next
+street," he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> rather mystified. He came so little into town, and
+mixed so little with the uncongenial life and company it offered, that
+he was ignorant of its prevailing fashion, pastime, and vice&mdash;gambling.
+Fortunes were made and lost across the trestle tables of the saloons
+quicker and easier than up on the claims. He did not now take much
+notice of what she had said, nor ask her for an explanation. The girl
+was handsome and a beautiful dancer, but the company at the bar he did
+not appreciate at all, and his only idea was to withdraw her from it.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not ready for another dance?" he said, as the violin began to
+squeak out another tune.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine nodded, and they had already turned away, when a voice said over
+her shoulder, "You won't quite forget me this evening, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>Katrine, without turning her head, answered, "You shall have the next,
+if you come for it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then they started, and for the next ten minutes Talbot tried to forget,
+to be oblivious of the sordid common scene around him, to get a glimpse
+back into his old life, which seemed so far away now, as one tries to
+re-dream a last night's dream.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen, sitting in his corner, whence he had never stirred, watched her
+sullenly. She was not dancing with Talbot now. Stephen could see that
+he, too, was watching her from the other side of the room, standing with
+his back to the wall. She was waltzing with a man Stephen had not seen
+before, evidently a stranger in every way to the place and the
+surroundings. He was a young fellow, sufficiently good-looking, and
+danced with as much ease as if he were in a New York ball-room. His left
+hand clasped Katrine's and drew it high up close to his neck and
+shoulder, his right arm enclosed her waist and drew her to him so firmly
+that the two figures seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> fused into one as they glided together over
+the imperfect floor. Katrine was giving herself up wholly to the
+pleasure of the dance. Stephen saw, as her face turned towards him, that
+her eyes were half closed, and a little smile of deep satisfaction
+rested on her lips. The young fellow's face showed he was equally
+absorbed and lost to his surroundings, and there was something in its
+expression, coupled with the peculiar ease and sway of the two blent
+forms, which raised a savage and jealous anger in Stephen's breast. To
+an absolutely unprejudiced eye, and one that saw only the extreme grace
+of the movement, which neither their rough clothes, the uneven floor,
+nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious
+and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now
+darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a
+sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the
+second time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes
+fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him,
+he started up as if to plant himself in their way, then checked himself,
+and when they had passed went across the room to where Talbot was
+standing.</p>
+
+<p>"You see her dancing?" he said excitedly, without any preface.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you notice how they are dancing? that's what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot laughed slightly. "That's not dancing, that's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Stephen flushed a dull red. "It's disgraceful; I'm going to stop her,"
+he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, remember you only met her this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care; she ought not to dance like that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't like it myself," answered Talbot, "but <i>you</i> can't interfere."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd much better not make an ass of yourself," returned Talbot,
+putting his hand on the other's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone," said Stephen, roughly shaking it off, as the two
+delinquents, still in the same manner, came moving up towards them.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen waited till they were just opposite him, then he stepped forward
+and seized the girl's arm and dragged it down from the level of the
+young fellow's neck where he had drawn it. Both the dancers stopped
+abruptly, and the man faced Stephen with an angry flush and kindling
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil do you mean, sir?" he said angrily, advancing close to
+Stephen, who had his eyes fixed on Katrine's face, all warm tints and
+smiling, as a child's roused from a happy dream.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He ignored the man and addressed her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not going to dance any more to-night," he said with sombre
+emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>The young man's face went from red to purple. He put his hand to his hip
+with an oath, and had half drawn his pistol, when Katrine sprang forward
+and seized his wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't be silly; I'm tired anyway, Dick. I'll dance with you
+to-morrow night. This is Mr. Stephen Wood. Mr. Wood&mdash;Mr. Peters. Now
+let's go and have some drinks. I'm not going to have any fighting over
+me."</p>
+
+<p>She put herself, smiling, between the two men, who stood glaring at each
+other in silence. She was annoyed at the dance being broken off, but she
+saw in Stephen's interference the great tribute paid to her own
+attraction, and therefore forgave him. At the same time she had no wish
+to have her vanity further gratified by bloodshed. There was a certain
+hardness but no cruelty in her nature. She turned from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> men and
+strolled very slowly in the direction of the bar, and they followed her
+as if her moving feet were shod with magnets and theirs with steel.
+Talbot went too, and in a few minutes the four were standing at the
+counter with glasses in their hands.</p>
+
+<p>Peters kept close beside Katrine, and he and Stephen did not exchange a
+word. Katrine kept up the chatter between herself and the two other men.</p>
+
+<p>"May I see you home?" Peters said abruptly to her, interrupting the
+general talk.</p>
+
+<p>"No," returned Katrine, lightly; "to-morrow night, not to-night. I have
+my escort," and she smiled at Stephen and Talbot.</p>
+
+<p>"I will say good-night then," and Peters, after a slight bow to Talbot,
+withdrew, taking no notice of Stephen, who since the girl's surrender of
+the dance had looked very self-contented and happy, and was now standing
+glass in hand, his eyes fixed upon her face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I think I really will go home now," she said. "We've had a jolly time.
+I only wish you'd have joined us. Are you always so very good?" she said
+innocently to Stephen. He flushed angrily and said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>A few seconds later they were on the way to Good Luck Row. One of the
+neatest-looking cabins in it had a light behind its yellow blind, and
+here Katrine stopped and thanked them for their escort. They would both
+have liked to see the interior, but she did not suggest their coming in.
+She wished them good-night very sweetly, and before they had realised it
+had disappeared inside.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on down the row slowly, side by side. The next thing to do
+was to find a lodging for the night, and they both felt about ready to
+appreciate a bed and some hours' rest.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Bill Winters," said Stephen, after a moment's silence. "He said
+he'd always put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> us up when we came down town; let's go and try him."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where his cabin is?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. Turn down here; now it is the next street, where those
+little black cabins are."</p>
+
+<p>They walked on quickly, following Stephen's directions, and made for a
+block of cabins that had been pitched over and shone black and glossy in
+the brilliant moonlight. When they got up to them the men were puzzled,
+each was so like its neighbour, and Stephen declared he had forgotten
+the number, though Bill had given it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, try any one," said Talbot, impatiently, as Stephen stopped
+bewildered. They were standing on the side-walk, now a slippery arch of
+ice, between two rows of the low black cabins. There was no light in any
+of them; it was two o'clock; the moon alone shone up and down the
+street. Talbot felt his moustache freezing to his face, and his left eye
+being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> rapidly closed by the lashes freezing together, and that's enough
+to make a man impatient. Stephen did not move, and Talbot went up
+himself to the nearest cabin and knocked at the door. They waited a long
+time, but at last a hand fumbled with the catch inside, and the door was
+opened a little way; through the crack came out a stream of warm air,
+the fumes of tobacco and wood smoke; within was darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this Bill Winters'?" Talbot asked, and the door opened wider.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it is," said a voice in reply. "Why, it's Mr. Talbot and Mr.
+Wood&mdash;come in, sirs."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot and Wood stepped over the threshold into the thick darkness, and
+the door closed behind them. There was a shuffling sound for an instant
+as Mr. Winters groped for a light, then he struck a match and lighted up
+a little tin lamp on the wall. The light revealed a good-sized cabin
+with a large stove in the cen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>tre, round which, with their feet towards
+it, four or five men rolled up in skins or blankets were lying asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"You want a bed for the night, I expect," Winters went on; "we've all
+turned in already, but I guess there's room for two more."</p>
+
+<p>Wood and Talbot both expressed their sense of contrition at disturbing
+him, but Winters would not listen.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stow all that," he said, as he set about dragging forward two
+trestles and covering them with blankets. "You two fellows are so damned
+polite, you don't seem suited to this town, you don't seem natural here,
+that's a fact."</p>
+
+<p>He was stepping over and about amongst the prostrate forms, and
+sometimes on them, but none of them roused themselves sufficiently to do
+more than utter a sleepy ejaculation and turn into a fresh position.
+Wood and Talbot stood waiting close against the door. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+half-an-hour before Bill had prepared their beds just as he wanted them,
+extinguished the lamp again, and retreated to his own corner. Then
+darkness and stillness reigned again over the smoky interior.</p>
+
+<p>The low trestles on which the men lay were hard and unyielding, and a
+doubled-up blanket makes a poor mattress; the air of the cabin was thick
+and heavy, and the stove, which was close to Talbot's head, having been
+stuffed to its utmost capacity with damp wood that it might burn through
+the night, let out thin spirals of acrid smoke from all its cracks.
+Stephen did not close his eyes long after they had lain down, and there
+was utter silence in the place except for heavy breathings. He lay with
+open eyes staring into the thick darkness, a thousand painful wearying
+thoughts stinging his brain. Talbot, tired and worn out with bodily
+fatigue, but with that mental calm that comes from an absolute
+singleness of aim and hope and pur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>pose, fell into a deep and tranquil
+sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. He lived now but to work;
+the night had come when he could not work, therefore he slept that he
+might work again on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>When the faint grey light of morning came creeping into the low and
+narrow room, which was not very early, as the nights now were far longer
+than the days, Talbot was the first of the sleepers to awake. He
+refilled the stove, which had burned down in the long night hours, and
+then let himself out.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned Bill and the other men were all stirring, and Stephen
+sitting up on his trestle rubbing his red and weary-looking eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, pardner, what are you going to do to-day?" he asked a few minutes
+later, when they had the cabin to themselves for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to do?" replied Talbot in astonishment, looking up from turning
+the coffee into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> the coffee-pot, according to Bill's orders. "Why, if we
+collect together all the stores we want, and get back to the diggings
+this afternoon, we shall have about enough to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I meant about the girl."</p>
+
+<p>"What girl?" queried Talbot, now standing still and staring Stephen in
+the face.</p>
+
+<p>"The girl you danced with last night&mdash;the saloon-keeper's daughter,
+Katrine Poniatovsky&mdash;do you want any more identification?" returned
+Stephen, sarcastically, opening his heavy lids a little wider.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>what</i> about her?" returned Talbot, looking at him expectantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, I didn't know; I thought perhaps we wouldn't go back to-day,
+that's all," answered Stephen, rather sheepishly.</p>
+
+<p>To his sympathetic, impulsive nature, open to every new impression,
+easily distracted like the butterfly which may be caught by the tint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> of
+any chance flower in its path, the incident of last night was much. To
+Talbot, self-concentrated, determined, and absorbed, it was nothing. He
+looked at his friend now with something like contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"She's so handsome, and dances so well," Stephen went on hurriedly,
+feeling foolish and uncomfortable before the other's gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not come here to dance with girls," remarked Talbot shortly,
+going over to the stove, and the entry of the other men at that moment
+stopped the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>They had breakfast together at the rough wood table in the centre of the
+room. The coffee was the redeeming feature of the meal: from that bright
+brown stream of boiling liquid the men seemed to gain new life; they
+watched it lovingly, expectantly, eagerly, as Bill poured it out into
+their thick cups.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the meal was over Talbot crushed his hat on to his eyes, but
+before he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> left the cabin he glanced at Stephen, who was standing
+irresolutely by the stove.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall get all I want," he said, "and be back here by two at the
+latest. If you're here then, we can start up together; if not, I shall
+go ahead;" and he went out.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen lingered by the stove, then he and Bill drifted into a
+discussion over some of the latest discoveries of gold in Colorado, and
+they both fell to wondering how much more had been found since their
+last news, seven months old; and they had a pipe together, and then Bill
+thought he'd drop down to the "Pistol Shot," and Stephen crushed on his
+fur cap as determinedly as Talbot had done and went out&mdash;to Katrine's
+number in Good Luck Row.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>AT THE WEST GULCH</h3>
+
+
+<p>Talbot made his start back to the cabin later than he intended; he had
+knocked at Winters' cabin before leaving the town, but all the occupants
+were out, and there had been no response.</p>
+
+<p>It was afternoon, and already the uncompromising cold of evening had
+entered into the air; the sky was grey everywhere, and dark, almost
+black, in front of him; it seemed to hang low, frowning and ominous,
+over the desolate snowy waste that stretched before him: there was no
+snow falling yet, only the threat of it written in the black and dreary
+sky that faced him. His cheeks and chin felt stiff and frozen already,
+as if a thin mask<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> of ice were drawn over them, and his eyes were sore
+and tired from the continuous glare of the snow. The little pony beside
+him plodded along the path patiently, and his master at intervals drew a
+hand from a comfortable pocket to lay it encouragingly on his neck, at
+which familiar caress the pony would throw up his head and step out
+faster for some paces. Talbot felt sorry for the little beast toiling
+along under his heavy though carefully packed burden of stores, cans of
+oil, loaves, and every sort of miscellaneous provisions, and would have
+spoken cheeringly to it, but his lips felt too stiff and painful to form
+the words, and so man and brute toiled along in silence over the trail
+under the angry sky. As he walked, Talbot's thoughts went back
+involuntarily to the picture of Stephen sitting smoking by the stove in
+the snug interior of Bill Winters' cabin; he felt instinctively, as
+surely as if he had seen it, that he would so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> sit through the
+afternoon, and by evening he would be finding his way down to the
+nearest saloon and pass the hours there with Katrine; and he compared
+him vaguely with himself, tired with tramping through the town from
+store to store, half frozen while he stood to pack the pony, and now
+labouring up alone to his cabin in the gulch.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered dimly whether it would turn out that he should ever realise
+a reward for his toil, whether he should live to get out of this icy
+corner of the world, or whether he should die and rot here, caught in
+this great snow-trap, in this open grave, where the living were buried.
+He wondered a little, but his mind was not one inclined to abstract
+thought. He spent very little time in retrospection, reflection, and
+contemplation, very little time in thinking of any sort, and on this
+account possessed so great a stock of energy for acting. Each human
+being has only a certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> amount of energy supplied him with which to do
+the work of his life. Thinking, speaking, and acting are all portions of
+this work, and whatever of his energy he consumes in any one, so much
+the less has he for the others. Thinking, the formation of ideas, is
+hard work; speaking, the expression of ideas, is hard work; and acting,
+the carrying out of ideas, is hard work. It is false to suppose that the
+first two are natural, instinctive, involuntary movements of the brain,
+and that only the last requires effort.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot thought very little and spoke very little. His ideas came to him
+in simple form; they were not elaborated in his mind nor in his speech,
+they turned into actions immediately or died quietly without giving him
+any trouble or wasting his time. A decision once made he carried out. He
+never thought about it afterwards, or frittered away his strength in
+hours of torturing doubt as to whether it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> was a good one to have made,
+or whether some other might not have been better. Once made, he kept to
+it, good or bad, leaving it to chance whether he died or succeeded in
+his attempt to carry it out. And this conservation of energy in all
+other mental processes resulted in a splendid strength for action and a
+limitless endurance in the carrying out of his decisions.</p>
+
+<p>And as he walked now he thought very little, except in a resigned way,
+of the physical discomfort he was enduring, and of the time when he
+should reach his cabin. Dusk had already fallen before he came to the
+gulch, and he had to strain his eyes to find the narrow trail which
+descended the side of the gorge. His log cabin, carefully and solidly
+constructed, stood half-way down the northern slope of the gulch, on a
+sort of natural platform formed by the vagaries of the now narrowed
+stream in its younger and wilder days. Beneath the cabin stretched his
+claims, 500<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> feet of dry soil on the slope of the hill, 100 feet this
+side of the stream and fairly in the creek, and 100 feet on the farther
+side, a stretch of 700 feet in all, and of a quality that made it at
+that time the richest claim for fifty miles round. Shafts, reaching down
+to bed rock, were sunk all over it, and great mounds of frozen gravel
+beside them showed how untiringly they had been worked. In addition to
+these, the man's native energy had prompted him to drive a tunnel
+horizontally for some distance into the side of the hill that rose
+steeply behind the cabin. The tunnel pierced the hill for 100 feet, and
+at the end a shaft had been sunk to bed rock, and it was from here at
+present that the highest grade ore was coming. Moved by an instinct to
+protect what he intuitively felt would be his richest possession, Talbot
+had built his tunnel in one solid block with the cabin, and closed its
+outer end with a huge door, well provided with bars and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> bolts. So long
+as this door was successfully held, no claim-jumper could penetrate into
+the tunnel or reach the shaft at the end. By this means, too, a double
+protection was afforded the living cabin, though of this he thought
+comparatively little, for the face of the cabin presented nothing but
+its one small window and this huge solid door. Upon opening this you
+found yourself in the tunnel; if you kept straight on you reached the
+shaft; if you entered the small door upon your left hand you found
+yourself in the interior of the living cabin.</p>
+
+<p>The gulch ran east and west, and at sunset at some times in the year a
+red light from the dying sun would fall into it, like a tongue of flame,
+and the whole gulch would seem on fire. At such moments Talbot would
+cease his work and stand looking up the gorge, with the red light
+falling on his face and banishing its careworn pallor. No one knew what
+he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> thinking of in those moments, whether he was recalling Italian
+or Egyptian skies that had been as fair, or whether for a moment some
+vanished face seemed to look at him from out those brilliant hues, or if
+merely the great sheets of gold that spread above the gulch brought
+visions of that wealth he was giving his best years to attain. No one
+who met him knew much about him, except that he was an Englishman, had
+travelled much and experienced many different forms of life, and finally
+come to the Klondike,&mdash;but why this last? He was believed to have been
+rich before he came: was it merely to increase his wealth, or was there
+some other reason? Was there any one awaiting his return? There were
+several portraits in his cabin of soft and lovely faces, but then the
+number was confusing, and the most curious of the men who worked under
+him could not come to any satisfying conclusion. All they knew was that
+he worked harder than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> any common miner, that his reserve was unbroken,
+and his life one continual self-denial. There were thirty men in all who
+worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than
+liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence
+of ingenuousness and frankness of character, that prevented any
+affection growing up amongst the men for their master, and his attitude
+towards them was summed up in the answer he gave to an acquaintance who
+once asked him how he got on with his men, if he had any friends amongst
+them. Talbot had raised his dark, marked eyebrows and merely said
+coldly, "I don't make friends of miners."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Wood's cabin was a little higher up the gulch by several yards,
+and the claims of the two men had been staked out side by side. A great
+friendship had grown up between the two, such a friendship as common
+danger, common privations, common aims, and Na<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>ture's awful loneliness
+drives any two human beings in each other's proximity into. But besides
+this friendship there was a quiet liking on Talbot's part for this weak,
+impulsive, boyish character, so unlike his own, and on Stephen's side a
+warm admiration for all Talbot's qualities that he could not and yet
+wished to emulate. He, as others, was completely excluded from the elder
+man's confidence, and knew nothing of his past or what was likely to be
+his future; but then Stephen was one of those people always so deeply
+absorbed in himself, his own aims and views, that he really never
+noticed that his manifold confidences were never returned in the
+smallest degree. He would come over to Talbot's cabin in the evening,
+seat himself on the opposite side of the fire, and talk incessantly.
+Talbot would allow him to do so until he felt too much bored, when he
+would rise and quietly tell him to go. Stephen would hastily apologise
+and re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>tire, to return the following night quite unabashed, with more
+views and aims to impart. In the first week of their acquaintance Talbot
+had heard all about his home life&mdash;about the little English village, and
+the red brick, ivy-covered school-house, where he had been master since
+he was eighteen; of the village schoolmistress he had loved, because she
+was so good, and had abandoned, presumably for the same reason; of his
+doubts, fears, hopes, wishes, and intentions,&mdash;and after ten months he
+knew no more of Talbot than he did the day of their first meeting.</p>
+
+<p>The cabins of the men employed by both Stephen and Talbot were dotted
+over the gulch, some higher and some lower than their own; while a
+number of the men lived some distance off, a few of them even having
+lodgings in the town.</p>
+
+<p>When at last Talbot reached his cabin door this evening darkness had
+completely fallen;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> there was no light from within to guide him, but
+with his half-frozen fingers he managed to unlock the outer door, and he
+and his tired beast went in together. The first thing he thought of when
+he had closed the great door behind him and lighted up the passage, was
+to unpack the animal and put him up in the stable which he had built
+opposite his own cabin door; and it was fully an hour before, having
+seen the beast comfortably installed, he turned into his own room and
+struck a light. Here there was only one living thing to greet him, and
+that was a shabby little black cat that leaped off the bed in the corner
+and came purring to meet him. One morning he had found this cat lying on
+his claim with a broken leg and carried it back to his cabin, where he
+had set the leg and nursed the miserable little creature into recovery.
+Denbigh, his foreman, who had seen Talbot sitting up for two whole
+nights to watch the helpless animal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> had carried away the impression
+that the cold, quiet, hard and selfish man, as he appeared to the
+miners, had another side to his character that they never saw. It was
+this other side that the kitten was familiar with, and she came mewing
+and purring with delight towards him. Talbot, who was ready to sink to
+the floor with exhaustion, stooped and stroked the animal, which
+followed his steps everywhere as he set about lighting up his stove. It
+was very quiet, there was absolute silence all round him, and every step
+of his heavy boots on the wooden floor, every crackle of the igniting
+wood in the stove, seemed a loud and important sound in the stillness.
+It was always very quiet at the gulch, Nature's own solemn quiet, except
+in the summer time, when she filled it with the laughing voices of a
+thousand streams and rills.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, when his domestic arrangements were all put into working
+order, his fire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> blazing, his coffee boiling on the hob, and his table
+laid, he sank back in his chair with a weary sigh, his hand idly
+stroking the cat, which had jumped purring on his knee. It seemed lonely
+without Stephen, and he foresaw that probably many evenings would pass
+now without his society.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, when it was yet barely light, and the gulch was
+holding still all its damp black shadows of the night, Talbot was out
+tramping over the claims, showing his men where to start new fires, and
+carefully scanning the fresh gravel as it was thawed and dug out. All
+his men had a pleasant salutation for him as he passed by, except one,
+who merely leaned over his work and threw out his spadeful of gravel
+savagely, as Talbot stopped by the fire. He took no notice apparently of
+the man, and after a second's survey passed on to the next fire. The man
+looked after him a moment sulkily and returned to his work. He was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+huge fellow, some six feet four, and with a massive frame and head to
+suit his height. He had been working for many months with Talbot now,
+and was a valuable labourer on account of his great strength and
+capacity for work. At first he had been rather a favorite with Talbot,
+and there hung now in his cabin a first-class six-shooter, the gift of
+his master when he first came up to the gulch.</p>
+
+<p>Dick Marley had had a devoted admiration for Talbot until the last few
+months, when it had turned into a bitter, sullen resentment over a
+matter with which in reality Talbot had absolutely nothing to do. Dick,
+being a hard and constant worker, had managed to save out of his liberal
+wages quite a considerable sum, and this he had entrusted to a man on
+his way to Seattle to invest for him in securities. After a time the man
+disappeared, and Dick discovered his securities had never been bought,
+and that he was in fact robbed and cheated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> In his first rage and
+disappointment he cast about unconsciously in his mind for some one
+besides himself to lay the blame upon, and finding no one he grew daily
+more and more morose. Hour after hour, as he worked upon the claims, his
+thoughts would revolve sullenly round his loss, and the offender being
+beyond his reach, his anger burned against any and every man near him,
+and apparently chiefly against his employer.</p>
+
+<p>A week passed before Stephen reappeared at the gulch, then one evening
+after dark, when Talbot was sitting back in his chair, dozing after the
+cold and fatigue of the day's work, a loud banging came on his outer
+door, and when he opened it, Stephen, looking very flushed and animated,
+came into the quiet little room, laden with packages and with a general
+air of city life about him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, old man, how are you? Hello, Kitty!" this as he stumbled over the
+little black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> cat at his feet. "Well, I've had such a glorious time! I
+wish you'd stayed down there too: that girl is just the finest creature
+I've ever seen. Have you anything for a fellow to eat?&mdash;I'm perfectly
+famished. Look here, I've brought you up some cans of things and a
+bottle of rye, the very best. I say, you look dreadfully blue&mdash;what's
+the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Life in the west gulch in the winter isn't particularly exhilarating,"
+answered Talbot, quietly, as he went about his preparations for
+Stephen's supper.</p>
+
+<p>"How have the men been&mdash;all right?" questioned Stephen, as he took off
+his coat and settled himself in the best chair.</p>
+
+<p>"They have been working pretty steadily, but I notice a difference in
+them since that fellow Marley has been here. He has been stirring them
+up, doing a lot of mischief, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"You must assert your authority, I sup<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>pose," remarked Stephen
+pompously, stretching his feet out comfortably in the cheerful blaze.
+"Perhaps he doesn't know who's master here."</p>
+
+<p>"He will very soon find out then," returned Talbot, so grimly that
+Stephen looked at him sharply. "Well, what's all your news?" asked
+Talbot, as if desirous to get away from the question of his men.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that there is much, except I've been having a good time.
+You've looked after my ground and seen to the workings, haven't you?
+Thanks, I knew you would, and so I felt I could stay down town a little:
+you're a better hand at managing men than I am, any way,&mdash;women too, for
+that matter; do you know that you impressed Katrine awfully? She has
+talked about you to me&mdash;you are so good-looking, so distinguished, she
+wants to know whether you are a Count or a Prince in disguise, and all
+sorts of things."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Talbot smiled. "It is extremely kind of her," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know she's not the kind of girl you admire," said Stephen, in
+rather a nettled tone. "You wouldn't look at a saloon-keeper's daughter
+simply because she <i>is</i> a saloon-keeper's daughter; you like a girl in
+your own rank, all grace and dignity and good manners, and awfully
+clever and intellectual, and gifted and educated, and all that."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot merely laughed and remained silent, a habit he had which
+successfully baffled questions, innuendoes, and suppositions alike.</p>
+
+<p>"And any way your passions are engaged somehow, somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?" asked Talbot, with a hardening of his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Know it! why, otherwise you could not lead this dog's life as you do,
+and you could not be indifferent to a beautiful girl like Katrine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>&mdash;for
+she is beautiful, she's not 'pretty' or 'nice,' but she's downright
+beautiful," returned Stephen, emphasising his remarks by striking the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot said nothing, but put more wood in the stove in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Your supper is ready now; if you are famished, as you said, you'd
+better have it, and discuss Miss Poniatovsky afterwards," he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen turned to the table. "Won't you have something too?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot shook his head. "No, thanks; I'm not hungry."</p>
+
+<p>"You ascetic creature, you never are," replied Stephen, as he began to
+carve into the cold bacon.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know how I detest her surroundings," he began again after a
+few minutes, "and drinking, and saloons, and almost everything she does,
+but then I can't help liking her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> She's so different from any girl I've
+ever seen. She attracts me, she holds my thoughts so, and if I could get
+her to give up all that, if I could alter her views&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You would be doing away with that difference from others that is the
+basis of your attraction," put in Talbot, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," returned Stephen after a minute, in a sulky tone, "we are all
+like that,&mdash;a man falls in love with a girl, because she <i>is</i> a girl,
+and then immediately wants to turn her into a married woman."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot laughed. "Good!" he said. "You are quite right."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the altering process we like, and we want to do the alteration
+ourselves. I showed her my pocket Greek testament yesterday," he
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>"And was she interested?" inquired Talbot, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so much as she was in the shooting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> gallery," admitted Stephen. "I
+told her how a bible at a man's heart had often saved his life, and she
+said a pistol had done that too, and she'd rather trust the pistol."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot laughed. "You say you like altering. I should think in Katrine
+you've a splendid field. If you want to get her down to the
+schoolmistress pattern, you've employment for a lifetime!"</p>
+
+<p>Stephen flushed, as he always did at any allusion to the girl he had
+loved as the type of all virtues, and yet had tired of. Good people are
+always more or less interested in and attracted by the wicked, while the
+wicked are not generally the least interested in nor attracted by the
+good. Stephen was drawn towards this reckless daughter of the saloons
+partly through the sense of her general badness, it formed unconsciously
+a sort of charm for him, whereas his goodness did not act at all in the
+same way upon her. To her eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> it was his one great drawback, an
+overwhelming disadvantage.</p>
+
+<p>He finished his supper in silence, and the two men drew in close to the
+fire to smoke. That is to say, Stephen did the smoking, as he did the
+talking. He consumed Talbot's tobacco, and filled Talbot's cabin with
+its fumes. Talbot himself did not smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen's return to his own claim freed Talbot from the double share of
+work he had been doing for the last week, and he remained on his own
+claims all day, tramping from one end to the other, directing where a
+new shaft should be made, overseeing closely all the work that went on,
+and doing a good deal of it himself; and in those days he became more
+clearly conscious than ever of the difference that was growing up in his
+men's manner towards him. There was a veiled insolence in their replies
+to his questions, a certain want of promptness in obeying his orders,
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> caused a curious gleam to come into the quiet grey eyes as,
+apparently without noticing it, he passed on.</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak of it, not even to his foreman, Denbigh, the man whom
+he liked and trusted most. He was accustomed to manage his own affairs,
+and rarely took counsel with any one. He was one of those men who are
+born with the gift of governing others. He was an organiser, an
+administrator, by nature. Had he been born to a throne, his kingdom
+would have been well ruled from end to end, and rarely if ever embroiled
+with other nations; and the same spirit that would have ruled a kingdom
+showed itself here in the ruling and management of his seven hundred
+feet of ground.</p>
+
+<p>He never bullied, never swore, no one had ever seen him in a passion. He
+gave his orders in a pleasant friendly voice, his manner was quiet, even
+to gentleness, but he had a way of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> getting those orders invariably
+carried out that was hard to analyse. If he said a thing was to be done,
+it was done, and no one knew of an instance where it was not. He never
+countermanded an order, and never receded from a position once taken,
+even if in his own heart he recognised later it was an unwise one. But
+the forethought and caution, the deliberation in decision that were his
+by nature, made the occasions on which he regretted an order very
+seldom, and if such there were, no matter, the order stood. He himself
+looked upon his word as irrevocable, whether given in promise or
+command, and instinctively all who came in contact with him looked upon
+it in the same light. The men, when they made engagements with him and
+stipulated certain terms for certain work, and other details, never
+asked for paper, and even refused it when offered. Whatever came from
+those silent, resolute lips they knew unalterable, unanswerable, final,
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> absolute; they all trusted his word completely, and it passed
+amongst them as other men's bond.</p>
+
+<p>Everything on the claims was well organised, all was kept in smooth
+working order. The men had exact hours of work, exact time for changing
+off, each his specified work and place on the ground, each his tools,
+for which he was accountable as long as he worked there.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot's forethought even went far enough to provide for the
+happy-go-lucky and mostly ungrateful creatures who had no idea of
+providing for themselves. He established a sick fund, and to this each
+of the men who worked for him was obliged to subscribe a trifle out of
+his weekly wages. Then in their not infrequent sickness there was
+alleviation and comfort waiting for them. If the miners were not his
+friends they were his dependents, and as such he cared for them and
+looked after them. He was always friendly in manner to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> them, always
+ready to help and assist them, to attend to their wants, to listen to
+their complaints, and settle the frequent disputes amongst themselves,
+which they invariably brought to him for decision. If he had not
+instilled affection into them, they felt an unlimited faith and
+confidence in his absolute justice.</p>
+
+<p>"He's hard, real hard," they said amongst themselves, "but he'll never
+go back on you;" and that was the received opinion amongst them.</p>
+
+<p>Although he was conscious now of the feeling growing up amongst his men,
+he appeared to ignore it entirely. As long as his instructions and
+commands were carried out, he affected to be in ignorance whether it was
+with a smiling or a scowling face. He felt certain that the disaffection
+owed its origin to the man Marley, and he expected every day that some
+matter would bring this man and himself into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> a personal conflict, in
+which he meant to conquer, and he preferred to wait for this to happen
+than to, in any way, take an initiative step in bringing the covert
+hostility to light.</p>
+
+<p>It was his method. On the same principle, when one of his debtors,
+having completely lost his head in blind rage against a quiet order that
+he should pay what was due, shook his fist in the other's face and
+threatened to wipe the floor with him, Talbot did not knock the man
+down, as some might have done. He simply remarked in his dryest tone,
+"You'd better try it," and for some reason or other the man did not.
+Shortly after the money was paid.</p>
+
+<p>So now he simply stood his own ground, saw that his work was properly
+done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the
+meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness
+of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and
+quite incapable of understanding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> his employer, grew elated and
+triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen had been back at the gulch a fortnight or more, when Talbot
+found late one afternoon some of his tools broken, and this, combined
+with other work he had to do in town, decided him to go down that
+afternoon and return the following day before daylight failed. He got
+ready, locked up his house, and called upon Stephen to say he was going.
+Stephen looked quite surprised, Talbot went to town so seldom, and then
+began to chaff him upon his motives and intentions.</p>
+
+<p>"As it happens, I'm going about some mending of spades," Talbot
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure it's not the breaking of hearts?" Stephen laughed back
+from the fire by which he was sitting. "Well, you'll see Katrine any
+way. Tell her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow," interrupted Talbot, impatiently, "I'm not going to see
+her. I shall have as much as I can do to be back here be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>fore mid-day
+to-morrow," and he went out before the amazed Stephen could say another
+word.</p>
+
+<p>"Going down town and not going to see Katrine! why, he must be mad,"
+ejaculated Stephen mentally; "wonder what his own girl's like anyway."
+Then he tossed himself back on the rug and looked at a little
+postage-stamp photograph Katrine had given him of herself, which he had
+stuck on the fly-leaf of his Greek testament.</p>
+
+<p>The following morning, before it was fully light, found Talbot toiling
+up to the west gulch on foot. He had made an early start, as he wanted
+to be back before the men began work, and the air hung round one and
+against one's cheek like a sodden blanket in the dusky dawn. It took him
+over three hours to make the distance, and when he reached his cabin he
+felt chilled through. All his muscles were stiff and numb from the long
+climb. He felt a longing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> to sit down and rest and get a little warmth
+kindled in his half-frozen limbs. The first thing that encountered him
+at the main door, which led into the block composed of his own cabin and
+the tunnel, was a sheet of smooth ice, only an inch deep perhaps, but
+glazing over the ground from where he stood to his own door. He saw at
+once what had happened: the waste water from the workings had been
+diverted from its proper outlet, and had simply run freely at its own
+will over the level ground. Talbot's face darkened as his eyes rested on
+it. It was Marley's business to see that the egress for the water was
+kept free and unblocked with ice, and only yesterday he had given him
+orders to attend to it. It was the second or third time he had returned
+to find the entrance to his own house almost impassable. Crossing over
+with difficulty the frozen stream, he looked into his cabin. There was
+about a foot of muddy water and ice covering the floor and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> floating his
+slippers and some pairs of socks he had left by the hearth. The fire was
+out, and the lower part of the stove filled with mud and water. The bed
+was completely soddened, the blankets and quilt dabbling in the water.
+He did not go beyond the threshold. After a minute's survey he turned
+and walked down the tunnel leading to the shaft where he knew the men
+were working.</p>
+
+<p>"Marley!" he called down the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" came up from below in a surly tone.</p>
+
+<p>"You have allowed the waste to run into the tunnel again, and my cabin
+is flooded."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, clean it out then!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think that is your business," answered the dry cutting tones from
+above. "Come up at once, and see to it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to swab out your blasted, dirty old cabin," shouted
+Marley hoarsely from the bottom of the shaft. "Do it yourself."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A strange look came over Talbot's quiet face. It whitened and set in the
+darkness. He knew his men were gathered about Marley, listening to what
+passed, and this open defiance of his authority, this public insult
+before them, angered him excessively. He made his answer very quietly,
+however, only his voice was peculiarly hard, and the words seemed to
+drop like ice on the men standing listening below.</p>
+
+<p>"I allow no one to speak to me like that here," he said. "This is the
+last day that you work on the claim."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll work here as long as it suits me," retorted Marley, with an oath.
+"You can't turn me out."</p>
+
+<p>"We will see about that," returned Talbot, in the same even, frigid
+tone, and he turned away from the pit and walked back to his flooded
+cabin.</p>
+
+<p>He found Denbigh had arrived there. It was close to the luncheon hour by
+this time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> and he was doing what he could to get rid of the water. He
+looked up, and saw at once from the other's face there had been some
+unusual incident.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" he inquired, standing still, with his mop in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"That fellow Marley is making all the trouble he can," returned Talbot.
+"I have just told him he has got to get out, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>Denbigh's face fell. "I think it's a bad job," he remarked after a
+minute. "You know what a desperate devil he is; he would kill you, I
+believe, if he had to give up his work."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he has been trying to boss this business for some time now,"
+returned Talbot, "and I am tired of it. To-day he finished with a gross
+insult before a lot of the men, and it's time, I think, to show him and
+them who is boss here."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't you overlook it?" replied Denbigh,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> tentatively, with a scared
+look on his thin face.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no wish to," replied Talbot, coldly. "There is bound to be
+trouble some time. It may just as well come now as later."</p>
+
+<p>Denbigh opened his mouth to make a further protest, but Talbot stopped
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us discuss it any further, please," he said curtly, and
+Denbigh closed his mouth and dropped back on his knees to his
+floor-mopping.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot drew out his pistol, glanced over it, and buckled it round his
+waist.</p>
+
+<p>When the room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the
+two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to
+swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with
+such absolute command over his passion, anger was with him, like a flame
+at white heat, rushing through his veins.</p>
+
+<p>As they sat they heard the miners tramping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> by the cabin door, and saw
+their heads pass the window as they went out to get their mid-day food.
+Denbigh himself, as soon as he had finished, made an excuse and
+departed. He was eager to join his companions before they came back to
+work and hear some more delectable details of the row than he could get
+from Talbot. When all his men had filed out from the tunnel, Talbot went
+into the passage and walked up to the heavy wooden door and shut it,
+barring it with a steady hand. This was the main entrance to the shaft,
+and at the present time the only one. The door was never, under ordinary
+circumstances, closed, but stood open all day for the men to pass in and
+out to their work. When he had fastened it he walked back, turned into
+his own cabin, and took up his place at the window. From here he could
+see the men as they came back. They began to return earlier than was
+their wont, knowing that trouble was in the air, and each one was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+anxious to be on the spot for the crisis. All through the lunch hour
+Talbot's words and the possibility of Dick Marley being obliged to
+"quit" was the sole topic of conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Dick talked largely, and with a great many of the miners his oaths, and
+the imputations of cowardice he heaped on his employer, carried the day.
+Some of the others, quieter men with keener perceptions, merely listened
+in silence, and shook their heads when appealed to for an opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno. He's got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and
+bacon, in response to a sanguinary burst of Dick's.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a slip," answered Dick, contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"But a dead sure shot."</p>
+
+<p>"He'd funk it," said Dick, his face paling a little. "He'd never stand
+up to me. He's got no fight in him. Why, he's managed that claim there
+now for two years and he's never so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> much as fired a shot over it. Now
+that fellow Robinson wot's got the claim a mile farther up the creek,
+he's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was
+trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five
+corpses over it."</p>
+
+<p>He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring assent.</p>
+
+<p>The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as butter as long as you
+know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to
+try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."</p>
+
+<p>Dick took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.</p>
+
+<p>As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their
+employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> when
+they passed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut.
+Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up,
+shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of
+things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they
+encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment,
+and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards
+the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"'E's waiting for Dick to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one
+of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in
+Dick's shoes when he do come."</p>
+
+<p>There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the
+men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of
+the coming contest.</p>
+
+<p>At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the
+window. Tal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>bot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles.
+He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. Dick fell back a
+step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round
+the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't come in," and the sentence had an accent of inflexibility
+that made it seem like a drawn sword across the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>"To hell I can't!" returned Dick, a dull red flush coming over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that
+contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, I guess I'm coming in any way," answered Marley, and he made a
+step forward. A slight motion of Talbot's right hand to his belt was his
+only answer.</p>
+
+<p>Marley stopped, put his own hand, half involuntarily, to his hip,
+remembered he had no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> revolver with him, and turned pale and red in
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the loud voices and talking at the door had brought the
+remainder of the men upon the scene. Those who had already passed into
+the shaft left their work and came up behind Talbot in the tunnel; those
+in front pressed a little nearer. Talbot stood now completely surrounded
+by the crowd of rough working men. Marley's adherents were in full
+force. He was quite alone. He did not glance round them. He did not
+think of himself, nor of his own danger should two or three of them back
+up their fellow and commence to hustle him. He felt nothing but a cool
+though intensely savage determination to subdue this burly brute, to
+defend his position and title, though it cost him his life.</p>
+
+<p>"There can be only one boss here," he said coldly, as Marley hesitated
+before him. "If you are not satisfied who it is, go to your cabin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> and
+get your six-shooter, and we will settle it here on the dump."</p>
+
+<p>There was a movement and a murmur of satisfaction amongst the men. Now
+this was coming down to business and giving them something they could
+understand. Here was a man willing to defend his rights in a good,
+square stand-up fight on the spot, and they one and all agreed in their
+own minds that he was the right sort. They glanced at Dick expectantly,
+and some said to themselves he weakened. They were not going to take
+sides with either party. One of the men was their friend and
+fellow-worker, the other was their employer. The two had a difference,
+and they could settle it between themselves. They had no business to
+interfere. All they had to do was to stand round and see a square fight
+and "with'old their judgment," as they said afterwards, talking it over
+in the bar of the "Pistol Shot." They waited, and Dick hesitated. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+felt his opponent's eyes upon him; he glanced round the men, they were
+watching him.</p>
+
+<p>"Fetch your six-shooter," commanded Talbot again, with increasing
+sternness, and Dick, feeling he must do something, nodded sullenly and
+turned away towards his cabin. He strode up the incline in the direction
+of the miners' dwellings, and Talbot, whose brain seemed to himself half
+splitting with nervous, angry excitement, began to pace up and down a
+short length before the door, waiting for him to come back. He did not
+order his men away, and they stayed in their places.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement was intense amongst them as they waited; not one of them
+shifted his place on the log or bank where he had sat down; they hardly
+seemed to draw their breath. All their eyes were fixed upon Talbot. He
+walked up and down in front of the door, his arms folded, his revolver
+still in its case on his hip. The men watched him curiously. His face<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+was very white and exceedingly determined.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was placid and lovely. The temperature was not within many
+degrees of zero, but the gold of the sunshine was bright, and the air
+dazzlingly clear. It was absolutely still, not a leaf rustled, not a
+breath stirred. Nature was in her calmest, gentlest mood; nowhere could
+there have been a more tranquil arena to witness the passions of men.
+There was perfect silence, except for the crack of the ice sometimes as
+it split beneath the firm, resolute steps of the man pacing up and down.
+His face was set as a stone mask, as immovable and as calm, but the
+passion of anger increased within him as he waited; a mad impatience for
+his adversary to return grew at each step that he walked to and fro,
+with the insult of the morning echoing in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>At last he stopped in his walk and fixed his gaze on the road which led
+to the miners' cabins. All the men's eyes followed his, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> they saw
+the figure of their fellow-worker coming slowly down towards them. A
+huge, hulking form, contrasting strongly with the slim one of the man
+waiting for him. Some of the miners glanced up at Talbot, wondering
+silently if he "funked it," but there was something in that attitude and
+that iron countenance that reassured them and stirred a dull admiration
+in their hearts. Talbot ceased to walk up and down. He planted himself
+directly in front of the wide open door and waited there. Passion and
+excitement had dilated his pupils until the usually calm light grey eyes
+looked black; his nostrils quivered slightly as he watched his enemy
+coming up. As Marley drew nearer, the miners noted with satisfaction his
+enormous six-shooter swinging in his belt; the sunlight caught the steel
+at every other step forward he made. Their hearts beat fast with keen
+anticipation. There would soon be some fine shooting, and one dead man
+perhaps, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> two, for Marley meant business; and as for the other, he
+looked like the devil himself as he stood there. And he was a fine shot,
+there was no mistake about that. Denbigh stared hard at him with round
+fixed eyes. He was thinking of the nights when he had watched Talbot
+teaching Dick to shoot straight&mdash;teaching the very man he had sent off
+now to get his pistol to shoot himself with! He remembered how Talbot
+had stood with Marley at this very tunnel's mouth and showed him how to
+snuff a candle at thirty yards! And Denbigh stared and glowed with
+admiration. Marley drew nearer down the path, his heavy crunching steps
+echoing through the serene and frosty air. A few minutes more and he was
+close upon the eager, expectant, silent circle; the men watched him with
+their breath suspended. On he came, sullenly, filled with a sort of
+dogged, brutal animosity against the man he had wronged and insulted. He
+stepped between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> the men, who made a short line, and then into the clear
+open space, facing Talbot.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time he looked him full in the face, with a fugitive,
+fleeting glance, and his eyes shifted away. His pace slackened, but he
+did not stop; his feet dragged loosely over the rough snow and gravel,
+his huge form seemed to shrink together, to lessen; while to the
+fascinated eyes of the men watching the two, that slight figure at the
+doorway, motionless as a statue, seemed to dominate the scene. Marley
+felt a peculiar, sick paralysis stealing over him, a curious tugging
+back of his muscles when he tried to get his hand to his hip, a
+strangling feeling in his throat: that glance seemed petrifying him. The
+absolute fearlessness, the indomitable will that filled it, seemed to
+overcome him.</p>
+
+<p>The very fact, perhaps, that Talbot had not even yet drawn his pistol,
+the extreme coolness that relied upon the swiftness of his wrist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> to
+draw it at a second's notice, staggered and scared him. He remembered
+the skill that had long been his admiration, and that he had at last
+learned to imitate, the sureness of aim and eye, the dexterity and
+quickness of that hand, and his tongue fairly cleaved to the roof of his
+dry mouth. He struggled to draw his revolver, but his arm refused to
+obey his will. Yet it was not wholly cowardice that swept over him in a
+sickly tide. As he had met those scornful, indignant eyes, there had
+rushed back to his mind a thousand small benefits conferred upon him by
+this man, a thousand instances of friendliness, the memory of the first
+days they had worked together, how he had slept under his roof, fed at
+his table, how, more than all, he had been given by him and instructed
+in the use of this very weapon that now would be turned to the giver's
+own breast. A horror of killing this man, of wounding him, firing upon
+him, combined with his terror of being killed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> swept over him, and
+between these he felt cowed and beaten, unable to stand up and face him,
+unable to do anything but drag one trembling foot behind the other and
+go by, keeping watch from the side of his eye that that deadly pistol
+was not drawn upon him. But Talbot never moved, simply stood and watched
+him too, with fixed eyes; and Marley, overwhelmed by some power he did
+not understand, as if dragged forward against his will, without another
+look at his opponent, passed by them all and went on slowly down the
+road leading to the town. Not a word was spoken, not a breath was drawn,
+no one moved. They watched his retreating figure, some half hoping, half
+expecting, some half fearing, he would turn and shoot from a
+distance,&mdash;all wondering greatly, and a little overawed. Then, as he
+neither turned nor looked back, but kept steadily ahead, his large
+figure well outlined against the stretches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> of white snow, his
+six-shooter glistening in the sun, his head hanging down, till at last
+by a turn in the road he was lost to view, there was a long-drawn breath
+of surprise and wonder, a general turning of the eyes to Talbot. It was
+a victory, though a bloodless one, and they felt it. Each one felt that
+the conqueror was before them. Talbot said nothing. He simply stood
+aside from the door, to let the miners who were outside enter. The men
+took it as a signification that they were to recommence work, and
+hastened to obey. They did not dare to speak to him, not even to
+congratulate him. They were awed into submissive silence before him. Not
+a sound was uttered. The men filed silently into the tunnel like cowed
+sheep into their pen, leaving their master standing motionless in the
+sunshine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Good Luck Row was a little row of small, insignificant cabins towards
+the back of the city, and at right angles to the direction of the main
+street. Dawson faces the Yukon, and its main thoroughfare lies parallel
+with the river. In the summer, when the Yukon and the Klondike, that
+joins it just above, are free, the waters of the two rivers united come
+rolling by in jubilant majesty, tossing loose blocks of ice, the
+remnants of their winter chains, on their swelling tide. They form a
+little eddy in front of the city, and their waters roll outward and
+swirl back again to their course, as if the great stream made a bow to
+the city front as it swept past. Here in the summer, with the steamboats
+ploughing through the rocking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> green water, and the sun streaming down
+upon the banks crowded with active human beings, glinting on the gay
+signs of the saloons and the white and green painted doors of the
+warehouses, with the brilliant azure sky stretched above, and far off
+the tall green larches piercing it with their slender tops,&mdash;in the
+summer this main street is a pleasant, cheerful sight; but now, with the
+river solid and silent, the banks black and frozen, and the bleak,
+bitter sky above, it looked more desolate than the inner streets of the
+town, more uninviting than Good Luck Row, which had little cabins on
+each side, and where the inhabitants overlooked their opposite
+neighbours' firelit interior instead of the frozen river. The side-walks
+of the row were like the other side-walks of the city, a wealth of soft
+mud and slush and dirt through the warm weather, and now frozen hard
+into uneven lumps, big depressions, and rough hummocks. The cabins were
+uniform<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> in size, small, with one fair-sized window in the front, beside
+the door, which opened straight into the main room, where the front
+window was. At the back there was another smaller room with a tiny
+window, looking out over a black barren ice-field, for Good Luck Row was
+on the edge of the town.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine lived at No. 13. This cabin had been the last to be occupied on
+account of its unlucky number, but Katrine only laughed at it, and
+painted it very large in white paint upon the door. Here Katrine lived
+alone, though her father, the little stunted Pole who kept the "Pistol
+Shot," was one of the richest men in the city.</p>
+
+<p>And because she lived alone some of her neighbours declared she was not
+respectable. As a matter of fact, she was more respectable than many of
+the married women living in the row, and Katrine knew many a story with
+which she could have startled an unsuspecting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> husband when he came into
+town after a week or two's absence prospecting or at work on the claims;
+but she did not trouble about other people's affairs; she gave her
+friendship to those who sought it, and heeded not at all those who
+condemned her.</p>
+
+<p>On an afternoon about three weeks after her first meeting with Stephen,
+Katrine stood in front of her little glass in the corner of her cabin,
+smoothing her short glossy hair; when this was flattened with
+mathematical exactness to her well-shaped head&mdash;for Katrine was always
+trim and neat in her appearance&mdash;she turned to the table and wrote on a
+slip of paper, "I'm next door;" this she pinned to the outside of her
+door, and then locking it went into the next cabin in the row. She had
+grown quite accustomed to Stephen's visits now, and generally left a
+note on her door when she went out, in case he should come unexpectedly
+in her absence. The cabin she entered presented a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> different appearance
+from her own. There was the same large stove opposite the door, the same
+rough table in the centre and wooden chairs round, but the floor was
+dirty and gritty, quite unlike Katrine's, which always maintained a
+white and floury look from her constant attentions, and the stove looked
+rusty and uncleaned. The small square panes of the window, too, hardly
+let in any light, they were so obscured by dust inside and snow frozen
+on to them without. By the stove sat a young woman, in whose face
+ill-health and beauty struggled together for predominance. Her hair,
+twisted into a loose knot at the back of her head, was of the lightest
+gold colour, like a young child's, and her face brought to one's mind
+the idea of milk and violets, the skin was so white and smooth and the
+eyes so blue. This was the beauty which no disease could kill, but
+ill-health triumphed in the livid circles round the eyes, the drawn
+lines round the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> faded lips. Katrine entered with her brightest smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Annie, are you better to-day?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>The woman rose with an unsteady movement from the chair, and before she
+could answer burst suddenly into a rain of tears. "Better? Oh, Katie, I
+shall never be any better! But I wish I could go home to die!"</p>
+
+<p>Katrine advanced and put her arms round her, drawing the frail
+attenuated form close against her own warm vigorous frame.</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense!" she said gently. "You are not going to die at home or
+anywhere yet. Why, Will is going to make a big strike, and take you home
+to live in style all the rest of your life."</p>
+
+<p>"No," sobbed the girl,&mdash;for she was no more than a girl in age,&mdash;falling
+back in her chair again. "No, it won't come in time for me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Where is Will?" asked Katrine, looking round.</p>
+
+<p>"He's just got a job up at the west gulch on Mr. Stephen Wood's claim,"
+returned the other. "Oh, I am that thankful he's found some one to
+employ him at last."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's delightful," returned Katrine, absently, as she sat down on
+the other side of the rusty stove and looked round the dirty, cheerless
+room. It was due to her urgent pleading with Stephen that Will had
+obtained the place on the claim, but his wife did not seem to know, and
+Katrine did not tell her.</p>
+
+<p>"But then it don't lead to nothing," continued Annie, despairingly. "He
+can't look out for himself if he's working another man's ground."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he only does a few hours' work, I believe, and has the rest of
+the day to look round for himself," returned Katrine.</p>
+
+<p>"It don't amount to much, anyway; this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> time of the year there ain't no
+day to speak of," replied the other, gazing plaintively through the dim
+glass of the window. "And then if he do see a bit of land he fancies,
+why, he can't buy it, he's got no money."</p>
+
+<p>"I think Mr. Wood will advance him enough to buy any ground he thinks
+well of," replied Katrine, gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wood!" repeated Annie, opening her sunken eyes wide with the first
+display of interest she had shown. "Why should he help my man along?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," returned Katrine, evasively, with heightened colour;
+"but he told me he would do so, and I know he will. How is Tim to-day?"
+she added suddenly, to divert the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>The mother looked round.</p>
+
+<p>"Tim!" she called; "where is that child? Katie, you go and look if you
+can see him in the wood-shed."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Katrine crossed the room to the lean-to attached to the cabin and looked
+in. On the floor of the wood-shed, with the happy indifference to the
+cold usually displayed by Klondike infants, little Tim sat on the floor
+with a pile of chips beside him. Great icicles hung from the rafters
+above him, and his tiny hands were blue with cold, but he was
+contentedly and silently piling up the wood on the frozen ground.
+Katrine picked him up and carried him into the next room, and put him by
+the fire at his mother's feet. He did not cry nor offer any resistance,
+but when put in his new location looked round for a few minutes, and
+then calmly leaned towards the stove and began to play with the cinders
+in place of his vanished wood chips.</p>
+
+<p>"What a good little fellow he is!" said Katrine, leaning over him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he's his mother's darling, that's what he is!" returned the other,
+stooping to smooth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> the curly head that was only a shade lighter than
+her own.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you have some coffee?" asked Annie presently, looking helplessly
+towards the dirty stove, where a feeble fire was burning sulkily amongst
+the old wood ash.</p>
+
+<p>"No," returned Katrine, cheerfully; "you must be getting tired of
+coffee. I brought you some tea for a change," and she extracted a neat
+little packet from one of her pockets. "May I do up the fire and make
+some for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it will make you so dirty; that stove is in an awful state,"
+replied Annie, looking over the other's neat dress and figure dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind that. Pick up the baby," Katrine answered, rolling up her
+sleeves and displaying two rounded muscular arms white as the snow
+outside. "You'd better move farther out of the dust," she added, going
+down on her knees before the stove. Annie picked up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> the child and
+retreated to a chair by the window, from where she watched the other
+with a sort of helpless envy.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord! I've grown that weak lately I can't do nothing," she said after a
+minute. "You know how nice I used to keep the place for Will when we
+first came."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine nodded in silence, and two bright tears fell amongst the wood
+ash she was taking from the stove. She did remember the bright, active
+young wife, the united little family moving into the cabin next her only
+a year ago; she remembered the interior that had always been so neat and
+clean and cheerful to receive Will when he came home, the unceasing
+devotion of his wife, and the mutual love and hope that had buoyed them
+up and made them face all hardships smilingly. Then she had watched
+sorrowfully the gradual deterioration of the man under the constant
+disappointment; she had met him more and more frequently in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> the
+saloons, less and less at his home. She had seen day by day the rapid
+decline of the bright, beautiful young creature he had brought with him
+into this poor faded wraith dragging herself about in the neglected,
+cheerless cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get stronger again in the warm weather," she said after a
+minute, when her voice was steady.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen what I saw on the snow this morning
+when I'd been coughing there back of the wood-shed," returned Annie,
+drearily leaning her tired head against the dingy pane.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" asked Katrine, looking up apprehensively. "Blood?"</p>
+
+<p>The other nodded in silence, and there was quiet in the cabin except for
+the crooning of the child. Then Katrine rose from the hearth impulsively
+with a flushed, lovely face and the ash dust on her hair and dress. She
+went over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> to Annie and drew her head on to her strong, warm bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you poor, poor thing! What can we do?" she said desperately.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," murmured Annie, closing her eyes in the girl's soothing
+embrace, "unless you could persuade Will to take me home, and nobody
+could do that now, he's so set upon the gold. That's the second bleeding
+from the chest that I've had this month; now the third'll do for me."</p>
+
+<p>She shivered as if from cold, and Katrine kissed her and hastened back
+to her work at the fire. It is not a pleasant nor an easy thing to do to
+clean out a stove that has been left to itself for a week or more and
+fresh fires kindled on the old ashes every day, but in a few minutes
+Katrine had the work completed and the fresh wood crackling and filling
+the stove with red flame. Then she made the tea rapidly, and neither of
+them spoke again till Annie held a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> great tin mug of it to her white
+lips. Katrine pulled her chair close to the stove again, and took Tim on
+her own lap, where he found a new toy in her cartridge belt. Annie
+sipped from her mug and gazed absently into the flames.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, we were so happy," she said musingly, a little colour coming into
+her face under the influence of the hot tea and the warmth from the
+re-invigorated fire. "We had the nicest little home down in Brixham. I
+daresay you don't know where that is?" Katrine shook her head. "It's
+just the prettiest, sweetest village in the world, down in Devonshire;
+and we had a cottage there, quite in the country, with pink roses all
+over the front,&mdash;I can smell those roses now. Oh, it was lovely; and
+Will had regular work all the time, and he was the best husband woman
+ever had. He used to bring his wages in Saturdays, and say to me,
+'Annie, old girl, ain't there enough there to get you a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> new ribbon for
+Sunday or a fresh sash for the baby?' He never spent a penny for drink
+nor tobacco. And Sunday we'd go out on the downs and stand looking at
+the sea; it do come in so splendid there, and the wind from it seems to
+put new life in yer. We was as happy and as well as could be, all of us;
+and then them newspapers got to printing all those tales of the gold in
+the Klondike, and Will he just got mad like, and nothing would do but he
+must sell the house and come out here. He thought he'd come back so
+rich; well, so he may, but he won't have no wife to go back with."</p>
+
+<p>She lay back in her chair, and Katrine, gazing at her white face and
+transparent hands, said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad I stuck to Will, though," the woman went on softly after a
+minute, "and didn't let him come out here alone. A wife's place is by
+her husband wherever he goes, and I'd rather die with him than be
+separated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> But there, I do hate the name of gold. It broke up our home,
+it's broke up our lives, and it's just killed me, that's what it's done.
+And what's the good of it? Why, as I said to Will before we came, 'We
+can't be no more than happy, and we're that now.'"</p>
+
+<p>Katrine said nothing. She was one of those women who in society would
+have gained the name of a good conversationalist, for she always
+listened attentively and spoke hardly at all.</p>
+
+<p>It grew rapidly darker outside and began to snow a little, the peculiar
+sharp, small snow of Alaska. The two women could hardly see each other's
+faces in the gloom, when Katrine rose and offered to light the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no oil left," returned Annie, drearily. "I just sit in the
+dark most of the time; I don't mind as long as I have a bit of fire. It
+do seem more lonesome though when you've no light," she added with a
+sigh.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you any money to buy it with?"</p>
+
+<p>Annie shook her head. "Not till Will comes back."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, here's enough to keep you in oil for the next three months," said
+Katrine, taking a little object from her belt which looked like a
+well-filled tobacco pouch and putting it on the shelf above her head.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that? dust?" said Annie. "Where-ever do you get so much money?"
+she added, staring at her.</p>
+
+<p>"I won that last night," returned Katrine, lightly. "I do have such
+luck. I wish you could come, Annie, and see the fun we have down town of
+a night, instead of moping up here; and I do have such luck," she
+repeated again with a half sigh. "I don't know what I'd do if it should
+change. I'd have to be bar-keep for a living, I suppose. Think I'd make
+a good bar-keep?" she said, getting up and stretching her arms above her
+head. All her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> full lissom figure was revealed to advantage by the
+attitude, and the firelight fell softly on the gay, bewitching face,
+slanted over to one shoulder as she put the question.</p>
+
+<p>"I do that," replied Annie, with emphasis. "Your bar would always be
+crammed by all the chaps in the place, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine laughed. "I'm glad you think so. I'll bring you some of my oil
+to burn for to-night, and then I must be off earning my living."</p>
+
+<p>She went into her own cabin and brought back a can of oil with her,
+trimmed and cleaned and lit Annie's lamp, and then with a kiss bade her
+good-bye till next day, and took her way down to the main street. She
+had only a little dust in her belt, just enough to start playing with,
+and if luck should go against her she would have to return empty handed;
+but then she always trusted to luck, and it had never forsaken her. Her
+mode of life, precarious and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> uncertain, dangerous and unsatisfactory as
+it might seem to an onlooker, never troubled her. She was in that state
+of glorious physical health and strength which lends an unlimited
+confidence to the mind, a sense of being able to cope with any
+difficulty which might suddenly present itself, when every present or
+possible trouble looks small, and when mere life itself, the mere
+sensation of the blood being warm in one's veins, is a joy. She loved
+the excitement, even the uncertainty of her life, and she had more
+friends in the town than she could count, who would be glad to lend her
+all she needed if her luck failed.</p>
+
+<p>That night, when Katrine lay fast asleep in her small inner room, her
+curly head tucked down comfortably under the rugs, she dreamed she heard
+a knocking on her door. The sound seemed faint at first, but grew
+louder, and after a minute she woke up, lifted her head, and listened.
+Yes, there was a tapping on her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> door, she heard it quite distinctly.
+She got up immediately, slipped into her fur coat and boots, and taking
+one of her pistols in her hand, went to the door. That there was danger
+in answering such a summons at such an hour she knew quite well, but
+that did not hinder her. She was accustomed to live with her life in her
+hand, and she felt instinctively confident of being able so to hold it,
+and meant to keep a tight grip on it. When she opened the door it was to
+a vivid moonlight, clear and brighter than day; the whole white world
+was shining under it.</p>
+
+<p>"Annie!" she exclaimed as her eyes fell on the slight, feeble figure
+muffled in a blanket that stood on her steps. "What is the matter? Come
+in," and she put the door wide open and stood back for her to pass.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Katie," she said, seizing the other's hands when they stood inside
+the room, "forgive me for waking you, but I want Will. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> feel I'm going
+to die to-night, and I can't without him&mdash;I can't," and she burst into a
+flood of tears broken by short sobbing coughs. She had slipped to her
+knees and was holding Katrine's hands in a feverish clutch. The blanket
+had fallen from her head and shoulders, and showed to Katrine that she
+was still in her day dress; it did not seem as if she had been to bed at
+all. There was a dark, half-dried stain upon the front of her bodice.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm dying! Oh, Katie, it's so dreadful all alone there. Will you go and
+bring Will to me? Oh, do."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine looked down upon her as she tried to raise her to her feet. The
+fire was still burning brightly and filled the room with light. Many
+people older than Katrine would have laughed at the woman's statement in
+face of her ability to come to them and make it, but Katrine's keen
+perceptions read much, too much, in the bright glazed eyes that looked
+up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> at her, in the hoarse grating tones that came from the sunken chest,
+and the feverish grasp of those burning fingers. She stooped down and
+put her arms round the kneeling figure and drew her up.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course I will. I will bring him to you. But you are only ill,
+dear; you're not dying."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I may not, I know; but if I should, and he not here! Katie, can you
+go now?&mdash;it's so late, and so cold, and so far. I don't see how you
+can."</p>
+
+<p>"He's working up on Mr. Wood's claim at the west gulch. I suppose if I
+go to Mr. Wood's cabin he can tell me where to find Will."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, yes," returned Annie, eagerly, a crimson flush now lighting up
+each cheek; "go straight to Mr. Wood and ask him for Will. One of Will's
+ponies is down here, back of our house; you can take him and ride up.
+Oh,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> it may kill you to go; I ought not to ask it. Oh, what shall I do?"</p>
+
+<p>Katrine laughed. "Kill me!" she said. "It would take more to kill me
+than that, I think. I shall be up there and Will down here before you
+know where you are. Now you've just got to drink this brandy while I go
+and get some things on. You're just fretting for Will, that's what is
+the matter with you. I believe you will feel all right when you see him
+again."</p>
+
+<p>She put the trembling woman into a chair, and went back to her room to
+put her clothes on. She noticed that her boots, which had been damp the
+night before, had frozen to the ground, and she had to break them from
+it by force.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be lucky if I get back with my feet unfrozen," she thought to
+herself, looking regretfully at the warm bed she had left; but it never
+once, even remotely, occurred to her to refuse the unwelcome mission.
+She put on all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> her thickest garments, buckled her pistols on her hip,
+and went back to Annie, who was crouching over the fire in the next
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"I had better take the pony," she said; "he'll get me there and back
+quicker than I can walk, if you think the little animal is up to it."</p>
+
+<p>Annie nodded. "He's well fed," she said, "and has had nothing to do
+since Will's been gone."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine shut the stove up, and the two women went out together.</p>
+
+<p>It was a still dead cold without, the sort of night on which your limbs
+might freeze beyond recovery, and without your knowing it, so insidious
+and so little aggressive was the cold.</p>
+
+<p>"You go in and keep warm," said Katrine; "I'll find the pony and manage
+him," and she pushed Annie gently within her own door, and went round to
+the shed at the back of the cabin where the pony was. Her hands in that
+short time had grown so stiff with cold she could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> hardly put the saddle
+on and fasten the girth and straps. The pony knew her, and pricked his
+ears and snorted while she was getting him ready; he had been idle in
+his stable two days, and by this time was willing to welcome any change
+in the monotony of life. When she had adjusted everything carefully by
+the light of the strong moon falling through the little window, she
+threw herself cross leg upon his back and rode him out of the shed.
+Annie had her face pressed eagerly against the back window of her cabin,
+watching for her to appear. Katrine smiled at her, lifted her fur cap
+above her head for an instant as a man would do, and then the next
+moment was cantering away over the snowy waste that stretched behind
+Good Luck Row. She went at a good pace, urged on by that last glimpse of
+the pale face, with the terrible look of haunted fear on it, pressed to
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>The temperature was very low, but the ab<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>sence of wind and dampness in
+the air made the cold bearable. Katrine, haunted by the fear of
+frostbite, kept pinching her nose and pulling her ears and banging her
+feet against the pony's side to keep the blood stirring in them. Inside
+the first half-hour she was away some distance from the lights of
+Dawson, and nothing but great snowy stretches lay around her.</p>
+
+<p>That night up at the west gulch it happened that neither Stephen nor
+Talbot had gone to bed. There is little to choose between night and day
+there, since half of the day hours are dark as the blackest night, and a
+man can sleep in them as profitably or more so than in the moonlit hours
+of the night. Three o'clock in the morning had come, and the two men
+were still sitting talking on each side of the stove, with an opened
+whisky bottle on the table between them, in Stephen's cabin, when the
+dull sound of a horse's footfall broke the blank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> silence of the gulch.
+Both sprang to their feet on the instant, and Talbot drew his pistol
+from his belt and stood listening with it in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I always said we oughtn't to keep our gold up here," said Stephen, and
+his face whitened.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot held up his hand to enjoin silence, and they waited while the
+sound of hoofs moving slowly over the treacherous and uneven soil came
+nearer. Then there was a pause, which seemed to the men inside endless.
+Then two distinct taps at the door. Talbot, who was nearer it, made a
+forward movement, but Stephen caught his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Open it and fire," returned Talbot, laconically, and he pushed back the
+latch and raised his revolver as he opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen was close behind him, and Talbot almost stepped upon him as he
+drew back with astonishment the next instant. Katrine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> jumped from the
+pony's back and stepped over the threshold without invitation.</p>
+
+<p>"How lucky I am to find you up!" she exclaimed, and then seeing Talbot's
+hastily lowered revolver in his right hand she burst out laughing. "So
+you were going to shoot, were you?" she said, drawing out her own.
+"Well, I was quite ready; I have been all the ride. I am sorry I
+frightened you."</p>
+
+<p>"Frightened us!" repeated the two men in a breath, with an indignant
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, of course I didn't mean that," rejoined Katrine, laughing.
+"Disturbed you, I should say. Oh, Stephen, give me some of that whisky;
+I am almost dead with cold."</p>
+
+<p>Her face did indeed look frozen white with cold under her fur cap, and
+her dark eyes shone in it with a liquid splendour that made Stephen's
+heart beat tumultuously against his side. He poured out some of the
+spirit for her and pushed her gently into a chair, com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>mencing to pull
+off her thick gloves for her.</p>
+
+<p>"I want Will Johnson," she said, with her customary directness.
+"Stephen, I've come up to fetch him. He's one of your men. Tell me where
+I can find him."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want with him at this time of night?" questioned Stephen,
+while Talbot silently extracted a plate of bread and bacon from the
+cupboard and put it on the table at her elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want him for myself," she answered mischievously. "His wife has
+sent me up to find him; she thinks she is dying, and wants to see him
+to-night. Where can I find him?"</p>
+
+<p>"His cabin is a little higher up the gulch, but you mustn't go there; I
+will go after him," said Stephen hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," replied Katrine; "I'd better ride up there and then take
+him on home with me, hadn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ride back again to-night!" exclaimed Ste<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>phen. "What madness! It was
+bad enough to make the ride once. She mustn't think of it, must she,
+Talbot?" and he turned to his friend for corroboration.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, I should say," returned Talbot, in his quiet but final
+way. "I will ride up to Johnson's place and send him down home, and you
+can make Katrine comfortable here."</p>
+
+<p>The girl sprang to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what an idea!" she said, with a flush on her pale cheeks. "I only
+came to you to find Will. Of course I can't stay here all night."</p>
+
+<p>"Your mission will be accomplished, won't it, if Will goes to his wife?"
+returned Talbot quietly. "There is no need to risk your life again.
+There is no good in it; besides, it will save time if you let Will have
+the pony at once to take him back. You can have one of ours in the
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him. She admired Talbot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> exceedingly. His voice was so
+invariably gentle and quiet, so different from all the voices that she
+heard round her daily. Stephen's, though his resembled it, had not the
+same curious accent of refinement. His manner, too, had the same extreme
+gentleness; and yet beneath this apparent softness she knew there
+existed a courage that equalled any in the whole camp. He looked very
+handsome too, she thought, at this moment, as she met a soft smile in
+his eyes, and her tones were more hesitating as she repeated&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I think I ought to return."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm going to despatch Will for you," replied Talbot, turning
+away. "I leave it to you, Stephen, to persuade her to stay," and he
+walked out. A second later they heard the pony's hoofs going up the
+narrow trail past the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"You can have my room; I'll sleep here on the floor," remarked Stephen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The girl got up.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said in her most decided tone. "I'll stay if you let me sleep
+here on the floor, or I'll go home. Turn you out of your own comfortable
+bed I will not."</p>
+
+<p>"Go home you can't," said Stephen in an equally decided tone, "so I'll
+make you up a bed here just in front of the stove."</p>
+
+<p>He went into the next room, and Katrine, left alone, drank up her whisky
+and gazed round the cabin. It was not at all an interesting interior,
+and had not the faint suggestions of artistic taste that redeemed
+Talbot's. A few prints were on the walls, seemingly cut from illustrated
+papers and principally consisting of views of cathedrals and school
+buildings, which Katrine's eyes wandered over without interest. At the
+farthest end from her there were some stout shelves nailed against the
+wall, and on these rested a row of flat tin pans; between the pans were
+pushed one or two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> books, and she recognised amongst them his Greek
+testament. She rose and strolled over to the shelf, and standing on
+tiptoe looked into the pans. As she thought, they contained thin layers
+of gold dust. She was standing there looking into them when Stephen
+returned and came up behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"They look fine, don't they?" he said. "That's a thirty dollar pan."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine turned, and looking up was startled by the eager light in his
+face and the greed written in every line of it. For herself, reckless,
+happy-go-lucky gambler that she was by nature, gold had little value for
+her except to toss by the handful on the tables to buy half-an-hour's
+excitement. With a sudden movement she seized the fullest pan by the rim
+in one hand and the Greek testament beside it in the other, and danced
+away from him to the other side of the room. Stephen turned with an
+involuntary cry, and followed her with anxious eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now which would you rather lose?" she said, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were fixed upon the pan, which was heavy and as much as she
+could support with one hand. He dreaded each minute to see it tip up and
+its golden treasure pour out on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. Don't be foolish," he said in a vexed tone.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine sidled up to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Answer, or I'll&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Stephen turned white. He felt she was capable of doing any mad thing
+when he met those mocking, sparkling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;would rather lose the book," he stammered, in an agony to see
+the gold safely put back. "I could replace that, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine advanced to him, balancing the pan as if weighing it.</p>
+
+<p>"Stephen, this is very heavy," she said, looking him straight in the
+eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let me take it from you," he said, eagerly stretching out his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what makes it so?" she said, still balancing it and still
+looking at him. "Your soul is in it!" and she gave it back to him.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen reddened angrily, and took both the book and the gold from her
+and replaced them sulkily on the shelf. Katrine had turned her back and
+walked over to the fire, humming.</p>
+
+<p>"What a royal couch you've made me!" she remarked, breaking the awkward
+silence that followed, and looking down on the pile of red blankets he
+had spread in front of the stove.</p>
+
+<p>He had, in fact, stripped his own bed and collected blankets from every
+corner to make a comfortable resting-place for her. Before Stephen could
+answer he was summoned to the door. Talbot looked in upon them, but
+would not come inside.</p>
+
+<p>"I've sent Will off," he said; "he swore like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> anything, but he is gone.
+No, thanks, Steve, I won't come in. I'm tired, and going to my own cabin
+now. See you at breakfast. Good-night," and before Katrine could thank
+him he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The two thus left entirely alone in the deep quiet of the gulch to pass
+the night together looked at each other for a moment with a shade of
+silent embarrassment. But the girl, accustomed as she was to take care
+of herself in all sorts of situations and surroundings, and endued with
+a certain fierce chastity of nature, recovered herself instantly and
+spoke quite naturally.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel tired too, and would like to go to sleep now, if I may."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said Stephen. "You have this room to yourself. The stove
+will burn till daylight, and you have the whisky if you feel cold in the
+night. Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>His tone was very formal, for he would so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> much have liked it to be
+otherwise, and without looking at her he took a match from his pocket
+and went into the other room, shutting the door after him. The girl
+waited a moment, then she shut the door of the stove and threw herself
+down on the soft pile of blankets, and drawing one of them over her to
+her ears, drew a deep, contented sigh, and was peacefully asleep in a
+few seconds.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Stephen rose stiff and cramped from his denuded bed.
+When he was completely dressed he silently opened his door and crept
+noiselessly into the adjoining room. The girl was not yet awake, and he
+stole softly over to the bed on the hearth and looked down at her. She
+lay warm and sleeping comfortably amongst the blankets. She was fully
+dressed, just as she had been the previous evening, except that two or
+three buttons were unfastened at the collar of her dress, and allowed
+the solid white neck to show beneath the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> rounded chin. The little head,
+with its mass of dark silky curls, lay inclined towards the stove, and
+the curled rosy lips had a softer smile than they generally wore in the
+daytime. Stephen leaned over her, entranced and breathless. As his eyes
+followed the dark arch of the eyebrows, the sweet delicate contour of
+the cheek, he forgot the horror he felt of her sometimes in her waking
+moments, forgot the hideous background of the saloons, forgot all the
+evil there might be in her, and bowed before that supreme power that
+human beauty has over us; he worshipped her as he had never worshipped
+his God. For a few seconds it was enough for him to gaze on her, then
+came an overwhelming impulse to stoop and kiss the soft youthful lips,
+to touch them even if ever so lightly. If he could without awakening
+her! But no, she was his guest, under his roof and protection. All that
+was best in his nature rose and held him motionless like a hand of
+iron.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> After a few seconds Katrine stirred, and Stephen, feeling she was
+about to awake, would have moved away, but his eyes seemed fixed and as
+impossible to remove from her face as one's hands are from an electric
+battery. The next minute her lids were lifted, and her eyes, two wells
+of living light, flashed up at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning," she said, sitting up. "How dreadfully pale you look,
+Stephen! What is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I?" he answered, with a forced laugh, feeling the blood, which had
+seemed to rest suspended in his veins for those few seconds, rush to his
+heart again in great waves.</p>
+
+<p>"You do indeed," she said, getting up. "I expect you want your
+breakfast. Tell me what I can do to make myself useful."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her hair straight, fastened the collar of her bodice, and, was
+dressed. She needed no toilet apparently, but looked as clean and fresh
+as a rose waking up in its garden.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," returned Stephen hastily. "Go over and tell Talbot to come in
+to breakfast, if you like; I'll have it ready when you come back."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine looked round regretfully, as if she would have liked to stay and
+help him; then concluding she had better do as she was told, she took up
+her fur cap and went out.</p>
+
+<p>The west gulch looks magnificent in the first early light, with all
+degrees of shadows, some black, some dusky, some the clearest grey,
+lingering in its snowy recesses, and the first glimpse of gold falling
+down it from the east. Katrine stopped and gazed up at the impressive
+beauty above and around her: trees in the gulch, now covered with a
+thick snowy mantle, stood assuming all sorts of grotesque forms, and
+extending their arms as if calling the spectator to their cold embrace.
+It was beautiful, but to Katrine it seemed so silent, so overawing, and
+so death-like, that she shivered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> as she looked up and down from the
+flat plateau where she stood, and hurried on the few necessary yards to
+Talbot's cabin.</p>
+
+<p>When they came back together they found Stephen had all in readiness,
+the fire blazing on the hearth and the breakfast waiting on the table.
+He made Katrine sit at the head and pour out the coffee for them, which
+she did with pleased, smiling eyes. Talbot said good-bye to her and went
+out to his claim immediately it was over, and Katrine and Stephen were
+left alone. He said he would go and get a pony for her and Katrine rose,
+but then Stephen hesitated and did not go after all. He turned to her
+instead, and came back from the door to where she was standing.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you listen to something I want to say to you?" he said, his heart
+beating wildly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, certainly I will," the girl answered simply, and she sat down in
+the chair behind her and folded her hands. Then she looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> up
+inquiringly, waiting for him to begin, but Stephen's voice was dried up
+in his throat. He stood in front of her, one damp hand nervously
+clasping the back of a chair, unable to articulate a word. Confusion and
+excitement overwhelmed him, and he stood turning paler and paler,
+staring at the proud, handsome face framed in the living yellow sunshine
+before him. At last he felt he could not even stand, and he turned away
+with a groan and sank down on the nearest chair with his face in his
+hands. Katrine, who had been watching him anxiously for the last few
+seconds, sprang up and went over to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter?" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Are
+you ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, oh no," said Stephen, catching the little hand in both of his. "No,
+I want to tell you I love you. Do you care for me? Will you marry me
+right away, and come up and live here with me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His voice had come back to him all right now, and he turned and gazed
+eagerly up at her.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine did not answer immediately, but she did not withdraw her hand
+that he was pressing hotly between his own, and a faint smile that came
+over her face showed she was not displeased; and here Stephen missed his
+cue&mdash;he should have taken the hesitating figure into his arms and kissed
+the undecided lips. In the sudden awakening of womanly feeling, in the
+momentary excitement, in the glimpse into passion, Katrine would have
+consented, welcoming as her nature did any new emotion; but Stephen was
+embarrassed and afraid. Fear and uncertainty held him back, the kiss
+burned ungiven on his own lips, and Katrine uninfluenced by passion
+could think clearly.</p>
+
+<p>What! come up here and live in this deathly quiet, away from even such
+amusement as the camp offered? Submit to all his tiresome religious
+conversations, and, above all, give up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> those feverish nights of
+excitement? the hazard and the stimulus of the long tables and the
+little heaps of gold dust? and her free life, her incomings and
+outgoings, with no one to question her? No, it was an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing Stephen knew was that she was smiling and looking down
+into his eyes, shaking her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Stephen, I can't do that. I like you awfully, and should like you
+to come and see me; but I wouldn't do for your wife at all, and if you
+knew all about me you wouldn't want it either."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen clung fast to her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it that I don't know?" he said desperately, putting, as people
+always do, the worst construction he could upon her words, and at the
+same time feeling he would forgive her everything, and in a sort of
+background in his brain contemplating the figure of the forgiven
+Magdalen at the feet of Christ.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Katrine dragged her hand away suddenly. She was not going to tell him
+she was a gambler and devoted to the excitement of the tables. She knew
+that if she did their pleasant talks in the evenings would be at an end.
+He could never come to see her without thinking it his duty to try to
+reform her; and as she knew she was not going to reform, what would be
+the good of it?</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter to you? I am not your wife, and am not going to be;
+I am an acquaintance. If you like me as I am, very good; if you don't,
+no one cares."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen got up and faced her. He was as white as the snow outside.</p>
+
+<p>"You make me think the worst by refusing to confide in me."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine laughed contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care a curse what you think! Haven't I just told you so? Great
+heavens," she added, with a burst of conviction, "it would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> never do for
+us to marry! Never! Your one idea is to curtail a person's liberty."</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Stephen quietly, "not liberty in a general way; only the
+liberty to sin and do evil, the liberty to be ignorant and do things
+which have terrible consequences that you don't know."</p>
+
+<p>He looked very well at this moment, his pale ascetic face and
+sympathetic eyes lighted up with enthusiasm. Katrine looked at him and
+then smiled with her quick, impulsive smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Stephen, you are a good man, and perfectly charming at times; but I am
+not a good woman, and don't want to be, and we should never get on. So
+don't let's bother any more about this question at all."</p>
+
+<p>An exceedingly pained expression came over Stephen's face, and Katrine
+was quick enough to feel that from her words he judged her errors to be
+other than they were. In a few words she might have cleared his mind
+from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> the idea of her actual immorality, but she was too proud to stand
+upon her own defence before him; besides, if her faults were not of that
+class, he would want to know what they were, and in his eyes a girl that
+gambled and drank and swore, and preferred the dance halls and variety
+shows to the mission church any day, was quite bad enough; so she
+concluded in her thoughts, "It doesn't matter if he is mixed."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen at the moment was afraid to press her further, and did not know
+quite how to treat her; but he was not wholly discouraged, and he
+thought it best to retain the ground he already had.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shall be in town in a few days," he said, "and I shall come to
+see you as usual, mayn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," returned Katrine, and they did not speak again till they
+were outside and she was mounted at the head of the trail.</p>
+
+<p>What a morning it was! The crisp air was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> like a bath of sparkling
+sunlight; the untrodden snow glittered everywhere. Far above the trail a
+ridge of dark green pine broke against the pale azure of the sky.
+Stephen leaned against the pony's side and gazed into the warm, lustrous
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, my darling&mdash;my own darling perhaps some day."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so," she answered, with a mischievous smile, and set the
+pony at a trot down the trail.</p>
+
+<p>She had to pass Talbot's cabin on her way back, and as she approached
+she saw him a little way up the creek surrounded by his men. She reined
+in her horse to a walk as she passed, and contemplated him. His figure
+always pleased and arrested her eyes&mdash;it had a certain height and
+strength and grace that marked it out distinctly from others; and then
+what an advantage it was, she thought, he had no religion and believed
+in none of those things, and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> in short, was quite as bad or worse than
+she herself was. She walked her horse on slowly, thinking. Somehow it
+seemed to her that life in his cabin would be far more piquant and
+amusing than in Stephen's. Yet he neither drank nor gambled, and as for
+the dance halls and theatre,&mdash;well, he had told her he liked dancing;
+and what a waltz that had been they had had together! But life with
+Stephen! He would be too good for her, and too stupid. She had a vague
+sense that what she lived for, excitement, he condemned in all its
+forms. Just what she cared for in drink, in play, in the dance, the
+electric pleasure of them, was just what he shrank from as a wile of the
+Evil One. Even the religious services of the High Church he condemned
+for the same reason. No, it would never do; life with him would be as
+cold as the snow around her. She was glad that her answer had been as it
+had. There was a level place in the trail here, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> she put the horse
+to a gallop, and so came into town with her cheeks stung into rich
+crimson by the keen air, and her spirits exhilarated and ready for any
+mischief going.</p>
+
+<p>She went at once to No. 14 in the row, and found Will sitting by his
+wife's bedside like a model husband. The girl was lying down, her weak
+white hand clasped in and nearly hidden by the swollen, rough red hand
+of the miner. She gave a little cry as Katrine entered, and buried her
+head under the blanket.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not angry with me for sending you up when it wasn't really
+necessary?" came a smothered voice.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine flung herself on her knees beside the bed and put her arms
+impetuously round the thin form under the coverlet.</p>
+
+<p>"Angry with you for not dying!" she said, between laughing and crying.
+"Why, I think you're the best girl in the world, and Will's a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> pretty
+good doctor, too!" she added, glancing up at him.</p>
+
+<p>Will coloured and looked a little uneasy, remembering his oaths of last
+night when he was roused to a ten-mile ride; but Katrine couldn't or
+wouldn't notice anything amiss. She said sweet things to both of them,
+and then, unwilling to rob Annie of any part of Will's company, she
+withdrew to her own cabin.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three weeks passed, and dreary weeks they were. The temperature
+fell below the zero mark and stayed there, the sun hardly ever shone,
+the whole sky being blotted out as behind a thick grey curtain. The few
+hours of daylight that each twenty-four hours brought round was little
+more than a dismal twilight. Times were dreary, too, provisions ran
+scarce and very high, and the cheerless cold and darkness seemed to
+paralyse the energies of the strongest and lay a grip upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> whole
+town. Many months of the winter had already gone by, and strength and
+spirits were beginning to flag; health and courage had worn thin, and
+men who had faced the bitterness of the cold with a joke when it had
+first set in felt it keenly now like the rest. In Good Luck Row matters
+were worse than anywhere else in the town; the occupants were mostly
+very poor, and the pressure of the high prices was sharpest upon them.
+In addition to all else they had to suffer, typhoid broke out amongst
+them, and another horrible fear was added to the terror of the cold. In
+the universal gloom that hung over the city, under the mantle of
+darkness, want and starvation and fear and disease wrangled together,
+while Death walked silently and continually about the darkened streets.
+During all this time Katrine was about the only one who kept up her
+spirits and courage. She was the light and comfort of the row, there was
+not a cabin in it that had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> not been brightened and cheered by her
+smiles and benefited by her gifts. She was absolutely without fear
+herself. The quality seemed to have been left out of her composition, or
+perhaps it was only that her great physical health and strength made her
+feel unconsciously that it was impossible for any harm to come to her.
+She went in and out of the fever-stricken cabins all day, doing what she
+could for each one of the inmates, and always with her brilliant smile,
+which was a tonic in itself, and half the night she would sit gambling
+in the saloons, winning the money to spend upon her sick patients the
+following day.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Stephen learned that typhoid had broken out in the row, he
+came down to her and urged her to marry him and come away to the west
+gulch, if only as an asylum. But Katrine simply laughed and joked, and
+would not listen to him. Then he begged her to look upon herself merely
+as his tenant; he and Tal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>bot would share the same cabin, and she could
+occupy his in perfect peace and security, and be safely away from the
+depressing influences of the town and its disease-laden atmosphere. Then
+she grew very grave, and said simply in a sweet tone that echoed through
+all the chambers of his heart&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Stephen, you are very good to be so anxious for me, but I'm not a
+bit anxious for myself. I should feel like a coward if I went away from
+the row now. These people are so dependent upon me, and I can do so many
+little things for them. I feel it's a duty to stay here, and I'd rather
+do it;" and Stephen had kissed her hand passionately and gone back to
+the gulch, more in love with her than ever.</p>
+
+<p>She saw very little of him, and was too busy to think about him or note
+whether he came or not, having so many anxieties on her mind just then,
+of which the heaviest was the girl-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>wife Annie in the next cabin. Since
+the semi-crisis in her illness, over which Katrine had helped her, there
+seemed to be little change in her condition from day to day. That is,
+the change did not show itself externally; within the delicate
+structure, the disease, aided by the cold, the foul damp air of the
+town, and hopeless spirits, crept steadily and quickly on, but gave
+little or no outward sign, and Katrine hoped against hope that she could
+possibly tide her over the time till Will perhaps made a strike and
+could take her away. She knew how the sick woman clung to this idea. For
+months now she had been shut off from all communication with the outer
+world, she never saw a paper or a book, she could not move from her
+cabin, her whole sphere was bounded now by its four rough walls, and so
+the one idea that was left to her starved brain and heart was that Will
+should make a strike. And as a weed runs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> over a bare and neglected
+garden, so will one single idea completely absorb and fill a neglected
+brain, and grow and grow to gigantic strength. This was Annie's one
+idea; she brooded over it, pondered over it, nursed it, slept with it,
+and talked to Katrine of it with burning eyes, till the latter felt if
+it could only be fulfilled the joy of it would almost cure her. And it
+might be fulfilled, she knew, any day. It was early days in the Klondike
+then, and plenty of good ground lay around waiting to be discovered. She
+heard from Stephen that Will was steady and energetic, had given up
+drink, and was set upon the idea of prospecting for land of his own.
+Katrine's heart beat hard with pure sympathy as she heard, and she
+begged Stephen as the one thing he could do for herself to facilitate
+Will's efforts in every way and aid him for her sake. Meanwhile, her own
+care was to keep the fragile creature who was living upon hope still on
+this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> side of the Great Divide. And to this end she worked night and
+day. She kept her cabin clean and well lighted and well warmed. She
+bought and made soup, and gave fabulous prices for meat and wine, and
+sat with her long hours cheering her with stories heard in the saloons
+and picked up in the streets, and scraps of news from the gulch and
+farther points.</p>
+
+<p>The disease seemed so quiescent that Katrine began to hope more and more
+that she should be rewarded, and one morning a hurried note scribbled in
+pencil was brought in to Annie while Katrine was scrubbing the cabin
+floor, telling her in a few ill-spelt words that Will thought he might
+get in to town that night. A bright flame of colour leaped over the
+woman's pale face, and then the next moment faded as her hands with the
+note in them fell listlessly to her lap.</p>
+
+<p>"He ain't made no strike yet," Katrine heard her mutter to herself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You don't know," rejoined Katrine, looking up flushed and warm from her
+hard work. "He may have some good news to tell you any way."</p>
+
+<p>Annie merely shook her head and gazed out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd have told me," she murmured, and that was all.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine had a long and heavy round of visits to make that day, and for
+two long hours she sat motionless by a dying woman's bedside, fearing to
+withdraw her hand, to which the poor terrified enterer into the Valley
+of the Shadow was clinging. In her arms, and with her tired head on
+Katrine's young bosom, the woman drew her last breath; and Katrine,
+feeling her own soul wrenched asunder and her body aching with strain
+and shock, came round in the afternoon to Annie. She would not say a
+word to her of the death-bed from which she had come. With an effort she
+talked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> of cheerful things, of the spring-time that was on its way to
+them, of the pleasure of seeing Will again, and so on, till her head
+ached. She did a few domestic offices for the girl, and then feeling she
+must break down herself if she stayed longer, she said she needed sleep,
+and if Annie could take care of herself for a time she would go and lie
+down. Annie noticed how heavy the lids were over her eyes and begged her
+to go at once, though a strange fear, like a child's of the dark, came
+over her.</p>
+
+<p>"Will will be soon with you now&mdash;the best company," Katrine said, with a
+tired smile; "and if you want me, a knock on the wall here will bring me
+to you," and Annie was left alone.</p>
+
+<p>As the afternoon closed in her cough seemed to grow more and more
+troublesome; the pain in her chest, too, had never been so bad; she had
+to keep her hand there all the time as she laboured round the room
+putting everything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> to rights, making sure that the cabin was neat and
+tidy against Will's return. At last she sat down in the circle of hot
+light round the fire, and little Tim crawled into her lap. She put her
+arms round him and held him absently. She was thinking over Katrine's
+words. The Spring! were they really near it? "so near," she had said,
+"it was almost here." Her eyes looking upwards to the darkening windows
+caught the old and smoke-hued almanac pinned up to the wall beside it.
+She set the child down, and getting up walked slowly over to it and ran
+one trembling finger down the dates. Each one from December, when they
+had first hung it up, had a heavy black line against it, where she had
+scratched it out with eager fingers; only the last days had no mark
+against them. She had been too weary, too heart sick, to note them any
+longer. What did it matter to her when the Spring came? the almanac for
+her would have come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> to an end before that. But now a fresh gleam of
+hope seemed to have entered her heart, and with a feverish movement she
+drew the old stump of pencil from her pocket and scratched off the
+unmarked days, and then stood gazing at the date of that day; they were
+still far, far from the Spring&mdash;too far. Oh, to go back in the Spring,
+to escape from this prison of darkness, this country of horror and
+starvation and misery, to be back once more in her home in the Spring!
+Her mind fled away from the dreary interior of the darkening cabin. She
+stood once more in the rich grassy meadow with the golden sunlight of an
+evening summer sky warm around her, the song of the birds in her ears,
+the hot scent of the meadow-sweet in her nostrils, before her the little
+narrow path leading to the cottage that seemed to bask sleepily in the
+yellow glow. She made a step forward with dilated eyes, then the cough
+seized her, the vision dissolved and fled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> Again the cabin with its
+blackened rafters enclosed her. She turned from the calendar. What was
+the Spring's coming? It might come, but they would not go back. What
+right had she to think of it? They had made no strike, and had not Will
+sworn he would never go back without the gold? This accursed gold! If
+they could but have found it as others had! She put her hands to her
+head to drive away the thoughts, they were familiar and so useless. She
+had thought them over and over again so often. As she went back to the
+fire she noticed one of Will's woollen shirts lying on a chair. Why,
+that was the one she had meant to wash that morning! How could she have
+forgotten it? And now perhaps she would not get it done before he
+returned. Her heart began to beat, her limbs trembled. How weak and
+queer she felt this afternoon! Still, she would do it somehow. There was
+hot water on the fire that Katrine had put there. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> lifted with an
+effort the great iron kettle from the fire, and with that in one hand
+and the shirt in the other she went into the adjoining sloping roofed
+compartment that served as scullery, wood-shed, pantry, and wash-house.
+It was many degrees colder here, and the long iron nails that kept the
+boards together overhead had sparkling icicles on them that glittered as
+the firelight from the inner room touched them, and she could hardly
+draw her breath. Nevertheless she walked over to the wash-tub and poured
+in the water, and set to work with shaking hands. "Had ever shirt seemed
+so large?" she wondered vaguely, and her thin arms moved slowly, lifting
+it up and down with difficulty. It seemed getting so dark, too. She
+should have lighted the candles, it wouldn't look so cheery for Will if
+he came back to find the cabin dark. But was this only the twilight
+falling? No, it was in her eyes. She leaned heavily on the edge of the
+wooden tub,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> trembling, the floor unsteady beneath her, a strangling
+suffocation in her throat, a swimming darkness before her eyes. A sense
+of terrible loneliness pressed in upon her, and then suddenly she knew
+that in the chill of that dark twilight she was alone with Death. He had
+come for her at last.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, to have had Will's strong arms round her, a human breast to lay her
+head down upon, and so die! A nameless terror possessed her, overwhelmed
+her; she started from the wash trestle. There was a sudden cry, "Will!
+Will!" and she fell forward on the damp flooring, a little eager scarlet
+stream of blood pouring out from the nerveless lips to stain the
+soap-suds under the trestle.</p>
+
+<p>The child sitting playing in the ring of warm firelight in the adjoining
+room heard that last cry, and startled, dropped his toys, looking with
+round eyes to the blackness beyond the open door. He listened with one
+tiny finger in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> his mouth for many minutes, but no further sound came to
+disturb him from the wash-house, and he went on playing.</p>
+
+<p>An hour passed perhaps before Will set foot in Good Luck Row, and he
+tramped up it with a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the
+blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had elastic springs in
+their soles. Yet he carried an extra weight with him. There was
+something in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand as if it
+had been red-hot iron when he touched it. As he came to No. 14 and saw
+the windows dark he merely hurried his pace, and hardly stayed to lift
+the door latch, but just burst through the half-opened door and brought
+his huge burly frame over the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Annie, my girl, we've struck it at last," he shouted at the top
+of his voice, "and you shall come home right away. Where are you, Annie?
+Didn't I say wait a bit for me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He had entered by the wash-house, but the darkness was thick, almost
+palpable, before his face and revealed nothing. He went forward to the
+open door, beyond which the burned-down fire gave only a faint red
+light, and his foot kicked something heavy on the floor. With a curious
+feeling gripping his heart, he stopped dead short where he stood and
+fumbled for a match. Then he struck it, and in its sickly glare looked
+down. "Annie, my dear!" he called in a shaking voice, and bent down
+holding the match close to the upturned face. The light played for an
+instant upon it and went out. "Annie!" he called again, and the word
+broke in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>A thin wail went up from little Tim in the dusk of the inner room. Where
+the man stood was silence and darkness. His strike had come too late.
+His wife was dead.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p><hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Half-an-hour later a man burst into the "Pistol Shot." It was between
+hours, and the bar-tender was just going round lighting the lamps; the
+place was nearly empty, only a few miners were standing at the end of
+the counter, talking together. The new customer staggered across the
+floor as if already under the influence of drink, kicking up the fresh
+sawdust on the ground; then he reached the counter and demanded drink
+after drink. He tossed the whiskies handed to him down his throat, and
+then retreated to a bench that stood against the wall and sat down
+staring stupidly in front of him. The little group of men looked at him
+once or twice curiously, and then one said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's Bill Johnson, who's just made a strike. Come up, boys, let's
+congratulate him."</p>
+
+<p>The men moved up to the motionless, staring figure, and one of them
+slapped him on the shoulder.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say, Bill, old man, you're in luck, and we'll all drink your health.
+Got any gold to show us?"</p>
+
+<p>The sitting figure seemed galvanised suddenly out of its stupor. Will
+raised his head with a jerk, and the men involuntarily drew back from
+the glare of his bloodshot eyes. He put his hand to his pocket and drew
+out a small dirty buckskin bag. He dashed it suddenly on the ground with
+all his force, so that the sawdust flew up in a little cloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Curse the gold!" he said, and got up and tramped heavily out of the
+saloon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>GOD'S GIFT</h3>
+
+
+<p>They buried Mrs. Johnson very soon. As one of the neighbours sensibly,
+if rather crudely, remarked, "Their cabins were too small for them to
+keep corpses knocking around in them." And so the second day after her
+death, in a flood of thin, sweet sunshine, they buried her who had so
+loved the light and the sun, and had longed so wearily for them through
+so many days.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine and Talbot stood side by side at the open grave. He had been in
+the town that day and met Katrine on the street, learned from her where
+she was going, and accompanied her. He knew something of all she had
+done for the dead woman, and he watched her now with interest and
+surprise at her com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>posure. Katrine's face was unmoved, and her eyes
+were dry through it all.</p>
+
+<p>"Another that gold has killed," she said to him as they turned away, and
+her face looked grave and grey in the flood of the cold sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Will was not present. He was down at the "Pistol Shot." He had been on a
+big drunk for the past two days, not even returning to his cabin at
+night, and the body of his wife would have lain unguarded had not
+Katrine brought her fur bag and slept beside it each night on the
+deserted hearth. Little Tim had been taken in by a neighbour, all the
+mothers round seeming anxious for the honour after it was known that
+Will had "made his strike."</p>
+
+<p>They walked in absolute silence for some time up the incline. Talbot was
+going back to the west gulch, and Katrine said she would walk a little
+of the way in that direction too. The afternoon was bright and clear,
+and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> air singularly still, so still that the intense cold was hardly
+realised. The rays of sunshine struck warmly across the snow banks piled
+on each side of the narrow path they were treading. The sky was pale
+blue, and the points of the straight larches on the summit of the ridges
+cut darkly into it like the points of lances. There was something in the
+atmosphere that recalled a day in late autumn in England. They were
+nearing the top of the ridge, and both had their gaze bent on the narrow
+ascending path before them, when suddenly a tiny object darted into the
+middle of it and ran up the opposite bank. On the instant Katrine drew
+one of the pistols from her belt and fired. The little dark form rolled
+down the bank, dropped back into their path, and lay there motionless.
+It was a fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards
+from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her
+with startled admiration. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> himself never shot except for food or
+other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise,
+but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious
+that they compelled him to an involuntary admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a good shot!" he exclaimed, looking at the bright, clear-cut
+face beside him, warmed into its warmest tints by the keen air and the
+continuous mounting of their steps.</p>
+
+<p>"But not a good woman," she answered shortly, quickly reading the
+thoughts that accompanied his words. She did not look at him, but
+straight ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"You might be both," he said, with a sudden impulse of interest and
+regret.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she said lightly. "Good women are not usually good
+shots. You don't generally find them combined. But any way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> what have I
+to do with goodness? I don't need it in my business."</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer, and they walked on in silence till they came up to
+the little dark lump in the road. It was a small marmot. Katrine glanced
+at it and passed on. Talbot stooped and picked up the scrap of
+blood-stained fur.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do it for?" he asked curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Practice, that's all," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you feel sorry to kill merely for the sake of practice?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I should have been sorry if I had wounded it; but it's a good thing
+to be dead, I think. I wouldn't have shot unless I had been almost
+entirely sure I should kill it."</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence, and then she said suddenly, "One must keep up
+one's practice here, going about as I do in all sorts of places and
+making my living as I do. These," and she tapped her pistols, "are my
+great protec<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>tion. Only last night a great brute leaned over me and
+wanted to kiss me&mdash;would have done, only he saw I should shoot him if he
+did."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you shoot a man for kissing you?" replied Talbot in an astonished
+tone, elevating his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Why, I'd rather be shot than kissed!" exclaimed the girl fiercely,
+with an angry flush on her smooth cheek.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot looked at the contemptuous, curling lips, at the whole beautiful
+hard face beside him, and walked on in silence, wondering. Her momentary
+anger was gone directly, and they were good comrades all the rest of the
+way.</p>
+
+<p>At the point where she stopped to say good-bye to him, she held out her
+hand: "Thank you for coming to the burial with me, it was good of you,"
+and she pressed his hand with a grateful smile.</p>
+
+<p>It was about a fortnight later on, one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> those dreary grey afternoons
+of late winter, nearly dark already, though still early by the clock,
+and the mercury in the thermometers had gone out of sight and stayed
+there. Katrine came tripping along a side street on her way back to the
+row, warm in her skin coat, and her face all aglow and abloom under her
+fur cap. She had turned into the "Swan and Goose" saloon on her way up,
+had put in half-an-hour over a game, and won a fat little canvas bag
+stuffed with gold dust; had thinned it out somewhat in hot drinks across
+the bar, and now, warmed through with rum, and light-hearted, she was
+returning with the bag still well lined in her waist-belt.</p>
+
+<p>She had recovered from the great shock of Annie's death. Her nature,
+though essentially kind, was not of that soft, tender stamp that
+receives deep and painful impressions from other's sufferings. She would
+exert herself strenuously for another, as she had done for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Annie, but
+it was not in her nature to sorrow long or deeply for the irrevocable.
+There was a certain hardness and philosophy in her temperament that her
+life and surroundings and all her experience had tended to develop. And
+in Annie's death there was nothing striking or unusually sad in this
+corner of the world, so crowded with scenes of suffering, so filled with
+pathos of every form. There were women hoping and waiting, and longing
+and starving, in every street of the town, she knew; sickness and sorrow
+and death looked her in the eyes from some poor face at every corner.
+Annie had been but one poor little unit in the crowd of sufferers, but
+one example of the misery of the town, the plague-stricken town, the
+town stricken with a curse&mdash;the curse of the greed of gold.</p>
+
+<p>Matters had brightened very much in Dawson lately, a new feeling of hope
+and fresh life had gone through the town. The weather was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> less severe,
+the days were lengthening, the skies were brighter, the sickness had
+died out, and people went about their work looking cheerful again; and
+Katrine, freed from her anxieties and nursing, felt her elastic spirits
+bound upwards in response to the general brightness of the camp.</p>
+
+<p>She came along humming behind her closed lips, and then suddenly turning
+a corner, stopped dead short with a horrified stare in her eyes. She had
+come round by one of the lowest dens in the city. Katrine knew it both
+inside and out, for there was no place from hut to hut in Dawson that
+she was afraid to enter. The door was standing open. It opened inwards,
+and there was a group of men, some inside and some outside, and amongst
+them they were forcing into the street a drunken woman. The entry to the
+place was beneath the level of the ground, and reached by a few uneven,
+miry steps, and up these the unfor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>tunate was blindly stumbling under a
+rain of blows, pushes, and curses. She was old, and her hair streamed in
+ragged streaks across her bloodshot eyes, her tawdry skirt was long, and
+got under her unsteady feet. Just as she had managed to totter to the
+topmost step, a young man in the group behind her struck her a heavy
+blow between the shoulders. She tripped in the long skirt and trod on
+it, tearing it with a ripping sound from the waist, and fell forward,
+striking her face on the uneven frozen ground. Katrine sprang forward,
+but before she could reach her the woman had staggered to her feet and
+turned to face her tormentors, the blood streaming now from her cut
+lips, her trembling hands vaguely grasping at her torn skirt and trying
+to keep it to her waist. A roar of laughter burst from the men at the
+pitiful sight, and then died suddenly as they recognised Katrine. She
+stepped in front of the old woman, and faced them with a scorn in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+eyes beyond all words. Then she turned in silence, put her arm round the
+helpless creature's waist, and supported her frail, tottering steps over
+the slippery, uneven ground. For an instant the men stood abashed and
+ashamed, then when the spell of those great fearless, scornful eyes was
+removed, their natures reasserted themselves, and a general laugh went
+round.</p>
+
+<p>"Birds of a feather!" shouted one, mockingly, as the two retreating
+figures disappeared in the gathering darkness. Katrine heard it, and
+winced; but she did not relax the hold of her supporting arm, and by
+gentle and repeated questioning managed to elicit from the helpless old
+being where she lived. Katrine turned her steps in the given direction,
+and drawing out her handkerchief wiped the blood from the old woman's
+face, and smoothed her straggling grey hair back behind her ears. When
+they reached her cabin at last, Katrine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> saw that the stove was black
+and empty. There was no light of any sort in the place, and the freezing
+darkness of the interior chilled her through. She would not leave the
+old woman until she had lighted a fire and candle for her and got her to
+bed; then, without waiting to listen to the mumbled and incoherent
+thanks showered upon her, she went out gently and on to her own place.
+She felt in a very serious mood as she made her cup of coffee and cooked
+herself a plate of bacon, and then sat down in the red glow of her
+well-tended hearth to her solitary meal.</p>
+
+<p>"Birds of a feather!" that hateful sentence echoed round her, until the
+silent walls themselves seemed taunting her. Was she not, after all,
+really akin to that old woman, and might she not some day end like her?
+What was all her own drinking and card-playing and knocking about in the
+saloons to end in? She shivered, and threw a frightened glance round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+her. This girl, who would have laughed all sermons, advice, and
+admonitions scornfully aside, was almost startled now into a sudden
+reformation by the chance object-lesson of this afternoon. She could not
+forget it, and in the silence the whole scene rose up vividly before
+her. She began to long for Stephen to come and break the silence, and
+glanced impatiently at the clock many times. He was coming in to town
+that night, she knew. It was a relief such as she had never experienced
+when at last he arrived, and she had not her own company only any
+longer.</p>
+
+<p>She was unusually silent all the evening. Stephen did not try to force
+her into conversation; he was content to sit on the opposite side of the
+hearth and let his eyes rest upon her in silence. She was paler, he
+thought, as he watched the orange light from the flames play over the
+oval face and throw up its regular lines. She was sitting sideways to
+him, gazing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> absently into the heart of the glowing coals, and her
+shadow, formed by the lamp between her and Stephen, fell strongly and
+clearly outlined upon the opposite wall. Stephen sat in his corner and
+gazed at it through half-closed eyes. He had been working hard all day,
+and in the keen, biting air; the warmth and the rest were grateful to
+him. The silence in the room had lasted so long that he began to feel
+drowsy under the influence of this quiet warmth. He watched the shadow
+sleepily, and dreamy fancies floated across his brain. The clean-cut,
+delicate profile was magnified to colossal proportions on the blank
+wall. So it seemed to Stephen that beautiful presence would dominate his
+life, fill in completely the blank of his colourless existence, as the
+large shadow filled the wall. Then, as his gaze followed its outlines,
+he saw what his eyes had not found before: a huge upright line of shade,
+formed by her chair back, ran up beside and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> mingling with the other
+lines. It seemed to curve over towards her shoulder, and then a few
+seconds more, and to Stephen's drowsy gaze, the harsh line expanded into
+a hideous grotesque figure. Out of those few shades upon the wall there
+leaped a picture to his eyes: the girl, and at her side, bending over
+her, a hideous devil, a strange vampire, hovering nearer or farther, in
+blacker or lighter shades, as the flames in the fire rose and fell.
+Stephen watched in a fascinated stupor, and then suddenly, as the light
+died down in the grate and the shade leaped out nearer and blacker, he
+started to his feet with a sudden exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>The girl started too, and looked up. "What is it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen pointed to the wall. Katrine turned, the blaze sprang up on the
+hearth, the shadows were gone, the illusion vanished.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she said again, wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing&mdash;a hideous shape on the wall," stammered Stephen. "I was
+watching your shadow, and another seemed to come up and threaten it.
+Imagination, I suppose&mdash;perhaps I had fallen into a dream," he added
+hurriedly, fearing she would laugh at him.</p>
+
+<p>But Katrine did not laugh: she looked at him gravely and in silence. In
+her mind she was pondering a question, hesitating, half fearing to speak
+to him, half impelled to, and half held back, and the equal opposite
+forces acting on her mind kept her silent.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen, unused to her present mood, felt perhaps she was annoyed or
+wearied, and drew out his watch. It was past ten.</p>
+
+<p>"I will say good-night," he said, rising.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine got up too. Her face paled yet more, her bosom rose and fell
+quickly. "Take me away from here," she said abruptly and suddenly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had been thinking all the evening how she would approach the subject
+with him, and then at last his leave-taking had startled away all her
+circuitous phrases and left her only the crudest words at her command to
+express her meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen was startled and confused, but his voice was very tender as he
+took her hand in his and said, "I don't understand, dear; what do you
+mean?"</p>
+
+<p>He felt her hand tremble in his. She looked up at him appealingly. Her
+eyes seemed frightened and uncertain. She was more womanly at this
+moment than she had ever been. To Stephen she was infinitely more
+fascinating than she had ever been. Accustomed to her bright, fearless
+independence, admire that as he might, in this weakness, whatever its
+cause, she was irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I mean," she said, speaking nervously, but with an effort to
+control her ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>citement, "the other day you spoke of our being married,
+and I said I couldn't stand a quiet life. Stephen, I will marry you now,
+and go anywhere with you. I will be content with any life, any
+monotony&mdash;only take me from here at once! I loathe this place, this
+life." She stopped suddenly, and a wave of crimson blood swept over the
+white face. "I want to be taken away," she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen looked at her a moment in silence, with a sense of apprehension
+and alarm. He could not do as she asked; he was not free&mdash;his claim held
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know quite what you mean," he said, a little stiffly, though he
+felt he did know. "It would be quite impossible for me to go away now;
+my whole heart's in the work, and I've sunk all I had in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and your soul too," said Katrine suddenly, looking at him with
+shining eyes and a calm face. "You're a slave now to your gold,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> the
+same as we all are here&mdash;a community of slaves," and she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen grew red, and looked confused, alarmed, and angry, all at the
+same time.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody would go now," he said, remonstratingly, "and leave ground like
+that. It would be insanity. Ask Talbot, ask anybody if they would."</p>
+
+<p>"Talbot!" repeated Katrine, scornfully; "he's the worst slave of all;
+but then he never preached about his soul, and wanting to reform
+people."</p>
+
+<p>"No one can reform you if you won't reform yourself," replied Stephen,
+coldly; and there he spoke the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was it who has put in our prayer, 'Lead us not into temptation, but
+deliver us from evil'? Here I live in temptation: I am always thrown
+into evil. If I were not&mdash;" Her voice was very quiet, and had a strange
+pathetic note in it. It ceased, and then there was silence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stephen felt as if a hand were laid on his lips and crushed down the
+voice that kept struggling from his heart. A second more, and then the
+girl laughed suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I was stupid! I did not know what I was saying, did not mean it
+anyway. It's quite right for you to stick to your claim and the idea you
+started with, and so on. You will make a great success if you do, and
+that is all you want!"</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was jesting and cynical as ever now&mdash;the usual hardness had
+come back to her face. The moment of submission, of confidence, of
+repentance, had passed&mdash;a moment when she could have been moved and won
+to any life he wished, and he had lost it. He felt it. Yet how could he
+have done otherwise?</p>
+
+<p>"Forget what I said&mdash;quite," she added; "and go now. It's getting late,
+and I want to get down to the saloons."</p>
+
+<p>A thrill of horror went through Stephen, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> she knew it would. He gazed
+at her blankly with a horrible feeling, as if he were murdering
+somebody, clutching at his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you waiting for?" she said, impatiently. "Why don't you hurry
+back to your claim?"</p>
+
+<p>"Katrine ... I&mdash;" he stammered, staring at her, but even as he looked a
+great wall of gold seemed to rise between them and shut her from him.
+"Forgive me," he muttered brokenly; "I can't give it up now."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," said Katrine, and he turned and fumbled for the door
+handle and went out.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone Katrine turned to her small square of looking-glass
+that hung beneath the lamp on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"What a fool I was to-night!" she said, looking at the sweet reflection
+and smiling lips.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes after Stephen had gone, a slight figure, muffled up to the
+eyes, slipped out of No. 13 and hurried with quick steps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> down the
+uneven footway of Good Luck Row.</p>
+
+<p>That night Stephen climbed to his cabin with his head on fire and a
+singing in his ears. A terrific struggle was going on in his breast. He
+felt the path of duty was clear to him now, and equally that he did not
+want to follow it. He had tried to shut his eyes to it; tried to believe
+that it was not clear, that he did not know what was right or necessary
+to do, and therefore that he might be excused if he did not do it, but
+he could close his eyes no longer. They had been dragged open to-night,
+and he could not wilfully close them again. As he strode up the narrow
+little snow path leading to his cabin he felt that he knew his duty, and
+he groaned out aloud in the silent icy night.</p>
+
+<p>To leave now meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, the million
+dollars that he felt in a month or two he could take out of his claim;
+and to stay meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, a human soul! A
+million dollars, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> human soul! These two ideas possessed him. A million
+dollars, a human soul! the two thoughts rang alternately through his
+brain until it seemed as if voices were crying them out upon the
+soundless air. According to his religion, spirits combated for the soul
+of man, and it seemed to Stephen that night as he mounted the solitary
+path under the far-seeing eyes of the frosty stars above him, that
+spirits really fought around him, good and evil, for the victory. "A
+million dollars!" shouted the evil ones, "do not throw them away." "A
+human soul!" wailed the others, "do not let it fall into evil." His
+sensitive, excitable mind trembled before the crisis. His own soul
+shuddered and sickened, for he seemed to see the hosts of greed of gold,
+and they were stronger than the hosts of light. And Stephen himself now
+was badly equipped for the conflict. He felt and recognised with dismay
+he had not the strength and the fervour now that had brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> him
+through former battles. He was as a warrior that has fallen asleep and
+awakened to find his arms grown rusty while he has been sleeping.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually for the last six months the lust for gold had been eating into
+his spirituality and destroying it. You cannot serve God and mammon: had
+he not entered into the services of mammon, and been held there by the
+rich rewards?</p>
+
+<p>He thought of the rich pans he had been getting out. There was no claim
+like his in the camp. There was no man more envied nor considered more
+lucky than he. Yes, mammon had paid him well in the six months he had
+served it, showered upon him more than God had done in six-and-twenty
+years; and here was God's gift, a human soul, a sweet human life, he
+could save and make his own&mdash;and Stephen groaned again, for he felt that
+the gold was dearer to him. How could he have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> so changed, he wondered.
+A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of a million dollars being
+a bribe for him to sin. He looked into his heart now and found there was
+nothing there but a passion for gold, gold! It was a yellow rust that
+had eaten into his Christian's sword.</p>
+
+<p>Then his thoughts strayed to the girl he had just left, and her bright
+fresh face seemed to sway before him as he walked. His excited fancy
+painted it upon the snow banks at his side. She was so young, she seemed
+so fresh and lovely, it was impossible to think of her as tainted
+already with vice and sin. It was only if she were kept in this
+snow-bound prison, this mournful land of darkness and suffering, where,
+as she said, she had no place nor aim, that she would fall as those
+bright meteors were falling now far in the distant darkness. He could be
+her deliverer, her saviour, if&mdash;if he could.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the icy cold of that arctic night, great drops of sweat broke out
+hotly on Stephen's forehead as his brain was wrenched to and fro in the
+struggle. He tried to bribe even himself, tried to let his thoughts
+dwell on his passion for the girl, tried to think of the mere human
+sweetness that would go hand in hand with his victory over evil. If he
+won that bright clean soul for God, would he not also win that loved
+human form for himself? But even the voice of passion was drowned in the
+clamour of the greater greed.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, as soon as it was light, Stephen went out to his
+claims. None of his men had come up to work yet. Stephen stood and
+looked over the stretch of ground beneath which he believed his fortunes
+lay. A light covering of snow had fallen on it during the night and lay
+about a foot deep in one unbroken sheet, not even the mark of a bird's
+foot disturbed its blank evenness: the claims looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> very cold and
+drear in the dull dusky grey light of the dawn under that leaden sky.
+But Stephen's heart beat quickly as he gazed upon them. What did it
+matter that cold, dreary, surface, when the gold lay glowing underneath!</p>
+
+<p>Stephen felt as only a man of his sensitive conscience could feel his
+defeat of the previous night. His heart, all his better nature was
+crushed under a sickening load of mortification, and he sought
+desperately to find relief and justification for himself in
+contemplating the treasure for whose sake he had accepted it. As in
+other circumstances a man would solace himself for all sacrifices by
+gazing on the face of a mistress for whom he had relinquished worldly
+ambitions, and find excuses for himself in her beauty, telling himself a
+hundred times she was worth it all; so Stephen now gazed upon his
+claims, for which he had given up his scruples, his principles, his
+conscience,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> and his God, and tried to hug to himself the comfort that
+they were worth it. After a few seconds he tramped across the frozen
+snow to the line marked out by the banks of gravel where they had been
+at work the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>That evening he could not stay in his cabin, he felt restless and ill at
+ease. A nervous sense of anxiety hung over him. He seemed to himself to
+be expecting some misfortune. His nerves, weakened by the lonely life he
+had been living for the past months, and exhausted by the sleepless
+hours of the previous night, kept presenting picture after picture of
+possible ills. He looked over both his revolvers, to make sure they were
+in good order for defence if he were attacked that night. Then he drew
+his fur cap tightly down on his forehead and went out. The stillness of
+his own cabin and the clamour of his own thoughts were unbearable. The
+night was still and starlit, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> air keen and thin as a knife-blade.
+Stephen strode along the narrow frosty path, and took the road down into
+the town. On his way he passed Talbot's cabin. It was lighted up. The
+little window made a square of yellow light in the darkness; the blind
+over it was drawn only half-way down. Stephen stepped up over the bank
+of frosted snow and looked in. The great fire lighted up the whole of
+the small interior, and threw its red light up to the cross logs in the
+roof. In the centre of the room, at a table. Talbot sat working. There
+were some sheets of paper before him, and he held a pen in his hand with
+which he was checking off some figures. His face was turned to the
+window; it looked pale and tired, but there was a curious expression of
+extreme tranquillity upon it&mdash;a settled, serene patience that struck the
+onlooker. He sat there working on steadily, motionless, calm as a figure
+in stone; and poor Stephen, torn in the struggle of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> desires,
+slipping into the cold slough of self-condemnation, and burnt with the
+fever of greed, groaned aloud as he stood outside. Then he turned from
+the window and plunged back through the snow to the path that led to the
+town. He wanted to see Katrine, and yet he hated the thought of facing
+her after their parting of last night. What must she think of him? With
+her quick mental perceptions she would have seen through and through his
+miserable mind; seen that the gold had got hold of him, held him now,
+and that his boasted religion had no power against it. No, he thought,
+he could not face her&mdash;he was still some distance from the town; then as
+he drew nearer, the unappeasable desire to see her and hear her fresh
+bright voice came over him. When he reached Good Luck Row he went
+straight to No. 13. He might have saved himself the trouble of his
+decisions. Katrine had decided for him whether he should see her that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+night or not. The window was dark; he tried the door, it was fastened;
+she was evidently not there. A chill ran over Stephen from head to foot,
+and then he recognized how much he had really wanted to see her. He
+stood outside the door a long time; the row was quiet, there were few
+passers. He waited, hoping to see her come up each minute&mdash;perhaps she
+had only gone out on some errand; but the minutes passed and he grew
+cold standing there, still she did not come. At last Stephen moved away
+from the door and wandered disconsolately down the row. He went on
+mechanically, not heeding where his footsteps took him, and found
+suddenly that he had reached the main street down by the river. There
+was no darkness nor quiet here, all the stores had their windows wide
+open, and the light from them poured out upon the black slippery mass of
+ice and melted snow that lay over the frozen ground. The saloons were in
+full blast, bril<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>liantly lighted and filled with noisy crowds of miners.
+The dance halls, of which there were some dozen along the street, seemed
+doing a good business. A shooting gallery that had been fixed up in a
+tent was not only filled inside, but a crowd of men and some women were
+gathered round the tent entrance, pushing and pressing each other in
+their efforts to get in; the glare from the flaming lights inside fell
+on their faces, and Stephen glanced eagerly over them to see if Katrine
+was amongst them. He passed on, disappointed. There was another tent a
+little farther on, where a cheap band was playing, and a board outside
+announced in pen-and-ink characters the attraction of a "Catherine Wheel
+Dance." The crowd here was even larger, and lights were fixed outside
+flaring merrily in the frosty air. Stephen walked on, past the stores
+and warehouses, past the noisy crowded saloons, past the brilliant dance
+halls and the variety show<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> tents. It was to him all a hideous, tawdry,
+glaring mockery of merriment; and on the other side of him was the
+sullen blackness of the frozen river. He walked on until he had
+outwalked the town front, outwalked the straggling tents, till he had
+left the noise, and light, and laughter behind him. When he glanced
+round he saw he had nothing but the river and a waste of darkness beside
+him. There was an old log in his path; he sat down upon it and looked
+back to the mist of light that hung over the town, then his gaze
+wandered back disconsolately and rested on the ice-bound river.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine had passed that day wretchedly too. She had been down idling in
+one of the saloons through the afternoon, but the old resorts seemed to
+have lost their charm. The old pleasure had gone, and the stimulus would
+not come back. The cards looked greasy and dirty and revolted her, and
+the drink seemed to turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> to carbolic acid in her mouth. She left at
+last, and went home to her lonely cabin and flung herself down in the
+dark in the chimney corner and tried to sleep, but horrible faces danced
+before her, and women with grey hair and wrinkles, with her own face,
+stared at her from the walls.</p>
+
+<p>She was still lying face downwards on the skins, half dozing now after
+that long conflict with horrible visions, when a light and very timid
+tap came on the door outside. She got up and went straight to it; her
+face was flushed and tear-stained, and her hair ruffled and in disorder,
+but she never thought to go first to the little square mirror that hung
+in the corner to improve her appearance before admitting visitors. As
+she threw open the door, the stream of hot light showed Stephen upon the
+threshold white as a spectre, chilled almost to death by his vigil at
+the river, with a strained smile on his lips and a great hunger in his
+eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> His conscience reproached him: he knew he had not come bravely
+with his hands full of the sacrifice, having conquered himself, and
+ready to lay down all for her sake; but like a coward, still in the
+thrall of his money-lust and yet longing to attain her too, unable to
+give her up. He knew all this, and stood timidly as the friendless dogs
+will gaze through an open hut-door, wistfully, expecting to be driven
+away with blows; but Katrine met him with neither harsh words nor looks,
+she just simply put out both her warm hands and drew him in over the
+threshold. The welcome, the smile, the warm touch overcame him.</p>
+
+<p>"Katrine," he muttered suddenly, as she closed the door and barred it,
+"if I&mdash;if&mdash;I gave&mdash;up," and then the words died, strangled in his
+throat. Katrine held up her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't begin to talk about anything like that," she said, gently pushing
+him down on the chair by the hearth, "till you are warm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> again. Where
+have you been freezing yourself like this?"</p>
+
+<p>She was busy lighting the lamp and setting her little old blackened
+coffee-pot over the flames. Stephen told her of his long lonely tramp by
+the river, and watched her with keen eager eyes as she made the coffee
+and poured him out a cup.</p>
+
+<p>"Now drink it all quick," she said imperatively, handing him the boiling
+mixture, from which the steam came furiously.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like the ordeal by fire," answered Stephen, meekly taking the cup.
+With a heroic effort he swallowed three parts of it, and colour began to
+come back to his face.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine observed this, and sat down contentedly on the floor in front of
+the ambitious fire, that seemed trying to leap up the chimney through
+the roof.</p>
+
+<p>"Stephen," she said very slowly and gently after a minute, "it was
+selfish of me to ask you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> to leave your claims. I've been thinking of it
+all day. I won't do it, and I will come and help you work them."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen felt the room whirl round him as he heard. Was he not in some
+rich, warm dream that would dissolve and leave him suddenly? His claims,
+those golden claims! and Katrine too&mdash;he seemed to see her dressed in
+gold, framed in gold, gold in her eyes and hair. Her movement, as she
+turned to look at him, brought him back to realities.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean it?" he said, stooping over her and catching her hands
+almost roughly in his. She met his feverish eyes with a bright, tranquil
+smile. He looked at her keenly for an instant, and involuntarily an
+exclamation broke from his lips: "Katrine! it's too much happiness for
+any man!"</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the gods above, who eye jealously the lives of mortals, here
+made a note of this remark in their pocket-books.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Katrine knitted her brows angrily. "I don't think so," she said. "You
+had better hear what sort of girl I am."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen turned pale, and leaned down over her as she sat on the hearth,
+her head against his knees. The cabin was full of the warm red
+firelight, that leaped over the walls and up to the rough blackened
+rafters above them. It glistened on the silky dark hair beneath his
+hand, and fell ruddily over the smooth oval face turned up to him.
+Stephen looked down at her and felt content.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," he said hastily; "never mind anything in the past; we will
+efface it all; we make a fresh start from to-night." He would have
+stooped and silenced her with a kiss, but an arrogant look came over her
+pale face, and she pushed him back with her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't like that idea. We must have things cleared up and tidy
+before we marry. You must know the truth from me, and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> you will
+know how to meet any one who comes to you with talk about me afterwards;
+and they may come, for I'm known in all the saloons of Dawson."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"If they keep to the truth about me, you must just accept it; if they
+tell lies, you'll just shoot them."</p>
+
+<p>Again a cold thrill passed through her lover. To talk of
+shooting&mdash;taking a human life&mdash;murder&mdash;as though it were no more than a
+snapping of the fingers! His mind flew on a sudden bound of remembrance
+back to the little school teacher in the village of Arden, who could not
+bear the sight of a rabbit's blood on the trap, and whose quiet days
+were spent between the village schoolroom and the village church; yet he
+knew he had never loved that little teacher as he loved Katrine, that
+she could never rouse him as this woman did whom he believed to be an
+epitome of evil, who, as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> lay now in the firelight by his feet,
+reminded him of the emblem of sin that crept into man's Eden. Yet it was
+a pleasure&mdash;what pleasure to be near her, to touch that smooth skin! But
+what was this pleasure?&mdash;was it also evil? What was this passion? His
+thoughts flew onward feverishly, and then Katrine's voice struck across
+them and brought him back to outer consciousness again.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," she was saying, "while I tell you all, and <i>then</i> we can start
+afresh, as you say."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen put his hand over his eyes, and waited in silence. He dreaded
+unspeakably what he thought he was going to hear, and with a man's moral
+cowardice would have deferred her confession, slurred over and tried to
+forget her wrong-doing, rather than hear and forgive it. They had
+changed places since he had asked her that morning in his cabin to
+confide in him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, to begin with," went on her clear, soft voice, "I drink&mdash;I like
+drinking. You think it wrong to drink anything but water; I like wine
+and spirits, anything that excites me, and I can drink with any man in
+town. But I have never been drunk, Stephen, you understand that. Then I
+like all kinds of gaiety, and like to spend all my time dancing and
+laughing, and what your friend Talbot calls 'fooling.' And I gamble,"
+Katrine paused a second before she said the decisive words, and then
+went on rapidly, "oh, Stephen, you don't know, I haven't told you, but I
+love the tables. I can sit up all night and play with the boys; I love
+excitement, I love the winning and raking in the gold dust. I spend all
+my nights playing; it's what I live for in this awful place."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence, then Katrine's voice broke it again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now you think that so wicked, I bet you don't want to marry me now."</p>
+
+<p>There was a half laugh with a sad ring in it as she looked up to his
+covered face. Now Stephen heard, but the words fell on his ears dully;
+he was waiting in strained painful tension for what was to come. It was
+true he loathed gambling as a hated vice, and but for the apprehension
+that gripped his mind her confession so far would have been horrible to
+him. Still it was as a Christian that he abhorred these things. What he
+expected to hear he would have abhorred as a man and a lover; and the
+former abhorrence is considerably milder than the latter.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," he said at last, in a stifled voice.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing more," returned Katrine, dejectedly.</p>
+
+<p>She thought she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a
+cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> over, clasping
+his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing,
+and drew her up to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there nothing?" he whispered eagerly in her ear. "Have you nothing
+more to confess to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Katrine gave herself up to his embrace, a delicious sense of peace and
+protection and warm comfort stealing over her such as she had never
+known.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," she murmured, with her soft lips close to his ear and her
+silky curls touching his neck. She felt Stephen grasp her close to him,
+and a tremor ran through his whole frame.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you never lain like this in a man's arms before? never felt a kiss
+on your lips?" he persisted, holding her to him with a fierce intensity
+of growing passion.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never," Katrine answered, opening her calm dark eyes and looking
+straight up to his.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stephen met their gaze for one long second, a proud, tranquil, fearless
+look that sunk deep into his soul and poured balm into every wound she
+had ever made there. The next moment she felt a torrent of hot kisses on
+her face, a pressure that almost stifled her on her breast, a murmur of
+"Darling, my darling," and knew nothing very clearly any more except
+that she was loved and very happy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>GOLD-PLATED</h3>
+
+
+<p>The next afternoon, when Stephen returned to the west gulch and Talbot
+heard his news, he said he was glad, and meant it. Life at the gulch was
+very desolate and dreary, and such a bright glad presence as the girl's
+would alleviate the monotony and disperse the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>For the following week both men were busy preparing Stephen's cabin for
+her reception and trying to impart to it a bridal appearance. The hands
+were left to do the work on the claims, and Talbot and Stephen were too
+busy indoors to even oversee them. The cabin was large and well built.
+It stood looking across the gulch, and half-way down it, over the tops
+of the dark green pines and facing towards the western horizon, where
+the pink lights played<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> and the little sundogs gambolled in the fall of
+the short grey snowy afternoons. Stephen was down in town once in the
+week, and came back with his pony laden with mysterious packages, and
+when Talbot came in in the evening he found Stephen on his knees,
+tacking down strips of carpet by the bed in the inner room. Narrow
+curtains had also been nailed up beside the window, and altogether the
+cabin presented a luxurious appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"This is quite magnificent," remarked Talbot, strolling about with an
+admiring air.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye think so?" replied Stephen in a pleased tone, lifting a flushed
+face from his tacks and sitting back on his boot heels. "She's awfully
+handsome, isn't she? Say, it's strange to come to a hole like this and
+meet the handsomest girl you've ever seen!"</p>
+
+<p>"She is very handsome," assented Talbot, sitting down by the stove and
+stretching out his frozen feet before it. He was in the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> room, but
+close to the open door leading into the bedroom, and facing Stephen as
+he sat on the floor with the screw of tacks by his side that had been
+paid for in gold.</p>
+
+<p>"And good, too, eh? good at heart, don't you think? Only not exactly
+religious, of course," he continued.</p>
+
+<p>"No, she's not very religious," returned Talbot, with the dry, hard tone
+in his voice that his subordinates knew and hated.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's not every one who says, 'Lord, Lord, that shall enter the
+kingdom of heaven,'" quoted Stephen; "you remember, Christ said that,"
+he pursued in an anxious tone, peering up at the other for
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot gave his slight, quiet laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got the handsomest girl in the place," he said, "and a very
+nice, charming one, too. I don't see what more you want."</p>
+
+<p>To his strong, determined character this per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>petual straining after a
+religion that was cast to the winds first at the temptation of gold, and
+then at a saloon-keeper's daughter's smile, was rather contemptible.</p>
+
+<p>"And 'there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,' etc.,"
+Stephen continued, anxious to persuade himself into a comfortable frame
+of mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Has Miss Poniatovsky repented?" asked Talbot, still more dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes; I told you all she said. She won't gamble any more."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot was silent; through his mind was running a line of Latin to the
+effect that wool once dyed scarlet can never recover its former tint,
+but he said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>It did not take Katrine long to prepare for her wedding. There was no
+such thing as buying a trousseau in Dawson. She gathered together her
+coarse woollen underclothes, her stout short dresses, and thick boots,
+and packed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> them in two flat cases, such as can be strapped to a burro's
+side, and these were to be all she would take up to the cabin in the
+gulch besides her wealth of natural beauty. She did go to many of the
+stores around, buying trifles such as might happen to find themselves
+there and suit her: a small looking-glass here, a ribbon or a piece of
+lace there, and as she leaned across the rough trestle counter she
+generally remarked to the storekeeper, "I'm going to be married." She
+said it in the shyest, happiest tone imaginable, and a little blush
+stole over her smooth cheeks. In this way the news got round to
+Katrine's old friends and associates. She would have liked to have told
+them herself, but the old hunting grounds were forbidden to her now, and
+Stephen's wishes made a barrier between her and the entrance of all the
+saloons. He had tried to make her give him a solemn promise never to
+enter one again, but this Katrine would not do.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I can't be tied like that," she had said. "Something might occur to
+make it necessary for me to go into one of those places; and if I had
+promised you in this way, I could not. You have said you don't wish me
+to go; I have said I won't. Isn't that enough?" And Stephen had looked
+into the clear dark eyes and had said "Quite."</p>
+
+<p>The day of Stephen's marriage, the day when Katrine was to arrive as a
+bride at the west gulch, was calm and still. There was no wind and no
+snow falling. The sky stretched black and gloomy above the plains of
+snow; it was a day of the Alaskan winter, but still a good day for that.
+Stephen had gone down the previous day, and slept the night in Dawson.
+Talbot was waiting at the cabin to receive them on their return. As he
+stood at the little window that overlooked the trail, waiting for the
+first glimpse of them, and staring across the dismal waste that ran into
+grey and dreary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> mist in the distance, a great revolt stirred in his
+usually calm and philosophic breast&mdash;a sudden longing swept over him for
+the blue skies and warm air of the lands he was accustomed to, and a
+wilder longing still for a glimpse of the sunlight held in two eyes that
+were fairer than any sky. He shut his teeth hard, and his hand closed
+tightly on the window frame. "Only a little longer," he muttered to
+himself, and then far in the distance came a soft silvery tinkle of
+bells. Recalled to himself, he relaxed his face in a pleasant smile, and
+went to the door and opened it. In a second or two they came in sight,
+riding single file up the narrow trail, the girl first and Stephen
+following. She wore a large skin coat of some shaggy fur which concealed
+her figure, though not its splendid upright pose, and on her head was a
+small fur cap of some light colour, white fox or rabbit. Beneath showed
+her dark glossy hair curling upwards over the brim, and her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> glowing
+face rich and fresh as a Damascus rose.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot was greatly struck. The realisation of her beauty came home to
+him very forcibly in this cold, envious light of open day. "Stephen's
+not such a fool, after all," was his inward comment as he went forward
+to meet them. As he lifted her from her pony and bade her welcome to the
+cabins and the west gulch, she smiled down upon him. What a mysterious,
+magic thing human beauty is, and the human smile! It seems to light the
+dreariest sky, people the loneliest landscape. Where there is a human
+smile to reflect one's own, not even a desert seems desolate, not even a
+prison cell seems cold. Talbot felt this very strongly in that moment.
+As the warm, bright, laughing, youthful face looked into his, the sun
+seemed to have suddenly burst out upon that dreary snowy plain, and as
+the two men escorted her over the threshold it seemed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> both that they
+were throwing open the door not only to her concrete self but to the
+abstracts, warmth and light, and gaiety and laughter, and that these all
+flowed in with her into the simple rough interior, transforming and
+illumining it.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine was delighted with her new home; she walked about examining
+every detail and showing her joy and pleasure in each little trifle that
+had been prepared for her. She had a very soft voice and manner when she
+chose,&mdash;she was too young yet for her gambling, drinking, and rough
+associates to have spoiled,&mdash;and Stephen stood in the centre of the
+room, flushed and silent with the fulness of his pleasure, following her
+eagerly with his eyes. After all, in this world of ours, everything
+stands in such close relation to its surrounding objects and
+circumstances that there is no absoluteness left. Or you may consider it
+the other way, that the feelings are absolute and always the same. A
+millionaire bridegroom could not receive more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> pleasure from the
+pleasure of his bride when viewing the mansion he had prepared for her,
+than Stephen did now from Katrine's approval of his log hut, and her
+thanks and smiles were as sweet over a little wooden shelf tacked
+against the wall, as if a two thousand dollar chandelier had called them
+forth.</p>
+
+<p>Then Stephen took her arm and drew her into the next room, and here she
+was so shy and nervous she could not look about at all. Stephen took off
+her cloak and all her outer wraps, and then made her come and see her
+reflection in a little square looking-glass that he had obtained for her
+at quite a high price; but Katrine could not face the mirror, and hid
+her blushing cheeks and downcast eyes on his shoulder instead. Stephen
+put his arm round her. "You don't regret what you have done?" he asked
+in alarm, pressing her close to him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, oh no, dear Steve, only it's all so strange; let's go back to the
+other room."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They returned, as she wished, and found that Talbot had laid the dinner
+for them,&mdash;a dinner he had spent all the morning in preparing,&mdash;and they
+sat down to it with a gaiety that made up for the shortness of supplies.
+After dinner they drew close round the fire and prolonged the roasting
+and eating of chestnuts and drinking whisky throughout the
+afternoon,&mdash;for whisky was there, strongly as Stephen objected to see
+her drink it; still it was their wedding day, and he let it pass. As
+darkness came down a whirling snow-storm swept through the gulch; they
+could see the thin sharp flakes fly past the window on the cutting wind,
+and hear the whistling roar of the storm as it struck and beat upon the
+cabin. They only flung more logs into the stove, and gave a backward
+glance over their shoulders from time to time towards the window. By
+nine in the evening, when Talbot was leaving them to go to his own
+cabin, it had calmed down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> a little, though the wind still moaned in the
+hollows of the gulch.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen and Katrine stood at the window a second after he had gone,
+looking out into the curious misty whiteness and blackness commingled of
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry there should be such a storm the first day you are here,
+darling," said Stephen softly, putting his arm round her waist.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what does that matter? I do not mind, I have you to protect me.
+You will always now, Steve, won't you, from everything? I don't want
+ever to go back to that gambling life again."</p>
+
+<p>He drew her into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, of course I will," he said, kissing her. "I will always take
+care of you."</p>
+
+<p>Her arms were interlaced about his neck, they looked into each other's
+eyes, and neither knew any more whether it was a storm or a calm in the
+night outside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For the first few weeks after their marriage Katrine was more than
+happy, and it seemed to those lonely beings, sheltered from the savage
+siege of Nature only by those frail little cabins built by their own
+hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had
+blossomed for them suddenly&mdash;a perfect spring in winter. The girl's
+wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and
+she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to
+smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless
+existence. Nothing seemed to have the power to disturb her, the most
+irritating and annoying incident never even brought a frown to her face;
+it filled her with consternation for the men, and an immediate desire to
+smooth it over for them, if possible to prevent their being ruffled by
+it. For herself, she seemed above the reach of any circumstance to
+disconcert. One morning the men had an instance of this.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> They were all
+three living together in Stephen's cabin now. That is to say, Talbot
+took all his meals there, and used it as his own home in every way,
+except that he still went back to his cabin to sleep. It had seemed
+cheerless to both Katrine and Stephen for Talbot to be eating alone a
+few yards from them, and though it gave the girl more work, and for that
+reason Talbot was slow to accept the arrangement, she herself coaxed him
+into it. They came in late from the claims to lunch, and found her
+bending over the fire, with flushed cheeks and happy eyes. She was
+stirring a great saucepan of inviting looking and smelling stew, that
+she had spent the whole morning in preparing. The large handle of the
+pan projected from the stove some distance, and as Stephen threw off his
+overcoat he managed in some way to tip up the saucepan with a sudden
+jerk that sent the contents half into the fire, half over the girl's
+bare arm,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> from which her sleeve was rolled to the elbow. She did not
+utter a sound as the scalding liquid ran burning over her flesh, but
+Talbot saw her face grow deadly pale with the sickening pain. After a
+second of agony, when she found her voice, and Stephen was remorsefully
+spreading fat over the blistered, cracking flesh, the first thing she
+said, with her eyes full of disappointed tears, was, "Oh dear! how
+unlucky! Now you won't get anything hot for lunch." And as soon as a
+bandage was twisted round her scalded arm, she was over at the cupboard
+collecting all the best of her cold supplies and laying them out on the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a word of anger or reproof to Stephen for his
+carelessness, not a word of her own pain. The great sorrow that she was
+anxious to smooth over and atone for to them was that they would have to
+put up with a cold luncheon!</p>
+
+<p>Her one idea, the sole thought that occupied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> her, was to make these two
+men happy, at any cost to herself. All day she studied how she could
+make their life, so hard and rough smoother for them, how she could
+alleviate the labour and monotony of it. She rose in the morning long
+before either was awake, and had the fires blazing, wood brought in,
+water melted out, and the coffee made by the time they came into the
+sitting-room, looking white and sleepy in the flare of the common
+candles. All the house work they had formerly found hard, when counted
+in addition to their outside labour, she took entirely upon herself, and
+insensibly they both felt the relief very great. There was no coming
+home now, worn out and frozen, to a cheerless cabin, and being obliged
+to chop wood and light fires and split ice before they could get warm
+and rested. A glowing hearth, a laid table, a smiling face, always
+awaited them. Often coming up from the dump at the lower end of the
+claim, they could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> see the square patch of red light flung out from the
+window on the snow, bidding them hurry in to the welcome warmth and
+light inside.</p>
+
+<p>The daylight only lasted them now from ten to two, and for these hours
+the men worked out of doors. During their absence the girl went out on
+shooting expeditions of her own. She had invented a modified snow-shoe,
+broad and short, with slightly curved-up ends, and with these strapped
+on to her lithe feet, her fur coat fastened up to her chin, and her fur
+cap drawn over her ears and to her brows, she defied the fall of the
+mercury, and skimmed over the snow as silently and swiftly as a shadow
+moving.</p>
+
+<p>She enjoyed these long, lonely excursions, with her heart kept warm by
+the hope of discovering something she could bring down with her pistol
+or her shot-gun, and carry back as a surprise and a treat for the men
+for supper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> There was not much indeed to be found; but a small breed of
+snow-bird was prevalent, and quite a flock of these would very often
+follow or precede a snow-storm, and whenever Katrine's keen eye caught
+sight of the little dark patch that a cluster of them made against the
+snow, she would glide swiftly over in that direction, and have eight or
+ten of them swinging at her belt to take home. They were small, but
+cooked as she knew how to cook them, they were a delicacy beyond price
+to the men who for months had tasted little but beans and hard bacon.
+Katrine felt quite happy if she could return through the suddenly
+falling gloom of the afternoon and cross the darkened threshold just as
+the men came back, half frozen, from the creek, and show her cluster of
+victims swinging by their long-necked heads from her waist.</p>
+
+<p>She thought of them, planned for their comfort, and worked for them all
+day; while to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> husband she was absolutely devoted, and one would
+think that for such devotion a few smiles, a kiss, and some kind words
+was a small price to pay. Yet after the first few weeks, and even during
+them, Stephen, who worked all day to secure his mining gains, would not
+even exert himself to that degree to return the affection that was worth
+all his claims put together. One kiss given before he went out to his
+work in the morning would have made Katrine happy all day, one tender
+inquiry on his return would have amply rewarded her for all her labours,
+yet he invariably went out to the claims without bestowing the one, and
+returned without making the other. Hard work, privations, loneliness,
+even the absence of all the amusements she had delighted in, would not
+have broken her spirits; she would have accepted them all cheerfully, if
+her husband had only thrown over them the little light and warmth of his
+affection that she longed for.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Each day she hoped it might be
+different; but no, he grew more and more absorbed by the gold fever that
+was eating away his heart and brain, and the girl grew more and more
+depressed and resentful. "It would be no trouble to him," she murmured
+to herself over and over again, as she stood at the wash-tub, wringing
+out his shirts, or knelt on the floor of the cabin scrubbing the boards,
+"just a kiss or a smile."</p>
+
+<p>She did not in the meantime relax any of her attention to him. Her smile
+for him was always as sweet when he returned, her efforts to please him
+as untiring, but in her heart her thoughts turned more and more
+constantly day by day to the idea of leaving him, of returning to her
+own life, where at least she had not been tormented by this perpetual
+hope and expectation and disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen never dreamed that the girl's thoughts were as they were; though
+if he had done so, he probably would not have altered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> his own
+course&mdash;for Katrine in several angry outbursts had appealed to him, had
+told him how she hungered after, not great and difficult proofs of his
+love, but the little ones, the trifles, how he was starving and killing
+her love for him by his neglect of it, and he either could not, or would
+not, understand. But that she contemplated ever leaving him never
+crossed his brain, any more than the conception of the passionate hate
+she felt for him at times when he left undone some trifling thing, that
+if done, would have roused an equally passionate access to her love. He,
+jaundiced with this mental yellow fever, thought his rich claims, his
+great wealth, had probably had some influence on the daughter of the
+Polish Jew when she accepted him. He relied, in fact, on his wealth, and
+on the material advantages she would gain by clinging to him, to hold
+her to him. And with Katrine this was a rope of sand. She cared no more
+for Stephen's wealth and for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> claims than if they had been ash
+heaps. There was not a touch of avarice, of calculating greed, in her
+whole character, and to gratify her own impulse she would have cast all
+material advantages aside. From Stephen she wanted love, and that only,
+and this was the only chain that could hold for an instant her proud,
+independent, reckless will.</p>
+
+<p>There were the makings of a splendid character in the girl, all the
+foundations of all the best qualities in her: a little care, a little
+culture bestowed on them, and she would have developed into a fine and
+noble woman; but Stephen's eyes were blinded by the glare of the gold he
+saw in his visions, and the far greater and more wonderful treasure, the
+living human soul, that chance had given over to his care, unfolded
+itself slowly before him in all its beauty, and he could no longer see
+it. To Talbot it seemed incredible that Katrine through her mere
+physical beauty did not obtain a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> greater hold upon him, that she seemed
+so unable to absorb him, that she could not triumph over him by the road
+of the senses. Talbot himself was absorbed in his work, but even he, the
+onlooker, the outsider, felt the influence of this brilliant young
+presence that had come suddenly into their sordid life, like the sun
+rising in radiant majesty over a barren plain. The common table at which
+they sat seemed no longer the same now that she was at the head, with
+her beautiful figure rising above it, and her laughing, lovely
+nineteen-year-old face looking down it. To him, those liquid flashing
+eyes, and arching brows, and curled red lips seemed to light, positively
+light, the small and common room. But the eye grows accustomed to beauty
+and ceases to heed it, just as it grows accustomed to, and ceases to
+heed, ugliness and deformity, especially where there is no standard, no
+measure for it, no comparison with other objects. Just as any
+shortcoming, any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> mental or physical defect that a man hardly notices in
+a woman he loves, when alone with her, becomes painfully apparent to him
+when he sees her surrounded by others, so does her beauty strike him
+when reflected in other eyes, and pass unheeded when seen only by his
+own. Katrine was alone, there was no other woman's face to either rival
+or be a foil to hers, and after the first six weeks her beauty ceased to
+sting and surprise Stephen's senses. She, as it were, became the
+standard, since there was no other. And there is no absoluteness about
+beauty, nor our admiration for it. When we say we admire a woman because
+she is beautiful, we mean we admire her because she is more beautiful
+than other women. If all others were the same as she, she would cease to
+be called a beautiful woman, and if there were none others than she,
+then she would simply be a woman for us. We could not know whether she
+was beautiful or not. Man's senses are made not to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> perceive, but to
+compare, and he cannot judge except by comparison. Talbot knew all this,
+and he could not help feeling sorry that a girl such as this should be
+so isolated with them, and that the man who possessed her should realise
+his good fortune so little. He suggested often, for the girl's sake,
+excursions down into the town; but Stephen, partly from his religious
+views, and more from his anxiety not to waste a minute of his literally
+golden time, always frowned down the question, and though the girl
+looked at him wistfully she never complained against his decisions. She
+seemed to have completely accepted the idea that her marriage meant the
+renunciation of all the things she had delighted in, and if her marriage
+had given her more of what she had hoped for, she would have been
+contented with the change.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, when Stephen was out in the shed at the back of the cabin
+stacking up some wood by the light of a candle stuck in a chink<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> of the
+logs, Talbot and the girl were sitting idle on each side of the stove,
+and somehow, though Talbot seldom opened his lips on such matters,
+seldom in his life offered opinion or advice to others, they had now
+been speaking of her marriage, and Stephen's attitude towards her.</p>
+
+<p>There were tears in her great eyes, and her under lip quivered and
+turned downwards like a wet rose-leaf.</p>
+
+<p>"He is so <i>very</i> wrapped up in all this digging business, why did he
+want to marry me at all?" she said, in a sort of helpless childish
+wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot was silent, looking at her, and then instead of answering her
+question, said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you make him notice you more? why can't you appeal to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Appeal to him!" she repeated; "it's no use. Why, he is
+gold-plated&mdash;eyes, ears, touch, everything, all plated over; you can't
+reach him through it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Have men nothing like affection in them?" she said, after a minute.
+"Have they nothing between their mad bursts of passion and a cold
+incivility? What do they do with all the charming ways they have before
+they possess a woman? Stephen was so gentle, so nice, so interested,
+when he used to visit me down town; and now you see how rude and hateful
+he is very often. Why do they change? I have not changed. I am still as
+attentive, as eager to please him, more so, than when he came to my
+cabin. Oh," she added, after a minute, "I'm getting so tired of it all,
+I feel I'd like to throw it all up and go back to my own life and
+freedom. All the men are so civil and so nice and so devoted as long as
+a woman does nothing for them," she said simply, not fully realising
+perhaps the terrible ironical truth she was half-unconsciously uttering.</p>
+
+<p>"I could love him immensely," she added, stretching out her arms; "oh,
+he could have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> such a love from me, if he wanted it; but as it is, I
+don't see much use in my staying with him. I feel I'd like to go back to
+my own life and forget I ever married him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you must not do that," said Talbot, startled out of his usual calm,
+and fixing his eyes on her; "pray don't think of such things."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he would care?" she said, opening her eyes in her turn.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure he would," Talbot answered, with so much emphasis and decision
+that the girl sat silent and impressed for some seconds.</p>
+
+<p>"Why is he not more amiable then?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It's men's way," returned Talbot, not knowing exactly what to say, and
+accidentally hitting the truth completely.</p>
+
+<p>"They're fools," replied Katrine, angrily, while the hot tears fell
+thickly into her lap.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen came in at the moment, and though Katrine made no attempt to
+conceal the fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> that she was crying, he took no notice of her, but
+began talking to Talbot about the wood.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have to take the sleigh to-morrow and go up the gulch and get
+some more wood somehow, if we can. There's only a few bundles left," he
+said, blowing out the candle and dragging some heavy logs over to the
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I come with you?" asked Katrine, looking at him with her soft
+pathetic eyes, still brimming with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;yes&mdash;I suppose so," returned Stephen, slowly opening the stove and
+looking in.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall enjoy it so much," answered Katrine, her face beginning to
+sparkle with its accustomed smiles. "We have not had a sleigh ride
+together once, have we? I'd like to go with you better than anything.
+You'll like it too, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; it's a confounded nuisance having to leave the claims a
+whole afternoon, I think."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Katrine got up suddenly from where she was sitting and walked into the
+next room without a word. Her tears were dried, her smiles killed.</p>
+
+<p>The following day was clear and bright, and a cold, pinky-looking winter
+sunlight filled the air. Katrine and Stephen started early, and Talbot
+did not expect them back till dark. He was out on the claims all the
+morning, and came in to his lunch late and did not go out again
+immediately. It was a day for a half-holiday, and all his men left
+early; the claims were deserted, and Talbot found himself in solitary
+possession of the gulch. He felt restless and unsettled, and walked
+about his little bare room in an aimless way quite unusual to him, and
+the early part of the afternoon had passed away before he realised it.</p>
+
+<p>In one of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The
+gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> majesty and
+desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour
+by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day.
+It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges
+and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and
+listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and
+oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's
+figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly
+where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence and loneliness, that
+Talbot started a little with sheer surprise; and then another appeared,
+and another. They were coming, one behind the other, singly, round the
+corner of the house, and as they emerged into view on the level platform
+in front of it Talbot looked them over and saw at a glance to what order
+they belonged.</p>
+
+<p>"As tough a crowd of claim-jumpers as I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> have seen," he murmured to
+himself as he watched their movements. They did not seem very decided or
+certain, nor well agreed amongst themselves. There were six in all, and
+they advanced towards the house in a loitering way, pausing once or
+twice to talk with each other, and glancing over the cabin. They were
+all dressed alike, in large slouch hats, thick boots and high leggings,
+and short coats with a belt round the waist, from which depended their
+enormous six-shooters. As they finally, in their loitering fashion,
+neared the door, Talbot walked to it, threw it wide open, and asked them
+what they wanted. They hung back from the door a little and looked at
+each other, and then one said he had a lease on the claims from General
+Marshall.</p>
+
+<p>"I am the only person who has power or authority to give a lease on
+these claims," returned Talbot in a short, hard voice.</p>
+
+<p>The men hesitated. Talbot looked pretty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> tough himself as he stood there
+facing them, clothed in buckskin from head to foot, his head nearly
+touching the lintel of the doorway above him, his revolver on his side,
+and behind him looming the tunnel, a gaping mouth of blackness.</p>
+
+<p>The men shuffled their feet on the snow and grinned at each other
+uneasily. It did not seem they could work the game of bluff here that
+they had thought out in the town.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's your opinion," returned the leader in a bantering tone,
+while the others closed in nearer the threshold in a jeering circle;
+"but a lease from General Marshall's good enough for us, and I guess
+we're coming in."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better try it," returned Talbot, and he slammed to the heavy door
+in their faces, and fastened it on the inside.</p>
+
+<p>He expected them to force it, and he hastily dragged together some sacks
+of rich dirt that were lying in the tunnel and piled them up,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> forming
+quite a respectable barricade. Behind these he took his stand, his
+revolver in his hand. With six against one he felt they must win in the
+end, but he thought he could put a bullet through half of their number
+as they advanced, and he'd sell his claim and his life dear.</p>
+
+<p>He waited some moments, but nothing happened. There was silence outside,
+and after a second or two he stepped back to his sitting-room and looked
+out of the window. A council of war was taking place seemingly. The men
+had all withdrawn to a little distance, where there was some old tin
+piping. They had seated themselves on this, and were now in earnest
+conversation. Talbot stood at the window and watched them with a dry
+smile. He could tell their talk almost from their expressions and their
+gestures. It was one thing to come up and bluff a man out of his
+property, and walk in and take it as he walked out; and another to force
+a narrow tunnel against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> straight, steady fire of a fearless devil
+like this. They could overpower him in the end, there was no doubt of
+that; but then when they walked in it would be over his dead body, that
+was clear, and several others besides him, for he was known to be the
+quickest, straightest shot in the district, and could certainly get away
+with some of them. It was this part they did not like, for each man felt
+he might be the one to be picked off and stretched stiff in the tunnel.
+So there was considerable parleying and hesitation amongst them, and
+Talbot stood motionless at the window watching them as they sat there,
+and noting the length of their six-shooters that dangled down the sides
+of their legs. At last there was a concerted movement amongst them: they
+got up with one accord, and without another glance at the cabin walked
+slowly away across the plateau in front of the house and round the
+corner of it towards the town trail, the way they had come. Talbot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+watched them disappear in the grey light of the gulch with surprise, and
+then drew a deep breath. He hardly knew whether he felt relieved or
+disappointed. His blood was up then, and he would have liked to send a
+bullet through a few of them. He roamed about restlessly for some time,
+and went to the back of the house to a little square window, and from
+there watched the last of them mount the trail and disappear from the
+gulch. Then all was silence and solitude again, in the swiftly falling
+darkness. He turned into his sitting-room, and stirred the fire into a
+blaze and lighted up the lamps&mdash;his lamps always burned well and
+brightly, being kept scientifically clean and trimmed with his own
+hands,&mdash;then he flung himself into a chair and sat there gazing into the
+flames, his revolver beside him on the table. He half expected the men
+to return, and his ears remained attentive to the slightest sound
+without. But there was nothing, absolute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> stillness reigned all around
+him; not a crackle of the frosted snow nor the fall of a leaf broke the
+grave-like silence.</p>
+
+<p>When the other two came in, he told his afternoon's adventure in the
+quietest, simplest way possible, and the fewest words. The girl listened
+with flushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What fun!" she said at last when he had finished, and kicking off her
+snow-laden boots as she sat by the stove. "And you held off six men by
+the 'power of your eye?' what a convenient eye that is! I don't see
+you've any need to carry a six-shooter! I wish they'd come back
+to-night, we'd give them something of a reception."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot laughed, and looked pleased at the praise from her bright young
+lips. Stephen only looked anxious.</p>
+
+<p>That night they sat up rather later than usual, and Katrine was quite in
+a pleased state<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> of expectation. No visitors made their appearance,
+however, and at last Talbot left to go to his own cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if they come in the night," remarked Katrine, laughing, as she
+said good-night, "don't slay them all with your eye, mind, but give me a
+chance."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot promised to use his eye mercifully, and Katrine and Stephen put
+their lights out and went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Katrine she had been asleep some time, when she awoke
+suddenly and put her hand on her husband's arm. "Steve, I hear steps."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," murmured Stephen, drowsily; "it's your fancy. Go to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>But Katrine's ears were like those of a wild animal, quick and not to be
+deceived.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to sleep yourself, if you can," she retorted, and sprang up in the
+darkness, found her day clothes, and hustled them on. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> was silence
+now outside, but Katrine hurried all she could, and then with one
+revolver in her belt and one in her hand went into the other room.
+Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, there was a crash, a sound
+of tearing and splitting wood, and the door was crushed inward, letting
+in a blast of icy air. There was pitch darkness within and without.
+Katrine answered immediately by two shots fired in succession; there was
+a heavy groan, a muttered curse, and some shuffling of feet outside.
+Katrine, standing flat against the wall to avoid offering a mark for
+wandering shots, chuckled inwardly and waited. A second later a shot
+came in return, but the bullet went high. Katrine heard it whizz into
+the wood somewhere between the wall and roof.</p>
+
+<p>She stood motionless, listening. Just in front of her, on the other side
+of the room, was the stove, and in this there still glowed an
+unextinguished portion of log, making one small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> spot of blood red in
+the surrounding darkness. Katrine fixed her eye on this glowing spot. To
+enter farther into the cabin the men must pass between it and her. She
+raised one of her revolvers into a line with it. When that spot was
+obliterated, she would know, however silently they moved, the enemy had
+advanced, and in that second she meant to fire; the stove was high, and
+a man passing in front of it would have that red spot in a line with his
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>With her heart beating fast with exultation, and not a tremor in her
+steady fingers, she waited motionless as a statue against the wall. She
+was not a girl of a cruel nature, but her husband lay behind that slim
+partition on her right, and unarmed, for Stephen would never carry a
+pistol, and she would have shot unhesitatingly each man in succession
+that tried to pass her to him. There seemed to be some talking outside
+and a trampling of feet on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> broken wood of the door, and then
+suddenly the soft red fire spot was eclipsed in the total darkness
+around, and on the instant Katrine's finger had pulled the trigger.
+There was no groan this time after the shot, only a heavy thud and a
+crash as a falling body struck some fire-irons by the stove. The red
+spot glowed out of the darkness again and stared Katrine cheerfully in
+the eyes. There was a confusion of voices outside: Katrine could hear
+the thick oaths and one man apparently enjoining another to come out of
+there and have done with the business. Katrine smiled as she heard. She
+guessed that the man addressed was the one that lay now between her and
+the stove, and his ears were for ever closed. In the same moment she
+heard the inner door open, and for an instant Stephen appeared, pale and
+in his night clothes and with a flaring candle in his hand. With a
+spring like a leopard Katrine had reached him and put her hand over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> the
+flame of the candle, crushing it out beneath her palm. The darkness she
+knew was their only shield. By their voices and their footsteps she
+could tell the men without numbered not less than four or five. Once let
+a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl,
+they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible
+pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such
+precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin
+was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It
+was the fears of the besiegers now simply that was protecting the
+besieged.</p>
+
+<p>"Go back," she said, with her lips on his ear, "unless you can find a
+pistol, and be ready to shoot," and she pushed him within the door
+again.</p>
+
+<p>She stood as before, in an even line with the red bull's-eye of the
+stove, and listened; there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> was still a scraping of feet and muttering
+of voices outside, but not so near the door, and she wondered if the
+enemy were going round the cabin to attack it from another side.
+Suddenly a shot rang out in the stillness outside, then another, and the
+ball came through the window behind her and passed over her shoulder;
+there seemed to be a rush and stampede towards the door. She turned and
+faced it, raising both revolvers, and as she heard the wood of the
+fallen door split under the trampling feet, her fingers had almost drawn
+the triggers to welcome the incomers, when out of that cold blackness
+beyond the door came a slight cough. Katrine's hand dropped to her side,
+a sick, cold horror came over her as she realised what she would have
+done in the next instant. That was Talbot's cough. One second more of
+silence, one more step forward, and her shot would have found his heart.
+She reeled where she stood, against the wall, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> the sickness of the
+thought. She could not shoot again now: he was there outside amongst
+them&mdash;and Stephen, was he there too, or inside? Talbot, she supposed,
+roused by the noise, had come out and attacked them between the two
+cabins. Then what she had said to Stephen recurred to her. Suppose he
+had searched and found a gun, and should come out from the inner room,
+he would not count upon Talbot's presence any more than she had done; he
+would naturally shoot at the first who crossed the threshold, as she
+herself had done; he would shoot in the dark, by her orders. The
+thoughts flashed quicker than lightning through her brain. The horror of
+the situation, this uncertainty, this killing blindly in the confusion
+and the darkness, was too great to be borne. The danger now was greater
+than even the light could bring. She dropped the pistols on to a stool
+beside her, drew a match from her pocket, and heedless of the perfect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+mark she herself offered now, struck it and held it over her head. In a
+second, the body across the hearth, the wrecked door, and two pale faces
+looking in at her from the opening, leaped into sight; the enemies, the
+living ones, were gone. A pool of blood beyond the threshold, and blood
+on the splintered wood, and their dead companion, only remained. For a
+moment the three faces, all pale with fear and anxiety, not for
+themselves, but for each other, stared nervously into each other's eyes
+in silence. Then Katrine broke it with a laugh, and brought down the
+match from over her head and put it to the lamp on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you frightened me so," she said, as she turned up the wick and made
+it burn, and the men stepped over the door and came in. "I thought I
+might kill you."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at them both in the lamplight, as if to reassure herself
+they were really there alive.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"You frightened me," he returned, jestingly. "I wouldn't come under that
+straight fire of yours for anything. The men outside were easier to deal
+with, they got so scared with you shooting in here and me shooting in
+their rear; they thought we were a band of a dozen at least."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd no idea you were there," murmured Katrine, shuddering still, as she
+moved from the lamp to the fire, and began drawing the half-burnt logs
+together.</p>
+
+<p>"Stephen climbed out of the back window and came round to me, but the
+first shot had already wakened me; I was getting my clothes on when he
+came," answered Talbot, walking over to where the dead man lay between
+the hearth and the door, and surveying him. "Some of your good work, I
+see," he said, after a minute. "This is one of the lot that came up
+yesterday afternoon. Tough-looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> chap, isn't he? Well, you see I did
+not kill them all. I gave you the chance you asked for," he added,
+looking at her with admiring eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And haven't I made the most of it?" she returned, lifting her flushed
+face, sparkling with smiles, from the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen had crept in, pale-faced as the corpse itself, and stood now
+staring at it in a dumb horror. He could not understand how Talbot and
+his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless
+between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he
+wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of
+mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with
+herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the
+flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred,
+as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> Stephen,
+reassured for her, let his eyes travel to the corpse, and then, with a
+sort of groan of horror, sank back on a chair with his face covered in
+his hands. Katrine looked up quickly from the fire, and then went over
+to him, putting an arm softly round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Steve, dear? you weren't hurt, were you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, to have killed him! to have killed a man, how horrible!" muttered
+Stephen, without lifting his head.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine looked amazed. "Well, but he would have killed us if he could,"
+she answered. "You kill a mosquito if it annoys you, and that's right.
+You only kill a man if he tries to kill you, that's quite fair."</p>
+
+<p>"But a murderer!" and Stephen shuddered. She felt the shiver of horror
+under her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it better to be a murderer than murdered?" she asked, with a
+little smile, feeling she had an unanswerable argument.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Murdered, your body is killed, murderer, your soul," came back in the
+same stifled voice.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine was silent. She was thinking what a nuisance it was to have a
+soul that needed so much looking after, never seemed to do any good, and
+was always obtruding itself and spoiling your best moments of fun in
+this life.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take him away," she said softly, after a minute, noticing that
+Stephen kept his fingers closely locked over his eyes, as if to shut out
+some fearful sight. "Talbot, let's take him out," she said to their
+companion, who stood with his back to the fire watching them. Stephen
+made no sign.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot and the girl walked over to the body. It was stiffening rapidly,
+and the wide-open eyes glared up glassily to the black rafters of the
+cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"Might this be useful?" said Talbot, stooping over the man and half
+drawing the second large revolver from his belt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, take nothing," answered Katrine, hastily; "we want nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot let the weapon slide back to its place, and they both bent down
+and lifted the corpse between them. Talbot walked backwards over the
+cabin door behind him. It was dark outside&mdash;a thick, pitchy darkness,
+with only a grey glare close to the ground from the snow.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's take him to the gulch," whispered Katrine, "and send him down it;
+it will worry Stephen so if he sees him again."</p>
+
+<p>It was only a few yards to the edge of the ravine; they moved towards it
+cautiously and stopped upon the brink.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready?" Talbot asked in a low tone, and Katrine whispered back
+"Yes." There was a heavy thud, then a soft rolling sound, and then
+silence, as the drift snow in the bottom of the gulch received and
+closed over its gift. They waited a second, then Talbot stretched out
+his hand towards her, found her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> arm in the darkness, and they both
+walked back together.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity Steve is so sensitive," said Katrine, plaintively. "I just
+saved him, and his house, and his precious gold, and everything,
+to-night, and he does not like me a bit for it."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are a very brave little girl," said Talbot, softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" returned Katrine, in a pleased voice; and Talbot felt that she
+turned her face and looked up at him in the darkness. "Steve and I don't
+fit very well, do we?" she added, with a sigh; "and he does not fit this
+life. Somehow, I don't believe we shall ever leave this place alive&mdash;I
+have a presentiment we shan't. You will&mdash;you'll make a success and go
+back; but we shan't."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot did not answer, as they were at the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen met them at the door as they came in, with a white stricken
+face. "Where have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> you put it?" he asked in an awed, trembling whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Down the gulch," replied Katrine, composedly. "Now, Steve, you're not
+to worry about it any more&mdash;it was a necessity."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced round the room and saw that Stephen had been too much shaken
+to think of putting it in order. The coffee-pot stood where she had left
+it, and the coffee was boiling over and wasting itself in the fire. She
+ran to it, took it off, and began pouring it into the cups on the table;
+as she did so the men noticed blood dripping from her wrist into one of
+the saucers.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," she said indifferently, in answer to Stephen's startled
+exclamation, "I thought I felt my sleeve getting very damp and sticky;
+there's a graze on the shoulder, I think, and the blood has been
+crawling slowly down my arm, tickling me horribly. Let's see how it
+looks!"</p>
+
+<p>She unfastened her bodice and took it off, seemingly unconscious of
+Talbot's presence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> He stood silently by the hearth watching her, and
+thought, as he saw her bare white arms and full, strong white neck, how
+well she would look in a London ball-room. Stephen, all nervous anxiety,
+was examining her shoulder. A bullet had gone over it, leaving a furrow
+in the flesh, where the blood welled up slowly. Katrine turned her head
+aside and regarded it out of one eye, as a bird does. Stephen bent over
+her and kissed her, murmuring incoherent words of remorseful sorrow.
+Katrine flung her arms round him and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I am delighted! it's been quite worth it, the fun we've had
+to-night. That's all right&mdash;it will be healed in a couple of days; just
+tie it up with your handkerchief."</p>
+
+<p>It was an easy place to bind, by passing the bandage under the arm, and
+this, by Katrine's directions, Stephen did, with trembling fingers.
+Talbot had turned away from them, and occupied himself by fixing up the
+door and stuf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>fing the chinks where the wood had broken. When this was
+done and the bandaging finished, Stephen brought a shawl from the other
+room and wrapped it round the girl's shoulders, and they all drew in
+round the fire in a close circle with their cups in their hands.</p>
+
+<p>Their common danger and the sudden realisation of how much they were,
+each of this lonely trio, to the other; how easily any one of them might
+have been taken from the circle that night, and how irreparable would
+have been the loss, drew them all closely together as they had never
+been before&mdash;that delicious chord of sweet human sympathy that lies deep
+down, but ever present, in the human breast, vibrated strongly in their
+hearts, and they sat round the cheery blaze, talking and laughing
+softly, and looking at one another, and then smiling as their eyes met,
+for mere lightheartedness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>MAMMON'S PAY</h3>
+
+
+<p>This little excitement quite delighted and pleased Katrine. She had
+spoken just the truth when she said she wished something like it would
+happen every day; and the only thing that spoilt the fun of it was
+Stephen's dejection and the persistently depressed way he looked and
+felt over it. After a day or two the pleasant sense of life having
+something worth living for passed away again, and the time seemed
+heavier and slower than ever. Day followed day in a dreadful monotony,
+and the girl visibly lost health and spirits. She changed a good deal,
+and both men noticed it. She lost her wonderful sweetness and evenness
+of temper and her bright smiles, and became fretful and irritable,
+discontented, and sharp in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> her replies. In the long winter mornings now
+she would not spring up in the early darkness as formerly, but try to
+fall asleep again after waking, and put her arm across Stephen and tell
+him there was no use of getting up, that the day was long enough anyway,
+and it was too dark to do anything; and then she would abuse him if he
+insisted on getting up in spite of her, and let the breakfast wait so
+long, that after a time the men drifted into the habit of having it
+alone, and going out without seeing her. Katrine had grown to hate the
+day, to hate every minute in fact when she was not sleeping, and to try
+to make the night last as long as possible. Stephen noticed all this,
+and spoke to Talbot about it in distress. Talbot merely said, "Perhaps
+it's her health; you'd better ask her." Stephen did so, and found there
+was a reason for her apparent illness, which delighted and consoled him;
+but when Katrine flew into a passion, declared it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> detestable, that
+it would take away her freedom and her power to ride and enjoy herself,
+Stephen was shocked and grieved, and said he was disappointed in her;
+whereupon Katrine replied she hated him, and Stephen quoted scripture
+texts to her till she ran out of the cabin and rushed across to Talbot's
+in a passion of sobs and tears. At least, she knew he would not quote
+texts to her. Talbot did all he could to smooth out matters between the
+two, and after that Katrine spoke very little; she took refuge in a
+dejected silence, and grew paler each day. It was only when the men had
+gone out to work, and she was left alone with a great pile of things to
+mend, work which she hated, that she would go to the door and stand
+looking out over the grey waste under the snow-filled lowering sky, with
+the tears rolling silently down her checks. From where she stood she
+could see, through the greyish air, the men working far down at the
+other end of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> claims, and the long line of trenches and the banks of
+frozen gravel; sometimes, in the light fog, made of the tiny sharp
+snow-flakes, sifting through the air, they would look misty, like ghosts
+or shadows; and sometimes the dulled click and scrape of the spades
+would reach her.</p>
+
+<p>"Slaves, slaves, just like slaves," she would think, watching the
+muffled-up figures continually bending over their work; "and they're
+digging graves, graves." And she would think of Annie, and the grave
+Will had been digging for her while he dug for gold. A red sun, dull as
+copper, hung above them, and sometimes the great Northern Lights would
+send up a red flame behind the horizon; and to Katrine it seemed like a
+blood-covered sword held up by Nature to warn them off a land not fit
+for men. One afternoon, when the sun looked more sullen and the sky more
+threatening than ever, and the men moving at the end of the claim
+looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> no more than mere blots in the cold mist, she stood watching the
+steady red blade shoot up in the ashen sky, and began comparing its
+colour to other things. "It's as red," she said to herself softly, "as
+Hearts and Diamonds;" and then her thought wandered to the cards
+themselves, and she thought of the hot saloons at nights crowded with
+faces, and the tobacco smoke in the air, and the jabber of voices, and
+the laughter of the miners, and their oaths and jokes and stories, and
+their friendly ways to her, and the admiration on their rough and
+sometimes honest faces, and the long tables and the spat, spat of the
+falling cards as they were dealt, and the chink of the glasses and the
+hot spirits burning your throat, and then the feeling of jollity, and
+then the warmth and life and cheeriness of it all. Her eyes brightened
+and her chest heaved a little as she leaned against the lintel. If she
+could have one night of it again! And here, what would it be when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+men came back? Supper, and then Talbot and Stephen talking of their
+work, and the probable value of the claims, and the pans they could
+make, and what the dirt would run to, and then dismissing the whole
+subject as impossible to decide till the spring came and they could wash
+the gravel, and then having so dismissed it, they would fall to
+speculating again what the spring would show them the dirt was worth,
+and so on all over again from the beginning. Oh, she had heard it so
+often, nothing, nothing but the same topic night after night, and after
+that, cups of coffee, of which she was sick, or water, and then reading
+a chapter of the Testament, and then going to bed, and Stephen too dead
+tired to give her a good-night kiss. If they had had a game of cards in
+the evening now, all together, and become interested in that and
+forgotten to talk of their claims, and some good whisky after it, or
+cleared out one of the cabins and had a dance there with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> some of the
+hands who lived near, and a man to whistle tunes for them if there was
+no other orchestra; but no! Stephen thought that cards were wrong and
+wouldn't have them in his house, and whisky too, and dancing worst of
+all, and only the sin of avarice and the lust of gold was to be connived
+at there. As she stood there, the thought slipped into her mind quite
+suddenly, so suddenly that it surprised herself, "Why not go down to
+town and have a good time as she used?" Her heart beat quickly, and the
+old colour came into her cheek. She glanced at the dull, coppery sun
+growing dimmer and dimmer behind the thickening snow fog, and the pink
+light flickering on the horizon, at the dim figures of the men and the
+grey wastes on every side. There was a thick silence, broken only by a
+faint far-off click of a shovel from the trenches. There would be
+half-an-hour's more daylight, half-an-hour before the men returned to
+miss her. She would get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> a good start anyway. She turned into the cabin
+again, her face aglow and her eyes sparkling. She knew that Stephen
+would be fearfully angry with her&mdash;she had not been once to the town
+since her marriage&mdash;but she had a stronger nature than Stephen's, and
+felt no fear of his anger.</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks I am a reformed character," she muttered contemptuously to
+herself, as she put on her thick rubber boots. "Well, I told him there
+was only one chance to reform me, and that was to take me away from
+here, and he wouldn't do it."</p>
+
+<p>She built up the fire in an enormous bank, and left the men's slippers
+and dry socks beside it. Then she slipped into her long skin coat, and
+crushed the fur cap down on her eyebrows and pulled it over her ears. As
+she went out she took a long look at the claims&mdash;the men were still busy
+there. "Slaves," she muttered. She closed the door with a sharp snap and
+left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> the key hanging on it, as was usual when she was inside. Then she
+turned her face to the town trail, and set off at a long steady stride
+through the dead silent air. The town was within easy walking distance
+for her, and though it would be dark before she reached it, that
+mattered very little, her eyes were strong and almost as good as a wild
+cat's in the dark. On every hand the sky seemed to hang low and
+threatening over the earth, and the air had the grip of iron in it, but
+Katrine pushed on at the same even pace without even an apprehensive
+glance round. Her spirits rose as she walked. She felt the old sense of
+gladness in her youth and strength and health, and in her freedom, and
+she bounded along over the hard, glittering snow, full of a mere
+irresponsible animal pleasure, such as moves the young chamois in his
+bounds from rock to rock. Darkness had come like a blot upon the earth
+before she had done half the distance, but now she had the twink<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>ling
+lights and the reddish haze of Dawson before her. Her own eyes
+brightened as she caught sight of them, and she hastened her steps. By
+the time night had fairly settled down she came into the side streets of
+the town. Dawson is an all-night town, and things were in full
+blast&mdash;saloons, shooting-galleries, dance-halls, and dog-fights going on
+just as usual. She noted with satisfaction that nothing seemed to have
+altered a little bit since she saw it last, and as she turned into Good
+Luck Row, to walk down it for old acquaintance' sake, a big,
+disreputable old yellow dog she had fed through last winter, came
+bounding up and leaped all over her in delighted recognition. Katrine
+was pleased at this welcome, and spent quite a time at the corner with
+him, asking how many dog-fights he had had lately, and being answered
+with short triumphant barks that she took to mean he had demolished all
+the small dogs of that quarter. Then she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> went on and passed her own
+former house, and saw to her surprise it was vacant, and so was Annie's
+next it. That looked as if Dawson was not pressed for space. As she was
+turning out of the row she saw ahead of her another old acquaintance,
+this was a human one, and Katrine felt as if she had quite slipped back
+into her own life as she hailed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam!" she called gently. "Hello, Sam!"</p>
+
+<p>The miner turned, and as soon as he saw her a broad, genial smile
+overspread his countenance and stretched his mouth from one edge of his
+fur ear-flaps to the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Kate, you down here again; you've cut the parson fellow, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," said Katrine hastily, reddening a little; "I'm just in town
+for a day or so. How's your wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," answered Sam slowly, as he put himself at her side and slouched
+heavily along<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> the side-walk with her. "She's all right&mdash;leastways I
+reckon she ought to be; she's in 'eaven now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Sam!" said Katrine, in a shocked voice, "is she dead? How did she
+die? when?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I reckon it was the cold like, she kind of froze to death. When I
+got home one night the fire was out, and she was just laying acrost the
+hearth; the room was awful cold, and there warn't no food neither&mdash;I
+'spect that helped it. I'd bin away three or four days, and the food
+give out quicker than I thought, and the firin'. I arst a doctor here
+wot it was, and he said it was sincough or sumthin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Syncope?" suggested Katrine.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's what 'e said; but I sez it was just the cold a ketchin' of
+her heart like, and stopping it."</p>
+
+<p>"What were you doing?" asked Katrine.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I was out arter gold, o' course."</p>
+
+<p>Katrine shivered. They passed the "Sally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> White" at that moment, with
+its flaring lights and noise of merriment within.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go in, Sam, and get a drink. Your tale has pretty near frozen
+me."</p>
+
+<p>They turned in, and as Katrine pushed open the door there was a shout of
+recognition and welcome from the men round the bar. The door fell to
+behind them, shutting out the icy night.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When the light failed, and the night had come down on the claims like a
+black curtain let fall suddenly, the men left the ground, and stiff with
+cold, their muscles almost rigid, plodded slowly and silently back to
+the cabin. The hired men dispersed in different directions, some going
+down town and some to their cabins near. When Stephen and Talbot entered
+they found the fire leaping and crackling as if it had just been tended,
+and both men sat down to change their boots in the outer room. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> door
+into the bedroom was shut, and they supposed Katrine was within. They
+were too tired and frozen to speak, and not a word was exchanged between
+them. After a time Stephen got up and went into the inner room; there
+was no light in it, and the door swung to behind him. Talbot, with a
+white drawn face, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When Stephen entered he thought Katrine was probably asleep upon the
+bed, and crossed the room to find a light. When the match was struck and
+a candle lighted, he stared round stupidly&mdash;the room was empty. He
+looked at the bed, Katrine was not there; then his eyes caught a little
+square of white paper pinned on to the red blanket. He went up to it,
+unpinned it slowly, and read it with trembling fingers. Talbot, waiting
+in the other room, hungry and thirsty, got up after a time and began to
+lay the supper. This done, he made the coffee, and when that was ready
+and still Stephen had not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> reappeared, he rapped at the door. There
+seemed a muffled sound from within, and Talbot pushed the door a little
+open. Inside, he saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at
+the paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" said Talbot.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen handed him the paper in a blank silence, and Talbot took it and
+held it near the candle. This is what he read:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have gone down to the town to get a little change and to relieve the
+dreadful monotony of this life. Don't follow me; just leave me alone,
+and I'll come back in a day or two. There's no need to be anxious. You
+know I can take care of myself."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot laughed quietly, and walked back into the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she gives you good advice," he said; "I should follow it. Let her
+have a day or two to herself&mdash;a day or two of liberty. She'll come back
+at the end all the better for it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stephen followed him into the firelight; his face was the colour of wood
+ash, and his eyes looked haggard and terrified. With all his faults he
+really loved his wife, in his own narrow, limited, selfish way,
+intensely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Talbot! to think she's gone back to it all! How awful!"</p>
+
+<p>Talbot gave a gesture of impatience. He understood the girl so much
+better than Stephen ever had that his methods seemed unreasonably
+foolish to him. And now he was excessively tired and cold and hungry,
+and his supper seemed of more importance than a world full of injured
+husbands.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't wonder at it, old man," he said. "This life must be
+intolerable for a girl like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? how?" questioned Stephen, blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so quiet; no excitement."</p>
+
+<p>"But women ought to like quiet, and excitement's sinful," returned
+Stephen hotly, becom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>ing the Low Church missionary school-teacher at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot merely laughed and shrugged his shoulders, but his laugh was not
+friendly, and there was an angry light in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to do?" asked Stephen mechanically, still standing, the
+pallor and the horror of his face growing each minute.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you. Let her have the few days' enjoyment she asks for; then
+her heart will reproach her, and she will come back to you."</p>
+
+<p>"But she might think me indifferent," murmured Stephen, his voice almost
+choked in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't leave her long. If she does not return the day after
+to-morrow, then you might go; but if you go now and attempt to force her
+back, you'll probably make a mess of it."</p>
+
+<p>"But think&mdash;my wife&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," returned Talbot, looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> at him and understanding
+what he was thinking of. "In one way, at least, you know she is a good
+girl. She will only gamble a little and drink and get very jolly, and
+she'll come back to you in a day or two with no harm done&mdash;what are you
+doing?" he broke off suddenly, as Stephen began to tear off his slippers
+and socks and get his thick wet boots on.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going after her," he said sullenly, in a thick voice, "to bring her
+back home here&mdash;alive or dead."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be dead probably, and you'll be exceedingly sorry," returned
+Talbot in a cutting tone.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen made no answer, but continued fastening his boots.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better have your supper before you go out again," remarked
+Talbot, sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen made no reply. When he had his boots on he put an extra
+comforter inside his fur collar, put his cap on, and walked over to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> the
+door. There he hesitated and looked back. Talbot sat unmoved by the
+fire, his profile to the door. Stephen stood for an instant, then came
+back to the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>"Talbot!" he said, standing in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>The other looked up. "Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me. Help me to find her and bring her back."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot compressed his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you capable of managing your own 'wife yourself?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You have so much influence with her," said Stephen, pleadingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I only have that influence because I am not quite a fool,"
+returned Talbot angrily, commencing to pull off his slippers.</p>
+
+<p>He was angry with Stephen, and feeling excessively wearied and
+disinclined for further effort. He hated to turn out again, and his
+whole physical system was craving for food and rest. But he was not the
+man to resist an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> appeal in which he saw another's whole soul was
+thrown, and angry and annoyed as he was with Stephen, he still disliked
+the idea of letting his friend go out alone in the Arctic night on such
+an errand. It seemed to him supremely ridiculous for Stephen to have to
+call in another man's aid in these personal matters, but then he was
+more than twice Stephen's age, and had got into the habit of making
+excuses for him. So, tired and exhausted though he was, he dragged on
+his frozen boots again, and prepared to accompany Stephen.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better have some of this first," he said, pouring out a cup of
+the coffee he had made, which stood ready on the stove.</p>
+
+<p>They each took a cup standing, and then turned out of the cabin, locking
+the door behind them. The atmosphere and aspect, the whole face of the
+night, had changed since the girl started. The fog had lifted itself and
+rolled away somewhere in the darkness. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> air was now clear and keen
+as the edge of steel. The stars were of a piercing brilliance, and all
+along the black horizon flickered and leaped a faint rosy light. The two
+men, stiff, tired, and aching, took much longer to accomplish the
+distance than the girl had done with her light, eager feet, and when
+they got down to the town the night was well on its way. At the bottom
+of Good Luck Row, which is, as explained already, one of the first
+streets you come to, on the edge of the town, they halted and took
+counsel as to where they would be most likely to find the object of
+their search.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she's gone up to the 'Pistol Shot,'" suggested Stephen. "We'd
+better go up to old Poniatovsky."</p>
+
+<p>"She hasn't come down to see her father, I should imagine," remarked
+Talbot, in his dryest tone.</p>
+
+<p>But Stephen persisted she might be there, and so they tramped straight
+across towards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> the main street and turned into the "Pistol Shot." They
+pushed their way unheeded through the idle, lounging, gossiping crowd
+within, found their way behind the bar, and asked for Poniatovsky. The
+little Pole came out of his back parlour and met them in the passage. He
+listened to their story, his long pipe in one hand, his mouth open, and
+his own vile whisky obscuring and clouding his brain.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot! she haf run away?" he exclaimed, as Stephen paused; "and who is de
+cause? Is it this shentleman here?" and he stared up at Talbot's slight,
+tall figure, imposing in its furs, and at the finely-cut, determined
+features that presented such a contrast to Stephen's weak boyish face.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said the latter angrily; "she hasn't run away at all. She has
+only come down here for an hour or so. I thought she might have come
+here to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied the Pole deprecatingly, shrug<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>ging his shoulders and
+spreading out his hands, "I haf not seen her. If she come here, I shut
+the door upon her. I say, 'I vil haf no runaway wives here.' My fren,
+before you vos marrit did not I say, a truant daughter make a truant
+wife. She haf left me first, now she haf left you."</p>
+
+<p>He had taken Stephen by the front of his coat, and was pushing in his
+words by the aid of a dirty forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot abandoned Stephen to argue the matter out with his drunken
+father-in-law, and strolled back through the passage, through the
+bar-room, and then stood, with his gloved hands deep in his fur-lined
+pockets, at the saloon door, looking up and down the street. Presently
+one of the wrecks of the night came drifting by, a girl of nineteen or
+so, with her cheeks blue and pinched in the terrible cold under their
+coat of coarse paint. He signalled to her, and she drifted across to
+him, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> stood, with her hands thrust up her sleeves, in the light from
+the "Pistol Shot."</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you've seen the inside of most of the drinking-houses
+to-night," he said, speaking in a kind voice, for the pitiful, cold face
+of the girl touched him; "have you seen anything of Katrine Poniatovsky,
+a girl who used to live here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's she like?" the girl asked sullenly. She was so hoarse that she
+could hardly make the words audible.</p>
+
+<p>"A tall girl, dark, and very handsome."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I seed her, not more'n an hour ago, in the 'Cock-pit.' She's
+a-makin' more money in there than I can make if I walk all night. Curse
+her! She sits there, and the devil sits behind her, a-playing for her, I
+know; but she'd better look out&mdash;you don't play with that partner long."</p>
+
+<p>"The 'Cock-pit.' That's on the other side, isn't it, away from the
+river?" Talbot's heart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> sank a little as he recognized the name of the
+worst den for gambling in the whole town.</p>
+
+<p>"Go down here, and turn to your left. Any one will tell you where the
+'Cock-pit' is," said the girl, with a hollow laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Then she lingered in the light, and looked at Talbot wistfully. He put
+some money into her hand. "Go into the warmth," he said kindly, "and get
+yourself something."</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned back into the saloon to find Stephen. He met him, having
+broken away at last from the fatherly advice of the Pole, and brushing
+the front of his coat down with his hand. He was very flushed and angry.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better waste no more time," remarked Talbot, calmly. "She is down
+at the 'Cock-pit,' playing."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen gasped. "How did you find out that?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been told by one of the habitu&eacute;s. Come along at once." Both
+the men went out,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> and Talbot, following the girl's directions, marched
+on decidedly, scarcely noticing Stephen's questions, which he could not
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he said, for the fiftieth time, to Stephen's last absurd
+query as to how long she had been there.</p>
+
+<p>The houses became poorer and shabbier as they walked. Even in log-cabins
+there is a great difference marked between the respectable and the
+disreputable. And the figures that passed them from time to time, though
+more rarely here in this quarter, looked of the toughest, most
+cut-throat class.</p>
+
+<p>"How can she like to come here alone?" exclaimed Stephen, with a
+shudder. "I wonder she is not afraid. I'm surprised she has not come to
+some harm long ago."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot smiled to himself inside his fur collar and said nothing. The
+girl's absolute fearlessness was the point which he admired most in her
+character, and the immunity from danger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> seemed in her case, as in
+others, the natural accompaniment of it. Fortune is said to favour the
+brave. Misfortune certainly seems to spare them.</p>
+
+<p>"I think this is the place," said Talbot at last, and they stopped
+before a large, but old and dirty-looking cabin. It was sunk beneath the
+usual level of the ground, and reached by some crooked, slippery steps.
+At the foot of these steps was a sort of yard, which you had to cross
+before reaching the cabin door itself. What was in the yard, or what its
+condition was, it was too dark to see, but a sickening smell came from
+it as the men descended the steps, and the ground seemed slippery or
+miry in places above the frozen snow. The windows of the cabin in front
+gave out no light whatever, but that there was light inside, and very
+bright light, was evidenced by that which burst through the chinks all
+over it.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if I stumbled over a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> corpse next," muttered Talbot,
+as he slipped and almost fell in the darkness on a slimy something under
+his feet that reminded him of blood. They got up to the door and tried
+the latch. It would not yield; then they thumped on it with their gloved
+fists.</p>
+
+<p>The latch was drawn back by some hand inside, and the door opened just
+wide enough to admit them, and was pushed to again. Stephen and Talbot
+found themselves in a crowd of loiterers inside the door, who apparently
+took no notice of them beyond a sodden stare.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long, low room that they entered, so low that it seemed to
+Talbot the ceiling was almost upon their heads. The atmosphere was
+stifling, evil-smelling beyond endurance, and so clouded with tobacco
+smoke that they could not see the farther end.</p>
+
+<p>A long table covered with green cloth took up the centre of the room,
+and all round the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> walls were ranged smaller ones. The place was full
+when the two men entered, all space at the centre table was occupied,
+the side tables were filled, and men standing up between blocked the way
+up the room. The windows at the end were barred and shuttered, not a
+breath of outer air could enter. The cheap lamps nailed at intervals
+along the grimy walls were mostly black and smoking, adding their acrid
+fumes to the thick atmosphere. There were very few women present, some
+painted, worn, unhappy-looking creatures, hovering like restless
+phantoms round the tables where the thickest crowds were, that seemed
+all. Stephen looked round on every side with haggard face and anxious
+eyes. She was nowhere near the door, and after a hurried survey of all
+those lower tables they forced and pressed and pushed their way towards
+the other end. At last they caught sight of her. She was sitting at a
+small table, with her face turned towards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> the room, intent upon the
+game. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. She had flung her fur cap
+aside, and her ruffled black hair lay loose upon her forehead. The
+collar of her bodice was open and turned back a little from her round
+white neck. She looked, with her soft young face, like a fresh flower
+dropped by chance into this evil, tainted den. Talbot gave her a keen
+scrutiny as they approached, and understood Stephen's infatuation. As
+for Stephen himself, his heart went out to her, and he was filled with a
+bitter self-reproach and sudden resolutions. His love and his darling!
+How could he have let her be found here! His claims and his gold, they
+might all go. He would take her away in safety at once. He would not
+hesitate again.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the table they saw there was a large stake on the
+cloth between the two players. Her companion was a youngish man,
+seemingly a miner, dressed in the roughest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> clothes. Neither looked up
+till both men were close by them and between them and the lights. Then
+Katrine raised her eyes and started violently as she recognised them.
+Her face flushed deeper, and her eyebrows contracted with annoyance.
+Stephen went round to the back of her chair and laid his hand on her
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Come away; oh pray, come away," he said, in an imploring tone. It was
+all he seemed able to articulate.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm just in the middle of a game," she answered petulantly. "You
+mustn't interrupt me."</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't safe for you to be here."</p>
+
+<p>"Stuff! I used to be here every night before I married you!"</p>
+
+<p>A death-like pallor overspread the man's face as he heard. He could not
+believe her, could not realise it. Had she indeed been here night after
+night?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why do you come here and interfere?" she continued pettishly, looking
+up from Talbot to his companion. "I always have such luck, and I'm
+likely to lose it if you worry me."</p>
+
+<p>The young miner sat back in his chair, thrust both hands in his pockets,
+and stared rudely at the intruders. He did not mind the interruption as
+much as she did, since he was losing, and had been steadily ever since
+he sat down to play with Katrine, and doubts and angry questionings of
+his opponent's methods began to stir in his dull, clouded brain, as
+toads stir the mud in some thick pool.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought not to be here at all," said Stephen hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why shouldn't I make money as well as you?" returned the girl
+quickly, with a flash of scorn in her dark eyes, and Stephen whitened
+and winced.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you made enough for one night, in any case?" interposed Talbot
+quietly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think I have," she answered, with a glance at the glistening
+pile on the cloth. "I'll come," she added suddenly, "if Jim's no
+objection. What do you say, Jim?" she asked, looking across to the young
+fellow, who had been a sulky, silent spectator of the whole scene.
+"Shall we quit for to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you give me back my money," he answered. "That's mine," he said,
+pointing to the pile. "It's my money, gentlemen; she's been winning all
+the evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I always do have luck," retorted Katrine. "I told you so when we
+began."</p>
+
+<p>"You may call it luck; I don't," muttered the miner, his face turning a
+dusky purple.</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you call it?" returned Katrine, white with anger in her
+turn at the insinuation, while Talbot, who saw what was coming, tried to
+draw her away.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter? Come away; leave him the money."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No one in the room noticed what was going on in their corner. The others
+were all too busy with their own play, absorbed in their own greed;
+besides, squabbles over the tables were of such common occurrence, they
+ceased to excite any curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't," returned Katrine, shaking herself free.</p>
+
+<p>The oily, smoky light from above fell across her face; it seemed to
+bloom through the foul, dusky air like a rose.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my money&mdash;I won it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, by cheating," shouted the miner, forgetting everything but the
+approaching loss he foresaw of the shining pile.</p>
+
+<p>"You lie," said Stephen, hoarsely. "She has not cheated you."</p>
+
+<p>The miner staggered to his feet, and before any of them realised it he
+had drawn his pistol and fired. His hand was unsteady from drink and
+rage, and the ball passed over Stephen's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> shoulder and went into the
+wall behind him. Talbot tried to draw Stephen to one side. The miner,
+blind with anger, half conscious only of what he was about, and drawing
+almost at random, turned his revolver on Talbot. Like a flash Katrine
+interposed between them, and Jim's bullet found a lodgment in her lungs.
+She had fired also. The shots had been simultaneous, and the miner fell,
+without a groan, without a murmur, forward across the table, carrying it
+with him to the floor. The gold pile scattered amongst the filthy
+sawdust on the ground. Katrine sank backwards into Talbot's arms, and
+her head fell to his shoulder like that of a tired child falling to
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant they were surrounded by an eager inquiring throng. All the
+tables, with some few exceptions, were deserted; the players all crowded
+up to the end of the room, and Stephen and Talbot were carried back to
+the wall by the pressing crowd. Some of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> men raised the body of the
+miner; he was dead. The people pressed round, and one glance at the set
+face told them. A momentary awe spread amongst them, and the men who had
+raised the body carried it to a bench and laid it there. Stephen, pallid
+as the dead man himself, looked round in desperation on the staring
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there a surgeon or a doctor here?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine heard him, and raised herself a little in Talbot's arms; he was
+standing against the wall now. She turned her eyes towards Stephen and
+stretched out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use, Steve, dear," she said; "I'm done for. Don't worry with a
+doctor. I shall be gone in five minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen dropped on his knees and seized the little soft brown hand
+extended to him, covering it with kisses.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, no, don't say it," he said in a voice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> suffocated with anguish,
+heedless of the staring faces around. Some of the mob looked on with
+interest, some turned back to their own tables, others went down on
+their hands and knees to scrape up the scattered gold dust that had
+mixed in the trampled sawdust.</p>
+
+<p>"Lay me a little flatter," she murmured to Talbot, and he sank on one
+knee and so supported her, her head resting on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"If we could get her to the air," Stephen exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"No, the moving pains me; let me be," she replied. "I tell you I'm
+dying."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray then, pray now. Oh, Katie dear, pray before it is too late. Aren't
+you afraid to die like this, in this place?"</p>
+
+<p>Katrine shook her head wearily. "No, I don't think I've ever been
+afraid," she murmured.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Did I kill him?" she asked a second later, opening her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot looked down and nodded. Stephen's voice was too choked for
+utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad of that," she murmured, letting her eyes close again; "I never
+missed a shot yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Katie, Katie," moaned Stephen. The room was black to him; it seemed
+as if he saw hell opening to swallow up for ever his beloved one.</p>
+
+<p>Katrine opened her eyes at his agonised cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Steve, it can't be helped; I'm dying, and it's all right. I only
+don't want you to worry over it. Nothing is worth worrying for in this
+world. And I guess we'll all meet again very soon in a warmer place than
+Alaska."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen, utterly broken down, could only sob upon her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot felt a sort of rigor passing through the form he held, and
+thought she was dying.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> He was stirred to the innermost depths of his
+being by her act. She had stepped so calmly between him and death, given
+up her life with the free generous courage of a soldier or a hero.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you come between us?" he asked, suddenly bending over her; "why
+did you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>The calm light eyes looked down into the dark passionate depths of the
+dying girl's pupils, and a long gaze passed between them. What secrets
+of her soul were revealed to his in that instant when they stood face to
+face with only Death between? Then Katrine turned her head wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she answered faintly; "mere devilry, I think." And she
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>The laugh shook the wounded lung. Her face turned from white to grey,
+her teeth clenched. There was a spasm as of a sudden wrenching loose
+from the body, then it sank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> back, collapsed, motionless, against
+Talbot's breast.</p>
+
+<p>The two men carried her out between them. The crowd made way for them,
+standing on either side in respectful silence. Such incidents were not
+uncommon, and excited nothing more than a dull and transient interest.
+They took her out, and the gold for which two lives had been sacrificed
+was left unheeded, scattered in the dust. They went out the way they had
+come, through the noisome court, up the narrow flight of rotten,
+slippery stairs into the pure icy air.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen turned to Talbot and took the girl's body wholly into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to carry her up to my cabin," he said in a choking voice, and
+the other nodded.</p>
+
+<p>The night was glorious with the deadly glory of the Arctic regions; the
+air was still, and of a coldness that seemed to bite deep into the
+flesh; but overhead, in the impenetrable black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>ness of the sky, the
+stars shone with a brilliance found only in the north, throwing a cold
+light over the snowy ground. To the south and east, low down, burned two
+enormous planets, like fiery eyes watching them over the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the two men walked over the hard ground. Not another living being
+was within sight.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen walked first with heavy, uneven steps, and his breath came
+quickly in suppressed and sobbing gasps. Talbot followed closely, deep
+in painful thought. All had happened so suddenly. The whole horrible
+tragedy had swept over them in a few minutes; she had passed away from
+them both for ever. His brain seemed dazed by the shock. He could not
+realise it. He saw her dark head lying on Stephen's shoulder. It seemed
+as if she must lift it every second. He could not believe that she was
+lifeless, lifeless, this creature who had always been life itself, with
+her gay smiles, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> light tones, and quick movements. Now, she and they
+were blotted out for all time. She had died against his breast, and for
+him. That was the horrible thought; it came into his brain after all the
+others, suddenly, and seemed as if it must burst it. And why, why should
+she have done it? Her last words rang in his ears, "mere devilry." So
+she had always been; reckless, open-handed, generous, she had often
+risked her life for another, and now she had given it for him. And in
+her last words she had tried to minimise her own act, tried to relieve
+him of the burden of a hopeless gratitude. But for all that he would
+have to bear it, and it seemed crushing him now. That she should have
+given her life, so young, less than half his own, so full of value and
+promise, for his! It seemed as if a reproach must follow him to the end
+of his days.</p>
+
+<p>He walked as in a dream. He had no sense of the distance they were
+going, hardly any of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> the direction, except that he was following
+mechanically Stephen's slow, uneven, halting footsteps, and watching
+that little head that lay on his shoulder. Once when Stephen paused, he
+stretched out his arms and offered to take the burden from him, but
+Stephen repulsed him fiercely, and then the two went on slowly as
+before, how long he did not know, it seemed a long time. Suddenly, in
+the middle of the narrow pathway before him, Talbot saw Stephen stagger,
+fall to his knees, and then sink heavily sideways in the snow, his arms
+still tightly locked round the rigid body of the girl. Talbot hurried
+forward and bent over him, feeling hastily in his own pockets for his
+flask. Stephen's eyes were wide open and gazed up at him with a
+hopeless, despairing determination that went to Talbot's heart and
+chilled it.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go any farther, not another step," he muttered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Talbot had been searching hurriedly through all his pockets for the
+flask he always carried.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" he exclaimed, "I haven't got it; I must have dropped it
+coming up here, or they stole it in that hell down town."</p>
+
+<p>Stephen feebly put up his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't trouble, I don't want it. I am just going to lie here and wait
+with her. Was she not lovely?" he muttered to himself, raising himself
+on his knees and laying the body before him on the snow.</p>
+
+<p>The sky above them arched in pitchy blackness, but the starlight was so
+keen and brilliant that it lighted up the white silence round them.
+Stephen, on his hands and knees, hung over the still figure and gazed
+down into the marble face. The short silky black hair made a little blot
+of darkness in the snow, the white face was turned upward to the
+starlight. Talbot, looking down, caught for an instant the sight of its
+pure oval, its regular lines, and the sweet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> mouth, and the passionate,
+reasonless face of the man crouching over it, and then looked
+desperately up and down the narrow lonely trail. They were five miles
+from the town, a little over three from the cabins. Glistening whiteness
+lay all around, till the plains of snow grew grey in the distance;
+overhead, the burning, flashing, restless stars; and far off, where the
+two planets guarded the horizon, the red lights of the north began to
+quiver and flicker in the night.</p>
+
+<p>The man on the ground noticed them, and straightening himself suddenly,
+looked towards them.</p>
+
+<p>"The flare of hell!" he muttered, with staring, straining eyes; "it's
+coming very near."</p>
+
+<p>Talbot saw that his reason had gone, failed suddenly, as a light goes
+down under a blast; he was delirious with that sudden delirium born of
+the awful cold that seizes men like a wolf in the long night of the
+Arctic winters.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For a second the helplessness of his situation flashed in upon Talbot's
+brain&mdash;alone here at midnight on the frozen trail, with a madman and a
+corpse!</p>
+
+<p>He saw he must get help at once, and the cabins were the nearest point
+where help could be found. He could get men who would carry Stephen by
+force if necessary, but would he ever live in the fangs of this pitiless
+cold till they could return to him? He stood for one moment irresolute,
+unwilling to leave him to meet his death, and that horrible fear that he
+read in those haggard eyes watching the horizon, alone; and in that
+moment Stephen looked up at him and met his eye, and the madness rolled
+back and stood off his brain for an instant. He beckoned to Talbot, and
+Talbot went down on his knees beside him on the snow.</p>
+
+<p>"My claims," muttered Stephen; "those claims will be yours now, do you
+understand? I've arranged it all with that lawyer Hoskins,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> down town.
+They were to be hers if anything happened to me, but we shall both go
+to-night, and they will be yours. She said I had sunk my soul in them,
+Talbot; she was right. The gold got me, I neglected her; I let her slip
+back into evil; I've murdered her for the claims. They are the price
+hell paid me. But you keep them. All turns to good in your hands. They
+can't harm you. Keep them. They are my grave."</p>
+
+<p>"Stephen, rouse yourself! You are alive! you've got to live," said
+Talbot desperately, shaking him by the shoulder. "I am going now to
+bring men back with me to help you home. You've got to live till I
+return, do you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>Stephen had turned from him again and put his arms round the motionless
+form before them.</p>
+
+<p>"They are coming nearer," Talbot heard him mutter; "but they shall burn
+through me first,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> little one;" and he stretched himself across the
+corpse as if to shield it from the approaching flames, and far off the
+red eyes of the planets sank nearer the horizon, but still seemed to
+watch them across the snowy waste.</p>
+
+<p>Talbot felt the only one thin thread of hope was to go as fast as his
+fatigue-clogged feet could move up to the cabins, and he rose and faced
+the homeward trail. He felt the hope of saving Stephen was just the
+least faintest flicker that ever burned within a heart; still there was
+the chance&mdash;the chance that, even should he be already in the sleep that
+ends in death when he returned, they could rouse him from it and drag
+him into life again. He forced his heavy feet along, and with a great
+effort started into a run. His limbs felt like lead, and all his body
+like paper. The long hours of cold and fatigue, the excitement, the rush
+of changing emotions he had gone through, had been draining his
+vitality, but he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> called upon all that he had left and put it all into
+the effort to save his friend. He knew that any one second lost or
+gained might be the one to turn the balance of life or death, and he
+urged himself forward till a dull pain filled all his side, and his
+temples seemed bursting, and the great lights before him swam in a
+blood-red mist.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen, left alone, raised his head and gazed round him once, then he
+laid his cheek down on the cold cheek, pressed his lips to the cold
+lips, and his breast upon the cold breast just over where the bullet had
+ploughed its way through the flesh and bone. The night gripped him
+tighter and tighter, and slowly he sank to sleep.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LENVOI" id="LENVOI"></a><i>L'ENVOI.</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>Noontide in June. A sky of the clearest, palest azure, and a rollicking,
+swelling, tumbling sea, full of smooth billowy waves chasing each other
+over its deep green surface&mdash;waves with their white crests blown
+backwards, throwing their spray high in the air and seeming to laugh and
+call to each other in gurgling voices; and between sea and sky the
+liquid golden sunlight filling the warm, throbbing air, spreading itself
+in dazzling sheets upon the water, and glinting in ten thousand
+glittering points on the flying spray thrown up by a steamer's screw. It
+was the steamer <i>Prince</i>, homeward-bound from Alaska, carrying
+passengers and a cargo as rich and yellow as the sunshine. And as if it
+knew of its precious and costly charge, the steamer cut proudly through
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> turbulent water, cleaving its straight passage homeward, homeward.
+On the deck of the boat, leaning back idly in a long chair, his calm,
+grey eyes fixed on the receding shores, where the golden sunshine seemed
+palpitating on their perilous loveliness, Talbot was sitting, with the
+freshening breeze stirring his hair and bringing to him the breath of a
+thousand spring flowers on the land. He was returning, and returning
+successful, with his work accomplished, his toil over, his aim achieved,
+and amongst all the lines of pain stamped on his pale and quiet face
+there was written a certain triumph, that yet perhaps was not so much
+triumph as relief. It was just four months since that terrible night
+when he had lost both his comrades, just a little less than four months
+since he had seen them both laid side by side in their lonely grave in
+the west gulch; and those four months would ever be a blot of horrible
+blackness on his life. Should he ever be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> able to forget the blank
+desolation that had closed in upon him night after night as he sat by
+his lonely hearth or paced the floor, his steps alone breaking the awful
+stillness? Yet he had forced himself to stay and face it, had continued
+his work and his method of life unchanged. His men had noted little
+difference in him. He had stayed the time he had appointed for himself,
+had accomplished his self-appointed task, and at last, when the summer
+burst in upon the gulch and loosened all Nature's fetters, he found
+himself also free; and now, like a black curtain rent in twain and torn
+from the bright face of a picture, the clouds of the past seemed falling
+away, leaving his future clear to his gaze. It stretched before him
+bright as the laughing sunlit sea beneath his eyes. If they could but
+have shared his joy, if they could have had their home-coming, his
+fellow-toilers, his fellow-prisoners! and the salt tears stung his lids
+until he closed them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> shutting out the vivid yellow light, as he
+thought of the desolate grave in the gulch.</p>
+
+<p>The fresh, cool air fanned his face and the sun smiled upon him, a loose
+piece of canvas of an awning near him flapped backwards and forwards
+with a monotonous musical sound, the plash and gurgle of the tumbling
+waves fell soothingly on his ears. Gradually sleep came over him gently,
+and enwrapped his strained, wearied body, his sore bruised mind.</p>
+
+<p>When he opened his eyes again it was afternoon. The steamer was still
+flying onward, but the sea was quiet and smooth, and lay still on every
+side in the sun's rays as a pool of liquid gold, and the shores of
+Alaska had vanished, lost in a burnished haze of light.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE END.</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Girl of the Klondike, by Victoria Cross
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Girl of the Klondike, by Victoria Cross
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Girl of the Klondike
+
+Author: Victoria Cross
+
+Release Date: December 4, 2007 [EBook #23732]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Annie McGuire and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE
+
+By
+
+VICTORIA CROSS
+
+"_Quid non mortalia pectora cogis
+Auri sacra fames?_"
+
+NEW YORK
+THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+_A Girl of the Klondike is now issued
+in America for the first time
+by arrangement with the author._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                        PAGE
+
+  CHAPTER I     A NIGHT IN TOWN            9
+
+  CHAPTER II    AT THE WEST GULCH         49
+
+  CHAPTER III   KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS      99
+
+  CHAPTER IV    GOD'S GIFT               167
+
+  CHAPTER V     GOLD-PLATED              211
+
+  CHAPTER VI    MAMMON'S PAY             265
+
+                L'ENVOI                  314
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A NIGHT IN TOWN
+
+
+Night had fallen over Alaska--black, uncompromising night; a veil of
+impenetrable darkness had dropped upon the snow wastes and the
+ice-fields and the fettered Yukon, sleeping under its ice-chains, and
+upon the cruel passes where the trails had been made by tracks of blood.
+Day by day, as long as the light of day--God's glorious gift to man--had
+lasted, these trails across the passes, between the snowy peaks, the
+peaks themselves, had been the theatre of hideous scenes of human
+cruelty, of human lust and greed, of human egoism. Day by day a slow
+terrible stream of humanity had wound like a dark and sluggish river
+through these passes, bringing with it sweat and toil and agony, torture
+and suffering and death. As long as the brilliant sun in the placid
+azure of the summer heavens above had guided them, bands of men had
+laboured and fought and struggled over these passes, deaf to all pity or
+mercy or justice, deaf to all but the clamour of greed within them that
+was driving them on, trampling down the weak and the old, crushing the
+fallen, each man clutching and grasping his own, hoarding his strength
+and even refusing a hand to his neighbour, starving the patient beasts
+of burden they had brought with them, friends who were willing to share
+their toil without sharing their reward, driving on the poor staggering
+strengthless brutes with open knives, and clubbing them to death when
+they fell beneath their loads with piteous eyes, or leaving them to
+freeze slowly where they lay, pressing forward, hurrying, fighting,
+slaughtering, so the men went into the gold camps all the summer, and
+the passes were the silent witnesses of the horror of it all and of the
+innocent blood shed. Then Nature herself intervened, and winter came
+down like a black curtain on the world, and the passes closed up behind
+the men and were filled with drifts of snow that covered the bones and
+the blood and the deep miry slides, marked with slipping tracks where
+struggling, gasping lives had gone out, and the river closed up behind
+the men and the ice thickened there daily, and the men were in the camps
+and there was no way out.
+
+And now, in the darkness of the winter night, in the coldness in which
+no man could live, there was peace. There was no sound, for the snow on
+the tall pines never melted and never fell, the water in the creeks was
+solid as the rocks and made no murmur, there was no footfall of bird nor
+beast, no leaf to rustle, no twig to fall.
+
+But beyond the silent peaks and the desolate passes, beyond the rigid
+pines, low down in the darkness, there was a reddish glow in the air, a
+strange, yellowish, quivering mist of light that hovered and moved
+restlessly, and yet kept its place where it hung suspended between white
+earth and black sky. All around was majestic peace and calm and
+stillness, nature wrapped in silence, but the flickering, wavering mist
+of light jumped feverishly in the darkness and spoke of man. It was the
+cloud of restless light that hung over the city of Dawson.
+
+Within the front parlour of the "Pistol Shot," the favourite and most
+successful, besides being the most appropriately named saloon in Dawson,
+the cold had been pretty well fought down; a huge stove stood at each
+end of the room, crammed as full as it would hold with fuel, all windows
+were tightly closed, and lamps flared merrily against the white-washed
+walls.
+
+At this hour the room was full, and the single door, facing the bar,
+was pushed open every half minute to admit one or two or more figures to
+join the steaming, drinking, noisy crowd within. It was snowing outside.
+As the door swung open one could see the white sheet of falling flakes
+in the darkness; the air was full of snow--that cruel, light, dry snow,
+fine and sharp like powdered ice, borne down on a North wind. The
+figures that entered brought it in with them, the light frosty powder
+resting on their furs and lying deep in the upturned rims of their seal
+caps.
+
+There had been a successful strike made that afternoon, and the men were
+all excited and eager about it. Every one pressed to the "Pistol Shot"
+to hear the latest details, to discuss and gossip over it. There was as
+much talk as digging done in Dawson. Men who had no chance and no means
+to win success, who owned no claims and never saw gold except in another
+man's hands, loved to talk work and talk claims and talk gold with the
+rest. It was exhilarating and exciting, and there was only that one
+topic in the world for them. They were like invalids in a small
+community afflicted by a common disease who never meet without
+discussing their symptoms. They were all invalids in reality, all
+suffering from the same horrible plague and fever, the gold fever that
+was eating into their brains.
+
+At one end of the bar counter, between it and the back wall, a girl was
+standing idly surveying with indifferent eyes the animated crowd that
+moved and swayed round her, the men jostling each other in their efforts
+to push up to the thickly surrounded counter. She was tall rather than
+short, and her figure well made, showing good lines even in the rough
+dress she was wearing; long rubber boots came to her knees, where they
+met her short buckskin skirt, and above this, in place of bodice, she
+wore merely a rough straight jacket drawn into the waist by a broad
+leather belt, in which was stuck, not ostentatiously but still
+sufficiently conspicuously a brace of revolvers. Her hair was cut short,
+and only a few dark silky rings showed themselves beneath the edge of
+her sealskin cap, pushed down close to her dark eyebrows. The dark eyes
+beneath looked out upon the scene before her with a half-disdainful,
+half-wearied expression which deepened into scorn now and then as she
+watched the bar-tender rake over the counter double and three times the
+price of a drink in the generous pinch of gold dust laid there by some
+miner almost too drunk to stagger to the bar. She had a very attractive
+face, to which one's eyes would wander again and again trying to
+reconcile the peculiar resolution, even hardness of the expression with
+the soft, well-moulded features and the sweet youthful lips full of
+freshness and colour. The miners took very little notice of her, and she
+certainly made no effort to attract it, leaning listlessly against the
+bar with one elbow on the counter, a silent and motionless spectator of
+all this excited eager humanity. There was no thought in their mind, no
+word on their lips just then but gold. Gold! gold! The thought possessed
+them with a grip on their brains like the grip of fever on the body, and
+the word sounded pleasant as the sweetest music to their ears. Gold! The
+syllable went round and passed from mouth to mouth, till the very air
+seemed to be getting a yellow tint above the grey fumes of tobacco.
+
+Amongst the last batch of incomers was a slim young fellow of twenty odd
+years, and when he had worked his way with difficulty up to the crowded
+counter, he found himself near the girl's corner. She looked at him,
+letting her dark eyes wander critically over his face. He formed a
+strong contrast to the figures around him, being slight and delicate in
+build, with a pale good-looking face that had a tender sympathetic
+expression like a woman's. Feeling the girl's gaze upon him, he glanced
+her way, and then having looked once, looked again. After a series of
+glances between drinks from his glass, the furtive looks began to amuse
+the girl, and the next time their eyes met she laughed openly, and they
+both spoke simultaneously.
+
+"You're a new comer, aren't you?" she said.
+
+"I haven't seen you here before," was his remark.
+
+"You might have done, I should think," answered the girl carelessly;
+"but I don't come here very often, although my father is running this
+place."
+
+"Are you Poniatovsky's daughter?" he asked in surprise, unable to
+connect this splendid young creature with the ugly little Pole he knew
+as the proprietor of the saloon.
+
+The girl nodded. "Yes, Katrine Poniatovsky is my name--what's yours?"
+
+"Stephen Wood," he answered meekly.
+
+"What have you come here for--mining?" she asked next. Although her
+queries were direct there was nothing rude in the fresh young voice
+making them.
+
+The young fellow coloured deeply, the rush of blood passed over his face
+up to his light smooth hair and deep down into his neck till it was lost
+beneath his coat collar.
+
+"No--yes--that is--well, I mean--I do mine now," he stammered after a
+minute.
+
+The girl said nothing, and when Stephen glanced around at her he saw she
+was regarding him with astonished eyes under elevated eyebrows. This
+expression made the pretty oval face fairly beautiful, and the young
+man's heart opened to her.
+
+"I came with the intention of doing some good here amongst the
+people--in a missionary, religious way I mean, but"--and he stopped
+again in painful embarrassment.
+
+Katrine laughed.
+
+"For the present you've laid religion aside and you're going to do a
+little mining and make a fortune, and then the religion can be taken up
+again," she said.
+
+The young fellow only flushed deeper and turned his glass around
+nervously on the counter.
+
+"That's all right," the girl said soothingly, after a second. "This
+place is a corner of the world where we all are different from what we
+are anywhere else. As soon as men come here they get changed. They
+forget everything else and just go in for gold. It's a sort of madness
+that's in the air. You'd be able to missionise somewhere else all right,
+but here you are obliged just to dig like the rest, you can't help it.
+Got a claim?"
+
+The young man's face paled again.
+
+"Yes," he answered in a low tone. "It was the claim that tempted me.
+It's one of the best, I believe, over in the west gulch, only about ten
+miles from here."
+
+There was a pressing movement round them as some fresh miners came
+pushing their way through to the bar, and Stephen and Katrine moved
+away, to make room for them, towards the wall of the room; they put
+their backs against it and looked over the mass of moving heads towards
+the door.
+
+"Look at this fellow coming in now," Stephen said to his companion
+suddenly, as the door swung open, to a mist of whirling whiteness, and
+two or three men entered: "Henry Talbot. He has the claim next mine in
+the gulch. He has just struck a fresh lot of gold, and he'll soon be one
+of the richest men here."
+
+The girl craned her neck to get a good view between the intervening
+heads, and though she had not been told which of the incoming figures
+to look at, she fixed her eyes as if by instinct on the right one. A man
+of rather tall, slight figure, pale face, and marked features. He made
+his way towards the bar, and then catching Stephen's signals to him, he
+smiled and came their way.
+
+"What are you doing down here?" he said, speaking to Stephen but looking
+at Katrine, who in her turn was scanning his face closely.
+
+"Why, enjoying Miss Poniatovsky's society," answered Stephen, with a
+bow. His friend bowed too, and then they all three laughed and felt
+instinctively they were friends. There is nothing truer than the saying,
+"Good looks are perpetual letters of introduction." These three carried
+their letters of introduction on their faces, and they were all mutually
+satisfied.
+
+"I know your father quite well," remarked Talbot to her. "This 'Pistol
+Shot' has been an institution longer than I have been here, but I never
+knew he had a daughter."
+
+"No," said Katrine, tranquilly, "I daresay not. Father and I quarrelled
+a little while ago, and since then I have been living by myself in one
+of those little cabins in Good Luck Row. Do you know it?"
+
+"No," answered Talbot. "I come into town very seldom, only when I want
+fresh supplies. I stay up at the claim nearly all the time. Do you live
+all by yourself then?" he added, wondering to himself as he looked at
+her, for her beauty was quite striking, and she was certainly not over
+twenty, yet there was something in the strong, noble outlines of her
+figure, in the tranquil calm of her manner, the self-reliance of her
+whole bearing, and the business-like way those pistols were thrust in
+her belt, that modified the wonder a little.
+
+"Quite," she said, with a laugh. "Oh, I've always been accustomed to
+take care of myself."
+
+"But don't you feel very dull and lonely?"
+
+"Sometimes," answered the girl; "but then I would much rather live alone
+than with some one I can't agree with."
+
+Both the men knew the drunken habits of old Poniatovsky, so that they
+silently sympathised with her, and there was a pause as they watched
+other miners coming in.
+
+"Well," said Katrine after a few seconds, straightening herself from her
+leaning attitude, "I think I will go home now; this place is getting so
+full, we shan't be able to breathe soon."
+
+The men looked at each other, and then spoke simultaneously: "May we see
+you as far as your cabin?"
+
+Katrine smiled, such a pretty arch smile, that dimpled the velvet cheeks
+and illumined the whole face.
+
+"Why yes, do, I shall be delighted."
+
+They all three went out together: the cold outside seemed so deadly that
+Talbot drew his collar up over his mouth and nose, unable to face it;
+the girl, however, did not seem to notice it, but laughed and chatted
+gaily in the teeth of the wind, as they made their way down the street.
+It was still snowing--a peculiar fine powdery snow, light and almost
+imperceptible, filled the whole air. Katrine walked fast with springing
+steps down the side-walk, and the two men plunged along beside her. Such
+a side-walk it was: in the summer a mere mass of mud and melted snow and
+accumulated rubbish--for in Dawson the inhabitants will not take the
+trouble to convey their refuse to any definite spot, but simply throw it
+out from their cabins a few yards from their own door, with a vague
+notion that they may have moved elsewhere before it rots badly,--now
+frozen solid but horribly uneven, and worn into deep holes. On the top
+of this had been laid some narrow planks, covered now by a thick glaze
+of ice, which rendered them things to be avoided and a line of danger
+down the middle of the path. Katrine made nothing of these slight
+inconveniences of the ground, but went swinging on in her large rubber
+boots, and talking and jesting all the way. At the bottom of the street,
+at the corner, there was a large wooden building, a double log-cabin
+turned into a saloon. Lights were fixed outside in tin shades, and the
+word "Dancing" was painted in white letters on the lintel. Katrine
+stopped suddenly.
+
+"Let's go in and have a dance," she said, and turned towards Talbot, as
+if she felt instinctively he was the more likely to assent.
+
+"If you like," he answered from behind his collar. "But can you dance in
+those boots?"
+
+"Oh, I can dance in anything," said Katrine, laughing.
+
+"Oh, don't go in, come on," remonstrated Stephen, trying to push on past
+the saloon.
+
+"Why not?" said Katrine; "it's too early to go to bed. Come in, I'll
+pay," and before either of them could answer she had pushed open the
+door, and was holding it for them with one hand, while with the other
+she laid down three quarters on a small trestle inside, where an old man
+was sitting as doorkeeper.
+
+It was a large oblong room, with a partition running half-way down the
+middle, dividing it into the front part, where they were standing and
+where the bar was, and the back part, which was strictly the dancing
+portion. Stephen sat down on a bench that faced the inner portion, with
+the determination of a man who was not to be moved from his seat. At the
+other side of the room was a low raised platform, where some very
+seedy-looking musicians were sawing out a jerky tune from their feeble
+violins. The room was fairly full, and a more heterogeneous collection
+of human beings Stephen thought he had never seen. There were miners in
+the roughest and thickest clothing, labourers, packers, a few Indians,
+some youths in extraordinary attempts at evening dress, some negro
+minstrels with real dress shirts on and diamond studs, girls with old
+velvet skirts and odd bodices that didn't match; and here and there,
+idling against the wall, looking on with absent eyes, one could find a
+different figure--that of student, or artist, or newspaper
+correspondent, or gentleman miner; one need not despair of finding
+almost any type of humanity in that room.
+
+Talbot looked at the girl's bright sparkling face as they entered, and
+then without a word slipped his arm round her waist and they started
+over the rough wooden floor.
+
+"You dance fine," observed Katrine, after a long silence, in which they
+had both given themselves up to the pleasure of mere motion. "I guess
+you have had lots of practice before you came out here."
+
+Talbot smiled down into her admiring eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said, thinking of the foreign embassies, the English
+ball-rooms, the many polished floors his feet had known, "in England."
+
+"My! I expect you're a great swell!" remarked the saloon-keeper's
+daughter.
+
+"All the same," he answered, laughing, "I have never had a partner that
+danced so perfectly as you do."
+
+"Now that's real kind of you," answered Katrine, with a flush of
+pleasure, and then they gave themselves up to silent enjoyment again.
+
+At the end of the dance they came back to Stephen, and found him in the
+same corner, watching the room with a doleful sadness on his face.
+Katrine, flushed and with sparkling eyes, sat down on the corner of the
+step beside him.
+
+"You look so miserable," she said. "Come and have a dance with me to
+cheer you up."
+
+"I can't dance," said Stephen, shortly.
+
+"I'll teach you," volunteered Katrine, leaning her chin on her hands and
+looking up at him.
+
+Stephen flushed angrily.
+
+"It's not that--my conscience won't allow me to."
+
+"I'll make you forget your conscience," with a very winning smile on her
+sweet scarlet lips.
+
+Stephen turned towards her and looked at her with a sudden horror in his
+eyes. The girl looked back at him quite undisconcerted and unmoved. She
+saw nothing in what she had said. To her, conscience was a tiresome
+possession, that might, she knew, trouble you suddenly at any time, and
+if any one could succeed in making you forget you had one, he was surely
+entitled to your gratitude. Words failed Stephen, he only looked at her
+with that silent horror and fear growing in his eyes. Katrine waited
+what she considered a reasonable time for him to reply or to accept her
+offer, and then she rose and turned to Talbot, who had been standing
+looking down upon them both with amusement.
+
+"I'm very thirsty, let's go and have a drink," she said, and they both
+strolled across the room, and then down into the farther end where the
+bar was. They elbowed their way to the counter and stood there waiting
+to be served. Most of the men seemed to know Katrine and made way for
+her, and she had a word of chaff, or a nod, or a smile or laugh or
+friendly greeting, for nearly all of them. Talbot noted this, and noted
+also that though the men seemed familiar, none of them were rude, and
+though rough enough, there was apparently no disrespect for her. Talbot
+wondered whether this was due to her morals or her pistols.
+
+"Who's your friend?" asked two or three voices at her side while they
+stood waiting.
+
+"Mr. Talbot--one of the lucky ones!" replied Katrine promptly. "He has a
+claim up the gulch that's bringing him in millions--or going to," she
+added mischievously. The men looked Talbot up and down curiously. Even
+in his rough miner's clothes, he looked a totally different figure from
+themselves. Slim and tall and trim, with his well-cut head and figure,
+with his long neck and refined quiet face, he was a type common enough
+in Bond Street, London, or on Broadway, New York, but not so common in
+the Klondike.
+
+"Well, if that's so, pardner," slowly observed a thick-set, crop-haired
+man, edging close up to him, "you won't mind standing a drink for us?"
+
+"Delighted," returned Talbot, with a pleasant smile. "Give it a name."
+
+The result of taking votes on this motion was the ordering of ten hot
+whiskies and two hot rums, the latter for himself and Katrine. Talbot
+never drank spirits at all, and the terrible concoctions of the cheap
+saloons were an abomination to him. He took his glass, however, to show
+his friendliness, had it filled nearly to the brim with water, and then
+could hardly drink it. The fluid seared his throat like red-hot
+knife-blades. Katrine took hers straight as it was handed across the
+counter and tossed it down her throat at one gulp, seeming to enjoy it.
+
+"Well, Jim," she said to the young miner next her, "what luck have you
+had lately?"
+
+"None," he replied gloomily. "Since I left the old place, I've lost all
+along in the 'Sally White.'"
+
+Talbot thought they were speaking of claims and that the man was
+referring to his work, and the next minute when Katrine turned her head
+to him and said rapidly, "The 'Sally White' is the third in the next
+street," he was rather mystified. He came so little into town, and
+mixed so little with the uncongenial life and company it offered, that
+he was ignorant of its prevailing fashion, pastime, and vice--gambling.
+Fortunes were made and lost across the trestle tables of the saloons
+quicker and easier than up on the claims. He did not now take much
+notice of what she had said, nor ask her for an explanation. The girl
+was handsome and a beautiful dancer, but the company at the bar he did
+not appreciate at all, and his only idea was to withdraw her from it.
+
+"Are you not ready for another dance?" he said, as the violin began to
+squeak out another tune.
+
+Katrine nodded, and they had already turned away, when a voice said over
+her shoulder, "You won't quite forget me this evening, will you?"
+
+Katrine, without turning her head, answered, "You shall have the next,
+if you come for it."
+
+Then they started, and for the next ten minutes Talbot tried to forget,
+to be oblivious of the sordid common scene around him, to get a glimpse
+back into his old life, which seemed so far away now, as one tries to
+re-dream a last night's dream.
+
+Stephen, sitting in his corner, whence he had never stirred, watched her
+sullenly. She was not dancing with Talbot now. Stephen could see that
+he, too, was watching her from the other side of the room, standing with
+his back to the wall. She was waltzing with a man Stephen had not seen
+before, evidently a stranger in every way to the place and the
+surroundings. He was a young fellow, sufficiently good-looking, and
+danced with as much ease as if he were in a New York ball-room. His left
+hand clasped Katrine's and drew it high up close to his neck and
+shoulder, his right arm enclosed her waist and drew her to him so firmly
+that the two figures seemed fused into one as they glided together over
+the imperfect floor. Katrine was giving herself up wholly to the
+pleasure of the dance. Stephen saw, as her face turned towards him, that
+her eyes were half closed, and a little smile of deep satisfaction
+rested on her lips. The young fellow's face showed he was equally
+absorbed and lost to his surroundings, and there was something in its
+expression, coupled with the peculiar ease and sway of the two blent
+forms, which raised a savage and jealous anger in Stephen's breast. To
+an absolutely unprejudiced eye, and one that saw only the extreme grace
+of the movement, which neither their rough clothes, the uneven floor,
+nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious
+and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now
+darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a
+sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the
+second time, still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes
+fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him,
+he started up as if to plant himself in their way, then checked himself,
+and when they had passed went across the room to where Talbot was
+standing.
+
+"You see her dancing?" he said excitedly, without any preface.
+
+Talbot nodded.
+
+"Did you notice how they are dancing? that's what I mean."
+
+Talbot laughed slightly. "That's not dancing, that's--"
+
+Stephen flushed a dull red. "It's disgraceful; I'm going to stop her,"
+he muttered.
+
+"My dear fellow, remember you only met her this evening."
+
+"I don't care; she ought not to dance like that."
+
+"I don't like it myself," answered Talbot, "but _you_ can't interfere."
+
+"I'm going to."
+
+"You'd much better not make an ass of yourself," returned Talbot,
+putting his hand on the other's arm.
+
+"Leave me alone," said Stephen, roughly shaking it off, as the two
+delinquents, still in the same manner, came moving up towards them.
+
+Stephen waited till they were just opposite him, then he stepped forward
+and seized the girl's arm and dragged it down from the level of the
+young fellow's neck where he had drawn it. Both the dancers stopped
+abruptly, and the man faced Stephen with an angry flush and kindling
+eyes.
+
+"What the devil do you mean, sir?" he said angrily, advancing close to
+Stephen, who had his eyes fixed on Katrine's face, all warm tints and
+smiling, as a child's roused from a happy dream.
+
+He ignored the man and addressed her.
+
+"You are not going to dance any more to-night," he said with sombre
+emphasis.
+
+The young man's face went from red to purple. He put his hand to his hip
+with an oath, and had half drawn his pistol, when Katrine sprang forward
+and seized his wrist.
+
+"Now don't be silly; I'm tired anyway, Dick. I'll dance with you
+to-morrow night. This is Mr. Stephen Wood. Mr. Wood--Mr. Peters. Now
+let's go and have some drinks. I'm not going to have any fighting over
+me."
+
+She put herself, smiling, between the two men, who stood glaring at each
+other in silence. She was annoyed at the dance being broken off, but she
+saw in Stephen's interference the great tribute paid to her own
+attraction, and therefore forgave him. At the same time she had no wish
+to have her vanity further gratified by bloodshed. There was a certain
+hardness but no cruelty in her nature. She turned from the men and
+strolled very slowly in the direction of the bar, and they followed her
+as if her moving feet were shod with magnets and theirs with steel.
+Talbot went too, and in a few minutes the four were standing at the
+counter with glasses in their hands.
+
+Peters kept close beside Katrine, and he and Stephen did not exchange a
+word. Katrine kept up the chatter between herself and the two other men.
+
+"May I see you home?" Peters said abruptly to her, interrupting the
+general talk.
+
+"No," returned Katrine, lightly; "to-morrow night, not to-night. I have
+my escort," and she smiled at Stephen and Talbot.
+
+"I will say good-night then," and Peters, after a slight bow to Talbot,
+withdrew, taking no notice of Stephen, who since the girl's surrender of
+the dance had looked very self-contented and happy, and was now standing
+glass in hand, his eyes fixed upon her face.
+
+"I think I really will go home now," she said. "We've had a jolly time.
+I only wish you'd have joined us. Are you always so very good?" she said
+innocently to Stephen. He flushed angrily and said nothing.
+
+A few seconds later they were on the way to Good Luck Row. One of the
+neatest-looking cabins in it had a light behind its yellow blind, and
+here Katrine stopped and thanked them for their escort. They would both
+have liked to see the interior, but she did not suggest their coming in.
+She wished them good-night very sweetly, and before they had realised it
+had disappeared inside.
+
+They walked on down the row slowly, side by side. The next thing to do
+was to find a lodging for the night, and they both felt about ready to
+appreciate a bed and some hours' rest.
+
+"There's Bill Winters," said Stephen, after a moment's silence. "He said
+he'd always put us up when we came down town; let's go and try him."
+
+"Do you know where his cabin is?"
+
+"I think so. Turn down here; now it is the next street, where those
+little black cabins are."
+
+They walked on quickly, following Stephen's directions, and made for a
+block of cabins that had been pitched over and shone black and glossy in
+the brilliant moonlight. When they got up to them the men were puzzled,
+each was so like its neighbour, and Stephen declared he had forgotten
+the number, though Bill had given it to him.
+
+"Well, try any one," said Talbot, impatiently, as Stephen stopped
+bewildered. They were standing on the side-walk, now a slippery arch of
+ice, between two rows of the low black cabins. There was no light in any
+of them; it was two o'clock; the moon alone shone up and down the
+street. Talbot felt his moustache freezing to his face, and his left eye
+being rapidly closed by the lashes freezing together, and that's enough
+to make a man impatient. Stephen did not move, and Talbot went up
+himself to the nearest cabin and knocked at the door. They waited a long
+time, but at last a hand fumbled with the catch inside, and the door was
+opened a little way; through the crack came out a stream of warm air,
+the fumes of tobacco and wood smoke; within was darkness.
+
+"Is this Bill Winters'?" Talbot asked, and the door opened wider.
+
+"I guess it is," said a voice in reply. "Why, it's Mr. Talbot and Mr.
+Wood--come in, sirs."
+
+Talbot and Wood stepped over the threshold into the thick darkness, and
+the door closed behind them. There was a shuffling sound for an instant
+as Mr. Winters groped for a light, then he struck a match and lighted up
+a little tin lamp on the wall. The light revealed a good-sized cabin
+with a large stove in the centre, round which, with their feet towards
+it, four or five men rolled up in skins or blankets were lying asleep.
+
+"You want a bed for the night, I expect," Winters went on; "we've all
+turned in already, but I guess there's room for two more."
+
+Wood and Talbot both expressed their sense of contrition at disturbing
+him, but Winters would not listen.
+
+"Oh, stow all that," he said, as he set about dragging forward two
+trestles and covering them with blankets. "You two fellows are so damned
+polite, you don't seem suited to this town, you don't seem natural here,
+that's a fact."
+
+He was stepping over and about amongst the prostrate forms, and
+sometimes on them, but none of them roused themselves sufficiently to do
+more than utter a sleepy ejaculation and turn into a fresh position.
+Wood and Talbot stood waiting close against the door. It was
+half-an-hour before Bill had prepared their beds just as he wanted them,
+extinguished the lamp again, and retreated to his own corner. Then
+darkness and stillness reigned again over the smoky interior.
+
+The low trestles on which the men lay were hard and unyielding, and a
+doubled-up blanket makes a poor mattress; the air of the cabin was thick
+and heavy, and the stove, which was close to Talbot's head, having been
+stuffed to its utmost capacity with damp wood that it might burn through
+the night, let out thin spirals of acrid smoke from all its cracks.
+Stephen did not close his eyes long after they had lain down, and there
+was utter silence in the place except for heavy breathings. He lay with
+open eyes staring into the thick darkness, a thousand painful wearying
+thoughts stinging his brain. Talbot, tired and worn out with bodily
+fatigue, but with that mental calm that comes from an absolute
+singleness of aim and hope and purpose, fell into a deep and tranquil
+sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. He lived now but to work;
+the night had come when he could not work, therefore he slept that he
+might work again on the morrow.
+
+When the faint grey light of morning came creeping into the low and
+narrow room, which was not very early, as the nights now were far longer
+than the days, Talbot was the first of the sleepers to awake. He
+refilled the stove, which had burned down in the long night hours, and
+then let himself out.
+
+When he returned Bill and the other men were all stirring, and Stephen
+sitting up on his trestle rubbing his red and weary-looking eyes.
+
+"Well, pardner, what are you going to do to-day?" he asked a few minutes
+later, when they had the cabin to themselves for a moment.
+
+"Going to do?" replied Talbot in astonishment, looking up from turning
+the coffee into the coffee-pot, according to Bill's orders. "Why, if we
+collect together all the stores we want, and get back to the diggings
+this afternoon, we shall have about enough to do."
+
+"Oh, I meant about the girl."
+
+"What girl?" queried Talbot, now standing still and staring Stephen in
+the face.
+
+"The girl you danced with last night--the saloon-keeper's daughter,
+Katrine Poniatovsky--do you want any more identification?" returned
+Stephen, sarcastically, opening his heavy lids a little wider.
+
+"Well, _what_ about her?" returned Talbot, looking at him expectantly.
+
+"Oh, well, I didn't know; I thought perhaps we wouldn't go back to-day,
+that's all," answered Stephen, rather sheepishly.
+
+To his sympathetic, impulsive nature, open to every new impression,
+easily distracted like the butterfly which may be caught by the tint of
+any chance flower in its path, the incident of last night was much. To
+Talbot, self-concentrated, determined, and absorbed, it was nothing. He
+looked at his friend now with something like contempt.
+
+"She's so handsome, and dances so well," Stephen went on hurriedly,
+feeling foolish and uncomfortable before the other's gaze.
+
+"I did not come here to dance with girls," remarked Talbot shortly,
+going over to the stove, and the entry of the other men at that moment
+stopped the conversation.
+
+They had breakfast together at the rough wood table in the centre of the
+room. The coffee was the redeeming feature of the meal: from that bright
+brown stream of boiling liquid the men seemed to gain new life; they
+watched it lovingly, expectantly, eagerly, as Bill poured it out into
+their thick cups.
+
+The moment the meal was over Talbot crushed his hat on to his eyes, but
+before he left the cabin he glanced at Stephen, who was standing
+irresolutely by the stove.
+
+"I shall get all I want," he said, "and be back here by two at the
+latest. If you're here then, we can start up together; if not, I shall
+go ahead;" and he went out.
+
+Stephen lingered by the stove, then he and Bill drifted into a
+discussion over some of the latest discoveries of gold in Colorado, and
+they both fell to wondering how much more had been found since their
+last news, seven months old; and they had a pipe together, and then Bill
+thought he'd drop down to the "Pistol Shot," and Stephen crushed on his
+fur cap as determinedly as Talbot had done and went out--to Katrine's
+number in Good Luck Row.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+AT THE WEST GULCH
+
+
+Talbot made his start back to the cabin later than he intended; he had
+knocked at Winters' cabin before leaving the town, but all the occupants
+were out, and there had been no response.
+
+It was afternoon, and already the uncompromising cold of evening had
+entered into the air; the sky was grey everywhere, and dark, almost
+black, in front of him; it seemed to hang low, frowning and ominous,
+over the desolate snowy waste that stretched before him: there was no
+snow falling yet, only the threat of it written in the black and dreary
+sky that faced him. His cheeks and chin felt stiff and frozen already,
+as if a thin mask of ice were drawn over them, and his eyes were sore
+and tired from the continuous glare of the snow. The little pony beside
+him plodded along the path patiently, and his master at intervals drew a
+hand from a comfortable pocket to lay it encouragingly on his neck, at
+which familiar caress the pony would throw up his head and step out
+faster for some paces. Talbot felt sorry for the little beast toiling
+along under his heavy though carefully packed burden of stores, cans of
+oil, loaves, and every sort of miscellaneous provisions, and would have
+spoken cheeringly to it, but his lips felt too stiff and painful to form
+the words, and so man and brute toiled along in silence over the trail
+under the angry sky. As he walked, Talbot's thoughts went back
+involuntarily to the picture of Stephen sitting smoking by the stove in
+the snug interior of Bill Winters' cabin; he felt instinctively, as
+surely as if he had seen it, that he would so sit through the
+afternoon, and by evening he would be finding his way down to the
+nearest saloon and pass the hours there with Katrine; and he compared
+him vaguely with himself, tired with tramping through the town from
+store to store, half frozen while he stood to pack the pony, and now
+labouring up alone to his cabin in the gulch.
+
+He wondered dimly whether it would turn out that he should ever realise
+a reward for his toil, whether he should live to get out of this icy
+corner of the world, or whether he should die and rot here, caught in
+this great snow-trap, in this open grave, where the living were buried.
+He wondered a little, but his mind was not one inclined to abstract
+thought. He spent very little time in retrospection, reflection, and
+contemplation, very little time in thinking of any sort, and on this
+account possessed so great a stock of energy for acting. Each human
+being has only a certain amount of energy supplied him with which to do
+the work of his life. Thinking, speaking, and acting are all portions of
+this work, and whatever of his energy he consumes in any one, so much
+the less has he for the others. Thinking, the formation of ideas, is
+hard work; speaking, the expression of ideas, is hard work; and acting,
+the carrying out of ideas, is hard work. It is false to suppose that the
+first two are natural, instinctive, involuntary movements of the brain,
+and that only the last requires effort.
+
+Talbot thought very little and spoke very little. His ideas came to him
+in simple form; they were not elaborated in his mind nor in his speech,
+they turned into actions immediately or died quietly without giving him
+any trouble or wasting his time. A decision once made he carried out. He
+never thought about it afterwards, or frittered away his strength in
+hours of torturing doubt as to whether it was a good one to have made,
+or whether some other might not have been better. Once made, he kept to
+it, good or bad, leaving it to chance whether he died or succeeded in
+his attempt to carry it out. And this conservation of energy in all
+other mental processes resulted in a splendid strength for action and a
+limitless endurance in the carrying out of his decisions.
+
+And as he walked now he thought very little, except in a resigned way,
+of the physical discomfort he was enduring, and of the time when he
+should reach his cabin. Dusk had already fallen before he came to the
+gulch, and he had to strain his eyes to find the narrow trail which
+descended the side of the gorge. His log cabin, carefully and solidly
+constructed, stood half-way down the northern slope of the gulch, on a
+sort of natural platform formed by the vagaries of the now narrowed
+stream in its younger and wilder days. Beneath the cabin stretched his
+claims, 500 feet of dry soil on the slope of the hill, 100 feet this
+side of the stream and fairly in the creek, and 100 feet on the farther
+side, a stretch of 700 feet in all, and of a quality that made it at
+that time the richest claim for fifty miles round. Shafts, reaching down
+to bed rock, were sunk all over it, and great mounds of frozen gravel
+beside them showed how untiringly they had been worked. In addition to
+these, the man's native energy had prompted him to drive a tunnel
+horizontally for some distance into the side of the hill that rose
+steeply behind the cabin. The tunnel pierced the hill for 100 feet, and
+at the end a shaft had been sunk to bed rock, and it was from here at
+present that the highest grade ore was coming. Moved by an instinct to
+protect what he intuitively felt would be his richest possession, Talbot
+had built his tunnel in one solid block with the cabin, and closed its
+outer end with a huge door, well provided with bars and bolts. So long
+as this door was successfully held, no claim-jumper could penetrate into
+the tunnel or reach the shaft at the end. By this means, too, a double
+protection was afforded the living cabin, though of this he thought
+comparatively little, for the face of the cabin presented nothing but
+its one small window and this huge solid door. Upon opening this you
+found yourself in the tunnel; if you kept straight on you reached the
+shaft; if you entered the small door upon your left hand you found
+yourself in the interior of the living cabin.
+
+The gulch ran east and west, and at sunset at some times in the year a
+red light from the dying sun would fall into it, like a tongue of flame,
+and the whole gulch would seem on fire. At such moments Talbot would
+cease his work and stand looking up the gorge, with the red light
+falling on his face and banishing its careworn pallor. No one knew what
+he was thinking of in those moments, whether he was recalling Italian
+or Egyptian skies that had been as fair, or whether for a moment some
+vanished face seemed to look at him from out those brilliant hues, or if
+merely the great sheets of gold that spread above the gulch brought
+visions of that wealth he was giving his best years to attain. No one
+who met him knew much about him, except that he was an Englishman, had
+travelled much and experienced many different forms of life, and finally
+come to the Klondike,--but why this last? He was believed to have been
+rich before he came: was it merely to increase his wealth, or was there
+some other reason? Was there any one awaiting his return? There were
+several portraits in his cabin of soft and lovely faces, but then the
+number was confusing, and the most curious of the men who worked under
+him could not come to any satisfying conclusion. All they knew was that
+he worked harder than any common miner, that his reserve was unbroken,
+and his life one continual self-denial. There were thirty men in all who
+worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than
+liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence
+of ingenuousness and frankness of character, that prevented any
+affection growing up amongst the men for their master, and his attitude
+towards them was summed up in the answer he gave to an acquaintance who
+once asked him how he got on with his men, if he had any friends amongst
+them. Talbot had raised his dark, marked eyebrows and merely said
+coldly, "I don't make friends of miners."
+
+Stephen Wood's cabin was a little higher up the gulch by several yards,
+and the claims of the two men had been staked out side by side. A great
+friendship had grown up between the two, such a friendship as common
+danger, common privations, common aims, and Nature's awful loneliness
+drives any two human beings in each other's proximity into. But besides
+this friendship there was a quiet liking on Talbot's part for this weak,
+impulsive, boyish character, so unlike his own, and on Stephen's side a
+warm admiration for all Talbot's qualities that he could not and yet
+wished to emulate. He, as others, was completely excluded from the elder
+man's confidence, and knew nothing of his past or what was likely to be
+his future; but then Stephen was one of those people always so deeply
+absorbed in himself, his own aims and views, that he really never
+noticed that his manifold confidences were never returned in the
+smallest degree. He would come over to Talbot's cabin in the evening,
+seat himself on the opposite side of the fire, and talk incessantly.
+Talbot would allow him to do so until he felt too much bored, when he
+would rise and quietly tell him to go. Stephen would hastily apologise
+and retire, to return the following night quite unabashed, with more
+views and aims to impart. In the first week of their acquaintance Talbot
+had heard all about his home life--about the little English village, and
+the red brick, ivy-covered school-house, where he had been master since
+he was eighteen; of the village schoolmistress he had loved, because she
+was so good, and had abandoned, presumably for the same reason; of his
+doubts, fears, hopes, wishes, and intentions,--and after ten months he
+knew no more of Talbot than he did the day of their first meeting.
+
+The cabins of the men employed by both Stephen and Talbot were dotted
+over the gulch, some higher and some lower than their own; while a
+number of the men lived some distance off, a few of them even having
+lodgings in the town.
+
+When at last Talbot reached his cabin door this evening darkness had
+completely fallen; there was no light from within to guide him, but
+with his half-frozen fingers he managed to unlock the outer door, and he
+and his tired beast went in together. The first thing he thought of when
+he had closed the great door behind him and lighted up the passage, was
+to unpack the animal and put him up in the stable which he had built
+opposite his own cabin door; and it was fully an hour before, having
+seen the beast comfortably installed, he turned into his own room and
+struck a light. Here there was only one living thing to greet him, and
+that was a shabby little black cat that leaped off the bed in the corner
+and came purring to meet him. One morning he had found this cat lying on
+his claim with a broken leg and carried it back to his cabin, where he
+had set the leg and nursed the miserable little creature into recovery.
+Denbigh, his foreman, who had seen Talbot sitting up for two whole
+nights to watch the helpless animal, had carried away the impression
+that the cold, quiet, hard and selfish man, as he appeared to the
+miners, had another side to his character that they never saw. It was
+this other side that the kitten was familiar with, and she came mewing
+and purring with delight towards him. Talbot, who was ready to sink to
+the floor with exhaustion, stooped and stroked the animal, which
+followed his steps everywhere as he set about lighting up his stove. It
+was very quiet, there was absolute silence all round him, and every step
+of his heavy boots on the wooden floor, every crackle of the igniting
+wood in the stove, seemed a loud and important sound in the stillness.
+It was always very quiet at the gulch, Nature's own solemn quiet, except
+in the summer time, when she filled it with the laughing voices of a
+thousand streams and rills.
+
+That evening, when his domestic arrangements were all put into working
+order, his fire blazing, his coffee boiling on the hob, and his table
+laid, he sank back in his chair with a weary sigh, his hand idly
+stroking the cat, which had jumped purring on his knee. It seemed lonely
+without Stephen, and he foresaw that probably many evenings would pass
+now without his society.
+
+The next morning, when it was yet barely light, and the gulch was
+holding still all its damp black shadows of the night, Talbot was out
+tramping over the claims, showing his men where to start new fires, and
+carefully scanning the fresh gravel as it was thawed and dug out. All
+his men had a pleasant salutation for him as he passed by, except one,
+who merely leaned over his work and threw out his spadeful of gravel
+savagely, as Talbot stopped by the fire. He took no notice apparently of
+the man, and after a second's survey passed on to the next fire. The man
+looked after him a moment sulkily and returned to his work. He was a
+huge fellow, some six feet four, and with a massive frame and head to
+suit his height. He had been working for many months with Talbot now,
+and was a valuable labourer on account of his great strength and
+capacity for work. At first he had been rather a favorite with Talbot,
+and there hung now in his cabin a first-class six-shooter, the gift of
+his master when he first came up to the gulch.
+
+Dick Marley had had a devoted admiration for Talbot until the last few
+months, when it had turned into a bitter, sullen resentment over a
+matter with which in reality Talbot had absolutely nothing to do. Dick,
+being a hard and constant worker, had managed to save out of his liberal
+wages quite a considerable sum, and this he had entrusted to a man on
+his way to Seattle to invest for him in securities. After a time the man
+disappeared, and Dick discovered his securities had never been bought,
+and that he was in fact robbed and cheated. In his first rage and
+disappointment he cast about unconsciously in his mind for some one
+besides himself to lay the blame upon, and finding no one he grew daily
+more and more morose. Hour after hour, as he worked upon the claims, his
+thoughts would revolve sullenly round his loss, and the offender being
+beyond his reach, his anger burned against any and every man near him,
+and apparently chiefly against his employer.
+
+A week passed before Stephen reappeared at the gulch, then one evening
+after dark, when Talbot was sitting back in his chair, dozing after the
+cold and fatigue of the day's work, a loud banging came on his outer
+door, and when he opened it, Stephen, looking very flushed and animated,
+came into the quiet little room, laden with packages and with a general
+air of city life about him.
+
+"Well, old man, how are you? Hello, Kitty!" this as he stumbled over the
+little black cat at his feet. "Well, I've had such a glorious time! I
+wish you'd stayed down there too: that girl is just the finest creature
+I've ever seen. Have you anything for a fellow to eat?--I'm perfectly
+famished. Look here, I've brought you up some cans of things and a
+bottle of rye, the very best. I say, you look dreadfully blue--what's
+the matter?"
+
+"Life in the west gulch in the winter isn't particularly exhilarating,"
+answered Talbot, quietly, as he went about his preparations for
+Stephen's supper.
+
+"How have the men been--all right?" questioned Stephen, as he took off
+his coat and settled himself in the best chair.
+
+"They have been working pretty steadily, but I notice a difference in
+them since that fellow Marley has been here. He has been stirring them
+up, doing a lot of mischief, I think."
+
+"You must assert your authority, I suppose," remarked Stephen
+pompously, stretching his feet out comfortably in the cheerful blaze.
+"Perhaps he doesn't know who's master here."
+
+"He will very soon find out then," returned Talbot, so grimly that
+Stephen looked at him sharply. "Well, what's all your news?" asked
+Talbot, as if desirous to get away from the question of his men.
+
+"I don't know that there is much, except I've been having a good time.
+You've looked after my ground and seen to the workings, haven't you?
+Thanks, I knew you would, and so I felt I could stay down town a little:
+you're a better hand at managing men than I am, any way,--women too, for
+that matter; do you know that you impressed Katrine awfully? She has
+talked about you to me--you are so good-looking, so distinguished, she
+wants to know whether you are a Count or a Prince in disguise, and all
+sorts of things."
+
+Talbot smiled. "It is extremely kind of her," he said quietly.
+
+"Oh, I know she's not the kind of girl you admire," said Stephen, in
+rather a nettled tone. "You wouldn't look at a saloon-keeper's daughter
+simply because she _is_ a saloon-keeper's daughter; you like a girl in
+your own rank, all grace and dignity and good manners, and awfully
+clever and intellectual, and gifted and educated, and all that."
+
+Talbot merely laughed and remained silent, a habit he had which
+successfully baffled questions, innuendoes, and suppositions alike.
+
+"And any way your passions are engaged somehow, somewhere."
+
+"How do you know that?" asked Talbot, with a hardening of his mouth.
+
+"Know it! why, otherwise you could not lead this dog's life as you do,
+and you could not be indifferent to a beautiful girl like Katrine,--for
+she is beautiful, she's not 'pretty' or 'nice,' but she's downright
+beautiful," returned Stephen, emphasising his remarks by striking the
+table.
+
+Talbot said nothing, but put more wood in the stove in silence.
+
+"Your supper is ready now; if you are famished, as you said, you'd
+better have it, and discuss Miss Poniatovsky afterwards," he remarked.
+
+Stephen turned to the table. "Won't you have something too?" he said.
+
+Talbot shook his head. "No, thanks; I'm not hungry."
+
+"You ascetic creature, you never are," replied Stephen, as he began to
+carve into the cold bacon.
+
+"Well, you know how I detest her surroundings," he began again after a
+few minutes, "and drinking, and saloons, and almost everything she does,
+but then I can't help liking her. She's so different from any girl I've
+ever seen. She attracts me, she holds my thoughts so, and if I could get
+her to give up all that, if I could alter her views--"
+
+"You would be doing away with that difference from others that is the
+basis of your attraction," put in Talbot, dryly.
+
+"Well," returned Stephen after a minute, in a sulky tone, "we are all
+like that,--a man falls in love with a girl, because she _is_ a girl,
+and then immediately wants to turn her into a married woman."
+
+Talbot laughed. "Good!" he said. "You are quite right."
+
+"It's the altering process we like, and we want to do the alteration
+ourselves. I showed her my pocket Greek testament yesterday," he
+continued.
+
+"And was she interested?" inquired Talbot, dryly.
+
+"Not so much as she was in the shooting gallery," admitted Stephen. "I
+told her how a bible at a man's heart had often saved his life, and she
+said a pistol had done that too, and she'd rather trust the pistol."
+
+Talbot laughed. "You say you like altering. I should think in Katrine
+you've a splendid field. If you want to get her down to the
+schoolmistress pattern, you've employment for a lifetime!"
+
+Stephen flushed, as he always did at any allusion to the girl he had
+loved as the type of all virtues, and yet had tired of. Good people are
+always more or less interested in and attracted by the wicked, while the
+wicked are not generally the least interested in nor attracted by the
+good. Stephen was drawn towards this reckless daughter of the saloons
+partly through the sense of her general badness, it formed unconsciously
+a sort of charm for him, whereas his goodness did not act at all in the
+same way upon her. To her eyes it was his one great drawback, an
+overwhelming disadvantage.
+
+He finished his supper in silence, and the two men drew in close to the
+fire to smoke. That is to say, Stephen did the smoking, as he did the
+talking. He consumed Talbot's tobacco, and filled Talbot's cabin with
+its fumes. Talbot himself did not smoke.
+
+Stephen's return to his own claim freed Talbot from the double share of
+work he had been doing for the last week, and he remained on his own
+claims all day, tramping from one end to the other, directing where a
+new shaft should be made, overseeing closely all the work that went on,
+and doing a good deal of it himself; and in those days he became more
+clearly conscious than ever of the difference that was growing up in his
+men's manner towards him. There was a veiled insolence in their replies
+to his questions, a certain want of promptness in obeying his orders,
+which caused a curious gleam to come into the quiet grey eyes as,
+apparently without noticing it, he passed on.
+
+He did not speak of it, not even to his foreman, Denbigh, the man whom
+he liked and trusted most. He was accustomed to manage his own affairs,
+and rarely took counsel with any one. He was one of those men who are
+born with the gift of governing others. He was an organiser, an
+administrator, by nature. Had he been born to a throne, his kingdom
+would have been well ruled from end to end, and rarely if ever embroiled
+with other nations; and the same spirit that would have ruled a kingdom
+showed itself here in the ruling and management of his seven hundred
+feet of ground.
+
+He never bullied, never swore, no one had ever seen him in a passion. He
+gave his orders in a pleasant friendly voice, his manner was quiet, even
+to gentleness, but he had a way of getting those orders invariably
+carried out that was hard to analyse. If he said a thing was to be done,
+it was done, and no one knew of an instance where it was not. He never
+countermanded an order, and never receded from a position once taken,
+even if in his own heart he recognised later it was an unwise one. But
+the forethought and caution, the deliberation in decision that were his
+by nature, made the occasions on which he regretted an order very
+seldom, and if such there were, no matter, the order stood. He himself
+looked upon his word as irrevocable, whether given in promise or
+command, and instinctively all who came in contact with him looked upon
+it in the same light. The men, when they made engagements with him and
+stipulated certain terms for certain work, and other details, never
+asked for paper, and even refused it when offered. Whatever came from
+those silent, resolute lips they knew unalterable, unanswerable, final,
+and absolute; they all trusted his word completely, and it passed
+amongst them as other men's bond.
+
+Everything on the claims was well organised, all was kept in smooth
+working order. The men had exact hours of work, exact time for changing
+off, each his specified work and place on the ground, each his tools,
+for which he was accountable as long as he worked there.
+
+Talbot's forethought even went far enough to provide for the
+happy-go-lucky and mostly ungrateful creatures who had no idea of
+providing for themselves. He established a sick fund, and to this each
+of the men who worked for him was obliged to subscribe a trifle out of
+his weekly wages. Then in their not infrequent sickness there was
+alleviation and comfort waiting for them. If the miners were not his
+friends they were his dependents, and as such he cared for them and
+looked after them. He was always friendly in manner to them, always
+ready to help and assist them, to attend to their wants, to listen to
+their complaints, and settle the frequent disputes amongst themselves,
+which they invariably brought to him for decision. If he had not
+instilled affection into them, they felt an unlimited faith and
+confidence in his absolute justice.
+
+"He's hard, real hard," they said amongst themselves, "but he'll never
+go back on you;" and that was the received opinion amongst them.
+
+Although he was conscious now of the feeling growing up amongst his men,
+he appeared to ignore it entirely. As long as his instructions and
+commands were carried out, he affected to be in ignorance whether it was
+with a smiling or a scowling face. He felt certain that the disaffection
+owed its origin to the man Marley, and he expected every day that some
+matter would bring this man and himself into a personal conflict, in
+which he meant to conquer, and he preferred to wait for this to happen
+than to, in any way, take an initiative step in bringing the covert
+hostility to light.
+
+It was his method. On the same principle, when one of his debtors,
+having completely lost his head in blind rage against a quiet order that
+he should pay what was due, shook his fist in the other's face and
+threatened to wipe the floor with him, Talbot did not knock the man
+down, as some might have done. He simply remarked in his dryest tone,
+"You'd better try it," and for some reason or other the man did not.
+Shortly after the money was paid.
+
+So now he simply stood his own ground, saw that his work was properly
+done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the
+meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness
+of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and
+quite incapable of understanding his employer, grew elated and
+triumphant.
+
+Stephen had been back at the gulch a fortnight or more, when Talbot
+found late one afternoon some of his tools broken, and this, combined
+with other work he had to do in town, decided him to go down that
+afternoon and return the following day before daylight failed. He got
+ready, locked up his house, and called upon Stephen to say he was going.
+Stephen looked quite surprised, Talbot went to town so seldom, and then
+began to chaff him upon his motives and intentions.
+
+"As it happens, I'm going about some mending of spades," Talbot
+returned.
+
+"Are you sure it's not the breaking of hearts?" Stephen laughed back
+from the fire by which he was sitting. "Well, you'll see Katrine any
+way. Tell her--"
+
+"My dear fellow," interrupted Talbot, impatiently, "I'm not going to see
+her. I shall have as much as I can do to be back here before mid-day
+to-morrow," and he went out before the amazed Stephen could say another
+word.
+
+"Going down town and not going to see Katrine! why, he must be mad,"
+ejaculated Stephen mentally; "wonder what his own girl's like anyway."
+Then he tossed himself back on the rug and looked at a little
+postage-stamp photograph Katrine had given him of herself, which he had
+stuck on the fly-leaf of his Greek testament.
+
+The following morning, before it was fully light, found Talbot toiling
+up to the west gulch on foot. He had made an early start, as he wanted
+to be back before the men began work, and the air hung round one and
+against one's cheek like a sodden blanket in the dusky dawn. It took him
+over three hours to make the distance, and when he reached his cabin he
+felt chilled through. All his muscles were stiff and numb from the long
+climb. He felt a longing to sit down and rest and get a little warmth
+kindled in his half-frozen limbs. The first thing that encountered him
+at the main door, which led into the block composed of his own cabin and
+the tunnel, was a sheet of smooth ice, only an inch deep perhaps, but
+glazing over the ground from where he stood to his own door. He saw at
+once what had happened: the waste water from the workings had been
+diverted from its proper outlet, and had simply run freely at its own
+will over the level ground. Talbot's face darkened as his eyes rested on
+it. It was Marley's business to see that the egress for the water was
+kept free and unblocked with ice, and only yesterday he had given him
+orders to attend to it. It was the second or third time he had returned
+to find the entrance to his own house almost impassable. Crossing over
+with difficulty the frozen stream, he looked into his cabin. There was
+about a foot of muddy water and ice covering the floor and floating his
+slippers and some pairs of socks he had left by the hearth. The fire was
+out, and the lower part of the stove filled with mud and water. The bed
+was completely soddened, the blankets and quilt dabbling in the water.
+He did not go beyond the threshold. After a minute's survey he turned
+and walked down the tunnel leading to the shaft where he knew the men
+were working.
+
+"Marley!" he called down the shaft.
+
+"What is it?" came up from below in a surly tone.
+
+"You have allowed the waste to run into the tunnel again, and my cabin
+is flooded."
+
+"Well, clean it out then!"
+
+"I think that is your business," answered the dry cutting tones from
+above. "Come up at once, and see to it."
+
+"I'm not going to swab out your blasted, dirty old cabin," shouted
+Marley hoarsely from the bottom of the shaft. "Do it yourself."
+
+A strange look came over Talbot's quiet face. It whitened and set in the
+darkness. He knew his men were gathered about Marley, listening to what
+passed, and this open defiance of his authority, this public insult
+before them, angered him excessively. He made his answer very quietly,
+however, only his voice was peculiarly hard, and the words seemed to
+drop like ice on the men standing listening below.
+
+"I allow no one to speak to me like that here," he said. "This is the
+last day that you work on the claim."
+
+"I'll work here as long as it suits me," retorted Marley, with an oath.
+"You can't turn me out."
+
+"We will see about that," returned Talbot, in the same even, frigid
+tone, and he turned away from the pit and walked back to his flooded
+cabin.
+
+He found Denbigh had arrived there. It was close to the luncheon hour by
+this time, and he was doing what he could to get rid of the water. He
+looked up, and saw at once from the other's face there had been some
+unusual incident.
+
+"What's up?" he inquired, standing still, with his mop in his hand.
+
+"That fellow Marley is making all the trouble he can," returned Talbot.
+"I have just told him he has got to get out, that's all."
+
+Denbigh's face fell. "I think it's a bad job," he remarked after a
+minute. "You know what a desperate devil he is; he would kill you, I
+believe, if he had to give up his work."
+
+"Well, he has been trying to boss this business for some time now,"
+returned Talbot, "and I am tired of it. To-day he finished with a gross
+insult before a lot of the men, and it's time, I think, to show him and
+them who is boss here."
+
+"Couldn't you overlook it?" replied Denbigh, tentatively, with a scared
+look on his thin face.
+
+"I have no wish to," replied Talbot, coldly. "There is bound to be
+trouble some time. It may just as well come now as later."
+
+Denbigh opened his mouth to make a further protest, but Talbot stopped
+him.
+
+"Don't let us discuss it any further, please," he said curtly, and
+Denbigh closed his mouth and dropped back on his knees to his
+floor-mopping.
+
+Talbot drew out his pistol, glanced over it, and buckled it round his
+waist.
+
+When the room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the
+two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to
+swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with
+such absolute command over his passion, anger was with him, like a flame
+at white heat, rushing through his veins.
+
+As they sat they heard the miners tramping by the cabin door, and saw
+their heads pass the window as they went out to get their mid-day food.
+Denbigh himself, as soon as he had finished, made an excuse and
+departed. He was eager to join his companions before they came back to
+work and hear some more delectable details of the row than he could get
+from Talbot. When all his men had filed out from the tunnel, Talbot went
+into the passage and walked up to the heavy wooden door and shut it,
+barring it with a steady hand. This was the main entrance to the shaft,
+and at the present time the only one. The door was never, under ordinary
+circumstances, closed, but stood open all day for the men to pass in and
+out to their work. When he had fastened it he walked back, turned into
+his own cabin, and took up his place at the window. From here he could
+see the men as they came back. They began to return earlier than was
+their wont, knowing that trouble was in the air, and each one was
+anxious to be on the spot for the crisis. All through the lunch hour
+Talbot's words and the possibility of Dick Marley being obliged to
+"quit" was the sole topic of conversation.
+
+Dick talked largely, and with a great many of the miners his oaths, and
+the imputations of cowardice he heaped on his employer, carried the day.
+Some of the others, quieter men with keener perceptions, merely listened
+in silence, and shook their heads when appealed to for an opinion.
+
+"I dunno. He's got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and
+bacon, in response to a sanguinary burst of Dick's.
+
+"He's a slip," answered Dick, contemptuously.
+
+"But a dead sure shot."
+
+"He'd funk it," said Dick, his face paling a little. "He'd never stand
+up to me. He's got no fight in him. Why, he's managed that claim there
+now for two years and he's never so much as fired a shot over it. Now
+that fellow Robinson wot's got the claim a mile farther up the creek,
+he's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was
+trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five
+corpses over it."
+
+He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring assent.
+
+The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.
+
+"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as butter as long as you
+know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to
+try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."
+
+Dick took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.
+
+As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their
+employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprised when
+they passed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut.
+Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up,
+shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of
+things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they
+encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment,
+and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards
+the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened
+again.
+
+"'E's waiting for Dick to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one
+of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in
+Dick's shoes when he do come."
+
+There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the
+men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of
+the coming contest.
+
+At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the
+window. Talbot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles.
+He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. Dick fell back a
+step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round
+the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.
+
+"You can't come in," and the sentence had an accent of inflexibility
+that made it seem like a drawn sword across the entrance.
+
+"To hell I can't!" returned Dick, a dull red flush coming over his face.
+
+"No, you can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that
+contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of the other.
+
+"Oh well, I guess I'm coming in any way," answered Marley, and he made a
+step forward. A slight motion of Talbot's right hand to his belt was his
+only answer.
+
+Marley stopped, put his own hand, half involuntarily, to his hip,
+remembered he had no revolver with him, and turned pale and red in
+confusion.
+
+By this time the loud voices and talking at the door had brought the
+remainder of the men upon the scene. Those who had already passed into
+the shaft left their work and came up behind Talbot in the tunnel; those
+in front pressed a little nearer. Talbot stood now completely surrounded
+by the crowd of rough working men. Marley's adherents were in full
+force. He was quite alone. He did not glance round them. He did not
+think of himself, nor of his own danger should two or three of them back
+up their fellow and commence to hustle him. He felt nothing but a cool
+though intensely savage determination to subdue this burly brute, to
+defend his position and title, though it cost him his life.
+
+"There can be only one boss here," he said coldly, as Marley hesitated
+before him. "If you are not satisfied who it is, go to your cabin and
+get your six-shooter, and we will settle it here on the dump."
+
+There was a movement and a murmur of satisfaction amongst the men. Now
+this was coming down to business and giving them something they could
+understand. Here was a man willing to defend his rights in a good,
+square stand-up fight on the spot, and they one and all agreed in their
+own minds that he was the right sort. They glanced at Dick expectantly,
+and some said to themselves he weakened. They were not going to take
+sides with either party. One of the men was their friend and
+fellow-worker, the other was their employer. The two had a difference,
+and they could settle it between themselves. They had no business to
+interfere. All they had to do was to stand round and see a square fight
+and "with'old their judgment," as they said afterwards, talking it over
+in the bar of the "Pistol Shot." They waited, and Dick hesitated. He
+felt his opponent's eyes upon him; he glanced round the men, they were
+watching him.
+
+"Fetch your six-shooter," commanded Talbot again, with increasing
+sternness, and Dick, feeling he must do something, nodded sullenly and
+turned away towards his cabin. He strode up the incline in the direction
+of the miners' dwellings, and Talbot, whose brain seemed to himself half
+splitting with nervous, angry excitement, began to pace up and down a
+short length before the door, waiting for him to come back. He did not
+order his men away, and they stayed in their places.
+
+The excitement was intense amongst them as they waited; not one of them
+shifted his place on the log or bank where he had sat down; they hardly
+seemed to draw their breath. All their eyes were fixed upon Talbot. He
+walked up and down in front of the door, his arms folded, his revolver
+still in its case on his hip. The men watched him curiously. His face
+was very white and exceedingly determined.
+
+The afternoon was placid and lovely. The temperature was not within many
+degrees of zero, but the gold of the sunshine was bright, and the air
+dazzlingly clear. It was absolutely still, not a leaf rustled, not a
+breath stirred. Nature was in her calmest, gentlest mood; nowhere could
+there have been a more tranquil arena to witness the passions of men.
+There was perfect silence, except for the crack of the ice sometimes as
+it split beneath the firm, resolute steps of the man pacing up and down.
+His face was set as a stone mask, as immovable and as calm, but the
+passion of anger increased within him as he waited; a mad impatience for
+his adversary to return grew at each step that he walked to and fro,
+with the insult of the morning echoing in his ears.
+
+At last he stopped in his walk and fixed his gaze on the road which led
+to the miners' cabins. All the men's eyes followed his, and they saw
+the figure of their fellow-worker coming slowly down towards them. A
+huge, hulking form, contrasting strongly with the slim one of the man
+waiting for him. Some of the miners glanced up at Talbot, wondering
+silently if he "funked it," but there was something in that attitude and
+that iron countenance that reassured them and stirred a dull admiration
+in their hearts. Talbot ceased to walk up and down. He planted himself
+directly in front of the wide open door and waited there. Passion and
+excitement had dilated his pupils until the usually calm light grey eyes
+looked black; his nostrils quivered slightly as he watched his enemy
+coming up. As Marley drew nearer, the miners noted with satisfaction his
+enormous six-shooter swinging in his belt; the sunlight caught the steel
+at every other step forward he made. Their hearts beat fast with keen
+anticipation. There would soon be some fine shooting, and one dead man
+perhaps, or two, for Marley meant business; and as for the other, he
+looked like the devil himself as he stood there. And he was a fine shot,
+there was no mistake about that. Denbigh stared hard at him with round
+fixed eyes. He was thinking of the nights when he had watched Talbot
+teaching Dick to shoot straight--teaching the very man he had sent off
+now to get his pistol to shoot himself with! He remembered how Talbot
+had stood with Marley at this very tunnel's mouth and showed him how to
+snuff a candle at thirty yards! And Denbigh stared and glowed with
+admiration. Marley drew nearer down the path, his heavy crunching steps
+echoing through the serene and frosty air. A few minutes more and he was
+close upon the eager, expectant, silent circle; the men watched him with
+their breath suspended. On he came, sullenly, filled with a sort of
+dogged, brutal animosity against the man he had wronged and insulted. He
+stepped between the men, who made a short line, and then into the clear
+open space, facing Talbot.
+
+For the first time he looked him full in the face, with a fugitive,
+fleeting glance, and his eyes shifted away. His pace slackened, but he
+did not stop; his feet dragged loosely over the rough snow and gravel,
+his huge form seemed to shrink together, to lessen; while to the
+fascinated eyes of the men watching the two, that slight figure at the
+doorway, motionless as a statue, seemed to dominate the scene. Marley
+felt a peculiar, sick paralysis stealing over him, a curious tugging
+back of his muscles when he tried to get his hand to his hip, a
+strangling feeling in his throat: that glance seemed petrifying him. The
+absolute fearlessness, the indomitable will that filled it, seemed to
+overcome him.
+
+The very fact, perhaps, that Talbot had not even yet drawn his pistol,
+the extreme coolness that relied upon the swiftness of his wrist to
+draw it at a second's notice, staggered and scared him. He remembered
+the skill that had long been his admiration, and that he had at last
+learned to imitate, the sureness of aim and eye, the dexterity and
+quickness of that hand, and his tongue fairly cleaved to the roof of his
+dry mouth. He struggled to draw his revolver, but his arm refused to
+obey his will. Yet it was not wholly cowardice that swept over him in a
+sickly tide. As he had met those scornful, indignant eyes, there had
+rushed back to his mind a thousand small benefits conferred upon him by
+this man, a thousand instances of friendliness, the memory of the first
+days they had worked together, how he had slept under his roof, fed at
+his table, how, more than all, he had been given by him and instructed
+in the use of this very weapon that now would be turned to the giver's
+own breast. A horror of killing this man, of wounding him, firing upon
+him, combined with his terror of being killed, swept over him, and
+between these he felt cowed and beaten, unable to stand up and face him,
+unable to do anything but drag one trembling foot behind the other and
+go by, keeping watch from the side of his eye that that deadly pistol
+was not drawn upon him. But Talbot never moved, simply stood and watched
+him too, with fixed eyes; and Marley, overwhelmed by some power he did
+not understand, as if dragged forward against his will, without another
+look at his opponent, passed by them all and went on slowly down the
+road leading to the town. Not a word was spoken, not a breath was drawn,
+no one moved. They watched his retreating figure, some half hoping, half
+expecting, some half fearing, he would turn and shoot from a
+distance,--all wondering greatly, and a little overawed. Then, as he
+neither turned nor looked back, but kept steadily ahead, his large
+figure well outlined against the stretches of white snow, his
+six-shooter glistening in the sun, his head hanging down, till at last
+by a turn in the road he was lost to view, there was a long-drawn breath
+of surprise and wonder, a general turning of the eyes to Talbot. It was
+a victory, though a bloodless one, and they felt it. Each one felt that
+the conqueror was before them. Talbot said nothing. He simply stood
+aside from the door, to let the miners who were outside enter. The men
+took it as a signification that they were to recommence work, and
+hastened to obey. They did not dare to speak to him, not even to
+congratulate him. They were awed into submissive silence before him. Not
+a sound was uttered. The men filed silently into the tunnel like cowed
+sheep into their pen, leaving their master standing motionless in the
+sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS
+
+
+Good Luck Row was a little row of small, insignificant cabins towards
+the back of the city, and at right angles to the direction of the main
+street. Dawson faces the Yukon, and its main thoroughfare lies parallel
+with the river. In the summer, when the Yukon and the Klondike, that
+joins it just above, are free, the waters of the two rivers united come
+rolling by in jubilant majesty, tossing loose blocks of ice, the
+remnants of their winter chains, on their swelling tide. They form a
+little eddy in front of the city, and their waters roll outward and
+swirl back again to their course, as if the great stream made a bow to
+the city front as it swept past. Here in the summer, with the steamboats
+ploughing through the rocking green water, and the sun streaming down
+upon the banks crowded with active human beings, glinting on the gay
+signs of the saloons and the white and green painted doors of the
+warehouses, with the brilliant azure sky stretched above, and far off
+the tall green larches piercing it with their slender tops,--in the
+summer this main street is a pleasant, cheerful sight; but now, with the
+river solid and silent, the banks black and frozen, and the bleak,
+bitter sky above, it looked more desolate than the inner streets of the
+town, more uninviting than Good Luck Row, which had little cabins on
+each side, and where the inhabitants overlooked their opposite
+neighbours' firelit interior instead of the frozen river. The side-walks
+of the row were like the other side-walks of the city, a wealth of soft
+mud and slush and dirt through the warm weather, and now frozen hard
+into uneven lumps, big depressions, and rough hummocks. The cabins were
+uniform in size, small, with one fair-sized window in the front, beside
+the door, which opened straight into the main room, where the front
+window was. At the back there was another smaller room with a tiny
+window, looking out over a black barren ice-field, for Good Luck Row was
+on the edge of the town.
+
+Katrine lived at No. 13. This cabin had been the last to be occupied on
+account of its unlucky number, but Katrine only laughed at it, and
+painted it very large in white paint upon the door. Here Katrine lived
+alone, though her father, the little stunted Pole who kept the "Pistol
+Shot," was one of the richest men in the city.
+
+And because she lived alone some of her neighbours declared she was not
+respectable. As a matter of fact, she was more respectable than many of
+the married women living in the row, and Katrine knew many a story with
+which she could have startled an unsuspecting husband when he came into
+town after a week or two's absence prospecting or at work on the claims;
+but she did not trouble about other people's affairs; she gave her
+friendship to those who sought it, and heeded not at all those who
+condemned her.
+
+On an afternoon about three weeks after her first meeting with Stephen,
+Katrine stood in front of her little glass in the corner of her cabin,
+smoothing her short glossy hair; when this was flattened with
+mathematical exactness to her well-shaped head--for Katrine was always
+trim and neat in her appearance--she turned to the table and wrote on a
+slip of paper, "I'm next door;" this she pinned to the outside of her
+door, and then locking it went into the next cabin in the row. She had
+grown quite accustomed to Stephen's visits now, and generally left a
+note on her door when she went out, in case he should come unexpectedly
+in her absence. The cabin she entered presented a different appearance
+from her own. There was the same large stove opposite the door, the same
+rough table in the centre and wooden chairs round, but the floor was
+dirty and gritty, quite unlike Katrine's, which always maintained a
+white and floury look from her constant attentions, and the stove looked
+rusty and uncleaned. The small square panes of the window, too, hardly
+let in any light, they were so obscured by dust inside and snow frozen
+on to them without. By the stove sat a young woman, in whose face
+ill-health and beauty struggled together for predominance. Her hair,
+twisted into a loose knot at the back of her head, was of the lightest
+gold colour, like a young child's, and her face brought to one's mind
+the idea of milk and violets, the skin was so white and smooth and the
+eyes so blue. This was the beauty which no disease could kill, but
+ill-health triumphed in the livid circles round the eyes, the drawn
+lines round the faded lips. Katrine entered with her brightest smile.
+
+"Well, Annie, are you better to-day?" she asked.
+
+The woman rose with an unsteady movement from the chair, and before she
+could answer burst suddenly into a rain of tears. "Better? Oh, Katie, I
+shall never be any better! But I wish I could go home to die!"
+
+Katrine advanced and put her arms round her, drawing the frail
+attenuated form close against her own warm vigorous frame.
+
+"What nonsense!" she said gently. "You are not going to die at home or
+anywhere yet. Why, Will is going to make a big strike, and take you home
+to live in style all the rest of your life."
+
+"No," sobbed the girl,--for she was no more than a girl in age,--falling
+back in her chair again. "No, it won't come in time for me."
+
+"Where is Will?" asked Katrine, looking round.
+
+"He's just got a job up at the west gulch on Mr. Stephen Wood's claim,"
+returned the other. "Oh, I am that thankful he's found some one to
+employ him at last."
+
+"Yes, it's delightful," returned Katrine, absently, as she sat down on
+the other side of the rusty stove and looked round the dirty, cheerless
+room. It was due to her urgent pleading with Stephen that Will had
+obtained the place on the claim, but his wife did not seem to know, and
+Katrine did not tell her.
+
+"But then it don't lead to nothing," continued Annie, despairingly. "He
+can't look out for himself if he's working another man's ground."
+
+"Well, he only does a few hours' work, I believe, and has the rest of
+the day to look round for himself," returned Katrine.
+
+"It don't amount to much, anyway; this time of the year there ain't no
+day to speak of," replied the other, gazing plaintively through the dim
+glass of the window. "And then if he do see a bit of land he fancies,
+why, he can't buy it, he's got no money."
+
+"I think Mr. Wood will advance him enough to buy any ground he thinks
+well of," replied Katrine, gently.
+
+"Mr. Wood!" repeated Annie, opening her sunken eyes wide with the first
+display of interest she had shown. "Why should he help my man along?"
+
+"I don't know," returned Katrine, evasively, with heightened colour;
+"but he told me he would do so, and I know he will. How is Tim to-day?"
+she added suddenly, to divert the conversation.
+
+The mother looked round.
+
+"Tim!" she called; "where is that child? Katie, you go and look if you
+can see him in the wood-shed."
+
+Katrine crossed the room to the lean-to attached to the cabin and looked
+in. On the floor of the wood-shed, with the happy indifference to the
+cold usually displayed by Klondike infants, little Tim sat on the floor
+with a pile of chips beside him. Great icicles hung from the rafters
+above him, and his tiny hands were blue with cold, but he was
+contentedly and silently piling up the wood on the frozen ground.
+Katrine picked him up and carried him into the next room, and put him by
+the fire at his mother's feet. He did not cry nor offer any resistance,
+but when put in his new location looked round for a few minutes, and
+then calmly leaned towards the stove and began to play with the cinders
+in place of his vanished wood chips.
+
+"What a good little fellow he is!" said Katrine, leaning over him.
+
+"Yes; he's his mother's darling, that's what he is!" returned the other,
+stooping to smooth the curly head that was only a shade lighter than
+her own.
+
+"Will you have some coffee?" asked Annie presently, looking helplessly
+towards the dirty stove, where a feeble fire was burning sulkily amongst
+the old wood ash.
+
+"No," returned Katrine, cheerfully; "you must be getting tired of
+coffee. I brought you some tea for a change," and she extracted a neat
+little packet from one of her pockets. "May I do up the fire and make
+some for you?"
+
+"Why, it will make you so dirty; that stove is in an awful state,"
+replied Annie, looking over the other's neat dress and figure dubiously.
+
+"I don't mind that. Pick up the baby," Katrine answered, rolling up her
+sleeves and displaying two rounded muscular arms white as the snow
+outside. "You'd better move farther out of the dust," she added, going
+down on her knees before the stove. Annie picked up the child and
+retreated to a chair by the window, from where she watched the other
+with a sort of helpless envy.
+
+"Lord! I've grown that weak lately I can't do nothing," she said after a
+minute. "You know how nice I used to keep the place for Will when we
+first came."
+
+Katrine nodded in silence, and two bright tears fell amongst the wood
+ash she was taking from the stove. She did remember the bright, active
+young wife, the united little family moving into the cabin next her only
+a year ago; she remembered the interior that had always been so neat and
+clean and cheerful to receive Will when he came home, the unceasing
+devotion of his wife, and the mutual love and hope that had buoyed them
+up and made them face all hardships smilingly. Then she had watched
+sorrowfully the gradual deterioration of the man under the constant
+disappointment; she had met him more and more frequently in the
+saloons, less and less at his home. She had seen day by day the rapid
+decline of the bright, beautiful young creature he had brought with him
+into this poor faded wraith dragging herself about in the neglected,
+cheerless cabin.
+
+"You'll get stronger again in the warm weather," she said after a
+minute, when her voice was steady.
+
+"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen what I saw on the snow this morning
+when I'd been coughing there back of the wood-shed," returned Annie,
+drearily leaning her tired head against the dingy pane.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Katrine, looking up apprehensively. "Blood?"
+
+The other nodded in silence, and there was quiet in the cabin except for
+the crooning of the child. Then Katrine rose from the hearth impulsively
+with a flushed, lovely face and the ash dust on her hair and dress. She
+went over to Annie and drew her head on to her strong, warm bosom.
+
+"Oh, you poor, poor thing! What can we do?" she said desperately.
+
+"Nothing," murmured Annie, closing her eyes in the girl's soothing
+embrace, "unless you could persuade Will to take me home, and nobody
+could do that now, he's so set upon the gold. That's the second bleeding
+from the chest that I've had this month; now the third'll do for me."
+
+She shivered as if from cold, and Katrine kissed her and hastened back
+to her work at the fire. It is not a pleasant nor an easy thing to do to
+clean out a stove that has been left to itself for a week or more and
+fresh fires kindled on the old ashes every day, but in a few minutes
+Katrine had the work completed and the fresh wood crackling and filling
+the stove with red flame. Then she made the tea rapidly, and neither of
+them spoke again till Annie held a great tin mug of it to her white
+lips. Katrine pulled her chair close to the stove again, and took Tim on
+her own lap, where he found a new toy in her cartridge belt. Annie
+sipped from her mug and gazed absently into the flames.
+
+"Lord, we were so happy," she said musingly, a little colour coming into
+her face under the influence of the hot tea and the warmth from the
+re-invigorated fire. "We had the nicest little home down in Brixham. I
+daresay you don't know where that is?" Katrine shook her head. "It's
+just the prettiest, sweetest village in the world, down in Devonshire;
+and we had a cottage there, quite in the country, with pink roses all
+over the front,--I can smell those roses now. Oh, it was lovely; and
+Will had regular work all the time, and he was the best husband woman
+ever had. He used to bring his wages in Saturdays, and say to me,
+'Annie, old girl, ain't there enough there to get you a new ribbon for
+Sunday or a fresh sash for the baby?' He never spent a penny for drink
+nor tobacco. And Sunday we'd go out on the downs and stand looking at
+the sea; it do come in so splendid there, and the wind from it seems to
+put new life in yer. We was as happy and as well as could be, all of us;
+and then them newspapers got to printing all those tales of the gold in
+the Klondike, and Will he just got mad like, and nothing would do but he
+must sell the house and come out here. He thought he'd come back so
+rich; well, so he may, but he won't have no wife to go back with."
+
+She lay back in her chair, and Katrine, gazing at her white face and
+transparent hands, said nothing.
+
+"I'm glad I stuck to Will, though," the woman went on softly after a
+minute, "and didn't let him come out here alone. A wife's place is by
+her husband wherever he goes, and I'd rather die with him than be
+separated. But there, I do hate the name of gold. It broke up our home,
+it's broke up our lives, and it's just killed me, that's what it's done.
+And what's the good of it? Why, as I said to Will before we came, 'We
+can't be no more than happy, and we're that now.'"
+
+Katrine said nothing. She was one of those women who in society would
+have gained the name of a good conversationalist, for she always
+listened attentively and spoke hardly at all.
+
+It grew rapidly darker outside and began to snow a little, the peculiar
+sharp, small snow of Alaska. The two women could hardly see each other's
+faces in the gloom, when Katrine rose and offered to light the lamp.
+
+"There ain't no oil left," returned Annie, drearily. "I just sit in the
+dark most of the time; I don't mind as long as I have a bit of fire. It
+do seem more lonesome though when you've no light," she added with a
+sigh.
+
+"Haven't you any money to buy it with?"
+
+Annie shook her head. "Not till Will comes back."
+
+"Well, here's enough to keep you in oil for the next three months," said
+Katrine, taking a little object from her belt which looked like a
+well-filled tobacco pouch and putting it on the shelf above her head.
+
+"What's that? dust?" said Annie. "Where-ever do you get so much money?"
+she added, staring at her.
+
+"I won that last night," returned Katrine, lightly. "I do have such
+luck. I wish you could come, Annie, and see the fun we have down town of
+a night, instead of moping up here; and I do have such luck," she
+repeated again with a half sigh. "I don't know what I'd do if it should
+change. I'd have to be bar-keep for a living, I suppose. Think I'd make
+a good bar-keep?" she said, getting up and stretching her arms above her
+head. All her full lissom figure was revealed to advantage by the
+attitude, and the firelight fell softly on the gay, bewitching face,
+slanted over to one shoulder as she put the question.
+
+"I do that," replied Annie, with emphasis. "Your bar would always be
+crammed by all the chaps in the place, my dear."
+
+Katrine laughed. "I'm glad you think so. I'll bring you some of my oil
+to burn for to-night, and then I must be off earning my living."
+
+She went into her own cabin and brought back a can of oil with her,
+trimmed and cleaned and lit Annie's lamp, and then with a kiss bade her
+good-bye till next day, and took her way down to the main street. She
+had only a little dust in her belt, just enough to start playing with,
+and if luck should go against her she would have to return empty handed;
+but then she always trusted to luck, and it had never forsaken her. Her
+mode of life, precarious and uncertain, dangerous and unsatisfactory as
+it might seem to an onlooker, never troubled her. She was in that state
+of glorious physical health and strength which lends an unlimited
+confidence to the mind, a sense of being able to cope with any
+difficulty which might suddenly present itself, when every present or
+possible trouble looks small, and when mere life itself, the mere
+sensation of the blood being warm in one's veins, is a joy. She loved
+the excitement, even the uncertainty of her life, and she had more
+friends in the town than she could count, who would be glad to lend her
+all she needed if her luck failed.
+
+That night, when Katrine lay fast asleep in her small inner room, her
+curly head tucked down comfortably under the rugs, she dreamed she heard
+a knocking on her door. The sound seemed faint at first, but grew
+louder, and after a minute she woke up, lifted her head, and listened.
+Yes, there was a tapping on her door, she heard it quite distinctly.
+She got up immediately, slipped into her fur coat and boots, and taking
+one of her pistols in her hand, went to the door. That there was danger
+in answering such a summons at such an hour she knew quite well, but
+that did not hinder her. She was accustomed to live with her life in her
+hand, and she felt instinctively confident of being able so to hold it,
+and meant to keep a tight grip on it. When she opened the door it was to
+a vivid moonlight, clear and brighter than day; the whole white world
+was shining under it.
+
+"Annie!" she exclaimed as her eyes fell on the slight, feeble figure
+muffled in a blanket that stood on her steps. "What is the matter? Come
+in," and she put the door wide open and stood back for her to pass.
+
+"Oh, Katie," she said, seizing the other's hands when they stood inside
+the room, "forgive me for waking you, but I want Will. I feel I'm going
+to die to-night, and I can't without him--I can't," and she burst into a
+flood of tears broken by short sobbing coughs. She had slipped to her
+knees and was holding Katrine's hands in a feverish clutch. The blanket
+had fallen from her head and shoulders, and showed to Katrine that she
+was still in her day dress; it did not seem as if she had been to bed at
+all. There was a dark, half-dried stain upon the front of her bodice.
+
+"I'm dying! Oh, Katie, it's so dreadful all alone there. Will you go and
+bring Will to me? Oh, do."
+
+Katrine looked down upon her as she tried to raise her to her feet. The
+fire was still burning brightly and filled the room with light. Many
+people older than Katrine would have laughed at the woman's statement in
+face of her ability to come to them and make it, but Katrine's keen
+perceptions read much, too much, in the bright glazed eyes that looked
+up at her, in the hoarse grating tones that came from the sunken chest,
+and the feverish grasp of those burning fingers. She stooped down and
+put her arms round the kneeling figure and drew her up.
+
+"Why, of course I will. I will bring him to you. But you are only ill,
+dear; you're not dying."
+
+"Oh, I may not, I know; but if I should, and he not here! Katie, can you
+go now?--it's so late, and so cold, and so far. I don't see how you
+can."
+
+"He's working up on Mr. Wood's claim at the west gulch. I suppose if I
+go to Mr. Wood's cabin he can tell me where to find Will."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," returned Annie, eagerly, a crimson flush now lighting up
+each cheek; "go straight to Mr. Wood and ask him for Will. One of Will's
+ponies is down here, back of our house; you can take him and ride up.
+Oh, it may kill you to go; I ought not to ask it. Oh, what shall I do?"
+
+Katrine laughed. "Kill me!" she said. "It would take more to kill me
+than that, I think. I shall be up there and Will down here before you
+know where you are. Now you've just got to drink this brandy while I go
+and get some things on. You're just fretting for Will, that's what is
+the matter with you. I believe you will feel all right when you see him
+again."
+
+She put the trembling woman into a chair, and went back to her room to
+put her clothes on. She noticed that her boots, which had been damp the
+night before, had frozen to the ground, and she had to break them from
+it by force.
+
+"I shall be lucky if I get back with my feet unfrozen," she thought to
+herself, looking regretfully at the warm bed she had left; but it never
+once, even remotely, occurred to her to refuse the unwelcome mission.
+She put on all her thickest garments, buckled her pistols on her hip,
+and went back to Annie, who was crouching over the fire in the next
+room.
+
+"I had better take the pony," she said; "he'll get me there and back
+quicker than I can walk, if you think the little animal is up to it."
+
+Annie nodded. "He's well fed," she said, "and has had nothing to do
+since Will's been gone."
+
+Katrine shut the stove up, and the two women went out together.
+
+It was a still dead cold without, the sort of night on which your limbs
+might freeze beyond recovery, and without your knowing it, so insidious
+and so little aggressive was the cold.
+
+"You go in and keep warm," said Katrine; "I'll find the pony and manage
+him," and she pushed Annie gently within her own door, and went round to
+the shed at the back of the cabin where the pony was. Her hands in that
+short time had grown so stiff with cold she could hardly put the saddle
+on and fasten the girth and straps. The pony knew her, and pricked his
+ears and snorted while she was getting him ready; he had been idle in
+his stable two days, and by this time was willing to welcome any change
+in the monotony of life. When she had adjusted everything carefully by
+the light of the strong moon falling through the little window, she
+threw herself cross leg upon his back and rode him out of the shed.
+Annie had her face pressed eagerly against the back window of her cabin,
+watching for her to appear. Katrine smiled at her, lifted her fur cap
+above her head for an instant as a man would do, and then the next
+moment was cantering away over the snowy waste that stretched behind
+Good Luck Row. She went at a good pace, urged on by that last glimpse of
+the pale face, with the terrible look of haunted fear on it, pressed to
+the window.
+
+The temperature was very low, but the absence of wind and dampness in
+the air made the cold bearable. Katrine, haunted by the fear of
+frostbite, kept pinching her nose and pulling her ears and banging her
+feet against the pony's side to keep the blood stirring in them. Inside
+the first half-hour she was away some distance from the lights of
+Dawson, and nothing but great snowy stretches lay around her.
+
+That night up at the west gulch it happened that neither Stephen nor
+Talbot had gone to bed. There is little to choose between night and day
+there, since half of the day hours are dark as the blackest night, and a
+man can sleep in them as profitably or more so than in the moonlit hours
+of the night. Three o'clock in the morning had come, and the two men
+were still sitting talking on each side of the stove, with an opened
+whisky bottle on the table between them, in Stephen's cabin, when the
+dull sound of a horse's footfall broke the blank silence of the gulch.
+Both sprang to their feet on the instant, and Talbot drew his pistol
+from his belt and stood listening with it in his hand.
+
+"I always said we oughtn't to keep our gold up here," said Stephen, and
+his face whitened.
+
+Talbot held up his hand to enjoin silence, and they waited while the
+sound of hoofs moving slowly over the treacherous and uneven soil came
+nearer. Then there was a pause, which seemed to the men inside endless.
+Then two distinct taps at the door. Talbot, who was nearer it, made a
+forward movement, but Stephen caught his arm.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he whispered.
+
+"Open it and fire," returned Talbot, laconically, and he pushed back the
+latch and raised his revolver as he opened the door.
+
+Stephen was close behind him, and Talbot almost stepped upon him as he
+drew back with astonishment the next instant. Katrine jumped from the
+pony's back and stepped over the threshold without invitation.
+
+"How lucky I am to find you up!" she exclaimed, and then seeing Talbot's
+hastily lowered revolver in his right hand she burst out laughing. "So
+you were going to shoot, were you?" she said, drawing out her own.
+"Well, I was quite ready; I have been all the ride. I am sorry I
+frightened you."
+
+"Frightened us!" repeated the two men in a breath, with an indignant
+glance.
+
+"Oh no, of course I didn't mean that," rejoined Katrine, laughing.
+"Disturbed you, I should say. Oh, Stephen, give me some of that whisky;
+I am almost dead with cold."
+
+Her face did indeed look frozen white with cold under her fur cap, and
+her dark eyes shone in it with a liquid splendour that made Stephen's
+heart beat tumultuously against his side. He poured out some of the
+spirit for her and pushed her gently into a chair, commencing to pull
+off her thick gloves for her.
+
+"I want Will Johnson," she said, with her customary directness.
+"Stephen, I've come up to fetch him. He's one of your men. Tell me where
+I can find him."
+
+"What do you want with him at this time of night?" questioned Stephen,
+while Talbot silently extracted a plate of bread and bacon from the
+cupboard and put it on the table at her elbow.
+
+"I don't want him for myself," she answered mischievously. "His wife has
+sent me up to find him; she thinks she is dying, and wants to see him
+to-night. Where can I find him?"
+
+"His cabin is a little higher up the gulch, but you mustn't go there; I
+will go after him," said Stephen hastily.
+
+"I don't know," replied Katrine; "I'd better ride up there and then take
+him on home with me, hadn't I?"
+
+"Ride back again to-night!" exclaimed Stephen. "What madness! It was
+bad enough to make the ride once. She mustn't think of it, must she,
+Talbot?" and he turned to his friend for corroboration.
+
+"Certainly not, I should say," returned Talbot, in his quiet but final
+way. "I will ride up to Johnson's place and send him down home, and you
+can make Katrine comfortable here."
+
+The girl sprang to her feet.
+
+"Why, what an idea!" she said, with a flush on her pale cheeks. "I only
+came to you to find Will. Of course I can't stay here all night."
+
+"Your mission will be accomplished, won't it, if Will goes to his wife?"
+returned Talbot quietly. "There is no need to risk your life again.
+There is no good in it; besides, it will save time if you let Will have
+the pony at once to take him back. You can have one of ours in the
+morning."
+
+She looked up at him. She admired Talbot exceedingly. His voice was so
+invariably gentle and quiet, so different from all the voices that she
+heard round her daily. Stephen's, though his resembled it, had not the
+same curious accent of refinement. His manner, too, had the same extreme
+gentleness; and yet beneath this apparent softness she knew there
+existed a courage that equalled any in the whole camp. He looked very
+handsome too, she thought, at this moment, as she met a soft smile in
+his eyes, and her tones were more hesitating as she repeated--
+
+"I think I ought to return."
+
+"Well, I'm going to despatch Will for you," replied Talbot, turning
+away. "I leave it to you, Stephen, to persuade her to stay," and he
+walked out. A second later they heard the pony's hoofs going up the
+narrow trail past the cabin.
+
+"You can have my room; I'll sleep here on the floor," remarked Stephen.
+
+The girl got up.
+
+"No," she said in her most decided tone. "I'll stay if you let me sleep
+here on the floor, or I'll go home. Turn you out of your own comfortable
+bed I will not."
+
+"Go home you can't," said Stephen in an equally decided tone, "so I'll
+make you up a bed here just in front of the stove."
+
+He went into the next room, and Katrine, left alone, drank up her whisky
+and gazed round the cabin. It was not at all an interesting interior,
+and had not the faint suggestions of artistic taste that redeemed
+Talbot's. A few prints were on the walls, seemingly cut from illustrated
+papers and principally consisting of views of cathedrals and school
+buildings, which Katrine's eyes wandered over without interest. At the
+farthest end from her there were some stout shelves nailed against the
+wall, and on these rested a row of flat tin pans; between the pans were
+pushed one or two books, and she recognised amongst them his Greek
+testament. She rose and strolled over to the shelf, and standing on
+tiptoe looked into the pans. As she thought, they contained thin layers
+of gold dust. She was standing there looking into them when Stephen
+returned and came up behind her.
+
+"They look fine, don't they?" he said. "That's a thirty dollar pan."
+
+Katrine turned, and looking up was startled by the eager light in his
+face and the greed written in every line of it. For herself, reckless,
+happy-go-lucky gambler that she was by nature, gold had little value for
+her except to toss by the handful on the tables to buy half-an-hour's
+excitement. With a sudden movement she seized the fullest pan by the rim
+in one hand and the Greek testament beside it in the other, and danced
+away from him to the other side of the room. Stephen turned with an
+involuntary cry, and followed her with anxious eyes.
+
+"Now which would you rather lose?" she said, laughing.
+
+His eyes were fixed upon the pan, which was heavy and as much as she
+could support with one hand. He dreaded each minute to see it tip up and
+its golden treasure pour out on the floor.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Don't be foolish," he said in a vexed tone.
+
+Katrine sidled up to the window.
+
+"Answer, or I'll--"
+
+Stephen turned white. He felt she was capable of doing any mad thing
+when he met those mocking, sparkling eyes.
+
+"Oh--I--I--would rather lose the book," he stammered, in an agony to see
+the gold safely put back. "I could replace that, you know."
+
+Katrine advanced to him, balancing the pan as if weighing it.
+
+"Stephen, this is very heavy," she said, looking him straight in the
+eyes.
+
+"Let me take it from you," he said, eagerly stretching out his hands.
+
+"Do you know what makes it so?" she said, still balancing it and still
+looking at him. "Your soul is in it!" and she gave it back to him.
+
+Stephen reddened angrily, and took both the book and the gold from her
+and replaced them sulkily on the shelf. Katrine had turned her back and
+walked over to the fire, humming.
+
+"What a royal couch you've made me!" she remarked, breaking the awkward
+silence that followed, and looking down on the pile of red blankets he
+had spread in front of the stove.
+
+He had, in fact, stripped his own bed and collected blankets from every
+corner to make a comfortable resting-place for her. Before Stephen could
+answer he was summoned to the door. Talbot looked in upon them, but
+would not come inside.
+
+"I've sent Will off," he said; "he swore like anything, but he is gone.
+No, thanks, Steve, I won't come in. I'm tired, and going to my own cabin
+now. See you at breakfast. Good-night," and before Katrine could thank
+him he was gone.
+
+The two thus left entirely alone in the deep quiet of the gulch to pass
+the night together looked at each other for a moment with a shade of
+silent embarrassment. But the girl, accustomed as she was to take care
+of herself in all sorts of situations and surroundings, and endued with
+a certain fierce chastity of nature, recovered herself instantly and
+spoke quite naturally.
+
+"I feel tired too, and would like to go to sleep now, if I may."
+
+"Certainly," said Stephen. "You have this room to yourself. The stove
+will burn till daylight, and you have the whisky if you feel cold in the
+night. Good-night."
+
+His tone was very formal, for he would so much have liked it to be
+otherwise, and without looking at her he took a match from his pocket
+and went into the other room, shutting the door after him. The girl
+waited a moment, then she shut the door of the stove and threw herself
+down on the soft pile of blankets, and drawing one of them over her to
+her ears, drew a deep, contented sigh, and was peacefully asleep in a
+few seconds.
+
+The next morning Stephen rose stiff and cramped from his denuded bed.
+When he was completely dressed he silently opened his door and crept
+noiselessly into the adjoining room. The girl was not yet awake, and he
+stole softly over to the bed on the hearth and looked down at her. She
+lay warm and sleeping comfortably amongst the blankets. She was fully
+dressed, just as she had been the previous evening, except that two or
+three buttons were unfastened at the collar of her dress, and allowed
+the solid white neck to show beneath the rounded chin. The little head,
+with its mass of dark silky curls, lay inclined towards the stove, and
+the curled rosy lips had a softer smile than they generally wore in the
+daytime. Stephen leaned over her, entranced and breathless. As his eyes
+followed the dark arch of the eyebrows, the sweet delicate contour of
+the cheek, he forgot the horror he felt of her sometimes in her waking
+moments, forgot the hideous background of the saloons, forgot all the
+evil there might be in her, and bowed before that supreme power that
+human beauty has over us; he worshipped her as he had never worshipped
+his God. For a few seconds it was enough for him to gaze on her, then
+came an overwhelming impulse to stoop and kiss the soft youthful lips,
+to touch them even if ever so lightly. If he could without awakening
+her! But no, she was his guest, under his roof and protection. All that
+was best in his nature rose and held him motionless like a hand of
+iron. After a few seconds Katrine stirred, and Stephen, feeling she was
+about to awake, would have moved away, but his eyes seemed fixed and as
+impossible to remove from her face as one's hands are from an electric
+battery. The next minute her lids were lifted, and her eyes, two wells
+of living light, flashed up at him.
+
+"Good-morning," she said, sitting up. "How dreadfully pale you look,
+Stephen! What is the matter?"
+
+"Do I?" he answered, with a forced laugh, feeling the blood, which had
+seemed to rest suspended in his veins for those few seconds, rush to his
+heart again in great waves.
+
+"You do indeed," she said, getting up. "I expect you want your
+breakfast. Tell me what I can do to make myself useful."
+
+She shook her hair straight, fastened the collar of her bodice, and, was
+dressed. She needed no toilet apparently, but looked as clean and fresh
+as a rose waking up in its garden.
+
+"Nothing," returned Stephen hastily. "Go over and tell Talbot to come in
+to breakfast, if you like; I'll have it ready when you come back."
+
+Katrine looked round regretfully, as if she would have liked to stay and
+help him; then concluding she had better do as she was told, she took up
+her fur cap and went out.
+
+The west gulch looks magnificent in the first early light, with all
+degrees of shadows, some black, some dusky, some the clearest grey,
+lingering in its snowy recesses, and the first glimpse of gold falling
+down it from the east. Katrine stopped and gazed up at the impressive
+beauty above and around her: trees in the gulch, now covered with a
+thick snowy mantle, stood assuming all sorts of grotesque forms, and
+extending their arms as if calling the spectator to their cold embrace.
+It was beautiful, but to Katrine it seemed so silent, so overawing, and
+so death-like, that she shivered as she looked up and down from the
+flat plateau where she stood, and hurried on the few necessary yards to
+Talbot's cabin.
+
+When they came back together they found Stephen had all in readiness,
+the fire blazing on the hearth and the breakfast waiting on the table.
+He made Katrine sit at the head and pour out the coffee for them, which
+she did with pleased, smiling eyes. Talbot said good-bye to her and went
+out to his claim immediately it was over, and Katrine and Stephen were
+left alone. He said he would go and get a pony for her and Katrine rose,
+but then Stephen hesitated and did not go after all. He turned to her
+instead, and came back from the door to where she was standing.
+
+"Will you listen to something I want to say to you?" he said, his heart
+beating wildly.
+
+"Why, certainly I will," the girl answered simply, and she sat down in
+the chair behind her and folded her hands. Then she looked up
+inquiringly, waiting for him to begin, but Stephen's voice was dried up
+in his throat. He stood in front of her, one damp hand nervously
+clasping the back of a chair, unable to articulate a word. Confusion and
+excitement overwhelmed him, and he stood turning paler and paler,
+staring at the proud, handsome face framed in the living yellow sunshine
+before him. At last he felt he could not even stand, and he turned away
+with a groan and sank down on the nearest chair with his face in his
+hands. Katrine, who had been watching him anxiously for the last few
+seconds, sprang up and went over to him.
+
+"What is the matter?" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Are
+you ill?"
+
+"No, oh no," said Stephen, catching the little hand in both of his. "No,
+I want to tell you I love you. Do you care for me? Will you marry me
+right away, and come up and live here with me?"
+
+His voice had come back to him all right now, and he turned and gazed
+eagerly up at her.
+
+Katrine did not answer immediately, but she did not withdraw her hand
+that he was pressing hotly between his own, and a faint smile that came
+over her face showed she was not displeased; and here Stephen missed his
+cue--he should have taken the hesitating figure into his arms and kissed
+the undecided lips. In the sudden awakening of womanly feeling, in the
+momentary excitement, in the glimpse into passion, Katrine would have
+consented, welcoming as her nature did any new emotion; but Stephen was
+embarrassed and afraid. Fear and uncertainty held him back, the kiss
+burned ungiven on his own lips, and Katrine uninfluenced by passion
+could think clearly.
+
+What! come up here and live in this deathly quiet, away from even such
+amusement as the camp offered? Submit to all his tiresome religious
+conversations, and, above all, give up those feverish nights of
+excitement? the hazard and the stimulus of the long tables and the
+little heaps of gold dust? and her free life, her incomings and
+outgoings, with no one to question her? No, it was an impossibility.
+
+The next thing Stephen knew was that she was smiling and looking down
+into his eyes, shaking her head.
+
+"No, Stephen, I can't do that. I like you awfully, and should like you
+to come and see me; but I wouldn't do for your wife at all, and if you
+knew all about me you wouldn't want it either."
+
+Stephen clung fast to her hand.
+
+"What is it that I don't know?" he said desperately, putting, as people
+always do, the worst construction he could upon her words, and at the
+same time feeling he would forgive her everything, and in a sort of
+background in his brain contemplating the figure of the forgiven
+Magdalen at the feet of Christ.
+
+Katrine dragged her hand away suddenly. She was not going to tell him
+she was a gambler and devoted to the excitement of the tables. She knew
+that if she did their pleasant talks in the evenings would be at an end.
+He could never come to see her without thinking it his duty to try to
+reform her; and as she knew she was not going to reform, what would be
+the good of it?
+
+"What does it matter to you? I am not your wife, and am not going to be;
+I am an acquaintance. If you like me as I am, very good; if you don't,
+no one cares."
+
+Stephen got up and faced her. He was as white as the snow outside.
+
+"You make me think the worst by refusing to confide in me."
+
+Katrine laughed contemptuously.
+
+"I don't care a curse what you think! Haven't I just told you so? Great
+heavens," she added, with a burst of conviction, "it would never do for
+us to marry! Never! Your one idea is to curtail a person's liberty."
+
+"No," answered Stephen quietly, "not liberty in a general way; only the
+liberty to sin and do evil, the liberty to be ignorant and do things
+which have terrible consequences that you don't know."
+
+He looked very well at this moment, his pale ascetic face and
+sympathetic eyes lighted up with enthusiasm. Katrine looked at him and
+then smiled with her quick, impulsive smile.
+
+"Stephen, you are a good man, and perfectly charming at times; but I am
+not a good woman, and don't want to be, and we should never get on. So
+don't let's bother any more about this question at all."
+
+An exceedingly pained expression came over Stephen's face, and Katrine
+was quick enough to feel that from her words he judged her errors to be
+other than they were. In a few words she might have cleared his mind
+from the idea of her actual immorality, but she was too proud to stand
+upon her own defence before him; besides, if her faults were not of that
+class, he would want to know what they were, and in his eyes a girl that
+gambled and drank and swore, and preferred the dance halls and variety
+shows to the mission church any day, was quite bad enough; so she
+concluded in her thoughts, "It doesn't matter if he is mixed."
+
+Stephen at the moment was afraid to press her further, and did not know
+quite how to treat her; but he was not wholly discouraged, and he
+thought it best to retain the ground he already had.
+
+"Well, I shall be in town in a few days," he said, "and I shall come to
+see you as usual, mayn't I?"
+
+"Of course," returned Katrine, and they did not speak again till they
+were outside and she was mounted at the head of the trail.
+
+What a morning it was! The crisp air was like a bath of sparkling
+sunlight; the untrodden snow glittered everywhere. Far above the trail a
+ridge of dark green pine broke against the pale azure of the sky.
+Stephen leaned against the pony's side and gazed into the warm, lustrous
+eyes.
+
+"Good-bye, my darling--my own darling perhaps some day."
+
+"I don't think so," she answered, with a mischievous smile, and set the
+pony at a trot down the trail.
+
+She had to pass Talbot's cabin on her way back, and as she approached
+she saw him a little way up the creek surrounded by his men. She reined
+in her horse to a walk as she passed, and contemplated him. His figure
+always pleased and arrested her eyes--it had a certain height and
+strength and grace that marked it out distinctly from others; and then
+what an advantage it was, she thought, he had no religion and believed
+in none of those things, and, in short, was quite as bad or worse than
+she herself was. She walked her horse on slowly, thinking. Somehow it
+seemed to her that life in his cabin would be far more piquant and
+amusing than in Stephen's. Yet he neither drank nor gambled, and as for
+the dance halls and theatre,--well, he had told her he liked dancing;
+and what a waltz that had been they had had together! But life with
+Stephen! He would be too good for her, and too stupid. She had a vague
+sense that what she lived for, excitement, he condemned in all its
+forms. Just what she cared for in drink, in play, in the dance, the
+electric pleasure of them, was just what he shrank from as a wile of the
+Evil One. Even the religious services of the High Church he condemned
+for the same reason. No, it would never do; life with him would be as
+cold as the snow around her. She was glad that her answer had been as it
+had. There was a level place in the trail here, and she put the horse
+to a gallop, and so came into town with her cheeks stung into rich
+crimson by the keen air, and her spirits exhilarated and ready for any
+mischief going.
+
+She went at once to No. 14 in the row, and found Will sitting by his
+wife's bedside like a model husband. The girl was lying down, her weak
+white hand clasped in and nearly hidden by the swollen, rough red hand
+of the miner. She gave a little cry as Katrine entered, and buried her
+head under the blanket.
+
+"You are not angry with me for sending you up when it wasn't really
+necessary?" came a smothered voice.
+
+Katrine flung herself on her knees beside the bed and put her arms
+impetuously round the thin form under the coverlet.
+
+"Angry with you for not dying!" she said, between laughing and crying.
+"Why, I think you're the best girl in the world, and Will's a pretty
+good doctor, too!" she added, glancing up at him.
+
+Will coloured and looked a little uneasy, remembering his oaths of last
+night when he was roused to a ten-mile ride; but Katrine couldn't or
+wouldn't notice anything amiss. She said sweet things to both of them,
+and then, unwilling to rob Annie of any part of Will's company, she
+withdrew to her own cabin.
+
+Two or three weeks passed, and dreary weeks they were. The temperature
+fell below the zero mark and stayed there, the sun hardly ever shone,
+the whole sky being blotted out as behind a thick grey curtain. The few
+hours of daylight that each twenty-four hours brought round was little
+more than a dismal twilight. Times were dreary, too, provisions ran
+scarce and very high, and the cheerless cold and darkness seemed to
+paralyse the energies of the strongest and lay a grip upon the whole
+town. Many months of the winter had already gone by, and strength and
+spirits were beginning to flag; health and courage had worn thin, and
+men who had faced the bitterness of the cold with a joke when it had
+first set in felt it keenly now like the rest. In Good Luck Row matters
+were worse than anywhere else in the town; the occupants were mostly
+very poor, and the pressure of the high prices was sharpest upon them.
+In addition to all else they had to suffer, typhoid broke out amongst
+them, and another horrible fear was added to the terror of the cold. In
+the universal gloom that hung over the city, under the mantle of
+darkness, want and starvation and fear and disease wrangled together,
+while Death walked silently and continually about the darkened streets.
+During all this time Katrine was about the only one who kept up her
+spirits and courage. She was the light and comfort of the row, there was
+not a cabin in it that had not been brightened and cheered by her
+smiles and benefited by her gifts. She was absolutely without fear
+herself. The quality seemed to have been left out of her composition, or
+perhaps it was only that her great physical health and strength made her
+feel unconsciously that it was impossible for any harm to come to her.
+She went in and out of the fever-stricken cabins all day, doing what she
+could for each one of the inmates, and always with her brilliant smile,
+which was a tonic in itself, and half the night she would sit gambling
+in the saloons, winning the money to spend upon her sick patients the
+following day.
+
+As soon as Stephen learned that typhoid had broken out in the row, he
+came down to her and urged her to marry him and come away to the west
+gulch, if only as an asylum. But Katrine simply laughed and joked, and
+would not listen to him. Then he begged her to look upon herself merely
+as his tenant; he and Talbot would share the same cabin, and she could
+occupy his in perfect peace and security, and be safely away from the
+depressing influences of the town and its disease-laden atmosphere. Then
+she grew very grave, and said simply in a sweet tone that echoed through
+all the chambers of his heart--
+
+"Dear Stephen, you are very good to be so anxious for me, but I'm not a
+bit anxious for myself. I should feel like a coward if I went away from
+the row now. These people are so dependent upon me, and I can do so many
+little things for them. I feel it's a duty to stay here, and I'd rather
+do it;" and Stephen had kissed her hand passionately and gone back to
+the gulch, more in love with her than ever.
+
+She saw very little of him, and was too busy to think about him or note
+whether he came or not, having so many anxieties on her mind just then,
+of which the heaviest was the girl-wife Annie in the next cabin. Since
+the semi-crisis in her illness, over which Katrine had helped her, there
+seemed to be little change in her condition from day to day. That is,
+the change did not show itself externally; within the delicate
+structure, the disease, aided by the cold, the foul damp air of the
+town, and hopeless spirits, crept steadily and quickly on, but gave
+little or no outward sign, and Katrine hoped against hope that she could
+possibly tide her over the time till Will perhaps made a strike and
+could take her away. She knew how the sick woman clung to this idea. For
+months now she had been shut off from all communication with the outer
+world, she never saw a paper or a book, she could not move from her
+cabin, her whole sphere was bounded now by its four rough walls, and so
+the one idea that was left to her starved brain and heart was that Will
+should make a strike. And as a weed runs over a bare and neglected
+garden, so will one single idea completely absorb and fill a neglected
+brain, and grow and grow to gigantic strength. This was Annie's one
+idea; she brooded over it, pondered over it, nursed it, slept with it,
+and talked to Katrine of it with burning eyes, till the latter felt if
+it could only be fulfilled the joy of it would almost cure her. And it
+might be fulfilled, she knew, any day. It was early days in the Klondike
+then, and plenty of good ground lay around waiting to be discovered. She
+heard from Stephen that Will was steady and energetic, had given up
+drink, and was set upon the idea of prospecting for land of his own.
+Katrine's heart beat hard with pure sympathy as she heard, and she
+begged Stephen as the one thing he could do for herself to facilitate
+Will's efforts in every way and aid him for her sake. Meanwhile, her own
+care was to keep the fragile creature who was living upon hope still on
+this side of the Great Divide. And to this end she worked night and
+day. She kept her cabin clean and well lighted and well warmed. She
+bought and made soup, and gave fabulous prices for meat and wine, and
+sat with her long hours cheering her with stories heard in the saloons
+and picked up in the streets, and scraps of news from the gulch and
+farther points.
+
+The disease seemed so quiescent that Katrine began to hope more and more
+that she should be rewarded, and one morning a hurried note scribbled in
+pencil was brought in to Annie while Katrine was scrubbing the cabin
+floor, telling her in a few ill-spelt words that Will thought he might
+get in to town that night. A bright flame of colour leaped over the
+woman's pale face, and then the next moment faded as her hands with the
+note in them fell listlessly to her lap.
+
+"He ain't made no strike yet," Katrine heard her mutter to herself.
+
+"You don't know," rejoined Katrine, looking up flushed and warm from her
+hard work. "He may have some good news to tell you any way."
+
+Annie merely shook her head and gazed out of the window.
+
+"He'd have told me," she murmured, and that was all.
+
+Katrine had a long and heavy round of visits to make that day, and for
+two long hours she sat motionless by a dying woman's bedside, fearing to
+withdraw her hand, to which the poor terrified enterer into the Valley
+of the Shadow was clinging. In her arms, and with her tired head on
+Katrine's young bosom, the woman drew her last breath; and Katrine,
+feeling her own soul wrenched asunder and her body aching with strain
+and shock, came round in the afternoon to Annie. She would not say a
+word to her of the death-bed from which she had come. With an effort she
+talked of cheerful things, of the spring-time that was on its way to
+them, of the pleasure of seeing Will again, and so on, till her head
+ached. She did a few domestic offices for the girl, and then feeling she
+must break down herself if she stayed longer, she said she needed sleep,
+and if Annie could take care of herself for a time she would go and lie
+down. Annie noticed how heavy the lids were over her eyes and begged her
+to go at once, though a strange fear, like a child's of the dark, came
+over her.
+
+"Will will be soon with you now--the best company," Katrine said, with a
+tired smile; "and if you want me, a knock on the wall here will bring me
+to you," and Annie was left alone.
+
+As the afternoon closed in her cough seemed to grow more and more
+troublesome; the pain in her chest, too, had never been so bad; she had
+to keep her hand there all the time as she laboured round the room
+putting everything to rights, making sure that the cabin was neat and
+tidy against Will's return. At last she sat down in the circle of hot
+light round the fire, and little Tim crawled into her lap. She put her
+arms round him and held him absently. She was thinking over Katrine's
+words. The Spring! were they really near it? "so near," she had said,
+"it was almost here." Her eyes looking upwards to the darkening windows
+caught the old and smoke-hued almanac pinned up to the wall beside it.
+She set the child down, and getting up walked slowly over to it and ran
+one trembling finger down the dates. Each one from December, when they
+had first hung it up, had a heavy black line against it, where she had
+scratched it out with eager fingers; only the last days had no mark
+against them. She had been too weary, too heart sick, to note them any
+longer. What did it matter to her when the Spring came? the almanac for
+her would have come to an end before that. But now a fresh gleam of
+hope seemed to have entered her heart, and with a feverish movement she
+drew the old stump of pencil from her pocket and scratched off the
+unmarked days, and then stood gazing at the date of that day; they were
+still far, far from the Spring--too far. Oh, to go back in the Spring,
+to escape from this prison of darkness, this country of horror and
+starvation and misery, to be back once more in her home in the Spring!
+Her mind fled away from the dreary interior of the darkening cabin. She
+stood once more in the rich grassy meadow with the golden sunlight of an
+evening summer sky warm around her, the song of the birds in her ears,
+the hot scent of the meadow-sweet in her nostrils, before her the little
+narrow path leading to the cottage that seemed to bask sleepily in the
+yellow glow. She made a step forward with dilated eyes, then the cough
+seized her, the vision dissolved and fled. Again the cabin with its
+blackened rafters enclosed her. She turned from the calendar. What was
+the Spring's coming? It might come, but they would not go back. What
+right had she to think of it? They had made no strike, and had not Will
+sworn he would never go back without the gold? This accursed gold! If
+they could but have found it as others had! She put her hands to her
+head to drive away the thoughts, they were familiar and so useless. She
+had thought them over and over again so often. As she went back to the
+fire she noticed one of Will's woollen shirts lying on a chair. Why,
+that was the one she had meant to wash that morning! How could she have
+forgotten it? And now perhaps she would not get it done before he
+returned. Her heart began to beat, her limbs trembled. How weak and
+queer she felt this afternoon! Still, she would do it somehow. There was
+hot water on the fire that Katrine had put there. She lifted with an
+effort the great iron kettle from the fire, and with that in one hand
+and the shirt in the other she went into the adjoining sloping roofed
+compartment that served as scullery, wood-shed, pantry, and wash-house.
+It was many degrees colder here, and the long iron nails that kept the
+boards together overhead had sparkling icicles on them that glittered as
+the firelight from the inner room touched them, and she could hardly
+draw her breath. Nevertheless she walked over to the wash-tub and poured
+in the water, and set to work with shaking hands. "Had ever shirt seemed
+so large?" she wondered vaguely, and her thin arms moved slowly, lifting
+it up and down with difficulty. It seemed getting so dark, too. She
+should have lighted the candles, it wouldn't look so cheery for Will if
+he came back to find the cabin dark. But was this only the twilight
+falling? No, it was in her eyes. She leaned heavily on the edge of the
+wooden tub, trembling, the floor unsteady beneath her, a strangling
+suffocation in her throat, a swimming darkness before her eyes. A sense
+of terrible loneliness pressed in upon her, and then suddenly she knew
+that in the chill of that dark twilight she was alone with Death. He had
+come for her at last.
+
+Oh, to have had Will's strong arms round her, a human breast to lay her
+head down upon, and so die! A nameless terror possessed her, overwhelmed
+her; she started from the wash trestle. There was a sudden cry, "Will!
+Will!" and she fell forward on the damp flooring, a little eager scarlet
+stream of blood pouring out from the nerveless lips to stain the
+soap-suds under the trestle.
+
+The child sitting playing in the ring of warm firelight in the adjoining
+room heard that last cry, and startled, dropped his toys, looking with
+round eyes to the blackness beyond the open door. He listened with one
+tiny finger in his mouth for many minutes, but no further sound came to
+disturb him from the wash-house, and he went on playing.
+
+An hour passed perhaps before Will set foot in Good Luck Row, and he
+tramped up it with a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the
+blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had elastic springs in
+their soles. Yet he carried an extra weight with him. There was
+something in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand as if it
+had been red-hot iron when he touched it. As he came to No. 14 and saw
+the windows dark he merely hurried his pace, and hardly stayed to lift
+the door latch, but just burst through the half-opened door and brought
+his huge burly frame over the threshold.
+
+"Well, Annie, my girl, we've struck it at last," he shouted at the top
+of his voice, "and you shall come home right away. Where are you, Annie?
+Didn't I say wait a bit for me?"
+
+He had entered by the wash-house, but the darkness was thick, almost
+palpable, before his face and revealed nothing. He went forward to the
+open door, beyond which the burned-down fire gave only a faint red
+light, and his foot kicked something heavy on the floor. With a curious
+feeling gripping his heart, he stopped dead short where he stood and
+fumbled for a match. Then he struck it, and in its sickly glare looked
+down. "Annie, my dear!" he called in a shaking voice, and bent down
+holding the match close to the upturned face. The light played for an
+instant upon it and went out. "Annie!" he called again, and the word
+broke in his throat.
+
+A thin wail went up from little Tim in the dusk of the inner room. Where
+the man stood was silence and darkness. His strike had come too late.
+His wife was dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half-an-hour later a man burst into the "Pistol Shot." It was between
+hours, and the bar-tender was just going round lighting the lamps; the
+place was nearly empty, only a few miners were standing at the end of
+the counter, talking together. The new customer staggered across the
+floor as if already under the influence of drink, kicking up the fresh
+sawdust on the ground; then he reached the counter and demanded drink
+after drink. He tossed the whiskies handed to him down his throat, and
+then retreated to a bench that stood against the wall and sat down
+staring stupidly in front of him. The little group of men looked at him
+once or twice curiously, and then one said--
+
+"Why, it's Bill Johnson, who's just made a strike. Come up, boys, let's
+congratulate him."
+
+The men moved up to the motionless, staring figure, and one of them
+slapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Say, Bill, old man, you're in luck, and we'll all drink your health.
+Got any gold to show us?"
+
+The sitting figure seemed galvanised suddenly out of its stupor. Will
+raised his head with a jerk, and the men involuntarily drew back from
+the glare of his bloodshot eyes. He put his hand to his pocket and drew
+out a small dirty buckskin bag. He dashed it suddenly on the ground with
+all his force, so that the sawdust flew up in a little cloud.
+
+"Curse the gold!" he said, and got up and tramped heavily out of the
+saloon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+GOD'S GIFT
+
+
+They buried Mrs. Johnson very soon. As one of the neighbours sensibly,
+if rather crudely, remarked, "Their cabins were too small for them to
+keep corpses knocking around in them." And so the second day after her
+death, in a flood of thin, sweet sunshine, they buried her who had so
+loved the light and the sun, and had longed so wearily for them through
+so many days.
+
+Katrine and Talbot stood side by side at the open grave. He had been in
+the town that day and met Katrine on the street, learned from her where
+she was going, and accompanied her. He knew something of all she had
+done for the dead woman, and he watched her now with interest and
+surprise at her composure. Katrine's face was unmoved, and her eyes
+were dry through it all.
+
+"Another that gold has killed," she said to him as they turned away, and
+her face looked grave and grey in the flood of the cold sunlight.
+
+Will was not present. He was down at the "Pistol Shot." He had been on a
+big drunk for the past two days, not even returning to his cabin at
+night, and the body of his wife would have lain unguarded had not
+Katrine brought her fur bag and slept beside it each night on the
+deserted hearth. Little Tim had been taken in by a neighbour, all the
+mothers round seeming anxious for the honour after it was known that
+Will had "made his strike."
+
+They walked in absolute silence for some time up the incline. Talbot was
+going back to the west gulch, and Katrine said she would walk a little
+of the way in that direction too. The afternoon was bright and clear,
+and the air singularly still, so still that the intense cold was hardly
+realised. The rays of sunshine struck warmly across the snow banks piled
+on each side of the narrow path they were treading. The sky was pale
+blue, and the points of the straight larches on the summit of the ridges
+cut darkly into it like the points of lances. There was something in the
+atmosphere that recalled a day in late autumn in England. They were
+nearing the top of the ridge, and both had their gaze bent on the narrow
+ascending path before them, when suddenly a tiny object darted into the
+middle of it and ran up the opposite bank. On the instant Katrine drew
+one of the pistols from her belt and fired. The little dark form rolled
+down the bank, dropped back into their path, and lay there motionless.
+It was a fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards
+from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her
+with startled admiration. He himself never shot except for food or
+other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise,
+but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious
+that they compelled him to an involuntary admiration.
+
+"You are a good shot!" he exclaimed, looking at the bright, clear-cut
+face beside him, warmed into its warmest tints by the keen air and the
+continuous mounting of their steps.
+
+"But not a good woman," she answered shortly, quickly reading the
+thoughts that accompanied his words. She did not look at him, but
+straight ahead.
+
+"You might be both," he said, with a sudden impulse of interest and
+regret.
+
+Katrine laughed.
+
+"I don't know," she said lightly. "Good women are not usually good
+shots. You don't generally find them combined. But any way, what have I
+to do with goodness? I don't need it in my business."
+
+He did not answer, and they walked on in silence till they came up to
+the little dark lump in the road. It was a small marmot. Katrine glanced
+at it and passed on. Talbot stooped and picked up the scrap of
+blood-stained fur.
+
+"What did you do it for?" he asked curiously.
+
+"Practice, that's all," she answered.
+
+"Don't you feel sorry to kill merely for the sake of practice?"
+
+"No. I should have been sorry if I had wounded it; but it's a good thing
+to be dead, I think. I wouldn't have shot unless I had been almost
+entirely sure I should kill it."
+
+There was another silence, and then she said suddenly, "One must keep up
+one's practice here, going about as I do in all sorts of places and
+making my living as I do. These," and she tapped her pistols, "are my
+great protection. Only last night a great brute leaned over me and
+wanted to kiss me--would have done, only he saw I should shoot him if he
+did."
+
+"Would you shoot a man for kissing you?" replied Talbot in an astonished
+tone, elevating his eyebrows.
+
+"Yes. Why, I'd rather be shot than kissed!" exclaimed the girl fiercely,
+with an angry flush on her smooth cheek.
+
+Talbot looked at the contemptuous, curling lips, at the whole beautiful
+hard face beside him, and walked on in silence, wondering. Her momentary
+anger was gone directly, and they were good comrades all the rest of the
+way.
+
+At the point where she stopped to say good-bye to him, she held out her
+hand: "Thank you for coming to the burial with me, it was good of you,"
+and she pressed his hand with a grateful smile.
+
+It was about a fortnight later on, one of those dreary grey afternoons
+of late winter, nearly dark already, though still early by the clock,
+and the mercury in the thermometers had gone out of sight and stayed
+there. Katrine came tripping along a side street on her way back to the
+row, warm in her skin coat, and her face all aglow and abloom under her
+fur cap. She had turned into the "Swan and Goose" saloon on her way up,
+had put in half-an-hour over a game, and won a fat little canvas bag
+stuffed with gold dust; had thinned it out somewhat in hot drinks across
+the bar, and now, warmed through with rum, and light-hearted, she was
+returning with the bag still well lined in her waist-belt.
+
+She had recovered from the great shock of Annie's death. Her nature,
+though essentially kind, was not of that soft, tender stamp that
+receives deep and painful impressions from other's sufferings. She would
+exert herself strenuously for another, as she had done for Annie, but
+it was not in her nature to sorrow long or deeply for the irrevocable.
+There was a certain hardness and philosophy in her temperament that her
+life and surroundings and all her experience had tended to develop. And
+in Annie's death there was nothing striking or unusually sad in this
+corner of the world, so crowded with scenes of suffering, so filled with
+pathos of every form. There were women hoping and waiting, and longing
+and starving, in every street of the town, she knew; sickness and sorrow
+and death looked her in the eyes from some poor face at every corner.
+Annie had been but one poor little unit in the crowd of sufferers, but
+one example of the misery of the town, the plague-stricken town, the
+town stricken with a curse--the curse of the greed of gold.
+
+Matters had brightened very much in Dawson lately, a new feeling of hope
+and fresh life had gone through the town. The weather was less severe,
+the days were lengthening, the skies were brighter, the sickness had
+died out, and people went about their work looking cheerful again; and
+Katrine, freed from her anxieties and nursing, felt her elastic spirits
+bound upwards in response to the general brightness of the camp.
+
+She came along humming behind her closed lips, and then suddenly turning
+a corner, stopped dead short with a horrified stare in her eyes. She had
+come round by one of the lowest dens in the city. Katrine knew it both
+inside and out, for there was no place from hut to hut in Dawson that
+she was afraid to enter. The door was standing open. It opened inwards,
+and there was a group of men, some inside and some outside, and amongst
+them they were forcing into the street a drunken woman. The entry to the
+place was beneath the level of the ground, and reached by a few uneven,
+miry steps, and up these the unfortunate was blindly stumbling under a
+rain of blows, pushes, and curses. She was old, and her hair streamed in
+ragged streaks across her bloodshot eyes, her tawdry skirt was long, and
+got under her unsteady feet. Just as she had managed to totter to the
+topmost step, a young man in the group behind her struck her a heavy
+blow between the shoulders. She tripped in the long skirt and trod on
+it, tearing it with a ripping sound from the waist, and fell forward,
+striking her face on the uneven frozen ground. Katrine sprang forward,
+but before she could reach her the woman had staggered to her feet and
+turned to face her tormentors, the blood streaming now from her cut
+lips, her trembling hands vaguely grasping at her torn skirt and trying
+to keep it to her waist. A roar of laughter burst from the men at the
+pitiful sight, and then died suddenly as they recognised Katrine. She
+stepped in front of the old woman, and faced them with a scorn in her
+eyes beyond all words. Then she turned in silence, put her arm round the
+helpless creature's waist, and supported her frail, tottering steps over
+the slippery, uneven ground. For an instant the men stood abashed and
+ashamed, then when the spell of those great fearless, scornful eyes was
+removed, their natures reasserted themselves, and a general laugh went
+round.
+
+"Birds of a feather!" shouted one, mockingly, as the two retreating
+figures disappeared in the gathering darkness. Katrine heard it, and
+winced; but she did not relax the hold of her supporting arm, and by
+gentle and repeated questioning managed to elicit from the helpless old
+being where she lived. Katrine turned her steps in the given direction,
+and drawing out her handkerchief wiped the blood from the old woman's
+face, and smoothed her straggling grey hair back behind her ears. When
+they reached her cabin at last, Katrine saw that the stove was black
+and empty. There was no light of any sort in the place, and the freezing
+darkness of the interior chilled her through. She would not leave the
+old woman until she had lighted a fire and candle for her and got her to
+bed; then, without waiting to listen to the mumbled and incoherent
+thanks showered upon her, she went out gently and on to her own place.
+She felt in a very serious mood as she made her cup of coffee and cooked
+herself a plate of bacon, and then sat down in the red glow of her
+well-tended hearth to her solitary meal.
+
+"Birds of a feather!" that hateful sentence echoed round her, until the
+silent walls themselves seemed taunting her. Was she not, after all,
+really akin to that old woman, and might she not some day end like her?
+What was all her own drinking and card-playing and knocking about in the
+saloons to end in? She shivered, and threw a frightened glance round
+her. This girl, who would have laughed all sermons, advice, and
+admonitions scornfully aside, was almost startled now into a sudden
+reformation by the chance object-lesson of this afternoon. She could not
+forget it, and in the silence the whole scene rose up vividly before
+her. She began to long for Stephen to come and break the silence, and
+glanced impatiently at the clock many times. He was coming in to town
+that night, she knew. It was a relief such as she had never experienced
+when at last he arrived, and she had not her own company only any
+longer.
+
+She was unusually silent all the evening. Stephen did not try to force
+her into conversation; he was content to sit on the opposite side of the
+hearth and let his eyes rest upon her in silence. She was paler, he
+thought, as he watched the orange light from the flames play over the
+oval face and throw up its regular lines. She was sitting sideways to
+him, gazing absently into the heart of the glowing coals, and her
+shadow, formed by the lamp between her and Stephen, fell strongly and
+clearly outlined upon the opposite wall. Stephen sat in his corner and
+gazed at it through half-closed eyes. He had been working hard all day,
+and in the keen, biting air; the warmth and the rest were grateful to
+him. The silence in the room had lasted so long that he began to feel
+drowsy under the influence of this quiet warmth. He watched the shadow
+sleepily, and dreamy fancies floated across his brain. The clean-cut,
+delicate profile was magnified to colossal proportions on the blank
+wall. So it seemed to Stephen that beautiful presence would dominate his
+life, fill in completely the blank of his colourless existence, as the
+large shadow filled the wall. Then, as his gaze followed its outlines,
+he saw what his eyes had not found before: a huge upright line of shade,
+formed by her chair back, ran up beside and mingling with the other
+lines. It seemed to curve over towards her shoulder, and then a few
+seconds more, and to Stephen's drowsy gaze, the harsh line expanded into
+a hideous grotesque figure. Out of those few shades upon the wall there
+leaped a picture to his eyes: the girl, and at her side, bending over
+her, a hideous devil, a strange vampire, hovering nearer or farther, in
+blacker or lighter shades, as the flames in the fire rose and fell.
+Stephen watched in a fascinated stupor, and then suddenly, as the light
+died down in the grate and the shade leaped out nearer and blacker, he
+started to his feet with a sudden exclamation.
+
+The girl started too, and looked up. "What is it?" she asked.
+
+Stephen pointed to the wall. Katrine turned, the blaze sprang up on the
+hearth, the shadows were gone, the illusion vanished.
+
+"What is it?" she said again, wonderingly.
+
+"Oh, nothing--a hideous shape on the wall," stammered Stephen. "I was
+watching your shadow, and another seemed to come up and threaten it.
+Imagination, I suppose--perhaps I had fallen into a dream," he added
+hurriedly, fearing she would laugh at him.
+
+But Katrine did not laugh: she looked at him gravely and in silence. In
+her mind she was pondering a question, hesitating, half fearing to speak
+to him, half impelled to, and half held back, and the equal opposite
+forces acting on her mind kept her silent.
+
+Stephen, unused to her present mood, felt perhaps she was annoyed or
+wearied, and drew out his watch. It was past ten.
+
+"I will say good-night," he said, rising.
+
+Katrine got up too. Her face paled yet more, her bosom rose and fell
+quickly. "Take me away from here," she said abruptly and suddenly.
+
+She had been thinking all the evening how she would approach the subject
+with him, and then at last his leave-taking had startled away all her
+circuitous phrases and left her only the crudest words at her command to
+express her meaning.
+
+Stephen was startled and confused, but his voice was very tender as he
+took her hand in his and said, "I don't understand, dear; what do you
+mean?"
+
+He felt her hand tremble in his. She looked up at him appealingly. Her
+eyes seemed frightened and uncertain. She was more womanly at this
+moment than she had ever been. To Stephen she was infinitely more
+fascinating than she had ever been. Accustomed to her bright, fearless
+independence, admire that as he might, in this weakness, whatever its
+cause, she was irresistible.
+
+"Well, I mean," she said, speaking nervously, but with an effort to
+control her excitement, "the other day you spoke of our being married,
+and I said I couldn't stand a quiet life. Stephen, I will marry you now,
+and go anywhere with you. I will be content with any life, any
+monotony--only take me from here at once! I loathe this place, this
+life." She stopped suddenly, and a wave of crimson blood swept over the
+white face. "I want to be taken away," she repeated.
+
+Stephen looked at her a moment in silence, with a sense of apprehension
+and alarm. He could not do as she asked; he was not free--his claim held
+him.
+
+"I don't know quite what you mean," he said, a little stiffly, though he
+felt he did know. "It would be quite impossible for me to go away now;
+my whole heart's in the work, and I've sunk all I had in it."
+
+"Yes; and your soul too," said Katrine suddenly, looking at him with
+shining eyes and a calm face. "You're a slave now to your gold, the
+same as we all are here--a community of slaves," and she laughed.
+
+Stephen grew red, and looked confused, alarmed, and angry, all at the
+same time.
+
+"Nobody would go now," he said, remonstratingly, "and leave ground like
+that. It would be insanity. Ask Talbot, ask anybody if they would."
+
+"Talbot!" repeated Katrine, scornfully; "he's the worst slave of all;
+but then he never preached about his soul, and wanting to reform
+people."
+
+"No one can reform you if you won't reform yourself," replied Stephen,
+coldly; and there he spoke the truth.
+
+"Who was it who has put in our prayer, 'Lead us not into temptation, but
+deliver us from evil'? Here I live in temptation: I am always thrown
+into evil. If I were not--" Her voice was very quiet, and had a strange
+pathetic note in it. It ceased, and then there was silence.
+
+Stephen felt as if a hand were laid on his lips and crushed down the
+voice that kept struggling from his heart. A second more, and then the
+girl laughed suddenly.
+
+"Oh, I was stupid! I did not know what I was saying, did not mean it
+anyway. It's quite right for you to stick to your claim and the idea you
+started with, and so on. You will make a great success if you do, and
+that is all you want!"
+
+Her tone was jesting and cynical as ever now--the usual hardness had
+come back to her face. The moment of submission, of confidence, of
+repentance, had passed--a moment when she could have been moved and won
+to any life he wished, and he had lost it. He felt it. Yet how could he
+have done otherwise?
+
+"Forget what I said--quite," she added; "and go now. It's getting late,
+and I want to get down to the saloons."
+
+A thrill of horror went through Stephen, as she knew it would. He gazed
+at her blankly with a horrible feeling, as if he were murdering
+somebody, clutching at his heart.
+
+"What are you waiting for?" she said, impatiently. "Why don't you hurry
+back to your claim?"
+
+"Katrine ... I--" he stammered, staring at her, but even as he looked a
+great wall of gold seemed to rise between them and shut her from him.
+"Forgive me," he muttered brokenly; "I can't give it up now."
+
+"Good-night," said Katrine, and he turned and fumbled for the door
+handle and went out.
+
+When he was gone Katrine turned to her small square of looking-glass
+that hung beneath the lamp on the wall.
+
+"What a fool I was to-night!" she said, looking at the sweet reflection
+and smiling lips.
+
+A few minutes after Stephen had gone, a slight figure, muffled up to the
+eyes, slipped out of No. 13 and hurried with quick steps down the
+uneven footway of Good Luck Row.
+
+That night Stephen climbed to his cabin with his head on fire and a
+singing in his ears. A terrific struggle was going on in his breast. He
+felt the path of duty was clear to him now, and equally that he did not
+want to follow it. He had tried to shut his eyes to it; tried to believe
+that it was not clear, that he did not know what was right or necessary
+to do, and therefore that he might be excused if he did not do it, but
+he could close his eyes no longer. They had been dragged open to-night,
+and he could not wilfully close them again. As he strode up the narrow
+little snow path leading to his cabin he felt that he knew his duty, and
+he groaned out aloud in the silent icy night.
+
+To leave now meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, the million
+dollars that he felt in a month or two he could take out of his claim;
+and to stay meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, a human soul! A
+million dollars, a human soul! These two ideas possessed him. A million
+dollars, a human soul! the two thoughts rang alternately through his
+brain until it seemed as if voices were crying them out upon the
+soundless air. According to his religion, spirits combated for the soul
+of man, and it seemed to Stephen that night as he mounted the solitary
+path under the far-seeing eyes of the frosty stars above him, that
+spirits really fought around him, good and evil, for the victory. "A
+million dollars!" shouted the evil ones, "do not throw them away." "A
+human soul!" wailed the others, "do not let it fall into evil." His
+sensitive, excitable mind trembled before the crisis. His own soul
+shuddered and sickened, for he seemed to see the hosts of greed of gold,
+and they were stronger than the hosts of light. And Stephen himself now
+was badly equipped for the conflict. He felt and recognised with dismay
+he had not the strength and the fervour now that had brought him
+through former battles. He was as a warrior that has fallen asleep and
+awakened to find his arms grown rusty while he has been sleeping.
+
+Gradually for the last six months the lust for gold had been eating into
+his spirituality and destroying it. You cannot serve God and mammon: had
+he not entered into the services of mammon, and been held there by the
+rich rewards?
+
+He thought of the rich pans he had been getting out. There was no claim
+like his in the camp. There was no man more envied nor considered more
+lucky than he. Yes, mammon had paid him well in the six months he had
+served it, showered upon him more than God had done in six-and-twenty
+years; and here was God's gift, a human soul, a sweet human life, he
+could save and make his own--and Stephen groaned again, for he felt that
+the gold was dearer to him. How could he have so changed, he wondered.
+A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of a million dollars being
+a bribe for him to sin. He looked into his heart now and found there was
+nothing there but a passion for gold, gold! It was a yellow rust that
+had eaten into his Christian's sword.
+
+Then his thoughts strayed to the girl he had just left, and her bright
+fresh face seemed to sway before him as he walked. His excited fancy
+painted it upon the snow banks at his side. She was so young, she seemed
+so fresh and lovely, it was impossible to think of her as tainted
+already with vice and sin. It was only if she were kept in this
+snow-bound prison, this mournful land of darkness and suffering, where,
+as she said, she had no place nor aim, that she would fall as those
+bright meteors were falling now far in the distant darkness. He could be
+her deliverer, her saviour, if--if he could.
+
+In the icy cold of that arctic night, great drops of sweat broke out
+hotly on Stephen's forehead as his brain was wrenched to and fro in the
+struggle. He tried to bribe even himself, tried to let his thoughts
+dwell on his passion for the girl, tried to think of the mere human
+sweetness that would go hand in hand with his victory over evil. If he
+won that bright clean soul for God, would he not also win that loved
+human form for himself? But even the voice of passion was drowned in the
+clamour of the greater greed.
+
+The next morning, as soon as it was light, Stephen went out to his
+claims. None of his men had come up to work yet. Stephen stood and
+looked over the stretch of ground beneath which he believed his fortunes
+lay. A light covering of snow had fallen on it during the night and lay
+about a foot deep in one unbroken sheet, not even the mark of a bird's
+foot disturbed its blank evenness: the claims looked very cold and
+drear in the dull dusky grey light of the dawn under that leaden sky.
+But Stephen's heart beat quickly as he gazed upon them. What did it
+matter that cold, dreary, surface, when the gold lay glowing underneath!
+
+Stephen felt as only a man of his sensitive conscience could feel his
+defeat of the previous night. His heart, all his better nature was
+crushed under a sickening load of mortification, and he sought
+desperately to find relief and justification for himself in
+contemplating the treasure for whose sake he had accepted it. As in
+other circumstances a man would solace himself for all sacrifices by
+gazing on the face of a mistress for whom he had relinquished worldly
+ambitions, and find excuses for himself in her beauty, telling himself a
+hundred times she was worth it all; so Stephen now gazed upon his
+claims, for which he had given up his scruples, his principles, his
+conscience, and his God, and tried to hug to himself the comfort that
+they were worth it. After a few seconds he tramped across the frozen
+snow to the line marked out by the banks of gravel where they had been
+at work the previous day.
+
+That evening he could not stay in his cabin, he felt restless and ill at
+ease. A nervous sense of anxiety hung over him. He seemed to himself to
+be expecting some misfortune. His nerves, weakened by the lonely life he
+had been living for the past months, and exhausted by the sleepless
+hours of the previous night, kept presenting picture after picture of
+possible ills. He looked over both his revolvers, to make sure they were
+in good order for defence if he were attacked that night. Then he drew
+his fur cap tightly down on his forehead and went out. The stillness of
+his own cabin and the clamour of his own thoughts were unbearable. The
+night was still and starlit, the air keen and thin as a knife-blade.
+Stephen strode along the narrow frosty path, and took the road down into
+the town. On his way he passed Talbot's cabin. It was lighted up. The
+little window made a square of yellow light in the darkness; the blind
+over it was drawn only half-way down. Stephen stepped up over the bank
+of frosted snow and looked in. The great fire lighted up the whole of
+the small interior, and threw its red light up to the cross logs in the
+roof. In the centre of the room, at a table. Talbot sat working. There
+were some sheets of paper before him, and he held a pen in his hand with
+which he was checking off some figures. His face was turned to the
+window; it looked pale and tired, but there was a curious expression of
+extreme tranquillity upon it--a settled, serene patience that struck the
+onlooker. He sat there working on steadily, motionless, calm as a figure
+in stone; and poor Stephen, torn in the struggle of his desires,
+slipping into the cold slough of self-condemnation, and burnt with the
+fever of greed, groaned aloud as he stood outside. Then he turned from
+the window and plunged back through the snow to the path that led to the
+town. He wanted to see Katrine, and yet he hated the thought of facing
+her after their parting of last night. What must she think of him? With
+her quick mental perceptions she would have seen through and through his
+miserable mind; seen that the gold had got hold of him, held him now,
+and that his boasted religion had no power against it. No, he thought,
+he could not face her--he was still some distance from the town; then as
+he drew nearer, the unappeasable desire to see her and hear her fresh
+bright voice came over him. When he reached Good Luck Row he went
+straight to No. 13. He might have saved himself the trouble of his
+decisions. Katrine had decided for him whether he should see her that
+night or not. The window was dark; he tried the door, it was fastened;
+she was evidently not there. A chill ran over Stephen from head to foot,
+and then he recognized how much he had really wanted to see her. He
+stood outside the door a long time; the row was quiet, there were few
+passers. He waited, hoping to see her come up each minute--perhaps she
+had only gone out on some errand; but the minutes passed and he grew
+cold standing there, still she did not come. At last Stephen moved away
+from the door and wandered disconsolately down the row. He went on
+mechanically, not heeding where his footsteps took him, and found
+suddenly that he had reached the main street down by the river. There
+was no darkness nor quiet here, all the stores had their windows wide
+open, and the light from them poured out upon the black slippery mass of
+ice and melted snow that lay over the frozen ground. The saloons were in
+full blast, brilliantly lighted and filled with noisy crowds of miners.
+The dance halls, of which there were some dozen along the street, seemed
+doing a good business. A shooting gallery that had been fixed up in a
+tent was not only filled inside, but a crowd of men and some women were
+gathered round the tent entrance, pushing and pressing each other in
+their efforts to get in; the glare from the flaming lights inside fell
+on their faces, and Stephen glanced eagerly over them to see if Katrine
+was amongst them. He passed on, disappointed. There was another tent a
+little farther on, where a cheap band was playing, and a board outside
+announced in pen-and-ink characters the attraction of a "Catherine Wheel
+Dance." The crowd here was even larger, and lights were fixed outside
+flaring merrily in the frosty air. Stephen walked on, past the stores
+and warehouses, past the noisy crowded saloons, past the brilliant dance
+halls and the variety show tents. It was to him all a hideous, tawdry,
+glaring mockery of merriment; and on the other side of him was the
+sullen blackness of the frozen river. He walked on until he had
+outwalked the town front, outwalked the straggling tents, till he had
+left the noise, and light, and laughter behind him. When he glanced
+round he saw he had nothing but the river and a waste of darkness beside
+him. There was an old log in his path; he sat down upon it and looked
+back to the mist of light that hung over the town, then his gaze
+wandered back disconsolately and rested on the ice-bound river.
+
+Katrine had passed that day wretchedly too. She had been down idling in
+one of the saloons through the afternoon, but the old resorts seemed to
+have lost their charm. The old pleasure had gone, and the stimulus would
+not come back. The cards looked greasy and dirty and revolted her, and
+the drink seemed to turn to carbolic acid in her mouth. She left at
+last, and went home to her lonely cabin and flung herself down in the
+dark in the chimney corner and tried to sleep, but horrible faces danced
+before her, and women with grey hair and wrinkles, with her own face,
+stared at her from the walls.
+
+She was still lying face downwards on the skins, half dozing now after
+that long conflict with horrible visions, when a light and very timid
+tap came on the door outside. She got up and went straight to it; her
+face was flushed and tear-stained, and her hair ruffled and in disorder,
+but she never thought to go first to the little square mirror that hung
+in the corner to improve her appearance before admitting visitors. As
+she threw open the door, the stream of hot light showed Stephen upon the
+threshold white as a spectre, chilled almost to death by his vigil at
+the river, with a strained smile on his lips and a great hunger in his
+eyes. His conscience reproached him: he knew he had not come bravely
+with his hands full of the sacrifice, having conquered himself, and
+ready to lay down all for her sake; but like a coward, still in the
+thrall of his money-lust and yet longing to attain her too, unable to
+give her up. He knew all this, and stood timidly as the friendless dogs
+will gaze through an open hut-door, wistfully, expecting to be driven
+away with blows; but Katrine met him with neither harsh words nor looks,
+she just simply put out both her warm hands and drew him in over the
+threshold. The welcome, the smile, the warm touch overcame him.
+
+"Katrine," he muttered suddenly, as she closed the door and barred it,
+"if I--if--I gave--up," and then the words died, strangled in his
+throat. Katrine held up her hand.
+
+"Don't begin to talk about anything like that," she said, gently pushing
+him down on the chair by the hearth, "till you are warm again. Where
+have you been freezing yourself like this?"
+
+She was busy lighting the lamp and setting her little old blackened
+coffee-pot over the flames. Stephen told her of his long lonely tramp by
+the river, and watched her with keen eager eyes as she made the coffee
+and poured him out a cup.
+
+"Now drink it all quick," she said imperatively, handing him the boiling
+mixture, from which the steam came furiously.
+
+"It's like the ordeal by fire," answered Stephen, meekly taking the cup.
+With a heroic effort he swallowed three parts of it, and colour began to
+come back to his face.
+
+Katrine observed this, and sat down contentedly on the floor in front of
+the ambitious fire, that seemed trying to leap up the chimney through
+the roof.
+
+"Stephen," she said very slowly and gently after a minute, "it was
+selfish of me to ask you to leave your claims. I've been thinking of it
+all day. I won't do it, and I will come and help you work them."
+
+Stephen felt the room whirl round him as he heard. Was he not in some
+rich, warm dream that would dissolve and leave him suddenly? His claims,
+those golden claims! and Katrine too--he seemed to see her dressed in
+gold, framed in gold, gold in her eyes and hair. Her movement, as she
+turned to look at him, brought him back to realities.
+
+"Do you mean it?" he said, stooping over her and catching her hands
+almost roughly in his. She met his feverish eyes with a bright, tranquil
+smile. He looked at her keenly for an instant, and involuntarily an
+exclamation broke from his lips: "Katrine! it's too much happiness for
+any man!"
+
+Perhaps the gods above, who eye jealously the lives of mortals, here
+made a note of this remark in their pocket-books.
+
+Katrine knitted her brows angrily. "I don't think so," she said. "You
+had better hear what sort of girl I am."
+
+Stephen turned pale, and leaned down over her as she sat on the hearth,
+her head against his knees. The cabin was full of the warm red
+firelight, that leaped over the walls and up to the rough blackened
+rafters above them. It glistened on the silky dark hair beneath his
+hand, and fell ruddily over the smooth oval face turned up to him.
+Stephen looked down at her and felt content.
+
+"No, no," he said hastily; "never mind anything in the past; we will
+efface it all; we make a fresh start from to-night." He would have
+stooped and silenced her with a kiss, but an arrogant look came over her
+pale face, and she pushed him back with her hand.
+
+"No, I don't like that idea. We must have things cleared up and tidy
+before we marry. You must know the truth from me, and then you will
+know how to meet any one who comes to you with talk about me afterwards;
+and they may come, for I'm known in all the saloons of Dawson."
+
+Stephen shuddered.
+
+"If they keep to the truth about me, you must just accept it; if they
+tell lies, you'll just shoot them."
+
+Again a cold thrill passed through her lover. To talk of
+shooting--taking a human life--murder--as though it were no more than a
+snapping of the fingers! His mind flew on a sudden bound of remembrance
+back to the little school teacher in the village of Arden, who could not
+bear the sight of a rabbit's blood on the trap, and whose quiet days
+were spent between the village schoolroom and the village church; yet he
+knew he had never loved that little teacher as he loved Katrine, that
+she could never rouse him as this woman did whom he believed to be an
+epitome of evil, who, as she lay now in the firelight by his feet,
+reminded him of the emblem of sin that crept into man's Eden. Yet it was
+a pleasure--what pleasure to be near her, to touch that smooth skin! But
+what was this pleasure?--was it also evil? What was this passion? His
+thoughts flew onward feverishly, and then Katrine's voice struck across
+them and brought him back to outer consciousness again.
+
+"Listen," she was saying, "while I tell you all, and _then_ we can start
+afresh, as you say."
+
+Stephen put his hand over his eyes, and waited in silence. He dreaded
+unspeakably what he thought he was going to hear, and with a man's moral
+cowardice would have deferred her confession, slurred over and tried to
+forget her wrong-doing, rather than hear and forgive it. They had
+changed places since he had asked her that morning in his cabin to
+confide in him.
+
+"Well, to begin with," went on her clear, soft voice, "I drink--I like
+drinking. You think it wrong to drink anything but water; I like wine
+and spirits, anything that excites me, and I can drink with any man in
+town. But I have never been drunk, Stephen, you understand that. Then I
+like all kinds of gaiety, and like to spend all my time dancing and
+laughing, and what your friend Talbot calls 'fooling.' And I gamble,"
+Katrine paused a second before she said the decisive words, and then
+went on rapidly, "oh, Stephen, you don't know, I haven't told you, but I
+love the tables. I can sit up all night and play with the boys; I love
+excitement, I love the winning and raking in the gold dust. I spend all
+my nights playing; it's what I live for in this awful place."
+
+There was silence, then Katrine's voice broke it again--
+
+"Now you think that so wicked, I bet you don't want to marry me now."
+
+There was a half laugh with a sad ring in it as she looked up to his
+covered face. Now Stephen heard, but the words fell on his ears dully;
+he was waiting in strained painful tension for what was to come. It was
+true he loathed gambling as a hated vice, and but for the apprehension
+that gripped his mind her confession so far would have been horrible to
+him. Still it was as a Christian that he abhorred these things. What he
+expected to hear he would have abhorred as a man and a lover; and the
+former abhorrence is considerably milder than the latter.
+
+"Go on," he said at last, in a stifled voice.
+
+"There is nothing more," returned Katrine, dejectedly.
+
+She thought she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a
+cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bent over, clasping
+his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing,
+and drew her up to him.
+
+"Is there nothing?" he whispered eagerly in her ear. "Have you nothing
+more to confess to me?"
+
+Katrine gave herself up to his embrace, a delicious sense of peace and
+protection and warm comfort stealing over her such as she had never
+known.
+
+"Nothing," she murmured, with her soft lips close to his ear and her
+silky curls touching his neck. She felt Stephen grasp her close to him,
+and a tremor ran through his whole frame.
+
+"Have you never lain like this in a man's arms before? never felt a kiss
+on your lips?" he persisted, holding her to him with a fierce intensity
+of growing passion.
+
+"Never, never," Katrine answered, opening her calm dark eyes and looking
+straight up to his.
+
+Stephen met their gaze for one long second, a proud, tranquil, fearless
+look that sunk deep into his soul and poured balm into every wound she
+had ever made there. The next moment she felt a torrent of hot kisses on
+her face, a pressure that almost stifled her on her breast, a murmur of
+"Darling, my darling," and knew nothing very clearly any more except
+that she was loved and very happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GOLD-PLATED
+
+
+The next afternoon, when Stephen returned to the west gulch and Talbot
+heard his news, he said he was glad, and meant it. Life at the gulch was
+very desolate and dreary, and such a bright glad presence as the girl's
+would alleviate the monotony and disperse the gloom.
+
+For the following week both men were busy preparing Stephen's cabin for
+her reception and trying to impart to it a bridal appearance. The hands
+were left to do the work on the claims, and Talbot and Stephen were too
+busy indoors to even oversee them. The cabin was large and well built.
+It stood looking across the gulch, and half-way down it, over the tops
+of the dark green pines and facing towards the western horizon, where
+the pink lights played and the little sundogs gambolled in the fall of
+the short grey snowy afternoons. Stephen was down in town once in the
+week, and came back with his pony laden with mysterious packages, and
+when Talbot came in in the evening he found Stephen on his knees,
+tacking down strips of carpet by the bed in the inner room. Narrow
+curtains had also been nailed up beside the window, and altogether the
+cabin presented a luxurious appearance.
+
+"This is quite magnificent," remarked Talbot, strolling about with an
+admiring air.
+
+"D'ye think so?" replied Stephen in a pleased tone, lifting a flushed
+face from his tacks and sitting back on his boot heels. "She's awfully
+handsome, isn't she? Say, it's strange to come to a hole like this and
+meet the handsomest girl you've ever seen!"
+
+"She is very handsome," assented Talbot, sitting down by the stove and
+stretching out his frozen feet before it. He was in the other room, but
+close to the open door leading into the bedroom, and facing Stephen as
+he sat on the floor with the screw of tacks by his side that had been
+paid for in gold.
+
+"And good, too, eh? good at heart, don't you think? Only not exactly
+religious, of course," he continued.
+
+"No, she's not very religious," returned Talbot, with the dry, hard tone
+in his voice that his subordinates knew and hated.
+
+"But it's not every one who says, 'Lord, Lord, that shall enter the
+kingdom of heaven,'" quoted Stephen; "you remember, Christ said that,"
+he pursued in an anxious tone, peering up at the other for
+encouragement.
+
+Talbot gave his slight, quiet laugh.
+
+"You've got the handsomest girl in the place," he said, "and a very
+nice, charming one, too. I don't see what more you want."
+
+To his strong, determined character this perpetual straining after a
+religion that was cast to the winds first at the temptation of gold, and
+then at a saloon-keeper's daughter's smile, was rather contemptible.
+
+"And 'there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,' etc.,"
+Stephen continued, anxious to persuade himself into a comfortable frame
+of mind.
+
+"Has Miss Poniatovsky repented?" asked Talbot, still more dryly.
+
+"Why, yes; I told you all she said. She won't gamble any more."
+
+Talbot was silent; through his mind was running a line of Latin to the
+effect that wool once dyed scarlet can never recover its former tint,
+but he said nothing.
+
+It did not take Katrine long to prepare for her wedding. There was no
+such thing as buying a trousseau in Dawson. She gathered together her
+coarse woollen underclothes, her stout short dresses, and thick boots,
+and packed them in two flat cases, such as can be strapped to a burro's
+side, and these were to be all she would take up to the cabin in the
+gulch besides her wealth of natural beauty. She did go to many of the
+stores around, buying trifles such as might happen to find themselves
+there and suit her: a small looking-glass here, a ribbon or a piece of
+lace there, and as she leaned across the rough trestle counter she
+generally remarked to the storekeeper, "I'm going to be married." She
+said it in the shyest, happiest tone imaginable, and a little blush
+stole over her smooth cheeks. In this way the news got round to
+Katrine's old friends and associates. She would have liked to have told
+them herself, but the old hunting grounds were forbidden to her now, and
+Stephen's wishes made a barrier between her and the entrance of all the
+saloons. He had tried to make her give him a solemn promise never to
+enter one again, but this Katrine would not do.
+
+"I can't be tied like that," she had said. "Something might occur to
+make it necessary for me to go into one of those places; and if I had
+promised you in this way, I could not. You have said you don't wish me
+to go; I have said I won't. Isn't that enough?" And Stephen had looked
+into the clear dark eyes and had said "Quite."
+
+The day of Stephen's marriage, the day when Katrine was to arrive as a
+bride at the west gulch, was calm and still. There was no wind and no
+snow falling. The sky stretched black and gloomy above the plains of
+snow; it was a day of the Alaskan winter, but still a good day for that.
+Stephen had gone down the previous day, and slept the night in Dawson.
+Talbot was waiting at the cabin to receive them on their return. As he
+stood at the little window that overlooked the trail, waiting for the
+first glimpse of them, and staring across the dismal waste that ran into
+grey and dreary mist in the distance, a great revolt stirred in his
+usually calm and philosophic breast--a sudden longing swept over him for
+the blue skies and warm air of the lands he was accustomed to, and a
+wilder longing still for a glimpse of the sunlight held in two eyes that
+were fairer than any sky. He shut his teeth hard, and his hand closed
+tightly on the window frame. "Only a little longer," he muttered to
+himself, and then far in the distance came a soft silvery tinkle of
+bells. Recalled to himself, he relaxed his face in a pleasant smile, and
+went to the door and opened it. In a second or two they came in sight,
+riding single file up the narrow trail, the girl first and Stephen
+following. She wore a large skin coat of some shaggy fur which concealed
+her figure, though not its splendid upright pose, and on her head was a
+small fur cap of some light colour, white fox or rabbit. Beneath showed
+her dark glossy hair curling upwards over the brim, and her glowing
+face rich and fresh as a Damascus rose.
+
+Talbot was greatly struck. The realisation of her beauty came home to
+him very forcibly in this cold, envious light of open day. "Stephen's
+not such a fool, after all," was his inward comment as he went forward
+to meet them. As he lifted her from her pony and bade her welcome to the
+cabins and the west gulch, she smiled down upon him. What a mysterious,
+magic thing human beauty is, and the human smile! It seems to light the
+dreariest sky, people the loneliest landscape. Where there is a human
+smile to reflect one's own, not even a desert seems desolate, not even a
+prison cell seems cold. Talbot felt this very strongly in that moment.
+As the warm, bright, laughing, youthful face looked into his, the sun
+seemed to have suddenly burst out upon that dreary snowy plain, and as
+the two men escorted her over the threshold it seemed to both that they
+were throwing open the door not only to her concrete self but to the
+abstracts, warmth and light, and gaiety and laughter, and that these all
+flowed in with her into the simple rough interior, transforming and
+illumining it.
+
+Katrine was delighted with her new home; she walked about examining
+every detail and showing her joy and pleasure in each little trifle that
+had been prepared for her. She had a very soft voice and manner when she
+chose,--she was too young yet for her gambling, drinking, and rough
+associates to have spoiled,--and Stephen stood in the centre of the
+room, flushed and silent with the fulness of his pleasure, following her
+eagerly with his eyes. After all, in this world of ours, everything
+stands in such close relation to its surrounding objects and
+circumstances that there is no absoluteness left. Or you may consider it
+the other way, that the feelings are absolute and always the same. A
+millionaire bridegroom could not receive more pleasure from the
+pleasure of his bride when viewing the mansion he had prepared for her,
+than Stephen did now from Katrine's approval of his log hut, and her
+thanks and smiles were as sweet over a little wooden shelf tacked
+against the wall, as if a two thousand dollar chandelier had called them
+forth.
+
+Then Stephen took her arm and drew her into the next room, and here she
+was so shy and nervous she could not look about at all. Stephen took off
+her cloak and all her outer wraps, and then made her come and see her
+reflection in a little square looking-glass that he had obtained for her
+at quite a high price; but Katrine could not face the mirror, and hid
+her blushing cheeks and downcast eyes on his shoulder instead. Stephen
+put his arm round her. "You don't regret what you have done?" he asked
+in alarm, pressing her close to him.
+
+"No, oh no, dear Steve, only it's all so strange; let's go back to the
+other room."
+
+They returned, as she wished, and found that Talbot had laid the dinner
+for them,--a dinner he had spent all the morning in preparing,--and they
+sat down to it with a gaiety that made up for the shortness of supplies.
+After dinner they drew close round the fire and prolonged the roasting
+and eating of chestnuts and drinking whisky throughout the
+afternoon,--for whisky was there, strongly as Stephen objected to see
+her drink it; still it was their wedding day, and he let it pass. As
+darkness came down a whirling snow-storm swept through the gulch; they
+could see the thin sharp flakes fly past the window on the cutting wind,
+and hear the whistling roar of the storm as it struck and beat upon the
+cabin. They only flung more logs into the stove, and gave a backward
+glance over their shoulders from time to time towards the window. By
+nine in the evening, when Talbot was leaving them to go to his own
+cabin, it had calmed down a little, though the wind still moaned in the
+hollows of the gulch.
+
+Stephen and Katrine stood at the window a second after he had gone,
+looking out into the curious misty whiteness and blackness commingled of
+the night.
+
+"I am sorry there should be such a storm the first day you are here,
+darling," said Stephen softly, putting his arm round her waist.
+
+"Why, what does that matter? I do not mind, I have you to protect me.
+You will always now, Steve, won't you, from everything? I don't want
+ever to go back to that gambling life again."
+
+He drew her into his arms.
+
+"Of course, of course I will," he said, kissing her. "I will always take
+care of you."
+
+Her arms were interlaced about his neck, they looked into each other's
+eyes, and neither knew any more whether it was a storm or a calm in the
+night outside.
+
+For the first few weeks after their marriage Katrine was more than
+happy, and it seemed to those lonely beings, sheltered from the savage
+siege of Nature only by those frail little cabins built by their own
+hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had
+blossomed for them suddenly--a perfect spring in winter. The girl's
+wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and
+she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to
+smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless
+existence. Nothing seemed to have the power to disturb her, the most
+irritating and annoying incident never even brought a frown to her face;
+it filled her with consternation for the men, and an immediate desire to
+smooth it over for them, if possible to prevent their being ruffled by
+it. For herself, she seemed above the reach of any circumstance to
+disconcert. One morning the men had an instance of this. They were all
+three living together in Stephen's cabin now. That is to say, Talbot
+took all his meals there, and used it as his own home in every way,
+except that he still went back to his cabin to sleep. It had seemed
+cheerless to both Katrine and Stephen for Talbot to be eating alone a
+few yards from them, and though it gave the girl more work, and for that
+reason Talbot was slow to accept the arrangement, she herself coaxed him
+into it. They came in late from the claims to lunch, and found her
+bending over the fire, with flushed cheeks and happy eyes. She was
+stirring a great saucepan of inviting looking and smelling stew, that
+she had spent the whole morning in preparing. The large handle of the
+pan projected from the stove some distance, and as Stephen threw off his
+overcoat he managed in some way to tip up the saucepan with a sudden
+jerk that sent the contents half into the fire, half over the girl's
+bare arm, from which her sleeve was rolled to the elbow. She did not
+utter a sound as the scalding liquid ran burning over her flesh, but
+Talbot saw her face grow deadly pale with the sickening pain. After a
+second of agony, when she found her voice, and Stephen was remorsefully
+spreading fat over the blistered, cracking flesh, the first thing she
+said, with her eyes full of disappointed tears, was, "Oh dear! how
+unlucky! Now you won't get anything hot for lunch." And as soon as a
+bandage was twisted round her scalded arm, she was over at the cupboard
+collecting all the best of her cold supplies and laying them out on the
+table.
+
+There was not a word of anger or reproof to Stephen for his
+carelessness, not a word of her own pain. The great sorrow that she was
+anxious to smooth over and atone for to them was that they would have to
+put up with a cold luncheon!
+
+Her one idea, the sole thought that occupied her, was to make these two
+men happy, at any cost to herself. All day she studied how she could
+make their life, so hard and rough smoother for them, how she could
+alleviate the labour and monotony of it. She rose in the morning long
+before either was awake, and had the fires blazing, wood brought in,
+water melted out, and the coffee made by the time they came into the
+sitting-room, looking white and sleepy in the flare of the common
+candles. All the house work they had formerly found hard, when counted
+in addition to their outside labour, she took entirely upon herself, and
+insensibly they both felt the relief very great. There was no coming
+home now, worn out and frozen, to a cheerless cabin, and being obliged
+to chop wood and light fires and split ice before they could get warm
+and rested. A glowing hearth, a laid table, a smiling face, always
+awaited them. Often coming up from the dump at the lower end of the
+claim, they could see the square patch of red light flung out from the
+window on the snow, bidding them hurry in to the welcome warmth and
+light inside.
+
+The daylight only lasted them now from ten to two, and for these hours
+the men worked out of doors. During their absence the girl went out on
+shooting expeditions of her own. She had invented a modified snow-shoe,
+broad and short, with slightly curved-up ends, and with these strapped
+on to her lithe feet, her fur coat fastened up to her chin, and her fur
+cap drawn over her ears and to her brows, she defied the fall of the
+mercury, and skimmed over the snow as silently and swiftly as a shadow
+moving.
+
+She enjoyed these long, lonely excursions, with her heart kept warm by
+the hope of discovering something she could bring down with her pistol
+or her shot-gun, and carry back as a surprise and a treat for the men
+for supper. There was not much indeed to be found; but a small breed of
+snow-bird was prevalent, and quite a flock of these would very often
+follow or precede a snow-storm, and whenever Katrine's keen eye caught
+sight of the little dark patch that a cluster of them made against the
+snow, she would glide swiftly over in that direction, and have eight or
+ten of them swinging at her belt to take home. They were small, but
+cooked as she knew how to cook them, they were a delicacy beyond price
+to the men who for months had tasted little but beans and hard bacon.
+Katrine felt quite happy if she could return through the suddenly
+falling gloom of the afternoon and cross the darkened threshold just as
+the men came back, half frozen, from the creek, and show her cluster of
+victims swinging by their long-necked heads from her waist.
+
+She thought of them, planned for their comfort, and worked for them all
+day; while to her husband she was absolutely devoted, and one would
+think that for such devotion a few smiles, a kiss, and some kind words
+was a small price to pay. Yet after the first few weeks, and even during
+them, Stephen, who worked all day to secure his mining gains, would not
+even exert himself to that degree to return the affection that was worth
+all his claims put together. One kiss given before he went out to his
+work in the morning would have made Katrine happy all day, one tender
+inquiry on his return would have amply rewarded her for all her labours,
+yet he invariably went out to the claims without bestowing the one, and
+returned without making the other. Hard work, privations, loneliness,
+even the absence of all the amusements she had delighted in, would not
+have broken her spirits; she would have accepted them all cheerfully, if
+her husband had only thrown over them the little light and warmth of his
+affection that she longed for. Each day she hoped it might be
+different; but no, he grew more and more absorbed by the gold fever that
+was eating away his heart and brain, and the girl grew more and more
+depressed and resentful. "It would be no trouble to him," she murmured
+to herself over and over again, as she stood at the wash-tub, wringing
+out his shirts, or knelt on the floor of the cabin scrubbing the boards,
+"just a kiss or a smile."
+
+She did not in the meantime relax any of her attention to him. Her smile
+for him was always as sweet when he returned, her efforts to please him
+as untiring, but in her heart her thoughts turned more and more
+constantly day by day to the idea of leaving him, of returning to her
+own life, where at least she had not been tormented by this perpetual
+hope and expectation and disappointment.
+
+Stephen never dreamed that the girl's thoughts were as they were; though
+if he had done so, he probably would not have altered his own
+course--for Katrine in several angry outbursts had appealed to him, had
+told him how she hungered after, not great and difficult proofs of his
+love, but the little ones, the trifles, how he was starving and killing
+her love for him by his neglect of it, and he either could not, or would
+not, understand. But that she contemplated ever leaving him never
+crossed his brain, any more than the conception of the passionate hate
+she felt for him at times when he left undone some trifling thing, that
+if done, would have roused an equally passionate access to her love. He,
+jaundiced with this mental yellow fever, thought his rich claims, his
+great wealth, had probably had some influence on the daughter of the
+Polish Jew when she accepted him. He relied, in fact, on his wealth, and
+on the material advantages she would gain by clinging to him, to hold
+her to him. And with Katrine this was a rope of sand. She cared no more
+for Stephen's wealth and for his claims than if they had been ash
+heaps. There was not a touch of avarice, of calculating greed, in her
+whole character, and to gratify her own impulse she would have cast all
+material advantages aside. From Stephen she wanted love, and that only,
+and this was the only chain that could hold for an instant her proud,
+independent, reckless will.
+
+There were the makings of a splendid character in the girl, all the
+foundations of all the best qualities in her: a little care, a little
+culture bestowed on them, and she would have developed into a fine and
+noble woman; but Stephen's eyes were blinded by the glare of the gold he
+saw in his visions, and the far greater and more wonderful treasure, the
+living human soul, that chance had given over to his care, unfolded
+itself slowly before him in all its beauty, and he could no longer see
+it. To Talbot it seemed incredible that Katrine through her mere
+physical beauty did not obtain a greater hold upon him, that she seemed
+so unable to absorb him, that she could not triumph over him by the road
+of the senses. Talbot himself was absorbed in his work, but even he, the
+onlooker, the outsider, felt the influence of this brilliant young
+presence that had come suddenly into their sordid life, like the sun
+rising in radiant majesty over a barren plain. The common table at which
+they sat seemed no longer the same now that she was at the head, with
+her beautiful figure rising above it, and her laughing, lovely
+nineteen-year-old face looking down it. To him, those liquid flashing
+eyes, and arching brows, and curled red lips seemed to light, positively
+light, the small and common room. But the eye grows accustomed to beauty
+and ceases to heed it, just as it grows accustomed to, and ceases to
+heed, ugliness and deformity, especially where there is no standard, no
+measure for it, no comparison with other objects. Just as any
+shortcoming, any mental or physical defect that a man hardly notices in
+a woman he loves, when alone with her, becomes painfully apparent to him
+when he sees her surrounded by others, so does her beauty strike him
+when reflected in other eyes, and pass unheeded when seen only by his
+own. Katrine was alone, there was no other woman's face to either rival
+or be a foil to hers, and after the first six weeks her beauty ceased to
+sting and surprise Stephen's senses. She, as it were, became the
+standard, since there was no other. And there is no absoluteness about
+beauty, nor our admiration for it. When we say we admire a woman because
+she is beautiful, we mean we admire her because she is more beautiful
+than other women. If all others were the same as she, she would cease to
+be called a beautiful woman, and if there were none others than she,
+then she would simply be a woman for us. We could not know whether she
+was beautiful or not. Man's senses are made not to perceive, but to
+compare, and he cannot judge except by comparison. Talbot knew all this,
+and he could not help feeling sorry that a girl such as this should be
+so isolated with them, and that the man who possessed her should realise
+his good fortune so little. He suggested often, for the girl's sake,
+excursions down into the town; but Stephen, partly from his religious
+views, and more from his anxiety not to waste a minute of his literally
+golden time, always frowned down the question, and though the girl
+looked at him wistfully she never complained against his decisions. She
+seemed to have completely accepted the idea that her marriage meant the
+renunciation of all the things she had delighted in, and if her marriage
+had given her more of what she had hoped for, she would have been
+contented with the change.
+
+One evening, when Stephen was out in the shed at the back of the cabin
+stacking up some wood by the light of a candle stuck in a chink of the
+logs, Talbot and the girl were sitting idle on each side of the stove,
+and somehow, though Talbot seldom opened his lips on such matters,
+seldom in his life offered opinion or advice to others, they had now
+been speaking of her marriage, and Stephen's attitude towards her.
+
+There were tears in her great eyes, and her under lip quivered and
+turned downwards like a wet rose-leaf.
+
+"He is so _very_ wrapped up in all this digging business, why did he
+want to marry me at all?" she said, in a sort of helpless childish
+wonder.
+
+Talbot was silent, looking at her, and then instead of answering her
+question, said--
+
+"Why don't you make him notice you more? why can't you appeal to him?"
+
+"Appeal to him!" she repeated; "it's no use. Why, he is
+gold-plated--eyes, ears, touch, everything, all plated over; you can't
+reach him through it."
+
+"Have men nothing like affection in them?" she said, after a minute.
+"Have they nothing between their mad bursts of passion and a cold
+incivility? What do they do with all the charming ways they have before
+they possess a woman? Stephen was so gentle, so nice, so interested,
+when he used to visit me down town; and now you see how rude and hateful
+he is very often. Why do they change? I have not changed. I am still as
+attentive, as eager to please him, more so, than when he came to my
+cabin. Oh," she added, after a minute, "I'm getting so tired of it all,
+I feel I'd like to throw it all up and go back to my own life and
+freedom. All the men are so civil and so nice and so devoted as long as
+a woman does nothing for them," she said simply, not fully realising
+perhaps the terrible ironical truth she was half-unconsciously uttering.
+
+"I could love him immensely," she added, stretching out her arms; "oh,
+he could have such a love from me, if he wanted it; but as it is, I
+don't see much use in my staying with him. I feel I'd like to go back to
+my own life and forget I ever married him."
+
+"Oh, you must not do that," said Talbot, startled out of his usual calm,
+and fixing his eyes on her; "pray don't think of such things."
+
+"Do you think he would care?" she said, opening her eyes in her turn.
+
+"I'm sure he would," Talbot answered, with so much emphasis and decision
+that the girl sat silent and impressed for some seconds.
+
+"Why is he not more amiable then?" she asked.
+
+"It's men's way," returned Talbot, not knowing exactly what to say, and
+accidentally hitting the truth completely.
+
+"They're fools," replied Katrine, angrily, while the hot tears fell
+thickly into her lap.
+
+Stephen came in at the moment, and though Katrine made no attempt to
+conceal the fact that she was crying, he took no notice of her, but
+began talking to Talbot about the wood.
+
+"We shall have to take the sleigh to-morrow and go up the gulch and get
+some more wood somehow, if we can. There's only a few bundles left," he
+said, blowing out the candle and dragging some heavy logs over to the
+fire.
+
+"Can I come with you?" asked Katrine, looking at him with her soft
+pathetic eyes, still brimming with tears.
+
+"Why--yes--I suppose so," returned Stephen, slowly opening the stove and
+looking in.
+
+"I shall enjoy it so much," answered Katrine, her face beginning to
+sparkle with its accustomed smiles. "We have not had a sleigh ride
+together once, have we? I'd like to go with you better than anything.
+You'll like it too, won't you?"
+
+"I don't know; it's a confounded nuisance having to leave the claims a
+whole afternoon, I think."
+
+Katrine got up suddenly from where she was sitting and walked into the
+next room without a word. Her tears were dried, her smiles killed.
+
+The following day was clear and bright, and a cold, pinky-looking winter
+sunlight filled the air. Katrine and Stephen started early, and Talbot
+did not expect them back till dark. He was out on the claims all the
+morning, and came in to his lunch late and did not go out again
+immediately. It was a day for a half-holiday, and all his men left
+early; the claims were deserted, and Talbot found himself in solitary
+possession of the gulch. He felt restless and unsettled, and walked
+about his little bare room in an aimless way quite unusual to him, and
+the early part of the afternoon had passed away before he realised it.
+
+In one of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The
+gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and
+desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour
+by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day.
+It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges
+and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and
+listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and
+oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's
+figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly
+where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence and loneliness, that
+Talbot started a little with sheer surprise; and then another appeared,
+and another. They were coming, one behind the other, singly, round the
+corner of the house, and as they emerged into view on the level platform
+in front of it Talbot looked them over and saw at a glance to what order
+they belonged.
+
+"As tough a crowd of claim-jumpers as I have seen," he murmured to
+himself as he watched their movements. They did not seem very decided or
+certain, nor well agreed amongst themselves. There were six in all, and
+they advanced towards the house in a loitering way, pausing once or
+twice to talk with each other, and glancing over the cabin. They were
+all dressed alike, in large slouch hats, thick boots and high leggings,
+and short coats with a belt round the waist, from which depended their
+enormous six-shooters. As they finally, in their loitering fashion,
+neared the door, Talbot walked to it, threw it wide open, and asked them
+what they wanted. They hung back from the door a little and looked at
+each other, and then one said he had a lease on the claims from General
+Marshall.
+
+"I am the only person who has power or authority to give a lease on
+these claims," returned Talbot in a short, hard voice.
+
+The men hesitated. Talbot looked pretty tough himself as he stood there
+facing them, clothed in buckskin from head to foot, his head nearly
+touching the lintel of the doorway above him, his revolver on his side,
+and behind him looming the tunnel, a gaping mouth of blackness.
+
+The men shuffled their feet on the snow and grinned at each other
+uneasily. It did not seem they could work the game of bluff here that
+they had thought out in the town.
+
+"Well, that's your opinion," returned the leader in a bantering tone,
+while the others closed in nearer the threshold in a jeering circle;
+"but a lease from General Marshall's good enough for us, and I guess
+we're coming in."
+
+"You'd better try it," returned Talbot, and he slammed to the heavy door
+in their faces, and fastened it on the inside.
+
+He expected them to force it, and he hastily dragged together some sacks
+of rich dirt that were lying in the tunnel and piled them up, forming
+quite a respectable barricade. Behind these he took his stand, his
+revolver in his hand. With six against one he felt they must win in the
+end, but he thought he could put a bullet through half of their number
+as they advanced, and he'd sell his claim and his life dear.
+
+He waited some moments, but nothing happened. There was silence outside,
+and after a second or two he stepped back to his sitting-room and looked
+out of the window. A council of war was taking place seemingly. The men
+had all withdrawn to a little distance, where there was some old tin
+piping. They had seated themselves on this, and were now in earnest
+conversation. Talbot stood at the window and watched them with a dry
+smile. He could tell their talk almost from their expressions and their
+gestures. It was one thing to come up and bluff a man out of his
+property, and walk in and take it as he walked out; and another to force
+a narrow tunnel against the straight, steady fire of a fearless devil
+like this. They could overpower him in the end, there was no doubt of
+that; but then when they walked in it would be over his dead body, that
+was clear, and several others besides him, for he was known to be the
+quickest, straightest shot in the district, and could certainly get away
+with some of them. It was this part they did not like, for each man felt
+he might be the one to be picked off and stretched stiff in the tunnel.
+So there was considerable parleying and hesitation amongst them, and
+Talbot stood motionless at the window watching them as they sat there,
+and noting the length of their six-shooters that dangled down the sides
+of their legs. At last there was a concerted movement amongst them: they
+got up with one accord, and without another glance at the cabin walked
+slowly away across the plateau in front of the house and round the
+corner of it towards the town trail, the way they had come. Talbot
+watched them disappear in the grey light of the gulch with surprise, and
+then drew a deep breath. He hardly knew whether he felt relieved or
+disappointed. His blood was up then, and he would have liked to send a
+bullet through a few of them. He roamed about restlessly for some time,
+and went to the back of the house to a little square window, and from
+there watched the last of them mount the trail and disappear from the
+gulch. Then all was silence and solitude again, in the swiftly falling
+darkness. He turned into his sitting-room, and stirred the fire into a
+blaze and lighted up the lamps--his lamps always burned well and
+brightly, being kept scientifically clean and trimmed with his own
+hands,--then he flung himself into a chair and sat there gazing into the
+flames, his revolver beside him on the table. He half expected the men
+to return, and his ears remained attentive to the slightest sound
+without. But there was nothing, absolute stillness reigned all around
+him; not a crackle of the frosted snow nor the fall of a leaf broke the
+grave-like silence.
+
+When the other two came in, he told his afternoon's adventure in the
+quietest, simplest way possible, and the fewest words. The girl listened
+with flushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
+
+"What fun!" she said at last when he had finished, and kicking off her
+snow-laden boots as she sat by the stove. "And you held off six men by
+the 'power of your eye?' what a convenient eye that is! I don't see
+you've any need to carry a six-shooter! I wish they'd come back
+to-night, we'd give them something of a reception."
+
+Talbot laughed, and looked pleased at the praise from her bright young
+lips. Stephen only looked anxious.
+
+That night they sat up rather later than usual, and Katrine was quite in
+a pleased state of expectation. No visitors made their appearance,
+however, and at last Talbot left to go to his own cabin.
+
+"Now, if they come in the night," remarked Katrine, laughing, as she
+said good-night, "don't slay them all with your eye, mind, but give me a
+chance."
+
+Talbot promised to use his eye mercifully, and Katrine and Stephen put
+their lights out and went to bed.
+
+It seemed to Katrine she had been asleep some time, when she awoke
+suddenly and put her hand on her husband's arm. "Steve, I hear steps."
+
+"Nonsense," murmured Stephen, drowsily; "it's your fancy. Go to sleep."
+
+But Katrine's ears were like those of a wild animal, quick and not to be
+deceived.
+
+"Go to sleep yourself, if you can," she retorted, and sprang up in the
+darkness, found her day clothes, and hustled them on. There was silence
+now outside, but Katrine hurried all she could, and then with one
+revolver in her belt and one in her hand went into the other room.
+Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, there was a crash, a sound
+of tearing and splitting wood, and the door was crushed inward, letting
+in a blast of icy air. There was pitch darkness within and without.
+Katrine answered immediately by two shots fired in succession; there was
+a heavy groan, a muttered curse, and some shuffling of feet outside.
+Katrine, standing flat against the wall to avoid offering a mark for
+wandering shots, chuckled inwardly and waited. A second later a shot
+came in return, but the bullet went high. Katrine heard it whizz into
+the wood somewhere between the wall and roof.
+
+She stood motionless, listening. Just in front of her, on the other side
+of the room, was the stove, and in this there still glowed an
+unextinguished portion of log, making one small spot of blood red in
+the surrounding darkness. Katrine fixed her eye on this glowing spot. To
+enter farther into the cabin the men must pass between it and her. She
+raised one of her revolvers into a line with it. When that spot was
+obliterated, she would know, however silently they moved, the enemy had
+advanced, and in that second she meant to fire; the stove was high, and
+a man passing in front of it would have that red spot in a line with his
+heart.
+
+With her heart beating fast with exultation, and not a tremor in her
+steady fingers, she waited motionless as a statue against the wall. She
+was not a girl of a cruel nature, but her husband lay behind that slim
+partition on her right, and unarmed, for Stephen would never carry a
+pistol, and she would have shot unhesitatingly each man in succession
+that tried to pass her to him. There seemed to be some talking outside
+and a trampling of feet on the broken wood of the door, and then
+suddenly the soft red fire spot was eclipsed in the total darkness
+around, and on the instant Katrine's finger had pulled the trigger.
+There was no groan this time after the shot, only a heavy thud and a
+crash as a falling body struck some fire-irons by the stove. The red
+spot glowed out of the darkness again and stared Katrine cheerfully in
+the eyes. There was a confusion of voices outside: Katrine could hear
+the thick oaths and one man apparently enjoining another to come out of
+there and have done with the business. Katrine smiled as she heard. She
+guessed that the man addressed was the one that lay now between her and
+the stove, and his ears were for ever closed. In the same moment she
+heard the inner door open, and for an instant Stephen appeared, pale and
+in his night clothes and with a flaring candle in his hand. With a
+spring like a leopard Katrine had reached him and put her hand over the
+flame of the candle, crushing it out beneath her palm. The darkness she
+knew was their only shield. By their voices and their footsteps she
+could tell the men without numbered not less than four or five. Once let
+a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl,
+they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible
+pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such
+precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin
+was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It
+was the fears of the besiegers now simply that was protecting the
+besieged.
+
+"Go back," she said, with her lips on his ear, "unless you can find a
+pistol, and be ready to shoot," and she pushed him within the door
+again.
+
+She stood as before, in an even line with the red bull's-eye of the
+stove, and listened; there was still a scraping of feet and muttering
+of voices outside, but not so near the door, and she wondered if the
+enemy were going round the cabin to attack it from another side.
+Suddenly a shot rang out in the stillness outside, then another, and the
+ball came through the window behind her and passed over her shoulder;
+there seemed to be a rush and stampede towards the door. She turned and
+faced it, raising both revolvers, and as she heard the wood of the
+fallen door split under the trampling feet, her fingers had almost drawn
+the triggers to welcome the incomers, when out of that cold blackness
+beyond the door came a slight cough. Katrine's hand dropped to her side,
+a sick, cold horror came over her as she realised what she would have
+done in the next instant. That was Talbot's cough. One second more of
+silence, one more step forward, and her shot would have found his heart.
+She reeled where she stood, against the wall, with the sickness of the
+thought. She could not shoot again now: he was there outside amongst
+them--and Stephen, was he there too, or inside? Talbot, she supposed,
+roused by the noise, had come out and attacked them between the two
+cabins. Then what she had said to Stephen recurred to her. Suppose he
+had searched and found a gun, and should come out from the inner room,
+he would not count upon Talbot's presence any more than she had done; he
+would naturally shoot at the first who crossed the threshold, as she
+herself had done; he would shoot in the dark, by her orders. The
+thoughts flashed quicker than lightning through her brain. The horror of
+the situation, this uncertainty, this killing blindly in the confusion
+and the darkness, was too great to be borne. The danger now was greater
+than even the light could bring. She dropped the pistols on to a stool
+beside her, drew a match from her pocket, and heedless of the perfect
+mark she herself offered now, struck it and held it over her head. In a
+second, the body across the hearth, the wrecked door, and two pale faces
+looking in at her from the opening, leaped into sight; the enemies, the
+living ones, were gone. A pool of blood beyond the threshold, and blood
+on the splintered wood, and their dead companion, only remained. For a
+moment the three faces, all pale with fear and anxiety, not for
+themselves, but for each other, stared nervously into each other's eyes
+in silence. Then Katrine broke it with a laugh, and brought down the
+match from over her head and put it to the lamp on the table.
+
+"Oh, you frightened me so," she said, as she turned up the wick and made
+it burn, and the men stepped over the door and came in. "I thought I
+might kill you."
+
+She looked up at them both in the lamplight, as if to reassure herself
+they were really there alive.
+
+Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.
+
+"You frightened me," he returned, jestingly. "I wouldn't come under that
+straight fire of yours for anything. The men outside were easier to deal
+with, they got so scared with you shooting in here and me shooting in
+their rear; they thought we were a band of a dozen at least."
+
+"I'd no idea you were there," murmured Katrine, shuddering still, as she
+moved from the lamp to the fire, and began drawing the half-burnt logs
+together.
+
+"Stephen climbed out of the back window and came round to me, but the
+first shot had already wakened me; I was getting my clothes on when he
+came," answered Talbot, walking over to where the dead man lay between
+the hearth and the door, and surveying him. "Some of your good work, I
+see," he said, after a minute. "This is one of the lot that came up
+yesterday afternoon. Tough-looking chap, isn't he? Well, you see I did
+not kill them all. I gave you the chance you asked for," he added,
+looking at her with admiring eyes.
+
+"And haven't I made the most of it?" she returned, lifting her flushed
+face, sparkling with smiles, from the fire.
+
+Stephen had crept in, pale-faced as the corpse itself, and stood now
+staring at it in a dumb horror. He could not understand how Talbot and
+his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless
+between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he
+wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of
+mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with
+herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the
+flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred,
+as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold. Stephen,
+reassured for her, let his eyes travel to the corpse, and then, with a
+sort of groan of horror, sank back on a chair with his face covered in
+his hands. Katrine looked up quickly from the fire, and then went over
+to him, putting an arm softly round his neck.
+
+"What is it, Steve, dear? you weren't hurt, were you?"
+
+"Oh, to have killed him! to have killed a man, how horrible!" muttered
+Stephen, without lifting his head.
+
+Katrine looked amazed. "Well, but he would have killed us if he could,"
+she answered. "You kill a mosquito if it annoys you, and that's right.
+You only kill a man if he tries to kill you, that's quite fair."
+
+"But a murderer!" and Stephen shuddered. She felt the shiver of horror
+under her hand.
+
+"Isn't it better to be a murderer than murdered?" she asked, with a
+little smile, feeling she had an unanswerable argument.
+
+"Murdered, your body is killed, murderer, your soul," came back in the
+same stifled voice.
+
+Katrine was silent. She was thinking what a nuisance it was to have a
+soul that needed so much looking after, never seemed to do any good, and
+was always obtruding itself and spoiling your best moments of fun in
+this life.
+
+"We'll take him away," she said softly, after a minute, noticing that
+Stephen kept his fingers closely locked over his eyes, as if to shut out
+some fearful sight. "Talbot, let's take him out," she said to their
+companion, who stood with his back to the fire watching them. Stephen
+made no sign.
+
+Talbot and the girl walked over to the body. It was stiffening rapidly,
+and the wide-open eyes glared up glassily to the black rafters of the
+cabin.
+
+"Might this be useful?" said Talbot, stooping over the man and half
+drawing the second large revolver from his belt.
+
+"No, take nothing," answered Katrine, hastily; "we want nothing."
+
+Talbot let the weapon slide back to its place, and they both bent down
+and lifted the corpse between them. Talbot walked backwards over the
+cabin door behind him. It was dark outside--a thick, pitchy darkness,
+with only a grey glare close to the ground from the snow.
+
+"Let's take him to the gulch," whispered Katrine, "and send him down it;
+it will worry Stephen so if he sees him again."
+
+It was only a few yards to the edge of the ravine; they moved towards it
+cautiously and stopped upon the brink.
+
+"Are you ready?" Talbot asked in a low tone, and Katrine whispered back
+"Yes." There was a heavy thud, then a soft rolling sound, and then
+silence, as the drift snow in the bottom of the gulch received and
+closed over its gift. They waited a second, then Talbot stretched out
+his hand towards her, found her arm in the darkness, and they both
+walked back together.
+
+"It's a pity Steve is so sensitive," said Katrine, plaintively. "I just
+saved him, and his house, and his precious gold, and everything,
+to-night, and he does not like me a bit for it."
+
+"I think you are a very brave little girl," said Talbot, softly.
+
+"Do you?" returned Katrine, in a pleased voice; and Talbot felt that she
+turned her face and looked up at him in the darkness. "Steve and I don't
+fit very well, do we?" she added, with a sigh; "and he does not fit this
+life. Somehow, I don't believe we shall ever leave this place alive--I
+have a presentiment we shan't. You will--you'll make a success and go
+back; but we shan't."
+
+Talbot did not answer, as they were at the cabin.
+
+Stephen met them at the door as they came in, with a white stricken
+face. "Where have you put it?" he asked in an awed, trembling whisper.
+
+"Down the gulch," replied Katrine, composedly. "Now, Steve, you're not
+to worry about it any more--it was a necessity."
+
+She glanced round the room and saw that Stephen had been too much shaken
+to think of putting it in order. The coffee-pot stood where she had left
+it, and the coffee was boiling over and wasting itself in the fire. She
+ran to it, took it off, and began pouring it into the cups on the table;
+as she did so the men noticed blood dripping from her wrist into one of
+the saucers.
+
+"Oh, yes," she said indifferently, in answer to Stephen's startled
+exclamation, "I thought I felt my sleeve getting very damp and sticky;
+there's a graze on the shoulder, I think, and the blood has been
+crawling slowly down my arm, tickling me horribly. Let's see how it
+looks!"
+
+She unfastened her bodice and took it off, seemingly unconscious of
+Talbot's presence. He stood silently by the hearth watching her, and
+thought, as he saw her bare white arms and full, strong white neck, how
+well she would look in a London ball-room. Stephen, all nervous anxiety,
+was examining her shoulder. A bullet had gone over it, leaving a furrow
+in the flesh, where the blood welled up slowly. Katrine turned her head
+aside and regarded it out of one eye, as a bird does. Stephen bent over
+her and kissed her, murmuring incoherent words of remorseful sorrow.
+Katrine flung her arms round him and laughed.
+
+"Why, I am delighted! it's been quite worth it, the fun we've had
+to-night. That's all right--it will be healed in a couple of days; just
+tie it up with your handkerchief."
+
+It was an easy place to bind, by passing the bandage under the arm, and
+this, by Katrine's directions, Stephen did, with trembling fingers.
+Talbot had turned away from them, and occupied himself by fixing up the
+door and stuffing the chinks where the wood had broken. When this was
+done and the bandaging finished, Stephen brought a shawl from the other
+room and wrapped it round the girl's shoulders, and they all drew in
+round the fire in a close circle with their cups in their hands.
+
+Their common danger and the sudden realisation of how much they were,
+each of this lonely trio, to the other; how easily any one of them might
+have been taken from the circle that night, and how irreparable would
+have been the loss, drew them all closely together as they had never
+been before--that delicious chord of sweet human sympathy that lies deep
+down, but ever present, in the human breast, vibrated strongly in their
+hearts, and they sat round the cheery blaze, talking and laughing
+softly, and looking at one another, and then smiling as their eyes met,
+for mere lightheartedness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MAMMON'S PAY
+
+
+This little excitement quite delighted and pleased Katrine. She had
+spoken just the truth when she said she wished something like it would
+happen every day; and the only thing that spoilt the fun of it was
+Stephen's dejection and the persistently depressed way he looked and
+felt over it. After a day or two the pleasant sense of life having
+something worth living for passed away again, and the time seemed
+heavier and slower than ever. Day followed day in a dreadful monotony,
+and the girl visibly lost health and spirits. She changed a good deal,
+and both men noticed it. She lost her wonderful sweetness and evenness
+of temper and her bright smiles, and became fretful and irritable,
+discontented, and sharp in her replies. In the long winter mornings now
+she would not spring up in the early darkness as formerly, but try to
+fall asleep again after waking, and put her arm across Stephen and tell
+him there was no use of getting up, that the day was long enough anyway,
+and it was too dark to do anything; and then she would abuse him if he
+insisted on getting up in spite of her, and let the breakfast wait so
+long, that after a time the men drifted into the habit of having it
+alone, and going out without seeing her. Katrine had grown to hate the
+day, to hate every minute in fact when she was not sleeping, and to try
+to make the night last as long as possible. Stephen noticed all this,
+and spoke to Talbot about it in distress. Talbot merely said, "Perhaps
+it's her health; you'd better ask her." Stephen did so, and found there
+was a reason for her apparent illness, which delighted and consoled him;
+but when Katrine flew into a passion, declared it was detestable, that
+it would take away her freedom and her power to ride and enjoy herself,
+Stephen was shocked and grieved, and said he was disappointed in her;
+whereupon Katrine replied she hated him, and Stephen quoted scripture
+texts to her till she ran out of the cabin and rushed across to Talbot's
+in a passion of sobs and tears. At least, she knew he would not quote
+texts to her. Talbot did all he could to smooth out matters between the
+two, and after that Katrine spoke very little; she took refuge in a
+dejected silence, and grew paler each day. It was only when the men had
+gone out to work, and she was left alone with a great pile of things to
+mend, work which she hated, that she would go to the door and stand
+looking out over the grey waste under the snow-filled lowering sky, with
+the tears rolling silently down her checks. From where she stood she
+could see, through the greyish air, the men working far down at the
+other end of the claims, and the long line of trenches and the banks of
+frozen gravel; sometimes, in the light fog, made of the tiny sharp
+snow-flakes, sifting through the air, they would look misty, like ghosts
+or shadows; and sometimes the dulled click and scrape of the spades
+would reach her.
+
+"Slaves, slaves, just like slaves," she would think, watching the
+muffled-up figures continually bending over their work; "and they're
+digging graves, graves." And she would think of Annie, and the grave
+Will had been digging for her while he dug for gold. A red sun, dull as
+copper, hung above them, and sometimes the great Northern Lights would
+send up a red flame behind the horizon; and to Katrine it seemed like a
+blood-covered sword held up by Nature to warn them off a land not fit
+for men. One afternoon, when the sun looked more sullen and the sky more
+threatening than ever, and the men moving at the end of the claim
+looked no more than mere blots in the cold mist, she stood watching the
+steady red blade shoot up in the ashen sky, and began comparing its
+colour to other things. "It's as red," she said to herself softly, "as
+Hearts and Diamonds;" and then her thought wandered to the cards
+themselves, and she thought of the hot saloons at nights crowded with
+faces, and the tobacco smoke in the air, and the jabber of voices, and
+the laughter of the miners, and their oaths and jokes and stories, and
+their friendly ways to her, and the admiration on their rough and
+sometimes honest faces, and the long tables and the spat, spat of the
+falling cards as they were dealt, and the chink of the glasses and the
+hot spirits burning your throat, and then the feeling of jollity, and
+then the warmth and life and cheeriness of it all. Her eyes brightened
+and her chest heaved a little as she leaned against the lintel. If she
+could have one night of it again! And here, what would it be when the
+men came back? Supper, and then Talbot and Stephen talking of their
+work, and the probable value of the claims, and the pans they could
+make, and what the dirt would run to, and then dismissing the whole
+subject as impossible to decide till the spring came and they could wash
+the gravel, and then having so dismissed it, they would fall to
+speculating again what the spring would show them the dirt was worth,
+and so on all over again from the beginning. Oh, she had heard it so
+often, nothing, nothing but the same topic night after night, and after
+that, cups of coffee, of which she was sick, or water, and then reading
+a chapter of the Testament, and then going to bed, and Stephen too dead
+tired to give her a good-night kiss. If they had had a game of cards in
+the evening now, all together, and become interested in that and
+forgotten to talk of their claims, and some good whisky after it, or
+cleared out one of the cabins and had a dance there with some of the
+hands who lived near, and a man to whistle tunes for them if there was
+no other orchestra; but no! Stephen thought that cards were wrong and
+wouldn't have them in his house, and whisky too, and dancing worst of
+all, and only the sin of avarice and the lust of gold was to be connived
+at there. As she stood there, the thought slipped into her mind quite
+suddenly, so suddenly that it surprised herself, "Why not go down to
+town and have a good time as she used?" Her heart beat quickly, and the
+old colour came into her cheek. She glanced at the dull, coppery sun
+growing dimmer and dimmer behind the thickening snow fog, and the pink
+light flickering on the horizon, at the dim figures of the men and the
+grey wastes on every side. There was a thick silence, broken only by a
+faint far-off click of a shovel from the trenches. There would be
+half-an-hour's more daylight, half-an-hour before the men returned to
+miss her. She would get a good start anyway. She turned into the cabin
+again, her face aglow and her eyes sparkling. She knew that Stephen
+would be fearfully angry with her--she had not been once to the town
+since her marriage--but she had a stronger nature than Stephen's, and
+felt no fear of his anger.
+
+"He thinks I am a reformed character," she muttered contemptuously to
+herself, as she put on her thick rubber boots. "Well, I told him there
+was only one chance to reform me, and that was to take me away from
+here, and he wouldn't do it."
+
+She built up the fire in an enormous bank, and left the men's slippers
+and dry socks beside it. Then she slipped into her long skin coat, and
+crushed the fur cap down on her eyebrows and pulled it over her ears. As
+she went out she took a long look at the claims--the men were still busy
+there. "Slaves," she muttered. She closed the door with a sharp snap and
+left the key hanging on it, as was usual when she was inside. Then she
+turned her face to the town trail, and set off at a long steady stride
+through the dead silent air. The town was within easy walking distance
+for her, and though it would be dark before she reached it, that
+mattered very little, her eyes were strong and almost as good as a wild
+cat's in the dark. On every hand the sky seemed to hang low and
+threatening over the earth, and the air had the grip of iron in it, but
+Katrine pushed on at the same even pace without even an apprehensive
+glance round. Her spirits rose as she walked. She felt the old sense of
+gladness in her youth and strength and health, and in her freedom, and
+she bounded along over the hard, glittering snow, full of a mere
+irresponsible animal pleasure, such as moves the young chamois in his
+bounds from rock to rock. Darkness had come like a blot upon the earth
+before she had done half the distance, but now she had the twinkling
+lights and the reddish haze of Dawson before her. Her own eyes
+brightened as she caught sight of them, and she hastened her steps. By
+the time night had fairly settled down she came into the side streets of
+the town. Dawson is an all-night town, and things were in full
+blast--saloons, shooting-galleries, dance-halls, and dog-fights going on
+just as usual. She noted with satisfaction that nothing seemed to have
+altered a little bit since she saw it last, and as she turned into Good
+Luck Row, to walk down it for old acquaintance' sake, a big,
+disreputable old yellow dog she had fed through last winter, came
+bounding up and leaped all over her in delighted recognition. Katrine
+was pleased at this welcome, and spent quite a time at the corner with
+him, asking how many dog-fights he had had lately, and being answered
+with short triumphant barks that she took to mean he had demolished all
+the small dogs of that quarter. Then she went on and passed her own
+former house, and saw to her surprise it was vacant, and so was Annie's
+next it. That looked as if Dawson was not pressed for space. As she was
+turning out of the row she saw ahead of her another old acquaintance,
+this was a human one, and Katrine felt as if she had quite slipped back
+into her own life as she hailed him.
+
+"Sam!" she called gently. "Hello, Sam!"
+
+The miner turned, and as soon as he saw her a broad, genial smile
+overspread his countenance and stretched his mouth from one edge of his
+fur ear-flaps to the other.
+
+"Why, Kate, you down here again; you've cut the parson fellow, eh?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Katrine hastily, reddening a little; "I'm just in town
+for a day or so. How's your wife?"
+
+"Well," answered Sam slowly, as he put himself at her side and slouched
+heavily along the side-walk with her. "She's all right--leastways I
+reckon she ought to be; she's in 'eaven now."
+
+"Oh, Sam!" said Katrine, in a shocked voice, "is she dead? How did she
+die? when?"
+
+"Why, I reckon it was the cold like, she kind of froze to death. When I
+got home one night the fire was out, and she was just laying acrost the
+hearth; the room was awful cold, and there warn't no food neither--I
+'spect that helped it. I'd bin away three or four days, and the food
+give out quicker than I thought, and the firin'. I arst a doctor here
+wot it was, and he said it was sincough or sumthin'."
+
+"Syncope?" suggested Katrine.
+
+"Yes, that's what 'e said; but I sez it was just the cold a ketchin' of
+her heart like, and stopping it."
+
+"What were you doing?" asked Katrine.
+
+"Why, I was out arter gold, o' course."
+
+Katrine shivered. They passed the "Sally White" at that moment, with
+its flaring lights and noise of merriment within.
+
+"Let's go in, Sam, and get a drink. Your tale has pretty near frozen
+me."
+
+They turned in, and as Katrine pushed open the door there was a shout of
+recognition and welcome from the men round the bar. The door fell to
+behind them, shutting out the icy night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the light failed, and the night had come down on the claims like a
+black curtain let fall suddenly, the men left the ground, and stiff with
+cold, their muscles almost rigid, plodded slowly and silently back to
+the cabin. The hired men dispersed in different directions, some going
+down town and some to their cabins near. When Stephen and Talbot entered
+they found the fire leaping and crackling as if it had just been tended,
+and both men sat down to change their boots in the outer room. The door
+into the bedroom was shut, and they supposed Katrine was within. They
+were too tired and frozen to speak, and not a word was exchanged between
+them. After a time Stephen got up and went into the inner room; there
+was no light in it, and the door swung to behind him. Talbot, with a
+white drawn face, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
+
+When Stephen entered he thought Katrine was probably asleep upon the
+bed, and crossed the room to find a light. When the match was struck and
+a candle lighted, he stared round stupidly--the room was empty. He
+looked at the bed, Katrine was not there; then his eyes caught a little
+square of white paper pinned on to the red blanket. He went up to it,
+unpinned it slowly, and read it with trembling fingers. Talbot, waiting
+in the other room, hungry and thirsty, got up after a time and began to
+lay the supper. This done, he made the coffee, and when that was ready
+and still Stephen had not reappeared, he rapped at the door. There
+seemed a muffled sound from within, and Talbot pushed the door a little
+open. Inside, he saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at
+the paper in his hand.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Talbot.
+
+Stephen handed him the paper in a blank silence, and Talbot took it and
+held it near the candle. This is what he read:--
+
+"I have gone down to the town to get a little change and to relieve the
+dreadful monotony of this life. Don't follow me; just leave me alone,
+and I'll come back in a day or two. There's no need to be anxious. You
+know I can take care of myself."
+
+Talbot laughed quietly, and walked back into the sitting-room.
+
+"Well, she gives you good advice," he said; "I should follow it. Let her
+have a day or two to herself--a day or two of liberty. She'll come back
+at the end all the better for it."
+
+Stephen followed him into the firelight; his face was the colour of wood
+ash, and his eyes looked haggard and terrified. With all his faults he
+really loved his wife, in his own narrow, limited, selfish way,
+intensely.
+
+"Oh, Talbot! to think she's gone back to it all! How awful!"
+
+Talbot gave a gesture of impatience. He understood the girl so much
+better than Stephen ever had that his methods seemed unreasonably
+foolish to him. And now he was excessively tired and cold and hungry,
+and his supper seemed of more importance than a world full of injured
+husbands.
+
+"You can't wonder at it, old man," he said. "This life must be
+intolerable for a girl like that."
+
+"Why? how?" questioned Stephen, blankly.
+
+"Oh, so quiet; no excitement."
+
+"But women ought to like quiet, and excitement's sinful," returned
+Stephen hotly, becoming the Low Church missionary school-teacher at
+once.
+
+Talbot merely laughed and shrugged his shoulders, but his laugh was not
+friendly, and there was an angry light in his eyes.
+
+"What am I to do?" asked Stephen mechanically, still standing, the
+pallor and the horror of his face growing each minute.
+
+"I've told you. Let her have the few days' enjoyment she asks for; then
+her heart will reproach her, and she will come back to you."
+
+"But she might think me indifferent," murmured Stephen, his voice almost
+choked in his throat.
+
+"I shouldn't leave her long. If she does not return the day after
+to-morrow, then you might go; but if you go now and attempt to force her
+back, you'll probably make a mess of it."
+
+"But think--my wife--"
+
+"That's all right," returned Talbot, looking at him and understanding
+what he was thinking of. "In one way, at least, you know she is a good
+girl. She will only gamble a little and drink and get very jolly, and
+she'll come back to you in a day or two with no harm done--what are you
+doing?" he broke off suddenly, as Stephen began to tear off his slippers
+and socks and get his thick wet boots on.
+
+"I'm going after her," he said sullenly, in a thick voice, "to bring her
+back home here--alive or dead."
+
+"It will be dead probably, and you'll be exceedingly sorry," returned
+Talbot in a cutting tone.
+
+Stephen made no answer, but continued fastening his boots.
+
+"You'd better have your supper before you go out again," remarked
+Talbot, sarcastically.
+
+Stephen made no reply. When he had his boots on he put an extra
+comforter inside his fur collar, put his cap on, and walked over to the
+door. There he hesitated and looked back. Talbot sat unmoved by the
+fire, his profile to the door. Stephen stood for an instant, then came
+back to the hearth.
+
+"Talbot!" he said, standing in front of him.
+
+The other looked up. "Well?"
+
+"Come with me. Help me to find her and bring her back."
+
+Talbot compressed his lips.
+
+"Aren't you capable of managing your own 'wife yourself?" he asked.
+
+"You have so much influence with her," said Stephen, pleadingly.
+
+"I suppose I only have that influence because I am not quite a fool,"
+returned Talbot angrily, commencing to pull off his slippers.
+
+He was angry with Stephen, and feeling excessively wearied and
+disinclined for further effort. He hated to turn out again, and his
+whole physical system was craving for food and rest. But he was not the
+man to resist an appeal in which he saw another's whole soul was
+thrown, and angry and annoyed as he was with Stephen, he still disliked
+the idea of letting his friend go out alone in the Arctic night on such
+an errand. It seemed to him supremely ridiculous for Stephen to have to
+call in another man's aid in these personal matters, but then he was
+more than twice Stephen's age, and had got into the habit of making
+excuses for him. So, tired and exhausted though he was, he dragged on
+his frozen boots again, and prepared to accompany Stephen.
+
+"You'd better have some of this first," he said, pouring out a cup of
+the coffee he had made, which stood ready on the stove.
+
+They each took a cup standing, and then turned out of the cabin, locking
+the door behind them. The atmosphere and aspect, the whole face of the
+night, had changed since the girl started. The fog had lifted itself and
+rolled away somewhere in the darkness. The air was now clear and keen
+as the edge of steel. The stars were of a piercing brilliance, and all
+along the black horizon flickered and leaped a faint rosy light. The two
+men, stiff, tired, and aching, took much longer to accomplish the
+distance than the girl had done with her light, eager feet, and when
+they got down to the town the night was well on its way. At the bottom
+of Good Luck Row, which is, as explained already, one of the first
+streets you come to, on the edge of the town, they halted and took
+counsel as to where they would be most likely to find the object of
+their search.
+
+"Perhaps she's gone up to the 'Pistol Shot,'" suggested Stephen. "We'd
+better go up to old Poniatovsky."
+
+"She hasn't come down to see her father, I should imagine," remarked
+Talbot, in his dryest tone.
+
+But Stephen persisted she might be there, and so they tramped straight
+across towards the main street and turned into the "Pistol Shot." They
+pushed their way unheeded through the idle, lounging, gossiping crowd
+within, found their way behind the bar, and asked for Poniatovsky. The
+little Pole came out of his back parlour and met them in the passage. He
+listened to their story, his long pipe in one hand, his mouth open, and
+his own vile whisky obscuring and clouding his brain.
+
+"Wot! she haf run away?" he exclaimed, as Stephen paused; "and who is de
+cause? Is it this shentleman here?" and he stared up at Talbot's slight,
+tall figure, imposing in its furs, and at the finely-cut, determined
+features that presented such a contrast to Stephen's weak boyish face.
+
+"No, no," said the latter angrily; "she hasn't run away at all. She has
+only come down here for an hour or so. I thought she might have come
+here to see you."
+
+"No," replied the Pole deprecatingly, shrugging his shoulders and
+spreading out his hands, "I haf not seen her. If she come here, I shut
+the door upon her. I say, 'I vil haf no runaway wives here.' My fren,
+before you vos marrit did not I say, a truant daughter make a truant
+wife. She haf left me first, now she haf left you."
+
+He had taken Stephen by the front of his coat, and was pushing in his
+words by the aid of a dirty forefinger.
+
+Talbot abandoned Stephen to argue the matter out with his drunken
+father-in-law, and strolled back through the passage, through the
+bar-room, and then stood, with his gloved hands deep in his fur-lined
+pockets, at the saloon door, looking up and down the street. Presently
+one of the wrecks of the night came drifting by, a girl of nineteen or
+so, with her cheeks blue and pinched in the terrible cold under their
+coat of coarse paint. He signalled to her, and she drifted across to
+him, and stood, with her hands thrust up her sleeves, in the light from
+the "Pistol Shot."
+
+"I expect you've seen the inside of most of the drinking-houses
+to-night," he said, speaking in a kind voice, for the pitiful, cold face
+of the girl touched him; "have you seen anything of Katrine Poniatovsky,
+a girl who used to live here?"
+
+"Wot's she like?" the girl asked sullenly. She was so hoarse that she
+could hardly make the words audible.
+
+"A tall girl, dark, and very handsome."
+
+"Yes, I seed her, not more'n an hour ago, in the 'Cock-pit.' She's
+a-makin' more money in there than I can make if I walk all night. Curse
+her! She sits there, and the devil sits behind her, a-playing for her, I
+know; but she'd better look out--you don't play with that partner long."
+
+"The 'Cock-pit.' That's on the other side, isn't it, away from the
+river?" Talbot's heart sank a little as he recognized the name of the
+worst den for gambling in the whole town.
+
+"Go down here, and turn to your left. Any one will tell you where the
+'Cock-pit' is," said the girl, with a hollow laugh.
+
+Then she lingered in the light, and looked at Talbot wistfully. He put
+some money into her hand. "Go into the warmth," he said kindly, "and get
+yourself something."
+
+Then he turned back into the saloon to find Stephen. He met him, having
+broken away at last from the fatherly advice of the Pole, and brushing
+the front of his coat down with his hand. He was very flushed and angry.
+
+"You'd better waste no more time," remarked Talbot, calmly. "She is down
+at the 'Cock-pit,' playing."
+
+Stephen gasped. "How did you find out that?" he asked.
+
+"I've just been told by one of the habitues. Come along at once." Both
+the men went out, and Talbot, following the girl's directions, marched
+on decidedly, scarcely noticing Stephen's questions, which he could not
+answer.
+
+"I don't know," he said, for the fiftieth time, to Stephen's last absurd
+query as to how long she had been there.
+
+The houses became poorer and shabbier as they walked. Even in log-cabins
+there is a great difference marked between the respectable and the
+disreputable. And the figures that passed them from time to time, though
+more rarely here in this quarter, looked of the toughest, most
+cut-throat class.
+
+"How can she like to come here alone?" exclaimed Stephen, with a
+shudder. "I wonder she is not afraid. I'm surprised she has not come to
+some harm long ago."
+
+Talbot smiled to himself inside his fur collar and said nothing. The
+girl's absolute fearlessness was the point which he admired most in her
+character, and the immunity from danger seemed in her case, as in
+others, the natural accompaniment of it. Fortune is said to favour the
+brave. Misfortune certainly seems to spare them.
+
+"I think this is the place," said Talbot at last, and they stopped
+before a large, but old and dirty-looking cabin. It was sunk beneath the
+usual level of the ground, and reached by some crooked, slippery steps.
+At the foot of these steps was a sort of yard, which you had to cross
+before reaching the cabin door itself. What was in the yard, or what its
+condition was, it was too dark to see, but a sickening smell came from
+it as the men descended the steps, and the ground seemed slippery or
+miry in places above the frozen snow. The windows of the cabin in front
+gave out no light whatever, but that there was light inside, and very
+bright light, was evidenced by that which burst through the chinks all
+over it.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I stumbled over a corpse next," muttered Talbot,
+as he slipped and almost fell in the darkness on a slimy something under
+his feet that reminded him of blood. They got up to the door and tried
+the latch. It would not yield; then they thumped on it with their gloved
+fists.
+
+The latch was drawn back by some hand inside, and the door opened just
+wide enough to admit them, and was pushed to again. Stephen and Talbot
+found themselves in a crowd of loiterers inside the door, who apparently
+took no notice of them beyond a sodden stare.
+
+It was a long, low room that they entered, so low that it seemed to
+Talbot the ceiling was almost upon their heads. The atmosphere was
+stifling, evil-smelling beyond endurance, and so clouded with tobacco
+smoke that they could not see the farther end.
+
+A long table covered with green cloth took up the centre of the room,
+and all round the walls were ranged smaller ones. The place was full
+when the two men entered, all space at the centre table was occupied,
+the side tables were filled, and men standing up between blocked the way
+up the room. The windows at the end were barred and shuttered, not a
+breath of outer air could enter. The cheap lamps nailed at intervals
+along the grimy walls were mostly black and smoking, adding their acrid
+fumes to the thick atmosphere. There were very few women present, some
+painted, worn, unhappy-looking creatures, hovering like restless
+phantoms round the tables where the thickest crowds were, that seemed
+all. Stephen looked round on every side with haggard face and anxious
+eyes. She was nowhere near the door, and after a hurried survey of all
+those lower tables they forced and pressed and pushed their way towards
+the other end. At last they caught sight of her. She was sitting at a
+small table, with her face turned towards the room, intent upon the
+game. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. She had flung her fur cap
+aside, and her ruffled black hair lay loose upon her forehead. The
+collar of her bodice was open and turned back a little from her round
+white neck. She looked, with her soft young face, like a fresh flower
+dropped by chance into this evil, tainted den. Talbot gave her a keen
+scrutiny as they approached, and understood Stephen's infatuation. As
+for Stephen himself, his heart went out to her, and he was filled with a
+bitter self-reproach and sudden resolutions. His love and his darling!
+How could he have let her be found here! His claims and his gold, they
+might all go. He would take her away in safety at once. He would not
+hesitate again.
+
+When they reached the table they saw there was a large stake on the
+cloth between the two players. Her companion was a youngish man,
+seemingly a miner, dressed in the roughest clothes. Neither looked up
+till both men were close by them and between them and the lights. Then
+Katrine raised her eyes and started violently as she recognised them.
+Her face flushed deeper, and her eyebrows contracted with annoyance.
+Stephen went round to the back of her chair and laid his hand on her
+shoulder.
+
+"Come away; oh pray, come away," he said, in an imploring tone. It was
+all he seemed able to articulate.
+
+"I'm just in the middle of a game," she answered petulantly. "You
+mustn't interrupt me."
+
+"But it isn't safe for you to be here."
+
+"Stuff! I used to be here every night before I married you!"
+
+A death-like pallor overspread the man's face as he heard. He could not
+believe her, could not realise it. Had she indeed been here night after
+night?
+
+"Why do you come here and interfere?" she continued pettishly, looking
+up from Talbot to his companion. "I always have such luck, and I'm
+likely to lose it if you worry me."
+
+The young miner sat back in his chair, thrust both hands in his pockets,
+and stared rudely at the intruders. He did not mind the interruption as
+much as she did, since he was losing, and had been steadily ever since
+he sat down to play with Katrine, and doubts and angry questionings of
+his opponent's methods began to stir in his dull, clouded brain, as
+toads stir the mud in some thick pool.
+
+"You ought not to be here at all," said Stephen hotly.
+
+"Well, why shouldn't I make money as well as you?" returned the girl
+quickly, with a flash of scorn in her dark eyes, and Stephen whitened
+and winced.
+
+"Haven't you made enough for one night, in any case?" interposed Talbot
+quietly.
+
+"Yes, I think I have," she answered, with a glance at the glistening
+pile on the cloth. "I'll come," she added suddenly, "if Jim's no
+objection. What do you say, Jim?" she asked, looking across to the young
+fellow, who had been a sulky, silent spectator of the whole scene.
+"Shall we quit for to-night?"
+
+"If you give me back my money," he answered. "That's mine," he said,
+pointing to the pile. "It's my money, gentlemen; she's been winning all
+the evening."
+
+"Yes, I always do have luck," retorted Katrine. "I told you so when we
+began."
+
+"You may call it luck; I don't," muttered the miner, his face turning a
+dusky purple.
+
+"And what do you call it?" returned Katrine, white with anger in her
+turn at the insinuation, while Talbot, who saw what was coming, tried to
+draw her away.
+
+"What does it matter? Come away; leave him the money."
+
+No one in the room noticed what was going on in their corner. The others
+were all too busy with their own play, absorbed in their own greed;
+besides, squabbles over the tables were of such common occurrence, they
+ceased to excite any curiosity.
+
+"I shan't," returned Katrine, shaking herself free.
+
+The oily, smoky light from above fell across her face; it seemed to
+bloom through the foul, dusky air like a rose.
+
+"It's my money--I won it."
+
+"Yes, by cheating," shouted the miner, forgetting everything but the
+approaching loss he foresaw of the shining pile.
+
+"You lie," said Stephen, hoarsely. "She has not cheated you."
+
+The miner staggered to his feet, and before any of them realised it he
+had drawn his pistol and fired. His hand was unsteady from drink and
+rage, and the ball passed over Stephen's shoulder and went into the
+wall behind him. Talbot tried to draw Stephen to one side. The miner,
+blind with anger, half conscious only of what he was about, and drawing
+almost at random, turned his revolver on Talbot. Like a flash Katrine
+interposed between them, and Jim's bullet found a lodgment in her lungs.
+She had fired also. The shots had been simultaneous, and the miner fell,
+without a groan, without a murmur, forward across the table, carrying it
+with him to the floor. The gold pile scattered amongst the filthy
+sawdust on the ground. Katrine sank backwards into Talbot's arms, and
+her head fell to his shoulder like that of a tired child falling to
+sleep.
+
+In an instant they were surrounded by an eager inquiring throng. All the
+tables, with some few exceptions, were deserted; the players all crowded
+up to the end of the room, and Stephen and Talbot were carried back to
+the wall by the pressing crowd. Some of the men raised the body of the
+miner; he was dead. The people pressed round, and one glance at the set
+face told them. A momentary awe spread amongst them, and the men who had
+raised the body carried it to a bench and laid it there. Stephen, pallid
+as the dead man himself, looked round in desperation on the staring
+crowd.
+
+"Is there a surgeon or a doctor here?" he asked.
+
+Katrine heard him, and raised herself a little in Talbot's arms; he was
+standing against the wall now. She turned her eyes towards Stephen and
+stretched out her hand.
+
+"It's no use, Steve, dear," she said; "I'm done for. Don't worry with a
+doctor. I shall be gone in five minutes."
+
+Stephen dropped on his knees and seized the little soft brown hand
+extended to him, covering it with kisses.
+
+"Oh no, no, don't say it," he said in a voice suffocated with anguish,
+heedless of the staring faces around. Some of the mob looked on with
+interest, some turned back to their own tables, others went down on
+their hands and knees to scrape up the scattered gold dust that had
+mixed in the trampled sawdust.
+
+"Lay me a little flatter," she murmured to Talbot, and he sank on one
+knee and so supported her, her head resting on his arm.
+
+"If we could get her to the air," Stephen exclaimed.
+
+"No, the moving pains me; let me be," she replied. "I tell you I'm
+dying."
+
+Stephen groaned.
+
+"Pray then, pray now. Oh, Katie dear, pray before it is too late. Aren't
+you afraid to die like this, in this place?"
+
+Katrine shook her head wearily. "No, I don't think I've ever been
+afraid," she murmured.
+
+"Did I kill him?" she asked a second later, opening her eyes.
+
+Talbot looked down and nodded. Stephen's voice was too choked for
+utterance.
+
+"I'm glad of that," she murmured, letting her eyes close again; "I never
+missed a shot yet."
+
+"Oh, Katie, Katie," moaned Stephen. The room was black to him; it seemed
+as if he saw hell opening to swallow up for ever his beloved one.
+
+Katrine opened her eyes at his agonised cry.
+
+"Now, Steve, it can't be helped; I'm dying, and it's all right. I only
+don't want you to worry over it. Nothing is worth worrying for in this
+world. And I guess we'll all meet again very soon in a warmer place than
+Alaska."
+
+Stephen, utterly broken down, could only sob upon her hand.
+
+Talbot felt a sort of rigor passing through the form he held, and
+thought she was dying. He was stirred to the innermost depths of his
+being by her act. She had stepped so calmly between him and death, given
+up her life with the free generous courage of a soldier or a hero.
+
+"Why did you come between us?" he asked, suddenly bending over her; "why
+did you do it?"
+
+The calm light eyes looked down into the dark passionate depths of the
+dying girl's pupils, and a long gaze passed between them. What secrets
+of her soul were revealed to his in that instant when they stood face to
+face with only Death between? Then Katrine turned her head wearily.
+
+"I don't know," she answered faintly; "mere devilry, I think." And she
+laughed.
+
+The laugh shook the wounded lung. Her face turned from white to grey,
+her teeth clenched. There was a spasm as of a sudden wrenching loose
+from the body, then it sank back, collapsed, motionless, against
+Talbot's breast.
+
+The two men carried her out between them. The crowd made way for them,
+standing on either side in respectful silence. Such incidents were not
+uncommon, and excited nothing more than a dull and transient interest.
+They took her out, and the gold for which two lives had been sacrificed
+was left unheeded, scattered in the dust. They went out the way they had
+come, through the noisome court, up the narrow flight of rotten,
+slippery stairs into the pure icy air.
+
+Stephen turned to Talbot and took the girl's body wholly into his arms.
+
+"I want to carry her up to my cabin," he said in a choking voice, and
+the other nodded.
+
+The night was glorious with the deadly glory of the Arctic regions; the
+air was still, and of a coldness that seemed to bite deep into the
+flesh; but overhead, in the impenetrable blackness of the sky, the
+stars shone with a brilliance found only in the north, throwing a cold
+light over the snowy ground. To the south and east, low down, burned two
+enormous planets, like fiery eyes watching them over the horizon.
+
+Slowly the two men walked over the hard ground. Not another living being
+was within sight.
+
+Stephen walked first with heavy, uneven steps, and his breath came
+quickly in suppressed and sobbing gasps. Talbot followed closely, deep
+in painful thought. All had happened so suddenly. The whole horrible
+tragedy had swept over them in a few minutes; she had passed away from
+them both for ever. His brain seemed dazed by the shock. He could not
+realise it. He saw her dark head lying on Stephen's shoulder. It seemed
+as if she must lift it every second. He could not believe that she was
+lifeless, lifeless, this creature who had always been life itself, with
+her gay smiles, and light tones, and quick movements. Now, she and they
+were blotted out for all time. She had died against his breast, and for
+him. That was the horrible thought; it came into his brain after all the
+others, suddenly, and seemed as if it must burst it. And why, why should
+she have done it? Her last words rang in his ears, "mere devilry." So
+she had always been; reckless, open-handed, generous, she had often
+risked her life for another, and now she had given it for him. And in
+her last words she had tried to minimise her own act, tried to relieve
+him of the burden of a hopeless gratitude. But for all that he would
+have to bear it, and it seemed crushing him now. That she should have
+given her life, so young, less than half his own, so full of value and
+promise, for his! It seemed as if a reproach must follow him to the end
+of his days.
+
+He walked as in a dream. He had no sense of the distance they were
+going, hardly any of the direction, except that he was following
+mechanically Stephen's slow, uneven, halting footsteps, and watching
+that little head that lay on his shoulder. Once when Stephen paused, he
+stretched out his arms and offered to take the burden from him, but
+Stephen repulsed him fiercely, and then the two went on slowly as
+before, how long he did not know, it seemed a long time. Suddenly, in
+the middle of the narrow pathway before him, Talbot saw Stephen stagger,
+fall to his knees, and then sink heavily sideways in the snow, his arms
+still tightly locked round the rigid body of the girl. Talbot hurried
+forward and bent over him, feeling hastily in his own pockets for his
+flask. Stephen's eyes were wide open and gazed up at him with a
+hopeless, despairing determination that went to Talbot's heart and
+chilled it.
+
+"I can't go any farther, not another step," he muttered.
+
+Talbot had been searching hurriedly through all his pockets for the
+flask he always carried.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed, "I haven't got it; I must have dropped it
+coming up here, or they stole it in that hell down town."
+
+Stephen feebly put up his hand.
+
+"Don't trouble, I don't want it. I am just going to lie here and wait
+with her. Was she not lovely?" he muttered to himself, raising himself
+on his knees and laying the body before him on the snow.
+
+The sky above them arched in pitchy blackness, but the starlight was so
+keen and brilliant that it lighted up the white silence round them.
+Stephen, on his hands and knees, hung over the still figure and gazed
+down into the marble face. The short silky black hair made a little blot
+of darkness in the snow, the white face was turned upward to the
+starlight. Talbot, looking down, caught for an instant the sight of its
+pure oval, its regular lines, and the sweet mouth, and the passionate,
+reasonless face of the man crouching over it, and then looked
+desperately up and down the narrow lonely trail. They were five miles
+from the town, a little over three from the cabins. Glistening whiteness
+lay all around, till the plains of snow grew grey in the distance;
+overhead, the burning, flashing, restless stars; and far off, where the
+two planets guarded the horizon, the red lights of the north began to
+quiver and flicker in the night.
+
+The man on the ground noticed them, and straightening himself suddenly,
+looked towards them.
+
+"The flare of hell!" he muttered, with staring, straining eyes; "it's
+coming very near."
+
+Talbot saw that his reason had gone, failed suddenly, as a light goes
+down under a blast; he was delirious with that sudden delirium born of
+the awful cold that seizes men like a wolf in the long night of the
+Arctic winters.
+
+For a second the helplessness of his situation flashed in upon Talbot's
+brain--alone here at midnight on the frozen trail, with a madman and a
+corpse!
+
+He saw he must get help at once, and the cabins were the nearest point
+where help could be found. He could get men who would carry Stephen by
+force if necessary, but would he ever live in the fangs of this pitiless
+cold till they could return to him? He stood for one moment irresolute,
+unwilling to leave him to meet his death, and that horrible fear that he
+read in those haggard eyes watching the horizon, alone; and in that
+moment Stephen looked up at him and met his eye, and the madness rolled
+back and stood off his brain for an instant. He beckoned to Talbot, and
+Talbot went down on his knees beside him on the snow.
+
+"My claims," muttered Stephen; "those claims will be yours now, do you
+understand? I've arranged it all with that lawyer Hoskins, down town.
+They were to be hers if anything happened to me, but we shall both go
+to-night, and they will be yours. She said I had sunk my soul in them,
+Talbot; she was right. The gold got me, I neglected her; I let her slip
+back into evil; I've murdered her for the claims. They are the price
+hell paid me. But you keep them. All turns to good in your hands. They
+can't harm you. Keep them. They are my grave."
+
+"Stephen, rouse yourself! You are alive! you've got to live," said
+Talbot desperately, shaking him by the shoulder. "I am going now to
+bring men back with me to help you home. You've got to live till I
+return, do you hear?"
+
+Stephen had turned from him again and put his arms round the motionless
+form before them.
+
+"They are coming nearer," Talbot heard him mutter; "but they shall burn
+through me first, little one;" and he stretched himself across the
+corpse as if to shield it from the approaching flames, and far off the
+red eyes of the planets sank nearer the horizon, but still seemed to
+watch them across the snowy waste.
+
+Talbot felt the only one thin thread of hope was to go as fast as his
+fatigue-clogged feet could move up to the cabins, and he rose and faced
+the homeward trail. He felt the hope of saving Stephen was just the
+least faintest flicker that ever burned within a heart; still there was
+the chance--the chance that, even should he be already in the sleep that
+ends in death when he returned, they could rouse him from it and drag
+him into life again. He forced his heavy feet along, and with a great
+effort started into a run. His limbs felt like lead, and all his body
+like paper. The long hours of cold and fatigue, the excitement, the rush
+of changing emotions he had gone through, had been draining his
+vitality, but he called upon all that he had left and put it all into
+the effort to save his friend. He knew that any one second lost or
+gained might be the one to turn the balance of life or death, and he
+urged himself forward till a dull pain filled all his side, and his
+temples seemed bursting, and the great lights before him swam in a
+blood-red mist.
+
+Stephen, left alone, raised his head and gazed round him once, then he
+laid his cheek down on the cold cheek, pressed his lips to the cold
+lips, and his breast upon the cold breast just over where the bullet had
+ploughed its way through the flesh and bone. The night gripped him
+tighter and tighter, and slowly he sank to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+_L'ENVOI._
+
+
+Noontide in June. A sky of the clearest, palest azure, and a rollicking,
+swelling, tumbling sea, full of smooth billowy waves chasing each other
+over its deep green surface--waves with their white crests blown
+backwards, throwing their spray high in the air and seeming to laugh and
+call to each other in gurgling voices; and between sea and sky the
+liquid golden sunlight filling the warm, throbbing air, spreading itself
+in dazzling sheets upon the water, and glinting in ten thousand
+glittering points on the flying spray thrown up by a steamer's screw. It
+was the steamer _Prince_, homeward-bound from Alaska, carrying
+passengers and a cargo as rich and yellow as the sunshine. And as if it
+knew of its precious and costly charge, the steamer cut proudly through
+the turbulent water, cleaving its straight passage homeward, homeward.
+On the deck of the boat, leaning back idly in a long chair, his calm,
+grey eyes fixed on the receding shores, where the golden sunshine seemed
+palpitating on their perilous loveliness, Talbot was sitting, with the
+freshening breeze stirring his hair and bringing to him the breath of a
+thousand spring flowers on the land. He was returning, and returning
+successful, with his work accomplished, his toil over, his aim achieved,
+and amongst all the lines of pain stamped on his pale and quiet face
+there was written a certain triumph, that yet perhaps was not so much
+triumph as relief. It was just four months since that terrible night
+when he had lost both his comrades, just a little less than four months
+since he had seen them both laid side by side in their lonely grave in
+the west gulch; and those four months would ever be a blot of horrible
+blackness on his life. Should he ever be able to forget the blank
+desolation that had closed in upon him night after night as he sat by
+his lonely hearth or paced the floor, his steps alone breaking the awful
+stillness? Yet he had forced himself to stay and face it, had continued
+his work and his method of life unchanged. His men had noted little
+difference in him. He had stayed the time he had appointed for himself,
+had accomplished his self-appointed task, and at last, when the summer
+burst in upon the gulch and loosened all Nature's fetters, he found
+himself also free; and now, like a black curtain rent in twain and torn
+from the bright face of a picture, the clouds of the past seemed falling
+away, leaving his future clear to his gaze. It stretched before him
+bright as the laughing sunlit sea beneath his eyes. If they could but
+have shared his joy, if they could have had their home-coming, his
+fellow-toilers, his fellow-prisoners! and the salt tears stung his lids
+until he closed them, shutting out the vivid yellow light, as he
+thought of the desolate grave in the gulch.
+
+The fresh, cool air fanned his face and the sun smiled upon him, a loose
+piece of canvas of an awning near him flapped backwards and forwards
+with a monotonous musical sound, the plash and gurgle of the tumbling
+waves fell soothingly on his ears. Gradually sleep came over him gently,
+and enwrapped his strained, wearied body, his sore bruised mind.
+
+When he opened his eyes again it was afternoon. The steamer was still
+flying onward, but the sea was quiet and smooth, and lay still on every
+side in the sun's rays as a pool of liquid gold, and the shores of
+Alaska had vanished, lost in a burnished haze of light.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Girl of the Klondike, by Victoria Cross
+
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