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_ A crowd filled the Tivoli--the old crowd that had seen Daylight
depart two months before; for this was the night of the sixtieth
day, and opinion was divided as ever as to whether or not he
would compass the achievement. At ten o'clock bets were still
being made, though the odds rose, bet by bet, against his
success. Down in her heart the Virgin believed he had failed,
yet she made a bet of twenty ounces with Charley Bates, against
forty ounces, that Daylight would arrive before midnight.
She it was who heard the first yelps of the dogs.
"Listen!" she cried. "It's Daylight!"
There was a general stampede for the door; but where the double
storm-doors were thrown wide open, the crowd fell back. They
heard the eager whining of dogs, the snap of a dog-whip, and the
voice of Daylight crying encouragement as the weary animals
capped all they had done by dragging the sled in over the wooden
floor. They came in with a rush, and with them rushed in the
frost, a visible vapor of smoking white, through which their
heads and backs showed, as they strained in the harness, till
they had all the seeming of swimming in a river. Behind them, at
the gee-pole, came Daylight, hidden to the knees by the swirling
frost through which he appeared to wade.
He was the same old Daylight, withal lean and tired-looking, and
his black eyes were sparkling and flashing brighter than ever.
His parka of cotton drill hooded him like a monk, and fell in
straight lines to his knees. Grimed and scorched by camp-smoke
and fire, the garment in itself told the story of his trip. A
two-months' beard covered his face; and the beard, in turn, was
matted with the ice of his breathing through the long
seventy-mile run.
His entry was spectacular, melodramatic; and he knew it. It was
his life, and he was living it at the top of his bent. Among his
fellows he was a great man, an Arctic hero. He was proud of the
fact, and it was a high moment for him, fresh from two thousand
miles of trail, to come surging into that bar-room, dogs, sled,
mail, Indian, paraphernalia, and all. He had performed one more
exploit that would make the Yukon ring with his name--he, Burning
Daylight, the king of travelers and dog-mushers.
He experienced a thrill of surprise as the roar of welcome went
up and as every familiar detail of the Tivoli greeted his
vision--the long bar and the array of bottles, the gambling
games,
the big stove, the weigher at the gold-scales, the musicians, the
men and women, the Virgin, Celia, and Nellie, Dan MacDonald,
Bettles, Billy Rawlins, Olaf Henderson, Doc Watson,--all of them.
It was just as he had left it, and in all seeming it might well
be
the very day he had left. The sixty days of incessant travel
through the white wilderness suddenly telescoped, and had no
existence in time. They were a moment, an incident. He had
plunged out and into them through the wall of silence, and back
through the wall of silence he had plunged, apparently the next
instant, and into the roar and turmoil of the Tivoli.
A glance down at the sled with its canvas mail-bags was necessary
to reassure him of the reality of those sixty days and the two
thousand miles over the ice. As in a dream, he shook the hands
that were thrust out to him. He felt a vast exaltation. Life
was magnificent. He loved it all. A great sense of humanness
and comradeship swept over him. These were all his, his own
kind. It was immense, tremendous. He felt melting in the heart
of him, and he would have liked to shake hands with them all at
once, to gather them to his breast in one mighty embrace.
He drew a deep breath and cried: "The winner pays, and I'm the
winner, ain't I? Surge up, you-all Malemutes and Siwashes, and
name your poison! There's your Dyea mail, straight from Salt
Water, and no hornswogglin about it! Cast the lashings adrift,
you-all, and wade into it!"
A dozen pairs of hands were at the sled-lashings, when the young
Le Barge Indian, bending at the same task, suddenly and limply
straightened up. In his eyes was a great surprise. He stared
about him wildly, for the thing he was undergoing was new to him.
He was profoundly struck by an unguessed limitation. He shook as
with a palsy, and he gave at the knees, slowly sinking down to
fall suddenly across the sled and to know the smashing blow of
darkness across his consciousness.
"Exhaustion," said Daylight. "Take him off and put him to bed,
some of you-all. He's sure a good Indian."
"Daylight's right," was Doc Watson's verdict, a moment later.
"The man's plumb tuckered out."
The mail was taken charge of, the dogs driven away to quarters
and fed, and Bettles struck up the paean of the sassafras root as
they lined up against the long bar to drink and talk and collect
their debts.
A few minutes later, Daylight was whirling around the
dance-floor, waltzing with the Virgin. He had replaced his parka
with his fur cap and blanket-cloth coat, kicked off his frozen
moccasins, and was dancing in his stocking feet. After wetting
himself to the knees late that afternoon, he had run on without
changing his foot-gear, and to the knees his long German socks
were matted with ice. In the warmth of the room it began to thaw
and to break apart in clinging chunks. These chunks rattled
together as his legs flew around, and every little while they
fell clattering to the floor and were slipped upon by the other
dancers. But everybody forgave Daylight. He, who was one of the
few that made the Law in that far land, who set the ethical pace,
and by conduct gave the standard of right and wrong, was
nevertheless above the Law. He was one of those rare and favored
mortals who can do no wrong. What he did had to be right,
whether others were permitted or not to do the same things. Of
course, such mortals are so favored by virtue of the fact that
they almost always do the right and do it in finer and higher
ways than other men. So Daylight, an elder hero in that young
land and at the same time younger than most of them, moved as a
creature apart, as a man above men, as a man who was greatly man
and all man. And small wonder it was that the Virgin yielded
herself to his arms, as they danced dance after dance, and was
sick at heart at the knowledge that he found nothing in her more
than a good friend and an excellent dancer. Small consolation it
was to know that he had never loved any woman. She was sick with
love of him, and he danced with her as he would dance with any
woman, as he would dance with a man who was a good dancer and
upon whose arm was tied a handkerchief to conventionalize him
into a woman.
One such man Daylight danced with that night. Among frontiersmen
it has always been a test of endurance for one man to whirl
another down; and when Ben Davis, the faro-dealer, a gaudy
bandanna on his arm, got Daylight in a Virginia reel, the fun
began. The reel broke up and all fell back to watch. Around and
around the two men whirled, always in the one direction. Word
was passed on into the big bar-room, and bar and gambling tables
were deserted. Everybody wanted to see, and they packed and
jammed the dance-room. The musicians played on and on, and on
and on the two men whirled. Davis was skilled at the trick, and
on the Yukon he had put many a strong man on his back. But after
a few minutes it was clear that he, and not Daylight, was going.
For a while longer they spun around, and then Daylight suddenly
stood still, released his partner, and stepped back, reeling
himself, and fluttering his hands aimlessly, as if to support
himself against the air. But Davis, a giddy smile of
consternation on his face, gave sideways, turned in an attempt to
recover balance, and pitched headlong to the floor. Still
reeling and staggering and clutching at the air with his hands,
Daylight caught the nearest girl and started on in a waltz.
Again he had done the big thing. Weary from two thousand miles
over the ice and a run that day of seventy miles, he had whirled
a fresh man down, and that man Ben Davis.
Daylight loved the high places, and though few high places there
were in his narrow experience, he had made a point of sitting in
the highest he had ever glimpsed. The great world had never
heard his name, but it was known far and wide in the vast silent
North, by whites and Indians and Eskimos, from Bering Sea to the
Passes, from the head reaches of remotest rivers to the tundra
shore of Point Barrow. Desire for mastery was strong in him, and
it was all one whether wrestling with the elements themselves,
with men, or with luck in a gambling game. It was all a game,
life and its affairs. And he was a gambler to the core. Risk
and chance were meat and drink. True, it was not altogether
blind, for he applied wit and skill and strength; but behind it
all was the everlasting Luck, the thing that at times turned on
its votaries and crushed the wise while it blessed the
fools--Luck, the thing all men sought and dreamed to conquer.
And
so he. Deep in his life-processes Life itself sang the siren
song of its own majesty, ever a-whisper and urgent, counseling
him that he could achieve more than other men, win out where they
failed, ride to success where they perished. It was the urge of
Life healthy and strong, unaware of frailty and decay, drunken
with sublime complacence, ego-mad, enchanted by its own mighty
optimism.
And ever in vaguest whisperings and clearest trumpet-calls came
the message that sometime, somewhere, somehow, he would run Luck
down, make himself the master of Luck, and tie it and brand it as
his own. When he played poker, the whisper was of four aces and
royal flushes. When he prospected, it was of gold in the
grass-roots, gold on bed-rock, and gold all the way down. At
the sharpest hazards of trail and river and famine, the message
was that other men might die, but that he would pull through
triumphant. It was the old, old lie of Life fooling itself,
believing itself--immortal and indestructible, bound to achieve
over other lives and win to its heart's desire.
And so, reversing at times, Daylight waltzed off his dizziness
and led the way to the bar. But a united protest went up. His
theory that the winner paid was no longer to be tolerated. It
was contrary to custom and common sense, and while it emphasized
good-fellowship, nevertheless, in the name of good-fellowship it
must cease. The drinks were rightfully on Ben Davis, and Ben
Davis must buy them. Furthermore, all drinks and general treats
that Daylight was guilty of ought to be paid by the house, for
Daylight brought much custom to it whenever he made a night.
Bettles was the spokesman, and his argument, tersely and
offensively vernacular, was unanimously applauded.
Daylight grinned, stepped aside to the roulette-table, and bought
a stack of yellow chips. At the end of ten minutes he weighed in
at the scales, and two thousand dollars in gold-dust was poured
into his own and an extra sack. Luck, a mere flutter of luck,
but it was his. Elation was added to elation. He was living,
and the night was his. He turned upon his well-wishing critics.
"Now the winner sure does pay," he said.
And they surrendered. There was no withstanding Daylight when he
vaulted on the back of life, and rode it bitted and spurred.
At one in the morning he saw Elijah Davis herding Henry Finn and
Joe Hines, the lumber-jack, toward the door. Daylight
interfered.
"Where are you-all going?" he demanded, attempting to draw them
to the bar.
"Bed," Elijah Davis answered.
He was a lean tobacco-chewing New Englander, the one daring
spirit in his family that had heard and answered the call of the
West shouting through the Mount Desert back odd-lots. "Got to,"
Joe Hines added apologetically. "We're mushing out in the
mornin'."
Daylight still detained them. "Where to? What's the
excitement?"
"No excitement," Elijah explained. "We're just a-goin' to play
your hunch, an' tackle the Upper Country. Don't you want to come
along?"
"I sure do," Daylight affirmed.
But the question had been put in fun, and Elijah ignored the
acceptance.
"We're tacklin' the Stewart," he went on. "Al Mayo told me he
seen some likely lookin' bars first time he come down the
Stewart, and we're goin' to sample 'em while the river's froze.
You listen, Daylight, an' mark my words, the time's comin' when
winter diggin's'll be all the go. There'll be men in them days
that'll laugh at our summer stratchin' an' ground-wallerin'."
At that time, winter mining was undreamed of on the Yukon. From
the moss and grass the land was frozen to bed-rock, and frozen
gravel, hard as granite, defied pick and shovel. In the summer
the men stripped the earth down as fast as the sun thawed it.
Then was the time they did their mining. During the winter they
freighted their provisions, went moose-hunting, got all ready for
the summer's work, and then loafed the bleak, dark months through
in the big central camps such as Circle City and Forty Mile.
"Winter diggin's sure comin'," Daylight agreed. "Wait till that
big strike is made up river. Then you-all'll see a new kind of
mining. What's to prevent wood-burning and sinking shafts and
drifting along bed-rock? Won't need to timber. That frozen muck
and gravel'll stand till hell is froze and its mill-tails is
turned to ice-cream. Why, they'll be working pay-streaks a
hundred feet deep in them days that's comin'. I'm sure going
along with you-all, Elijah."
Elijah laughed, gathered his two partners up, and was making a
second attempt to reach the door
"Hold on," Daylight called. "I sure mean it."
The three men turned back suddenly upon him, in their faces
surprise, delight, and incredulity.
"G'wan, you're foolin'," said Finn, the other lumberjack, a
quiet, steady, Wisconsin man.
"There's my dawgs and sled," Daylight answered. "That'll make
two
teams and halve the loads--though we-all'll have to travel easy
for
a spell, for them dawgs is sure tired."
The three men were overjoyed, but still a trifle incredulous.
"Now look here," Joe Hines blurted out, "none of your foolin,
Daylight. We mean business. Will you come?"
Daylight extended his hand and shook.
"Then you'd best be gettin' to bed," Elijah advised. "We're
mushin'
out at six, and four hours' sleep is none so long."
"Mebbe we ought to lay over a day and let him rest up," Finn
suggested.
Daylight's pride was touched.
"No you don't," he cried. "We all start at six. What time do
you-all want to be called? Five? All right, I'll rouse you-all
out."
"You oughter have some sleep," Elijah counselled gravely. "You
can't go on forever."
Daylight was tired, profoundly tired. Even his iron body
acknowledged weariness. Every muscle was clamoring for bed and
rest, was appalled at continuance of exertion and at thought of
the trail again. All this physical protest welled up into his
brain in a wave of revolt. But deeper down, scornful and
defiant, was Life itself, the essential fire of it, whispering
that all Daylight's fellows were looking on, that now was the
time to pile deed upon deed, to flaunt his strength in the face
of strength. It was merely Life, whispering its ancient lies.
And in league with it was whiskey, with all its consummate
effrontery and vain-glory.
"Mebbe you-all think I ain't weaned yet?" Daylight demanded.
"Why, I ain't had a drink, or a dance, or seen a soul in two
months. You-all get to bed. I'll call you-all at five."
And for the rest of the night he danced on in his stocking feet,
and at five in the morning, rapping thunderously on the door of
his new partners' cabin, he could be heard singing the song that
had given him his name:--
"Burning daylight, you-all Stewart River hunchers! Burning
daylight! Burning daylight! Burning daylight!" _
Read next: PART I: CHAPTER VII
Read previous: PART I: CHAPTER V
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