II
Dawson, always eager for news, beheld Montana Kid's sled heading
down the Yukon, and went out on the ice to meet him. No, he
hadn't any newspapers; didn't know whether Durrant was hanged yet,
nor who had won the Thanksgiving game; hadn't heard whether the
United States and Spain had gone to fighting; didn't know who
Dreyfus was; but O'Brien? Hadn't they heard? O'Brien, why, he
was drowned in the White Horse; Sitka Charley the only one of the
party who escaped. Joe Ladue? Both legs frozen and amputated at
the Five Fingers. And Jack Dalton? Blown up on the "Sea Lion"
with all hands. And Bettles? Wrecked on the "Carthagina," in
Seymour Narrows,--twenty survivors out of three hundred. And
Swiftwater Bill? Gone through the rotten ice of Lake LeBarge with
six female members of the opera troupe he was convoying. Governor
Walsh? Lost with all hands and eight sleds on the Thirty Mile.
Devereaux? Who was Devereaux? Oh, the courier! Shot by Indians
on Lake Marsh.
So it went. The word was passed along. Men shouldered in to ask
after friends and partners, and in turn were shouldered out, too
stunned for blasphemy. By the time Montana Kid gained the bank he
was surrounded by several hundred fur-clad miners. When he passed
the Barracks he was the centre of a procession. At the Opera
House he was the nucleus of an excited mob, each member struggling
for a chance to ask after some absent comrade. On every side he
was being invited to drink. Never before had the Klondike thus
opened its arms to a che-cha-qua. All Dawson was humming. Such a
series of catastrophes had never occurred in its history. Every
man of note who had gone south in the spring had been wiped out.
The cabins vomited forth their occupants. Wild-eyed men hurried
down from the creeks and gulches to seek out this man who had told
a tale of such disaster. The Russian half-breed wife of Bettles
sought the fireplace, inconsolable, and rocked back and forth, and
ever and anon flung white wood-ashes upon her raven hair. The
flag at the Barracks flopped dismally at half-mast. Dawson
mourned its dead.
Why Montana Kid did this thing no man may know. Nor beyond the
fact that the truth was not in him, can explanation be hazarded.
But for five whole days he plunged the land in wailing and sorrow,
and for five whole days he was the only man in the Klondike. The
country gave him its best of bed and board. The saloons granted
him the freedom of their bars. Men sought him continuously. The
high officials bowed down to him for further information, and he
was feasted at the Barracks by Constantine and his brother
officers. And then, one day, Devereaux, the government courier,
halted his tired dogs before the gold commissioner's office.
Dead? Who said so? Give him a moose steak and he'd show them how
dead he was. Why, Governor Walsh was in camp on the Little
Salmon, and O'Brien coming in on the first water. Dead? Give him
a moose steak and he'd show them.
And forthwith Dawson hummed. The Barracks' flag rose to the
masthead, and Bettles' wife washed herself and put on clean
raiment. The community subtly signified its desire that Montana
Kid obliterate himself from the landscape. And Montana Kid
obliterated; as usual, at the tail-end of some one else's dog
team. Dawson rejoiced when he headed down the Yukon, and wished
him godspeed to the ultimate destination of the case-hardened
sinner. After that the owner of the dogs bestirred himself, made
complaint to Constantine, and from him received the loan of a
policeman.
