The Wife of a King
Once when the northland was very young, the social and civic
virtues were remarkably alike for their paucity and their
simplicity. When the burden of domestic duties grew grievous, and
the fireside mood expanded to a constant protest against its
bleak loneliness, the adventurers from the Southland, in lieu of
better, paid the stipulated prices and took unto themselves
native wives. It was a foretaste of Paradise to the women, for it
must be confessed that the white rovers gave far better care and
treatment of them than did their Indian copartners. Of course,
the white men themselves were satisfied with such deals, as were
also the Indian men for that matter. Having sold their daughters
and sisters for cotton blankets and obsolete rifles and traded
their warm furs for flimsy calico and bad whisky, the sons of the
soil promptly and cheerfully succumbed to quick consumption and
other swift diseases correlated with the blessings of a superior
civilization.
It was in these days of Arcadian simplicity that Cal Galbraith
journeyed through the land and fell sick on the Lower River. It
was a refreshing advent in the lives of the good Sisters of the
Holy Cross, who gave him shelter and medicine; though they little
dreamed of the hot elixir infused into his veins by the touch of
their soft hands and their gentle ministrations. Cal Galbraith,
became troubled with strange thoughts which clamored for
attention till he laid eyes on the Mission girl, Madeline. Yet he
gave no sign, biding his time patiently. He strengthened with the
coming spring, and when the sun rode the heavens in a golden
circle, and the joy and throb of life was in all the land, he
gathered his still weak body together and departed.
Now, Madeline, the Mission girl, was an orphan. Her white father
had failed to give a bald-faced grizzly the trail one day, and
had died quickly. Then her Indian mother, having no man to fill
the winter cache, had tried the hazardous experiment of waiting
till the salmon-run on fifty pounds of flour and half as many of
bacon. After that, the baby, Chook-ra, went to live with the good
Sisters, and to be thenceforth known by another name.
But Madeline still had kinsfolk, the nearest being a dissolute
uncle who outraged his vitals with inordinate quantities of the
white man's whisky. He strove daily to walk with the gods, and
incidentally, his feet sought shorter trails to the grave. When
sober he suffered exquisite torture. He had no conscience. To
this ancient vagabond Cal Galbraith duly presented himself, and
they consumed many words and much tobacco in the conversation
that followed. Promises were also made; and in the end the old
heathen took a few pounds of dried salmon and his birch-bark
canoe, and paddled away to the Mission of the Holy Cross.
It is not given the world to know what promises he made and what
lies he told--the Sisters never gossip; but when he returned, upon
his swarthy chest there was a brass crucifix, and in his canoe
his niece Madeline. That night there was a grand wedding and a
potlach; so that for two days to follow there was no fishing done
by the village. But in the morning Madeline shook the dust of the
Lower River from her moccasins, and with her husband, in a
poling-boat, went to live on the Upper River in a place known as
the Lower Country. And in the years which followed she was a good
wife, sharing her husband's hardships and cooking his food. And
she kept him in straight trails, till he learned to save his dust
and to work mightily. In the end, he struck it rich and built a
cabin in Circle City; and his happiness was such that men who
came to visit him in his home-circle became restless at the sight
of it and envied him greatly.
But the Northland began to mature and social amenities to make
their appearance.
Hitherto, the Southland had sent forth its sons; but it now
belched forth a new exodus--this time of its daughters. Sisters
and wives they were not; but they did not fail to put new ideas
in the heads of the men, and to elevate the tone of things in
ways peculiarly their own. No more did the squaws gather at the
dances, go roaring down the center in the good, old Virginia
reels, or make merry with jolly 'Dan Tucker.' They fell back on
their natural stoicism and uncomplainingly watched the rule of
their white sisters from their cabins.
Then another exodus came over the mountains from the prolific
Southland.
This time it was of women that became mighty in the land. Their
word was law; their law was steel. They frowned upon the Indian
wives, while the other women became mild and walked humbly. There
were cowards who became ashamed of their ancient covenants with
the daughters of the soil, who looked with a new distaste upon
their dark-skinned children; but there were also others--men--who
remained true and proud of their aboriginal vows. When it became
the fashion to divorce the native wives. Cal Galbraith retained
his manhood, and in so doing felt the heavy hand of the women who
had come last, knew least, but who ruled the land.
One day, the Upper Country, which lies far above Circle City, was
pronounced rich. Dog-teams carried the news to Salt Water; golden
argosies freighted the lure across the North Pacific; wires and
cables sang with the tidings; and the world heard for the first
time of the Klondike River and the Yukon Country. Cal Galbraith
had lived the years quietly. He had been a good husband to
Madeline, and she had blessed him. But somehow discontent fell
upon him; he felt vague yearnings for his own kind, for the life
he had been shut out from--a general sort of desire, which men
sometimes feel, to break out and taste the prime of living.
Besides, there drifted down the river wild rumors of the
wonderful El Dorado, glowing descriptions of the city of logs and
tents, and ludicrous accounts of the che-cha-quas who had rushed
in and were stampeding the whole country.
Circle City was dead. The world had moved on up river and become
a new and most marvelous world.
Cal Galbraith grew restless on the edge of things, and wished to
see with his own eyes.
So, after the wash-up, he weighed in a couple of hundred pounds
of dust on the Company's big scales, and took a draft for the
same on Dawson. Then he put Tom Dixon in charge of his mines,
kissed Madeline good-by, promised to be back before the first
mush-ice ran, and took passage on an up-river steamer.
Madeline waited, waited through all the three months of daylight.
She fed the dogs, gave much of her time to Young Cal, watched the
short summer fade away and the sun begin its long journey to the
south. And she prayed much in the manner of the Sisters of the
Holy Cross. The fall came, and with it there was mush-ice on the
Yukon, and Circle City kings returning to the winter's work at
their mines, but no Cal Galbraith. Tom Dixon received a letter,
however, for his men sledded up her winter's supply of dry pine.
The Company received a letter for its dogteams filled her cache
with their best provisions, and she was told that her credit was
limitless.
Through all the ages man has been held the chief instigator of
the woes of woman; but in this case the men held their tongues
and swore harshly at one of their number who was away, while the
women failed utterly to emulate them. So, without needless delay,
Madeline heard strange tales of Cal Galbraith's doings; also, of
a certain Greek dancer who played with men as children did with
bubbles. Now Madeline was an Indian woman, and further, she had
no woman friend to whom to go for wise counsel. She prayed and
planned by turns, and that night, being quick of resolve and
action, she harnessed the dogs, and with Young Cal securely
lashed to the sled, stole away.
Though the Yukon still ran free, the eddy-ice was growing, and
each day saw the river dwindling to a slushy thread. Save him who
has done the like, no man may know what she endured in traveling
a hundred miles on the rim-ice; nor may they understand the toil
and hardship of breaking the two hundred miles of packed ice
which remained after the river froze for good. But Madeline was
an Indian woman, so she did these things, and one night there
came a knock at Malemute Kid's door. Thereat he fed a team of
starving dogs, put a healthy youngster to bed, and turned his
attention to an exhausted woman. He removed her icebound
moccasins while he listened to her tale, and stuck the point of
his knife into her feet that he might see how far they were
frozen.
Despite his tremendous virility, Malemute Kid was possessed of a
softer, womanly element, which could win the confidence of a
snarling wolf-dog or draw confessions from the most wintry heart.
Nor did he seek them. Hearts opened to him as spontaneously as
flowers to the sun. Even the priest, Father Roubeau, had been
known to confess to him, while the men and women of the Northland
were ever knocking at his door--a door from which the latch-string
hung always out. To Madeline, he could do no wrong, make no
mistake. She had known him from the time she first cast her lot
among the people of her father's race; and to her half-barbaric
mind it seemed that in him was centered the wisdom of the ages,
that between his vision and the future there could be no
intervening veil.
There were false ideals in the land. The social strictures of
Dawson were not synonymous with those of the previous era, and
the swift maturity of the Northland involved much wrong. Malemute
Kid was aware of this, and he had Cal Galbraith's measure
accurately.
He knew a hasty word was the father of much evil; besides, he was
minded to teach a great lesson and bring shame upon the man. So
Stanley Prince, the young mining expert, was called into the
conference the following night as was also Lucky Jack Harrington
and his violin. That same night, Bettles, who owed a great debt
to Malemute Kid, harnessed up Cal Galbraith's dogs, lashed Cal
Galbraith, Junior, to the sled, and slipped away in the dark for
Stuart River.
