The camps of chaos/His own salvation
HIS OWN SALVATION
FURTHER TALES OF "THE CAMPS OF CHAOS"
BY SAMUEL ALEXANDER WHITE
IT WAS after Gayle Outremont, Cronin Hess, Thorpe Calgour and Thorpe's sister Trudis, now happy Mrs. Outremont, discovered Davidson Creek in the Upper Stewart country that the four held a candlelight consultation in the Outremont cabin in Dawson City concerning their old friend Alabama Horbeed—a consultation in which they analyzed Alabama's erratic actions and discussed his immediate welfare.
Right up in the van of the Davidson Creek stampede, at the heels of the four and of their nearest competitor, Tivoli Slavin, Alabama had been hustled by the partners on to Slavin's ground after a well-directed jaw punch from Thorpe Calgour had stopped Tivoli's staking.
Thorpe as the discoverer located Discovery and One Below, upon which latter claim he promptly installed Trudis. Outremont held Two Below. Cronin Hess held Three Below. Lucky Alabama's prize was Number Four. His claim was as rich as any of the claims of the first four stakers, and, like the first four, he sold it the night of the wedding banquet in Dawson City to Gunderhein of the Gunderhein Syndicate for thirty thousand dollars.
"What you fellows goin' to do with your stake?" Alabama asked the partners after the banquet.
"Plant her in other creek holdings," Cronin Hess told him. "You'd better do likewise, Alabama. Thirty thousand dollars is a lot of money. Opportunities is good in the Klondike now, and it'll grow like slander."
"No, I'm goin' Outside with my stake," Alabama solemnly proclaimed. "I wired my woman in Los Angeles not five minutes ago that I'd struck it and was comin' on the jump. I can't go back on my word. Her and the two little tykes are lookin' for me and yearnin' for the stake. It travels to them, boys, as a proper man's earnings should travel. I'm goin' to hit Dyea over the ice as soon as the ice'll bear me all the way, and I'll sail with poke intact. I've never been what you'd call a frugal character, but here's where I draw the poke strings. Mark me, not an ounce do I spend in the frivolities of the golden city, not even for a haircut or shave. There's barbers in Los Angeles."
BUT that vow was just after his sojourn on famous Duncan Creek amid the gouged creek limits and timber-stripped hills, when the search for the missing pay streak went on in an orgasm of toil and there was never the pop of a cork, the click of a roulette wheel, or the sound of a dance-hall fiddle within hundreds of miles. Engulfed in social and gregarious Dawson, while waiting for the swift open waters of the Thirty-mile and Fifty-mile to freeze, things took on a different aspect. Like many a stiffer man, Alabama fell to its potent lure. Here in the Mecca of the gold lands his poke was invested in his eyes with stupendous worth and insidious elusiveness because of the gayety it could buy. Excess of golden dust upset his mental balance and reacted on his physical organism. He forgot his solemn proclamation regarding his going out. Ounce by ounce he fell from grace, wasting his substance in riotous living, ramping all winter all over Dawson and leaving a trail of yellow dust as he ramped. Nor did the summer bring him respite. He did not go forth on the creeks according to the custom, but hugged the golden city hard, and fall found him with the grains in his poke running out like the sands of an hourglass.
Most of it was running into Rooney Ryan's drawers at the Troandike Saloon, a house formerly owned by Tivoli Slavin and which had passed over to his associate Ryan after Tivoli's death by drowning in the Klondike River, and because Hess, Outremont, and Thorpe had been instrumental in locating Alabama next them on Davidson and were responsible for the existence of his stake and because Rooney Ryan had forced a drink on Alabama, started him on his prodigal path and was persistently keeping him there to the profit of the Troandike, the partners felt morally constrained to do something.
"I tell you, Gayle, Thorpe, and Tru," declaimed Hess, pounding the plank table with such emphasis that the tallow candle, stuck in the neck of a pickle bottle, sputtered and jumped, "if we don't, Alabama won't have an ounce to his name. And the wife and two kids in Los Angeles can look their eyes out and yearn their hearts out for his coming. It's a piercing pity any way you glimpse it. Rooney's mostly to blame, of course. But at that I never thought Alabama'd copper himself for such a varnished fool!"
"That's the curse of this land," philosophized Gayle, dreaming eyes fixed on Trudis, who was doing up the supper things while listening to the talk—"prodigality like his. It hoodooes political economy and puts any kind of administration on the bum. Still, it's the way it hits the most of them. When the big strike comes they lose their sense of values, they lose their ballast, they go up like a balloon, and when the gas gives out you find them lying quiet in a snow bank."
"Well," returned Cronin determinedly, "it's up to us to see that there's no snow-bank stunt for Alabama Horbeed. He's a nice fellow and a true friend when he's sober. Then there's the wife to be considered, and the kids likewise. I know how it is with the family that waits at home. I know just how them three's banking and building on Alabama's stake and what it's going to do for them. I'd hate like thunder to see them disappointed and mebbe in want, all for the greed of Rooney Ryan. Oh, there's no two ways of squinting at it, boys! Alabama sure has to pike for the Outside!"
"He's missed six late boats already," Thorpe pointed out, "but there's one more left before the ice sets fast. You say the word, Cronin, and I'll take a handful of pack lashings, truss him up till he can't even roll, and sling him aboard."
But Cronin shook a grave and disapproving head.
"That play's no good, Thorpe," he appraised. "Forcing him would only make him balk. That's the way he's constituted. He'd break out at Whitehorse before ever he caught the other steamer above the cañon, or he'd go on the tear at Skagway. No, he's got to take out his own passport and ship of his own free will. Then he'll go through. And in order to ship of his own free will he's got to renounce his evil ways, he's got to get such a jolt in the conscience as'll clear his delirium tremens and reveal the error of his course."
"A sort of spiritual shake-up, eh, Cronin?" smiled Trudis. "But remember the devil in the form of Rooney Ryan sticks pretty close. How are you going to compass it? Hypnotism? Christian Science? Or mediums?"
"Mebbe we'll have to mix them doses," was Cronin's enigmatic reply as he reached for his bearskin coat. "But it's got to be done just the same, and it's got to be done in a hurry. The Victorian's due to sail at seven in the morning. So I'm going to pull away from you for a bit your devoted husband and your equally devoted brother, Tru. Ain't got any objections—serious, have you?"
"Not if it'll help Alabama," laughed Tru.
"It'll help," declared Cronin. "We're going to locate some more of the boys, take them over to the Troandike and frame up a cure for Horbeed."
Burrowing deep into the bearskin coat as he went, Hess stepped out of the doorway, and his partners, Gayle and Thorpe, dutifully followed. The frost of the late autumn night bit keenly against their fire-warmed faces as they emerged and descended the hill, their moccasins crunching crisply in the six inches of snow that covered the slope. Below them on the flat at the base of the hill glittered the thousands of lights of Dawson and across the Klondike River the thousands more of Klondike City. Between, like ivory foam on a summer stream, surged the mush ice which the Klondike was throwing into the Yukon, and down the Yukon itself great, grinding floes ran a ghostly race.
CONTINUALLY the floes jammed and, aided by the ragged fields of shore ice, heaved up in gigantic dams. Then the night was filled with the snarl and roar of baffled waters, with the crash and boom of smiting ice, with the conflict of earth's forces, the struggle of the rebellious freedom-loving river against the shackles of the Arctic frost. Time after time the Yukon broke its bonds and hurled down the débris of the ice in a chaotic wreck, but as fast as the powerful current freed itself the Arctic tyrant reached out clammy hands for another grip, and Hess, Outremont, and Thorpe, watching the turbulent struggle as they twisted down the hillside, knew that navigation was perilously near its close.
"She's working for a bang-up freeze," declared Cronin. "The Victorian'll be bucking ice all the way to Whitehorse. It's plainly Alabama's last chance home."
"Sure the outermost rim of his last chance," agreed Outremont, pointing a fur-gauntleted hand at the northern sky. "Look at the borealis. Watch when it flares, partners. See the red in it? Just like a trace of blood on the snow. It's certain winter when she crimsons that way. And the stars are shaking. That's another sign."
From the snow path which had led down the steep in serpentine curves the three turned into Main Street and stumped along its brilliant white way. Although it was getting on late, business was booming as at noonday, for the departure of the last steamer of the season was a momentous event, the regretful closing of the summer chapter of the Northland life, and transactions of many months were being crammed into as many hours. Cronin, Gayle, and Thorpe passed rows of glittering stores and restaurants till they came to Dawson Barracks. There they looked in, but Inspector Strickland, whom Hess sought, was nowhere about. So they turned back from the river to Gunderhein's office. In the office sat Gunderhein's secretary, walled round with stacks of papers.
"Seen anything of the old man himself?" asked Cronin.
"Over at the Troandike," the secretary answered without lifting eyes from the papers. "He's there with Strickland and a lot more watching Alabama Horbeed perform. Alabama's some contortionist to-night, they tell me. So long, men. Sorry I can't be in the fun. But I'm loaded down with the bills of sale of these Sulphur Creek Fractions. They got to be paid to-morrow."
THEY left Gunderhein's secretary among his ramparts of papers, wheeled up a side street past the Omar Opera House, past Bongrine's Emporium, past a warehouse in the process of erection, past two cabins and a dog pen full of howling Malemutes, and opened the door of a roomy log building roofed with troughs. The, place was full of smoke, heat, and music. Amid the smoke a mob of men crowded around the stove and the gaming tables and whirled in a blurring maze upon the dancing floor at the back of the building. Beside the stove, beaming benignantly through the halo formed by his cigar, showed the well-known face of Inspector Strickland of the Mounted Police, and in the next chair to him sat the tall, thick-chested, mobile-featured Gunderhein.
"Just looking for you, boys," greeted Cronin, shoving up. "The clerk in the Syndicate's office told us you were here. But where's Alabama? Seen much of him?"
"Seen much of him?" echoed Gunderhein. "We haven't seen anything else to-night. He's been a blaze and a flame and a meteor and a planet in our eyes. He's rioted all over the Troandike like a starving man in a bakeshop. Couldn't get fun enough. The big stunts he did I disremember, but I'll tell you some of the little stunts. He jumped in there at Table Four and coppered every bet that was laid. Savvy? Every bet! Didn't matter who laid it or how much was laid. Alabama coppered all the same and quit loser to the tune of eleven hundred dollars. Then he faced round and bought wine enough to drown the house. Yes, sir, bought all the wine in the Troandike, one hundred and fifty-four bottles at ten dollars a bottle. No wonder Rooney Ryan considers him his especial care! No wonder he won't let him go for a fling in any other house! This is the biggest night he's had yet, and that wine was a shocker. For, you see, Alabama smashed what wasn't used just to get his money's worth. And, to cap it all, what does he do but waltz round the ballroom floor, a girl on each arm and his pocket poke upside down in his teeth; upside down, I say, with the poke strings loose and the gold paving the floor as he waltzed. Piff! Twenty-two hundred dollars gone while you light your pipe!"
"And four thousand eight hundred and forty dollars gone while you smoke a cigar!" totaled Strickland.
"Thunder!" exclaimed Hess in dismay. "That's the pace he's hitting, eh? And Gayle and Thorpe and me was figuring on sending him out on the Victorian in the morning. Mebbe there's no use sending him? Mebbe his stake's all blowed already?"
"Not all of it," informed Strickland. "What's left of it is in his main poke over there by Ryan's gold scales right under Ryan's guarding eye. It's the shape of a punctured football, Cronin, and sagging fast. Rooney won't stand for giving it up till there's only the buckskin left."
"Won't he?" growled Cronin speculatively. "But where's Alabama got to? He ain't in vision."
"In the rest room," Gunderhein, interposing, took up the tale. He nodded toward a side door behind which it was the custom of the Troandike management to deposit those who had ceased to be assets and could be considered only as nuisances. "Like an orthodox planet, finally brought to balance! If you want to send him out, you'd better put him aboard while he's asleep and get Captain Cambonne to lock him in a stateroom."
"Our mentalities must be twin systems, Gunderhein," observed Thorpe. "I suggested tying him up with pack lashings."
"No, boys, nothing like that," warned Hess hastily. "No strong-arm tactics for Alabama. He wouldn't stand for them. He'd break the very minute he got a chance to break. He's just like a high-strung horse. You've got to get him going by pure persuasion."
"Go on and persuade, then," laughed Strickland. We haven't had a miracle in camp for a year."
"I can't do it alone," explained Cronin. "No more can Gayle, Thorpe, and me do it ourselves. We need our help, Strickland, and yours, Gunderhein. And we need the help of a sucker as slender and supple as an eel."
"That's Thorpe Calgour," decided Strickland. "He's the youngest man here, and the slenderest. And anybody who's tackled him knows how supple he is. You've no objections to playing eel for Cronin, have you, Thorpe?"
"Not if he doesn't skin me," chuckled Thorpe. "But what's the frame-up that's been brewing in you, Cronin? Let it out, and we'll all go you the limit."
HESS took a swift glance toward the bar, behind which Rooney Ryan pompously presided, and another glance round the group by the stove.
"Anybody here who ain't a friend of Alabama Horbeed's?" he demanded. "Anybody here who doesn't want to see him break his bondage to Ryan and go Outside to his wife and kids with the remnant of his stake? Anybody here who ain't willing to go the limit, as Thorpe intimates, in lending Alabama moral support?"
"Not a degenerate one!" the group chorused.
"All right," beamed Cronin. "Draw in close, boys, and I'll show my hand."
Tilted chairs came down in a ring, and bodies bent forward expectantly while Hess outlined his plan in terse whispers. Then the chairs tilted back and bodies straightened up as a ripple of restrained mirth ridged the faces of the group.
"Cronin," snickered Gunderhein, "you've missed your calling chasing pay streaks. You sure should have been a comedian. I've a notion to draw up a contract as your manager and bill you at the Omar Opera."
"And mebbe I'll sign your contract if the rehearsal pans out all right," grinned Hess. "It's time we started yon rehearsal. Do you know it's getting near midnight already? We'll have to spread ourselves and get the stage set and the footlights lit. But first we've got to see about his poke. Come on over to the gold scales, boys, and see how much is left in her."
The company arose from around the stove and lined up in front of the gold scales which stood upon the end of Ryan's ornate bar.
"What'll you have, boys?" asked Ryan, presuming that they desired refreshments.
"We're not imbibing," Cronin told him. "We imbibe only with our friends. You're our hereditary enemy, Rooney, an enemy to society in general and to this committee in particular. It's Alabama Horbeed we've come to converse about. How much is left in his poke?"
Ryan, with a scowl, lifted it on to the scales.
"’Most ten thousand dollars," he computed.
"And ain't you falling down faint with shame?" demanded Cronin.
"What'd I fall down faint for?"
"For shame, I said. You've stolen the other twenty thousand—stolen it from Alabama's wife and kiddies down in Los Angeles."
"Stolen!" glared Ryan. "I ain't done no such thing. Don't you accuse me of that. He got his money's worth, didn't he? And you know he'd blow it anyway, so he might as well blow it in the Troandike as anywhere else."
"He wouldn't have blowed an ounce only you exercised wiles and lures and blandishments," reproached Hess. "There's no use in denying. We know. All the boys here support my contention. We're jointly and solidly convinced that you stole his twenty thousand, and we're just as solidly convinced that you won't steal the remaining ten thousand."
"Here, lay that down!" shouted Ryan, as Cronin reached for the poke. "That ain't your dust. It belongs solely to Alabama, and he's the only man as can give orders for its disposition. You lay it down, or I'll have Strickland arrest you."
"Go on and arrest. I'm going to keep it. It goes with Alabama. He sails at seven 'n the morning on the Victorian."
Ryan's eyes widened. He leaned back against his glittering pyramid of glass and put his hands to his sides. "Haw! Haw!" he chortled. "That's a good one. Alabama's sailing, is he? And him in the rest room now. I bet you the drinks he doesn't."
"And I bet you the twenty thousand dollars you stole that he does!"
IT WAS an unexpected challenge to Rooney, and, moreover, such a challenge as in the spirit of the country and before the crowd of witnesses he could not ignore without crawling. Ryan was no crawler at any stage of the game, and least of all in his own house, the Troandike, under the sardonic stare of twenty pairs of eyes. He leaned forward, and the fire grew in his cheek.
"I call your bluff," he accepted, crashing down his fist. "You think talk's cheap and I'm easy to flip, but I'm not. You'll find that out, and you'll lose your twenty thousand as sure as the freeze-up's here. I know Alabama. I've known him longer'n, you. He won't sail any more'n this roof'll fall in. The Victorian! Seven in the morning, eh? Got his passage all booked! Tarnation, and him in the rest room now. I take your bet!"
"All right," smiled Cronin, "make your twenty a marked check. I'll do the same. Gunderhein'll hold the stakes. I don't want to skin you, but I sure do want to give Alabama back his own. So Gunderhein'll inclose your check in the poke. Savvy? I want to emphasize my financial disinterestedness. I don't stand to make a cent on the deal."
"Sure not," sneered Ryan, scribbling his check which Gunderhein duly inclosed in the poke. "You stand to lose—lose your twenty thousand. But there's a string to this bet. You're not to strong-arm Alabama. Anybody could put handcuffs on him and carry him aboard. That won't win. Understand me? He's got to go aboard himself."
"Through purely moral persuasion," assured Hess. "I hang to your string. Now you hang to mine. You're to keep your mouth shut during the course of persuasion where Alabama's concerned and not restrain him by any word or enticement. Is the bet still on?"
"Still on, Cronin. Rush to your own loss, fast as your legs'll let you."
"With pleasure, Rooney! You follow up to Gayle's cabin on the hill and you'll find how fast I'll go. Gunderhein, you and Gayle take half the boys and gather Alabama. Thorpe and me'll go through town with Strickland and the rest. Strickland'll bring his permit. We'll bring what other fixtures we need, and we'll give Captain Cambonne the tip as we go by."
Gayle and the others immediately carried out Cronin's instructions. They gently gathered the snoring Alabama from his dark repose in the rest room and as gently bore him and his poke through the glaring streets of Dawson and up the dim snow path to Outremont's cabin.
Trudis came forward, all excitement at the entrance of the crowd, but in a few laughing words Gayle explained Cronin's frame-up and besought her help. He was just finishing his explanation when Cronin himself came up the slope with his section of the men. All but him bore upon their shoulders sacks of flour and salt, burdens which they deposited with grunts of relief inside the cabin door. He traveled lighter, hugging under one arm a huge roll of crimson ribbon and under the other arm a huger bundle of scarlet tissue paper.
"Cronin, what on earth are you going to do with those things?" demanded Trudis, who, although she knew, could not forbear to banter the ex-marshal.
"Yes, and what's the flour and salt for?" seconded the amazed Ryan. "Think Alabama's likely to strike a famine going out?"
"Tru," grinned Cronin, "these are adornments for that beloved brother of yours. And you, Rooney," addressing Ryan, "hang on to my string on the bet and keep your mouth shut. You'll soon see what they're all for. You sit over there with Strickland beside Alabama and don't get in the road. We got our work cut out for us. Tru, it's a good cause, and I know you don't mind us taking possession. So go to it, boys, according to the blue prints."
OUTREMONT'S cabin, since it was graced by a woman's presence, was somewhat pretentious and contained two rooms. In the back room, which held a big stone fireplace and bunks, Thorpe and Cronin were accustomed to sleep. In the front room, where stood the Yukon stove, was Gayle's and Trudis's bunk, the plank table and chairs. This layout of the building was peculiarly suited to Cronin's plans. He had had the layout in mind when he made them, and now he hastened their execution. Still hugging his ribbon and tissue paper, he disappeared into the back room with Thorpe and half a dozen more men.
"Here, Mrs. Outremont," protested Ryan, "this has got to be open to the day and according to the contract. They can't try no secret machinations on me. Do I see what they're doing in there?"
"At the proper time, you do," Trudis laughingly assured him. "I'm in on this, and you can take my word for it. All you have to do now is to keep your eye on me. I'm going to help Gayle and the rest."
With her husband and his helpers she plunged into the work on the front room, and Ryan assiduously followed her with his eyes. For Trudis was good to look upon, and she was the life of the undertaking, swift of hand and foot, darting here and there, directing, admonishing, bandying quick words and laughter. Till near dawn she toiled with them as in a labor of love, and Rooney with ever-growing wonder marveled at the transformation effected in the cabin. When their work was done, the front room presented the weird appearance of a frosted cave. The fire was out in the Yukon stove, the table shoved behind the stove and both concealed by a strip of canvas. Walls and ceiling were plastered with flour, and salt covered the floor like snow. In the center of the floor yawned a black gap where a seven-foot plank had been lifted. Through the gap rose a chill air, for the cabin sat sidewise on the incline, one of its sills supported by piles, and underneath the gap was open hillside.
"Ugh!" gasped Ryan, as the frosty air struck him. "You boys are sure strong on ventilation. That breeze ought to wake anybody."
He looked down at Alabama, but the breeze had not penetrated to the latter's consciousness. He snored peacefully on a blanket, unaware of Strickland and Rooney keeping vigil over him, unaware of Trudis's, Gayle's, and the other men's creation, and likewise unaware of the advent of Cronin Hess and his companions, who, with the exception of Thorpe Calgour, stepped forth at that moment from completing their preparations in the back room.
"Where's Thorpe?" demanded Ryan suspiciously. "Mind you ain't working no trick in the dark. I've got my lamps skinned. What's Thorpe doing back in there?"
"Staying to see how it looks," chuckled Cronin. "Don't you worry yourself, Rooney. He'll soon be in evidence. Alabama any way restless yet?"
"Peaceful as a papoose with a suck of tallow," declared Strickland. "See for yourself."
He slid back the cardboard bull's-eye of his dark lantern, which had been fashioned by sticking a candle in a lidded biscuit box and which had been a necessary precaution in the event of Alabama's waking prematurely, and directed the beam upon the sleeper.
MORE than twenty pairs of eyes scrutinized Alabama by the yellow light, but the magnetic power of that stare had no effect. Unmindful of Dawson City, the Victorian or Los Angeles, he continued to snore.
"Shame to bring him back to the rank realities of life!" observed Outremont. "Shame to disturb that peace for the turmoil of his destined path. But there's the wife and the children to think of. So go ahead, Strickland. Wake him up."
Strickland reached over with the celerity of a doctor and jabbed Alabama with a long bright needle Hess had borrowed at a drug store. Alabama's body heaved a little and his head, with the eyes still closed, rolled petulantly.
"Aw, Slim, get over," he mumbled, thinking he was reprimanding Slim Sullivan, his bunk mate of several years. "Wake up and go to sleep right. And you'll sure cut your toe nails before I bunk with you another night."
A titter circulated through the group, but Strickland held up a warning hand.
"Whisht!" he admonished. "And hustle, Cronin. He'll be quite lively in a minute."
"All right, inspector. Here, Gayle, you and "Thorpe take your tump lines. I'll get my throat cleared for oration. And, Rooney, mind if you open your mouth you forfeit twenty thousand dollars."
Swiftly Outremont sprang to Alabama's head, while Thorpe knelt at his feet. They passed the stout tump lines they held under Alabama's ankles and shoulders. Strickland shoved a third line under his hips. Many hands laid hold of the lines, lifted Alabama bodily up and lowered him into the gravelike gap till he was a little below the level of the floor.
The frost biting at Alabama's back hastened the reviving influence of Strickland's loaded needle. Alabama's eyes opened upon the awesome mouth of the pit wherein he was suspended, upon the crowd of men lowering him in the feeble biscuit box light, upon the frost-rimed cave roof above where played a score of shadows, and his ears quickened to the familiar and stentorian voice of Cronin Hess.
"Boys," he heard Cronin declaiming, "I wish for the sake of our late friend Alabama that there'd been a sky pilot handy, but there wasn't. Father Virgon's a hundred miles down river. He won't be back for two months, not till the ice gets fit for dogs, so this solemn duty by unanimous consent devolves on me. Now I ain't much of a preacher, and I'm going to make the service short. You were all acquainted with the late lamented—"
Alabama's shriek smothered Cronin's voice. "Hold on," Alabama yelled, imploring eyes fixed on Rooney Ryan, who stood beside the ex-marshal. "I ain't dead. Hey, you batty ginks, pull me out! Rooney, make them pull me out."
BUT Rooney, with twenty thousand dollars forfeited if he opened his mouth, could do nothing but stare down like a graven image, denying himself even the luxury of a smile lest he jeopardize his stake. Nor was there any greater hope in the attitude of the men about him. Alabama's convulsive kicking shook the tump lines, but as if there were not the slightest tremor in those lines the holders gripped them tightly, listening with grave solemnity to Cronin Hess's short service.
And Cronin, surveying the open grave with a sort of passive resignation, raised pathetic eyes to the choking Trudis and covered the unorthodox pause which Alabama's interruption had occasioned by suggestively sponging his eyes with an orange bandana handkerchief.
"With the late lamented Alabama," went on, "and you know the manner of his demise, how he gambled and drank and waltzed enough in one night to kill a dozen Queen Charlotte islanders and fell down of heart failure at the end. We don't need to go deeper into his shortcomings or into his virtues—if he had any. It's a raw land up here. All the men in it are men with hair on their chests, and it ain't for any one of us to criticize. So let us be glad for Alabama's sake that he didn't come to a more violent end. Also let us be thankful for the sake of the widow and the two fatherless children down in Los Angeles that he died before his stake gave out entirely."
HESS raised Horbeed's poke, now prone to sag and with much loose buckskin puckered under the poke strings, and let it thump dully in the salt. "Nearly forty pounds in it yet! Close on ten thousand dollars! A godsend to them as wouldn't have got anything if he'd have lived! And right here I want to thank you boys who divvied up so that there wouldn't be so much as an ounce of what remained touched, you boys who chipped in and paid for his obsequies, you boys who—"
"Rooney!" squealed Alabama, his voice pitched high in terror. "Rooney, make Cronin stop them obsequies. I tell you I ain't dead. I tell you I ain't. Murder! Madmen! Massacres! Help! Hel-l-l-p!"
Alabama's appeal for outside aid vibrated as shrill and as long as a siren whistle, but the ex-marshal apparently heard not even a whisper.
"You boys," with an impelling uplift of the arm, "who kindly acted as undertakers, hearse, pallbearers, and sextons! On behalf of the widow and the fatherless I thank you. It'll sure be a source of comfort to them to know you stood with Alabama at the end and lowered him—yes, go on and lower, boys—into his last resting place on earth!"
The tump lines slipped slowly through he holders' hands.
Alabama's body sank steadily down into the black pit. Men standing on either side with shovels in their hands began to shovel in the salt.
At the impact of the white crystals which he deemed smothering snow Alabama emitted a bellow that nearly blew out the biscuit box light.
"Whisht, wait a bit!" commanded Strickland. "I heard something like a sigh. Did any of you men sigh?"
They all with shakes of their heads disclaimed anything other than silent respiration, while Alabama sent up yells that shook the flour off the roof.
Inspector Strickland leaned over the edge of the grave and listened attentively. "There sure is something like a feeble moaning down there," he declared in astonishment. "It can't be Alabama, but you better pull up a little, boys, till we make sure. We hear so much about burying alive nowadays."
Obediently the men hauled up, and Alabama's kicking legs and flailing arms shot into view. Still shrieking, he managed with a terrific effort to throw himself sidewise, and all tangled in the tump lines he rolled out upon the brink of his burial place.
AS if he had seen a ghost arise, Inspector Strickland staggered back ind sat down heavily in a drift of salt, his mouth gaped big and round, and his eyes, as big and as round as his mouth, stared dazedly at Alabama.
"Alabama," he protested, as a man who cannot believe the evidence of his own eyes, "you're dead. You can't be anything else but dead. You were dead when the boys gathered you up. You were dead when we had you examined it a drug store, and by thunder, you're dead in my burial permit."
Strickland pulled out a formidable document and shook it accusingly at Alabama, who was struggling with the tump lines.
"Boys," he flared with a show of violent anger, "it sure isn't right for Alabama to play up like this. I issue a permit for his burial, and he sits up and doesn't need it. It sure isn't right for him to come to unexpected and spoil my reputation."
"But, listen here, Inspector!" commanded Trudis, leaning forward with a gravity which bordered on alarm. "You don't mean you're allowing him to come back?"
"Yes," Gayle cut in, "leaving out the matter of your reputation, Strickland, what about his wife and children down in Los Angeles? What about this ten thousand dollars? Are we going to commit the immoral act of starting Alabama again along the riotous road we flattered ourselves he had duly quitted to squander the remaining funds the wife and children should have? By thunder, I raise my voice and say no!"
"And we all raise our voices and say no!" shouted the rest of the men in a clamorous chorus,
"By the hide of Carmack, you're right!" agreed Strickland. "For the moment I forgot them. They're the deciding factor. Yes, you're right. And it's between ourselves. No one can know anything of it. He's dead in the eyes of Dawson City. He's dead in the burial permit. He owes it to those who'll benefit by it to play the man and go on and be buried. So lay hold of the tump lines again, boys. Lay hold and lower away!"
Outremont and Hess made a grab at the lines, but Alabama by frantic struggling and kicking, all the while yelling for help, had contrived to work free of them. He sprang erect and seizing the poke sitting in the salt, swung it round his head like a bludgeon.
"Get back, you massacring maniacs, or you'll get a forty-pound crack in the skull!" he screamed. "Don't you lay a hand on me. I ain't going to be buried alive. Keep away, you ghastly ghouls! Keep away or I'll have the Mounted Police on to you this minute. Yes, and I'll have Strickland fired by higher authority. Captain Constantine'll deal with you geezers, and Rooney, you hypocritical shark, you're the first one I'll have him pinch!"
RYAN'S face grew apoplectic, and speech welled up in his throat, but a significant glance from the ex-marshal choked him off.
"Pah!" sneered Cronin. "Think Captain Constantine's going hunting a man who's properly accounted for by Strickland's burial permit? Think he's coming down in here, anyway? The frost was too hard to dig outside, so we came where it was soft. Do you know where you are? I'll tell you. You've a thousand feet into the heart of the Dome, at the end of the tunnel Gunderhein's Syndicate drove to find the mother lode. That's where you are, Alabama, so far in the earth that you must be next door to the devil himself, and as sure as there's frost on your mustache and snow in your hair, you'll never see daylight again!"
The ex-marshal, assisted by Outremont, was maneuvering his advance while he spoke so that Alabama was forced to retreat toward the doorway of the back room. From that doorway the door had been removed and the space cunningly sealed with tacked-up tar paper coated, like the rest of the wall, with flour.
When Alabama was within a yard of the doorway, Cronin and Gayle made a determined rush at him.
Alabama, still calling for Constantine and desperately swinging his poke in defense, sprang back out of their reach. His heels struck the step. His back struck the supposed cave wall, and he plunged backward through the fragile barrier of the tar paper as a circus clown goes through a paper ring.
IN the moment of Alabama's fall Strickland blew out the light. Cronin, Gayle, and Gunderhein slipped out three more planks of the flooring leaving a wide cavity in front of the doorway. Then, drawing the surprised Ryan with them, Gayle, Trudis, Cronin, and the rest lined up in the obscurity.
Through the hole Alabama had ripped in the tar paper Rooney could see to amazing advantage the artistry of Hess, Thorpe, and the others who had worked in secret upon the back room. In lurid contrast to the frost-rimed front room it glowed like a fiery furnace. Floor, ceiling, and walls were covered with scarlet tissue paper. The upper stonework of the fireplace was likewise concealed, and the opening of the fireplace itself was choked with live coals. A handful of brimstone thrown upon the coals burned ghostly blue, giving out vile, sulphurous fumes. And in the midst of the fumes posed Thorpe Calgour. His supple, sinewy body and limbs were tightly wound with crimson ribbon, and there were other appropriate frills to his costume. Pensive he stood, a red-skinned demon, horned, masked, hoofed, and tailed, poking at the coals with a Stick Indian salmon spear that was a relic of the cabin.
The ones outside saw Alabama inside spring to his feet in the glaring inferno, his eyes focused with a horrified stare upon the Satanic figure poking at the coals. "Glowing Gehenna!" he roared.
Thorpe whirled like lightning. "Well, what did you expect after the way you've been rampaging round?" he demanded in an unearthly screech. "Painted Paradise?"
Thorpe jumped three feet in the air and brandished his ugly spear, but Alabama did not stop to state his expectations. Hugging his poke to his breast, he took a fear-blind leap back the way he had come, dropped through the cavity in the flooring, struck the snow-drifted slope between the cabin's piles and tobogganed down the incline.
HOW he passed through the bowels of the earth out of the heart of the Dome and landed on Dawson's flat must have been a festering mystery in Alabama's mind, but it was a mystery there was no chance to probe, for he realized that his Satanic Majesty had also turned the trick. Alabama saw him coming in the lightening gray of the Arctic dawn, red-skinned, horned, masked, hoofed, and tailed, brandishing his ugly spear and making his three-foot air-springs down the hillside.
It was no time for vacillation. Alabama's eyes, sweeping the water front for some quick refuge, encountered the Victorian lying at the White Pass steamer landing. From her funnel swirled a trailing banner of smoke, and round her all Dawson City congregated in a mournful mob. Alabama knew what the smoke and the mob meant. Steam was up. Upon a tide of tears the Victorian was sailing for the Outside, and the Outside was to him a place of safety where no Satanic inhabitant of the heart of the Dome could massacre him or treacherous friends entomb him alive. So with the vantage of the Victorian's deck in view he dashed frantically toward the water front.
Captain Cambonne, living up to the tip Cronin Hess had given him, was on the watch from the pilot house. He saw Alabama coming, and before the latter's feet struck the landing, the Victorian's bell began a blatant jangle. It was the notice of the sailing. The gangplank commenced to slide in, and the crowd of Dawsonites raised their voices in farewell lamentations.
"Hey, captain, wait, wait!" gasped Alabama, wildly shaking his poke to signal the pilot house. "Case of—life—or—death! Stop her!"
But Captain Cambonne remembered what the ex-marshal had described and impressed upon him as the psychological move at the psychological moment, and the position of the boat was such as to lend itself favorably to the accomplishment of that move. The shore ice on the river was thick and formidable though the middle current still ran free, and for the accommodation of docking or departing steamers a channel had been cut through this shore ice from the clear water to the wharf. It was the custom to back out of the channel, swing in the free current and head upstream against the running ice, and now Cambonne gave the engine room the order to reverse.
{{di|THE Victorian, being the last boat of the year, was crammed with passengers interspersed with husky dogs. Because it was a race against the frost and the steamer would make a nonstop run to Whitehorse, all freight for way points on the Upper River had been refused, but the huskies of necessity were exempt from this ruling and passed as human beings. Navigation, generally earlier to cease on the Lower Yukon, was already closed, and those of the Lower River camps like Forty-mile and Eagle City who had no exit by way of St. Michaels were bound out to tide-water over the White Pass. Americans, Englishmen, French-Canadians, Swedes, Russians, Jews, and Poles, all were jammed together, the whole blended into one barbaric mass by a sprinkling of fierce-eyed Sticks, Chilcats, Wrangels, and Queen Charlotte Islanders.
So heavily was the Victorian loaded down that she backed but slowly. Almost imperceptibly she moved, but foot by foot the gap between her bow and the landing widened, and to the mourning crowd it semed that the disheveled, sweat-dripping Alabama, bolting suddenly from nowhere through their ranks had lost his sailing. But the crowd did not know the spur behind Alabama. The Victorian was fifteen feet out, but under the urge of that spur a fifteen-foot water gap was not enough to doom him to destruction. On the wharf lay a serried pile of inbrought merchandise, boxes, bales, and bags, a mountainous pile that topped the steamer's rail. Up on to the outer wall of this pile Alabama swung from the vantage of a handy truck and ran forward to its highest rampart many feet above the water.
With a straight-arm thrust he cast the forty-pound poke ahead, as one casts a medicine ball. It whizzed past the dodging heads of a score of men and thudded squarely among a knot of warring huskies, squelching the war and scattering the howling beasts below. Then Alabama tensed every muscle in the jump and landed face down on top of a Swede and a Wrangel Indian.
Captain Cambonne rang full speed astern and stared out of the pilot house at Gayle Outremont, Trudis Outremont, Cronin Hess, Inspector Strickland, and many more doubled up with mirth by a cabin on Dawson's hillside, at the rigid, mirthless figure of Rooney Ryan in front and at a red-skinned demon, horned, masked, hoofed, and tailed, sneaking by devious ways out of Dawson's flat to join them. And as he stared and grinned, he could not forbear to reach for his megaphone.
Swiftly he put the small end to his lips and poked the large end out of the pilot-house window. "Rooney, you lose!" he bellowed in a voice that echoed as far as Moosehide Mountain.