"No, you can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that contrasted strongly with the coa.r.s.e, 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 pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle, 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sion 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 att.i.tude and that iron countenance that rea.s.sured 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. Pa.s.sion 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 antic.i.p.ation. 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 d.i.c.k 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 s.p.a.ce, 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, pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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.