Bonanza

Upon the 19th of September, Akshelah came in from her own little hut behind my shanty. Her cheeks were a wonderful ripe colour. She looked at me with large, sad eyes, and softly announced:

“She has come!”

I had already felt the exhilaration of the atmosphere, and I had been conscious of the raw, strong light, though I could not see outside, so I knew that the change had come. I did not put any question to Akshelah, but I must have looked it with my eyes.

She replied simply, “Mispoor,” and I went out.

Mispoor, the lovely cold goddess, had indeed come to us in the night, and all the country glared and shivered. The mountain ranges looked to have moved and come closer. Hanafin City was shrouded, and all things had increased in size. The water along the defile was the colour of indigo. The smoke hung in the stagnant air like thick lumps of wool. Here was Pepooa, and the night was upon us.

“We cannot go away now,” said a plaintive voice behind.

Akshelah was right. We could not go away while the night lasted. The prison bars were closing round us; the light went out fast; we were two occupants of the gilded prison called Bonanza, and we could not escape until the time of May, when the Spirit of the Green Mantles should tear open the waterways, and melt apart the bars of ice.

I went inside my shanty, and desolation and loneliness fell and settled over me. In all that busy cosmopolitan mining town I was alone. I was friendless and forsaken.

MacCaskill had left me. We had drifted apart gradually, because I would not join him in the saloon or at the faro table; he had bought a tent, and pitched it in Bonanza upon his claim, and there made merry with his new friends. Wealth had poured in upon him like the riches of an old tale. His claim had turned out to be the Eldorado hole of old Fagge. Hanafin and Redpath had each made the pardonable mistake of thinking that the treasure would be found immediately below the forks. Probably Leblanc had known that it was five hundred feet lower down, but Justice had overtaken him before he could make use of his ill-bought knowledge. MacCaskill was the lucky man, the drawer of the highest prize in this gigantic lottery. He had achieved the height of his ambition; he had found the gold which should satisfy all the cravings of avarice. Apart from his finds of the stone, he would frequently wash out over one hundred and fifty dollars in dirt alone per day.

At one time I thought that he must be gathering in his fortune fast—that fortune with which he hoped to retire to luxury in New York City, but I found myself in error. How did he spend his wealth? The city prices were not exorbitant. Flour cost nine dollars, fat bacon twenty-five, sugar seventeen for fifty pounds, beans ten dollars per bushel, and a pound of tea could be bought for two dollars.

But on a certain night MacCaskill made me enter the largest of the saloons upon Front Street. One half of the place was devoted to drinking, the other half to gambling.

My companion soon left me to join a gang, and I grew tired of waiting for him and came away.

Later I met Lennie, who was slipping downwards fast.

“Say!” he exclaimed, with unwonted eagerness but customary insobriety, “your ole pard Mac’s ben havin’ quite a bad streak. Heard of it?”

When I had replied, Lennie proceeded:

“He started out to run the faro bank dry, did Mac, an’ he’s ben cleared out of fourteen thousand dollars. Come and liquor.”

I refused, and walked away, Lennie jeering after me taunts of pride, because it was a bad breach of etiquette to refuse to drink. I was making myself unpopular that way, but I simply could not swallow the smoky, scorching spirit. Only a few minutes later I met MacCaskill, surrounded by a gang of half-drunken miners; he was himself half drunk, more with the madness of gambling than with liquor, and was swearing furiously that he had not finished with that faro bank.

“Wait till I lift a few more thousands outer my hole. I’ll bust it!” he shouted.

The gang passed on, MacCaskill not more than a yard from me; but already a great gulf spread between us. He had been changed by coming into Bonanza; I had remained the same.

Father Lacombe had gone. He had only spent a fortnight in Hanafin City. I was presented to him, and proclaimed my utter ignorance at once, because, not knowing how to address him, I asked the natural question whether he had come to mine.

“Yes,” he replied, his grey eyes lighting. “It is my idea to stake out and record the entire district.”

He asked me into his tent, and both then and on several subsequent occasions, because he was a man who never seemed to want sleep, unfolded to me another world, even more mysterious than the inside and outside worlds I already had knowledge of. When he had gone, another blank was made; but he sent a priest to form a mission, and this Father Casey came for me, and continued my education where his superior had left off. He was planning to erect a church in Hanafin City, and I had promised him five thousand dollars from my own rich finds.

Hanafin had gone. That was the saddest loss of all. He had been recalled by Government to make his report upon the new district, and on the 10th of September I had wrung his hand and said good-bye, and then turned away from the handsome aristocratic Englishman, who had deigned to be my friend, weary at heart, because I knew that I should never see him again. He would go home and marry his beautiful English sweetheart, and find the place that had been appointed for him. The Athabasca Mining Syndicate, Limited, paid good dividends, he had assured me, and later on I heard that he had made an assignment of the claim for a high figure. He had done very well, and I feel sure he deserved all his success. So on that morning when the snow came, which would not begin to melt until the following late April, I broke down under the realisation of my loneliness. Two men had declared themselves my partner—one an unprincipled rascal, who had always held a complete influence over me; the other as true as steel, and as weak as sand; both had deceived and forsaken me. I was alone, and yet—

An arm went round my neck, and a flushed face looked down on mine.

“You have lost your friends,” said a sad little voice. “But all the time I have had only you.”

And had it not been for her, should I have ever seen Bonanza?

I took Akshelah’s hand, and she sat beside me, and there we remained in silence, with the snow around us, and the ice coming up.

“I should not have come away, but he persuaded me. My father advised me to stay—with you. But I wanted to see what life was.”

“Ah, and you have seen it,” said Akshelah. Then, after a pause: “Do you like it?”

“I hate it.”

“And the women of the world—do you like them?”

I have referred to the women who had entered Hanafin City. Their numbers had grown of late; women wonderfully dressed in bright colours, with faces of careless strength and boldness, with cold eyes and mechanically laughing mouths. “Fine women,” MacCaskill had dubbed them. I thought of them when Akshelah spoke, and I looked at her large bright eyes, her delicate colouring, her soft fawn skin, her wealth of rich black hair. I mentally compared this maid of the outside with the women of the inside. So, I thought, would the great City of London, my birthplace inside the world, compare with my little home outside.

“Do you like the women?” Akshelah was asking again, and I answered her truly, and she was satisfied.

The day soon darkened, and the pale snow became ghastly when the arch of the aurora lit, and the livid spears lengthened and shortened across a clear black sky. The atmosphere lowered and tightened its hold upon us, as the grim frost began to assert its long rule, and the thermometer went down, far below zero, and still down. The close season had come.

I had five thousand dollars for Father Casey in the currency of the country, having made the exchange at the bank that morning. The money was fastened up into a little bundle, which I had left lying ready to hand, because there was little fear of anything being stolen in this mining town. Akshelah had gone out, and I was sitting alone in the lantern light, beside my cook-stove, when the fall of footsteps crunched the snow; a hand felt across the piece of canvas which did duty for a door; there was the sound of quick breathing; the flap gave way, and a well-known voice spoke familiarly:

“Good evening, Petrie!”

A terrible apparition introduced itself into my shanty. A tall figure, abnormally thin, with unspeakable rags clinging about it; an emaciated face, where two great cheek-bones protruded as though they must burst the skin; two pouches of bloodless flesh represented cheeks; two cold, deeply-sunken eyes; two large loose ears; a little grey hair, and a neck that had dwindled down to the dimensions of a stove-pipe. This was the Redpath who advanced to bend greedily over my glowing stove.

“An inclement night, my dear fellow. Really miserably cold and cheerless. Well, and how are you? Of course, I ought to have visited you long ago; but you know, perhaps, how peculiarly I have been situated. An incident of a painful nature has compelled me to retire into temporary seclusion. Even now I have to exercise supreme caution. Ah, excuse my clothes, Petrie. Anything goes in a mining camp, you know.”

The same as yesterday!

The living skeleton reached out a hand which made me shiver, and closed it upon my pipe. He looked round.

“I don’t see your tobacco. Ah, thanks.” He began to fill my pipe, but I noticed that it was only with the utmost difficulty he could maintain an upright position. “Well, and how are things? Going smoothly, eh? Confounded nuisance my being knocked out of it for the time. Excuse plain speaking, Petrie, but I really think you might have done a little more for me. I know it’s sauve qui peut in gold-mining, as in most other things, and shove the hindmost to the devil. You needn’t remind me. Ah, well, bygones must be bygones. I thought I’d just trot round, look you up, and have a bit of supper with you, old man, to show there’s no ill-feeling on my part; but I daresay, with my usual inaccuracy, I’ve dropped in at the wrong time, and you’ve done your bite.”

He could talk in that strain though he was fainting, and absolutely starved. He began to sway to and fro, and sometimes groped blindly. I could not bear to look at him.

“I never expected to see you again,” I said.

“You thought Hanafin had driven me away?” Redpath spoke with the greatest difficulty, and the bony hand that clutched my still unlighted pipe shook in a horrid fashion. “I have been in hiding a few miles from Bonanza, awaiting my opportunity. It has been decidedly lonesome and, of course, annoying, because I have been compelled to furnish myself with supplies. I think you said that you have had your supper? Hanafin has gone, I hear. He could not find me, after all. He was wasted here ... admirable tactician ... clever in finesse ... sees the board with his mind ... always sure of his next move, anticipates yours.... You move one way—check ... you move another way—check ... then checkmate; down comes your number, and the lights go out Ah, God! What an earthquake!”

The unhappy wretch reeled about in an agony, stumbled against the stove, and cried like an animal when he felt his leg scorched. It was horrible to watch him being tortured, but with all his pride striving to conceal it.

I pushed him down upon a log of wood, and as quickly as I could put some food before his half-blind eyes, and gave him some hot whisky in a tin mug. It was marvellous how rapidly the food and drink acted. In a very short time Redpath was his cynical self again, and I noticed that he had the sense and the self-restraint to eat sparingly.

“I most sincerely beg your pardon,” he said with dignity. “It is altogether inexcusable to enter a man’s house and straightway make a scene before him. It is most unpardonable and ridiculous. The fact is, I breakfasted very early, found myself too busy to take luncheon, and this keen winter’s air acts suddenly upon an empty stomach and such a weak constitution as mine. You see, Petrie, we sometimes over-estimate our strength. We forget we are getting on in years.”

Then he again took up my pipe, lighted it, and smoked heartily. What was I to do with this man, who appeared to think that I had wronged him?

“It is not safe for you to be here,” I said. “Why don’t you go away?”

“That is impossible now that the winter has come,” said Redpath, as though pitying my ignorance. “Besides, this place has attractions for me. It has been the object of my life to attain. I have played my hand very badly, and must now suffer the consequences. I shall not go. Indeed, my finances happen to be too shaky to permit me to travel. There is plenty to be picked up about here.”

“Honestly?” I inquired.

His eyebrows went up.

“Spare me bathos,” he said entreatingly.

“Where is Olaffson?”

The expression on the human skeleton’s face altered.

“Ah, you may congratulate me there! He has gone, and, I trust, for ever. I can feel myself a free man now. Olaffson has really gone, and my malediction goes with him and after him.”

“Hadn’t you better go?” I suggested, following the train of thought. “If you are found in my shanty—”

“Ah, yes, I understand! Your skill in touching upon these delicate matters is very remarkable, Petrie. Why mince the matter? Let us say boldly that the law, as administered here so admirably, would exact a penalty from you were I to be discovered under your hospitable roof.” He poured himself out some more whisky. “Here is your very excellent health. All that you can possibly wish me do I wish you.”

He drank slowly, his eyes half shut.

“Good-night!” I said coldly.

“You good fellow!” said Redpath warmly, clasping my hand in his cold, bony grip. With his spare hand, I noticed, he was gathering up the scraps of food he had left, and stuffing the same somewhere among his rags. “With your never-failing good heart, you speed your parting guest Good-night, dear old boy! I’m coming round again very shortly, as I have a suggestion to lay before you. Make both our fortunes in a very little time. Good-night. Don’t come with me. I must slip along the back of the street, and ’ware soldiers.”

He went, my pipe in his mouth, and my plug of tobacco in his hand. Devoutly I hoped that I had seen the last of him.

I had promised to visit Father Casey that same night, to leave with him my little donation. I put on my hat, coat, and overshoes, and looked for my tiny bundle of money—that five thousand dollars.

Will it be believed that I looked in vain?