The League of the Old Men
At the Barracks a man was being tried for his life. He was an old man, a native from the Whitefish River, which empties into the Yukon below Lake Le Barge. All Dawson was wrought up over the affair, and likewise the Yukon-dwellers for a thousand miles up and down. It has been the custom of the land-robbing and sea-robbing Anglo-Saxon to give the law to conquered peoples, and ofttimes this law is harsh. But in the case of Imber the law for once seemed inadequate and weak. In the mathematical nature of things, equity did not reside in the punishment to be accorded him. The punishment was a foregone conclusion, there could be no doubt of that; and though it was capital, Imber had but one life, while the tale against him was one of scores.
In fact, the blood of so many was upon his hands that the killings
attributed to him did not permit of precise enumeration. Smoking a
pipe by the trail-side or lounging around the stove, men made rough
estimates of the numbers that had perished at his hand. They had been
whites, all of them, these poor murdered people, and they had been
slain singly, in pairs, and in parties. And so purposeless and wanton
had been these killings, that they had long been a mystery to the
mounted police, even in the time of the captains, and later, when the
creeks realized, and a governor came from the Dominion to make the
land pay for its prosperity.
But more mysterious still was the coming of Imber to Dawson to give
himself up. It was in the late spring, when the Yukon was growling and
writhing under its ice, that the old Indian climbed painfully up the
bank from the river trail and stood blinking on the main street. Men
who had witnessed his advent, noted that he was weak and tottery, and
that he staggered over to a heap of cabin-logs and sat down. He sat
there a full day, staring straight before him at the unceasing tide of
white men that flooded past. Many a head jerked curiously to the side
to meet his stare, and more than one remark was dropped anent the old
Siwash with so strange a look upon his face. No end of men remembered
afterward that they had been struck by his extraordinary figure, and
forever afterward prided themselves upon their swift discernment of
the unusual.
But it remained for Dickensen, Little Dickensen, to be the hero of the
occasion. Little Dickensen had come into the land with great dreams
and a pocketful of cash; but with the cash the dreams vanished, and
to earn his passage back to the States he had accepted a clerical
position with the brokerage firm of Holbrook and Mason. Across
the street from the office of Holbrook and Mason was the heap of
cabin-logs upon which Imber sat. Dickensen looked out of the window
at him before he went to lunch; and when he came back from lunch he
looked out of the window, and the old Siwash was still there.
Dickensen continued to look out of the window, and he, too, forever
afterward prided himself upon his swiftness of discernment. He was a
romantic little chap, and he likened the immobile old heathen to the
genius of the Siwash race, gazing calm-eyed upon the hosts of the
invading Saxon. The hours swept along, but Imber did not vary his
posture, did not by a hair's-breadth move a muscle; and Dickensen
remembered the man who once sat upright on a sled in the main street
where men passed to and fro. They thought the man was resting, but
later, when they touched him, they found him stiff and cold, frozen to
death in the midst of the busy street. To undouble him, that he might
fit into a coffin, they had been forced to lug him to a fire and thaw
him out a bit. Dickensen shivered at the recollection.
Later on, Dickensen went out on the sidewalk to smoke a cigar and cool
off; and a little later Emily Travis happened along. Emily Travis was
dainty and delicate and rare, and whether in London or Klondike she
gowned herself as befitted the daughter of a millionnaire mining
engineer. Little Dickensen deposited his cigar on an outside window
ledge where he could find it again, and lifted his hat.
They chatted for ten minutes or so, when Emily Travis, glancing past
Dickensen's shoulder, gave a startled little scream. Dickensen turned
about to see, and was startled, too. Imber had crossed the street
and was standing there, a gaunt and hungry-looking shadow, his gaze
riveted upon the girl.