Winter seized us. My partner and I worked the claim we had bought on Little Marook, and yet, three times a week, I made the long trip to the camp; for the greatest ambition I had conceived, the greatest hope in life, lay in having Elizabeth Wilton tell me that she loved me. Thirty years of age, matured, unscarred, I had been drawn into the vortex of love, where everything but the ultimate is lost sight of, and paltry. Three times a week I made that long trip over the trail, that I might hear her voice, and watch the shadows in her hair, the light in her eyes, and the graceful mobility of her lips.
And many events had happened, trivial in themselves, but distinct and of note to one living in a camp so far removed from the outside world that letters came but once a year, and every thing was bounded by what could be seen on the horizon, and the day's work.
Early in the fall the constant companionship of Sam Barstow and Pitkok had been observed, and commented on. It was an unusual thing for a white man to take up with a native in those days.
“I tell you,” Dan was wont to assert, “there's somethin' back of it all that we ain't on to. That Pitkok's a devil! I know him. Sam was all right, as far as anybody knows, until he came down the river. He works, and he wants to get ahead. But what does he mix up with that big buck for? Why, the Koyukuks won't have nothin' to do with him, and when an Injun's own tribe throws him out, there's somethin' mighty bad about him. You just wait! You'll see!”
But the strange companionship had continued, and it had ended by their going away together one night, in which direction no one knew—not even the natives of the low-lying village across the river. That they went together I knew from something that Bessie told me on one of my visits.
“Sam Barstow has gone away with Pitkok,” she said, as if she, too, had noted the strange partnership. “You remember I told you, one time, oh, months ago, that he came into the post, and wanted credit for a big outfit? Well, it was right after that he and Sam Degan to be seen together. Now, it was Sam over in the Indian village, and again it was Pitkok living in Sam's cabin. Finally Sam came in and bought supplies, and Pitkok was with him, They stood there together, and discussed what they wanted, and it was light stuff, such as men would use on a long, hard trip. And they went away together, and—well, that's all there is to it. I wonder what that dance girl, Marie, thinks of it!”
She had ended her information in a feminine way, by a feminine speculation as to the member of her sex left behind.
In the usual meeting places, the trading posts, the saloons, and the dance halls, men had smiled,and ventured that Sam had gone away on a foolish prospecting trip, such as had been made by a half dozen men in search of “Too-much-gold Creek,” a mythical stream in the Mackenzie border told of by the natives, but never found.
Men worked more, gambled less, and played infrequently now that the busy season was on in force, and the fires from the pits shone dully on every gulch, every night. The ring of the ax, the creak of the windlass, and the clashing of overturned buckets, formed a threnody too irresistible to be displaced by idle wonder as to the goings and comings of one man. Life was palpitating, and wriggling, as if the loss of any camp character were unworthy of note. It followed its course.
Kentucky Smith, swinging down the trail and whistling, as he passed from his claim above ours, Bevins sauntering over to our cabin in the evenings to tell us that the pay on Number Twelve looked better, Sinclair stopping on his way up to give us camp news, were the only breaks in the steady grind of work, fed by hope.
And it was Sinclair who, on the way up, one night in early January, paused to tell us that Sam Barstow was back. That was all, he had returned.
“And Pitkok?” asked Dan, who stood on the edge of the dump, looking down to the blackened path leading past it, on which our fellow prospector had halted.
“Pitkok's dead!” was the reply.
We gave exclamations of surprise.
“Sam says he got scratched up by a bear as they were coming out,” Sinclair went on. “Sam got there too late. Pitkok cashed in his chips, in spite of all that Sam could do. And it's a small loss, according to my reckoning. That buck gave me the willies. He was too much of here, there, and everywhere, to suit my taste.”
He plodded off up the trail, and we laid our fires for the night, and I took my part with some haste. My partner noticed it, and growled as he stooped over and thrust short logs against the face of clay and gravel that was to be thawed out to expose its contents.