At the Rainbow's End
It was for two reasons that Montana Kid discarded his "chaps" andMexican spurs, and shook the dust of the Idaho ranges from hisfeet. In the first place, the encroachments of a steady, sober,and sternly moral civilization had destroyed the primeval statusof the western cattle ranges, and refined society turned the coldeye of disfavor upon him and his ilk. In the second place, in oneof its cyclopean moments the race had arisen and shoved back itsfrontier several thousand miles. Thus, with unconsciousforesight, did mature society make room for its adolescentmembers. True, the new territory was mostly barren; but itsseveral hundred thousand square miles of frigidity at least gavebreathing space to those who else would have suffocated at home.Montana Kid was such a one. Heading for the sea-coast, with ahaste several sheriff's posses might possibly have explained, andwith more nerve than coin of the realm, he succeeded in shippingfrom a Puget Sound port, and managed to survive the contingentmiseries of steerage sea-sickness and steerage grub. He wasrather sallow and drawn, but still his own indomitable self, whenhe landed on the Dyea beach one day in the spring of the year.Between the cost of dogs, grub, and outfits, and the customsexactions of the two clashing governments, it speedily penetratedto his understanding that the Northland was anything save a poorman's Mecca. So he cast about him in search of quick harvests.Between the beach and the passes were scattered many thousands ofpassionate pilgrims. These pilgrims Montana Kid proceeded tofarm. At first he dealt faro in a pine-board gambling shack; butdisagreeable necessity forced him to drop a sudden period into aman's life, and to move on up trail. Then he effected a corner inhorseshoe nails, and they circulated at par with legal tender,four to the dollar, till an unexpected consignment of a hundredbarrels or so broke the market and forced him to disgorge hisstock at a loss. After that he located at Sheep Camp, organizedthe professional packers, and jumped the freight ten cents a poundin a single day. In token of their gratitude, the packerspatronized his faro and roulette layouts and were mulctedcheerfully of their earnings. But his commercialism was of toolusty a growth to be long endured; so they rushed him one night,burned his shanty, divided the bank, and headed him up the trailwith empty pockets.Ill-luck was his running mate. He engaged with responsibleparties to run whisky across the line by way of precarious andunknown trails, lost his Indian guides, and had the very firstoutfit confiscated by the Mounted Police. Numerous othermisfortunes tended to make him bitter of heart and wanton ofaction, and he celebrated his arrival at Lake Bennett byterrorizing the camp for twenty straight hours. Then a miners'meeting took him in hand, and commanded him to make himselfscarce. He had a wholesome respect for such assemblages, and heobeyed in such haste that he inadvertently removed himself at thetail-end of another man's dog team. This was equivalent to horse-stealing in a more mellow clime, so he hit only the high placesacross Bennett and down Tagish, and made his first camp a fullhundred miles to the north.Now it happened that the break of spring was at hand, and many ofthe principal citizens of Dawson were travelling south on the lastice. These he met and talked with, noted their names andpossessions, and passed on. He had a good memory, also a fairimagination; nor was veracity one of his virtues.
IIDawson, always eager for news, beheld Montana Kid's sled headingdown the Yukon, and went out on the ice to meet him. No, hehadn't any newspapers; didn't know whether Durrant was hanged yet,nor who had won the Thanksgiving game; hadn't heard whether theUnited States and Spain had gone to fighting; didn't know whoDreyfus was; but O'Brien? Hadn't they heard? O'Brien, why, hewas drowned in the White Horse; Sitka Charley the only one of theparty who escaped. Joe Ladue? Both legs frozen and amputated atthe Five Fingers. And Jack Dalton? Blown up on the "Sea Lion"with all hands. And Bettles? Wrecked on the "Carthagina," inSeymour Narrows,--twenty survivors out of three hundred. AndSwiftwater Bill? Gone through the rotten ice of Lake LeBarge withsix female members of the opera troupe he was convoying. GovernorWalsh? Lost with all hands and eight sleds on the Thirty Mile.Devereaux? Who was Devereaux? Oh, the courier! Shot by Indianson Lake Marsh.So it went. The word was passed along. Men shouldered in to askafter friends and partners, and in turn were shouldered out, toostunned for blasphemy. By the time Montana Kid gained the bank hewas surrounded by several hundred fur-clad miners. When he passedthe Barracks he was the centre of a procession. At the OperaHouse he was the nucleus of an excited mob, each member strugglingfor a chance to ask after some absent comrade. On every side hewas being invited to drink. Never before had the Klondike thusopened its arms to a che-cha-qua. All Dawson was humming. Such aseries of catastrophes had never occurred in its history. Everyman of note who had gone south in the spring had been wiped out.The cabins vomited forth their occupants. Wild-eyed men hurrieddown from the creeks and gulches to seek out this man who had tolda tale of such disaster. The Russian half-breed wife of Bettlessought the fireplace, inconsolable, and rocked back and forth, andever and anon flung white wood-ashes upon her raven hair. Theflag at the Barracks flopped dismally at half-mast. Dawsonmourned its dead.Why Montana Kid did this thing no man may know. Nor beyond thefact that the truth was not in him, can explanation be hazarded.But for five whole days he plunged the land in wailing and sorrow,and for five whole days he was the only man in the Klondike. Thecountry gave him its best of bed and board. The saloons grantedhim the freedom of their bars. Men sought him continuously. Thehigh officials bowed down to him for further information, and hewas feasted at the Barracks by Constantine and his brotherofficers. And then, one day, Devereaux, the government courier,halted his tired dogs before the gold commissioner's office.Dead? Who said so? Give him a moose steak and he'd show them howdead he was. Why, Governor Walsh was in camp on the LittleSalmon, and O'Brien coming in on the first water. Dead? Give hima moose steak and he'd show them.And forthwith Dawson hummed. The Barracks' flag rose to themasthead, and Bettles' wife washed herself and put on cleanraiment. The community subtly signified its desire that MontanaKid obliterate himself from the landscape. And Montana Kidobliterated; as usual, at the tail-end of some one else's dogteam. Dawson rejoiced when he headed down the Yukon, and wishedhim godspeed to the ultimate destination of the case-hardenedsinner. After that the owner of the dogs bestirred himself, madecomplaint to Constantine, and from him received the loan of apoliceman.
IIIWith Circle City in prospect and the last ice crumbling under hisrunners, Montana Kid took advantage of the lengthening days andtravelled his dogs late and early. Further, he had but littledoubt that the owner of the dogs in question had taken his trail,and he wished to make American territory before the river broke.But by the afternoon of the third day it became evident that hehad lost in his race with spring. The Yukon was growling andstraining at its fetters. Long detours became necessary, for thetrail had begun to fall through into the swift current beneath,while the ice, in constant unrest, was thundering apart in greatgaping fissures. Through these and through countless airholes,the water began to sweep across the surface of the ice, and by thetime he pulled into a woodchopper's cabin on the point of anisland, the dogs were being rushed off their feet and wereswimming more often than not. He was greeted sourly by the tworesidents, but he unharnessed and proceeded to cook up.Donald and Davy were fair specimens of frontier inefficients.Canadian-born, city-bred Scots, in a foolish moment they hadresigned their counting-house desks, drawn upon their savings, andgone Klondiking. And now they were feeling the rough edge of thecountry. Grubless, spiritless, with a lust for home in theirhearts, they had been staked by the P. C. Company to cut wood forits steamers, with the promise at the end of a passage home.Disregarding the possibilities of the ice-run, they had fittinglydemonstrated their inefficiency by their choice of the island onwhich they located. Montana Kid, though possessing littleknowledge of the break-up of a great river, looked about himdubiously, and cast yearning glances at the distant bank where thetowering bluffs promised immunity from all the ice of theNorthland.After feeding himself and dogs, he lighted his pipe and strolledout to get a better idea of the situation. The island, like allits river brethren, stood higher at the upper end, and it was herethat Donald and Davy had built their cabin and piled many cords ofwood. The far shore was a full mile away, while between theisland and the near shore lay a back-channel perhaps a hundredyards across. At first sight of this, Montana Kid was tempted totake his dogs and escape to the mainland, but on closer inspectionhe discovered a rapid current flooding on top. Below, the rivertwisted sharply to the west, and in this turn its breast wasstudded by a maze of tiny islands."That's where she'll jam," he remarked to himself.Half a dozen sleds, evidently bound up-stream to Dawson, weresplashing through the chill water to the tail of the island.Travel on the river was passing from the precarious to theimpossible, and it was nip and tuck with them till they gained theisland and came up the path of the wood-choppers toward the cabin.One of them, snow-blind, towed helplessly at the rear of a sled.Husky young fellows they were, rough-garmented and trail-worn, yetMontana Kid had met the breed before and knew at once that it wasnot his kind."Hello! How's things up Dawson-way?" queried the foremost,passing his eye over Donald and Davy and settling it upon the Kid.A first meeting in the wilderness is not characterized byformality. The talk quickly became general, and the news of theUpper and Lower Countries was swapped equitably back and forth.But the little the newcomers had was soon over with, for they hadwintered at Minook, a thousand miles below, where nothing wasdoing. Montana Kid, however, was fresh from Salt Water, and theyannexed him while they pitched camp, swamping him with questionsconcerning the outside, from which they had been cut off for atwelvemonth.A shrieking split, suddenly lifting itself above the generaluproar on the river, drew everybody to the bank. The surfacewater had increased in depth, and the ice, assailed from above andbelow, was struggling to tear itself from the grip of the shores.Fissures reverberated into life before their eyes, and the air wasfilled with multitudinous crackling, crisp and sharp, like thesound that goes up on a clear day from the firing line.From up the river two men were racing a dog team toward them on anuncovered stretch of ice. But even as they looked, the pairstruck the water and began to flounder through. Behind, wheretheir feet had sped the moment before, the ice broke up and turnedturtle. Through this opening the river rushed out upon them totheir waists, burying the sled and swinging the dogs off at rightangles in a drowning tangle. But the men stopped their flight togive the animals a fighting chance, and they groped hurriedly inthe cold confusion, slashing at the detaining traces with theirsheath-knives. Then they fought their way to the bank throughswirling water and grinding ice, where, foremost in leaping to therescue among the jarring fragments, was the Kid."Why, blime me, if it ain't Montana Kid!" exclaimed one of the menwhom the Kid was just placing upon his feet at the top of thebank. He wore the scarlet tunic of the Mounted Police andjocularly raised his right hand in salute."Got a warrant for you, Kid," he continued, drawing a bedraggledpaper from his breast pocket, "an' I 'ope as you'll come alongpeaceable."Montana Kid looked at the chaotic river and shrugged hisshoulders, and the policeman, following his glance, smiled."Where are the dogs?" his companion asked."Gentlemen," interrupted the policeman, "this 'ere mate o' mine isJack Sutherland, owner of Twenty-Two Eldorado--""Not Sutherland of '92?" broke in the snow-blinded Minook man,groping feebly toward him."The same." Sutherland gripped his hand."And you?""Oh, I'm after your time, but I remember you in my freshman year,--you were doing P. G. work then. Boys," he called, turning halfabout, "this is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland, erstwhile full-backon the 'Varsity. Come up, you gold-chasers, and fall upon him!Sutherland, this is Greenwich,--played quarter two seasons back.""Yes, I read of the game," Sutherland said, shaking hands. "And Iremember that big run of yours for the first touchdown."Greenwich flushed darkly under his tanned skin and awkwardly maderoom for another."And here's Matthews,--Berkeley man. And we've got some Easterncracks knocking about, too. Come up, you Princeton men! Come up!This is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland!"Then they fell upon him heavily, carried him into camp, andsupplied him with dry clothes and numerous mugs of black tea.Donald and Davy, overlooked, had retired to their nightly game ofcrib. Montana Kid followed them with the policeman."Here, get into some dry togs," he said, pulling them from out hisscanty kit. "Guess you'll have to bunk with me, too.""Well, I say, you're a good 'un," the policeman remarked as hepulled on the other man's socks. "Sorry I've got to take you backto Dawson, but I only 'ope they won't be 'ard on you.""Not so fast." The Kid smiled curiously. "We ain't under wayyet. When I go I'm going down river, and I guess the chances areyou'll go along.""Not if I know myself--""Come on outside, and I'll show you, then. These damn fools,"thrusting a thumb over his shoulder at the two Scots, "playedsmash when they located here. Fill your pipe, first--this ispretty good plug--and enjoy yourself while you can. You haven'tmany smokes before you."The policeman went with him wonderingly, while Donald and Davydropped their cards and followed. The Minook men noticed MontanaKid pointing now up the river, now down, and came over."What's up?" Sutherland demanded."Nothing much." Nonchalance sat well upon the Kid. "Just a caseof raising hell and putting a chunk under. See that bend downthere? That's where she'll jam millions of tons of ice. Thenshe'll jam in the bends up above, millions of tons. Upper jambreaks first, lower jam holds, pouf!" He dramatically swept theisland with his hand. "Millions of tons," he added reflectively."And what of the woodpiles?" Davy questioned.The Kid repeated his sweeping gestures and Davy wailed, "The laborof months! It canna be! Na, na, lad, it canna be. I doot notit's a jowk. Ay, say that it is," he appealed.But when the Kid laughed harshly and turned on his heel, Davyflung himself upon the piles and began frantically to toss thecordwood back from the bank."Lend a hand, Donald!" he cried. "Can ye no lend a hand? 'T isthe labor of months and the passage home!"Donald caught him by the arm and shook him, but he tore free."Did ye no hear, man? Millions of tons, and the island shall besweepit clean.""Straighten yersel' up, man," said Donald. "It's a bit fashed yeare."But Davy fell upon the cordwood. Donald stalked back to thecabin, buckled on his money belt and Davy's, and went out to thepoint of the island where the ground was highest and where a hugepine towered above its fellows.The men before the cabin heard the ringing of his axe and smiled.Greenwich returned from across the island with the word that theywere penned in. It was impossible to cross the back-channel. Theblind Minook man began to sing, and the rest joined in with -"Wonder if it's true?
Does it seem so to you?
Seems to me he's lying -
Oh, I wonder if it's true?""It's ay sinfu'," Davy moaned, lifting his head and watching themdance in the slanting rays of the sun. "And my guid wood a' goingto waste.""Oh, I wonder if it's true,"was flaunted back.The noise of the river ceased suddenly. A strange calm wrappedabout them. The ice had ripped from the shores and was floatinghigher on the surface of the river, which was rising. Up it came,swift and silent, for twenty feet, till the huge cakes rubbedsoftly against the crest of the bank. The tail of the island,being lower, was overrun. Then, without effort, the white floodstarted down-stream. But the sound increased with the momentum,and soon the whole island was shaking and quivering with the shockof the grinding bergs. Under pressure, the mighty cakes, weighinghundreds of tons, were shot into the air like peas. The frigidanarchy increased its riot, and the men had to shout into oneanother's ears to be heard. Occasionally the racket from the backchannel could be heard above the tumult. The island shudderedwith the impact of an enormous cake which drove in squarely uponits point. It ripped a score of pines out by the roots, thenswinging around and over, lifted its muddy base from the bottom ofthe river and bore down upon the cabin, slicing the bank and treesaway like a gigantic knife. It seemed barely to graze the cornerof the cabin, but the cribbed logs tilted up like matches, and thestructure, like a toy house, fell backward in ruin."The labor of months! The labor of months, and the passage home!"Davy wailed, while Montana Kid and the policeman dragged himbackward from the woodpiles."You'll 'ave plenty o' hoppertunity all in good time for yerpassage 'ome," the policeman growled, clouting him alongside thehead and sending him flying into safety.Donald, from the top of the pine, saw the devastating berg sweepaway the cordwood and disappear down-stream. As though satisfiedwith this damage, the ice-flood quickly dropped to its old leveland began to slacken its pace. The noise likewise eased down, andthe others could hear Donald shouting from his eyrie to look down-stream. As forecast, the jam had come among the islands in thebend, and the ice was piling up in a great barrier which stretchedfrom shore to shore. The river came to a standstill, and thewater finding no outlet began to rise. It rushed up till theisland was awash, the men splashing around up to their knees, andthe dogs swimming to the ruins of the cabin. At this stage itabruptly became stationary, with no perceptible rise or fall.Montana Kid shook his head. "It's jammed above, and no more'scoming down.""And the gamble is, which jam will break first," Sutherland added."Exactly," the Kid affirmed. "If the upper jam breaks first, wehaven't a chance. Nothing will stand before it."The Minook men turned away in silence, but soon "Rumsky Ho"floated upon the quiet air, followed by "The Orange and theBlack." Room was made in the circle for Montana Kid and thepoliceman, and they quickly caught the ringing rhythm of thechoruses as they drifted on from song to song."Oh, Donald, will ye no lend a hand?" Davy sobbed at the foot ofthe tree into which his comrade had climbed. "Oh, Donald, man,will ye no lend a hand?" he sobbed again, his hands bleeding fromvain attempts to scale the slippery trunk.But Donald had fixed his gaze up river, and now his voice rangout, vibrant with fear: -"God Almichty, here she comes!"Standing knee-deep in the icy water, the Minook men, with MontanaKid and the policeman, gripped hands and raised their voices inthe terrible, "Battle Hymn of the Republic." But the words weredrowned in the advancing roar.And to Donald was vouchsafed a sight such as no man may see andlive. A great wall of white flung itself upon the island. Trees,dogs, men, were blotted out, as though the hand of God had wipedthe face of nature clean. This much he saw, then swayed aninstant longer in his lofty perch and hurtled far out into thefrozen hell.