Which Make Men Remember
Fortune La Pearle crushed his way through the snow, sobbing,straining, cursing his luck, Alaska, Nome, the cards, and the manwho had felt his knife. The hot blood was freezing on his hands,and the scene yet bright in his eyes,--the man, clutching thetable and sinking slowly to the floor; the rolling counters andthe scattered deck; the swift shiver throughout the room, and thepause; the game-keepers no longer calling, and the clatter of thechips dying away; the startled faces; the infinite instant ofsilence; and then the great blood-roar and the tide of vengeancewhich lapped his heels and turned the town mad behind him."All hell's broke loose," he sneered, turning aside in thedarkness and heading for the beach. Lights were flashing fromopen doors, and tent, cabin, and dance-hall let slip theirdenizens upon the chase. The clamor of men and howling of dogssmote his ears and quickened his feet. He ran on and on. Thesounds grew dim, and the pursuit dissipated itself in vain rageand aimless groping. But a flitting shadow clung to him. Headthrust over shoulder, he caught glimpses of it, now taking vagueshape on an open expanse of snow, how merging into the deepershadows of some darkened cabin or beach-listed craft.Fortune La Pearle swore like a woman, weakly, with the hint oftears that comes of exhaustion, and plunged deeper into the mazeof heaped ice, tents, and prospect holes. He stumbled over tauthawsers and piles of dunnage, tripped on crazy guy-ropes andinsanely planted pegs, and fell again and again upon frozen dumpsand mounds of hoarded driftwood. At times, when he deemed he haddrawn clear, his head dizzy with the painful pounding of his heartand the suffocating intake of his breath, he slackened down; andever the shadow leaped out of the gloom and forced him on inheart-breaking flight. A swift intuition lashed upon him, leavingin its trail the cold chill of superstition. The persistence ofthe shadow he invested with his gambler's symbolism. Silent,inexorable, not to be shaken off, he took it as the fate whichwaited at the last turn when chips were cashed in and gains andlosses counted up. Fortune La Pearle believed in those rare,illuminating moments, when the intelligence flung from it time andspace, to rise naked through eternity and read the facts of lifefrom the open book of chance. That this was such a moment he hadno doubt; and when he turned inland and sped across the snow-covered tundra he was not startled because the shadow took upon itgreater definiteness and drew in closer. Oppressed with his ownimpotence, he halted in the midst of the white waste and whirledabout. His right hand slipped from its mitten, and a revolver, atlevel, glistened in the pale light of the stars."Don't shoot. I haven't a gun."The shadow had assumed tangible shape, and at the sound of itshuman voice a trepidation affected Fortune La Pearle's knees, andhis stomach was stricken with the qualms of sudden relief.Perhaps things fell out differently because Uri Bram had no gunthat night when he sat on the hard benches of the El Dorado andsaw murder done. To that fact also might be attributed the tripon the Long Trail which he took subsequently with a most unlikelycomrade. But be it as it may, he repeated a second time, "Don'tshoot. Can't you see I haven't a gun?""Then what the flaming hell did you take after me for?" demandedthe gambler, lowering his revolver.Uri Bram shrugged his shoulders. "It don't matter much, anyhow.I want you to come with me.""Where?""To my shack, over on the edge of the camp."But Fortune La Pearle drove the heel of his moccasin into the snowand attested by his various deities to the madness of Uri Bram."Who are you," he perorated, "and what am I, that I should put myneck into the rope at your bidding?""I am Uri Bram," the other said simply, "and my shack is overthere on the edge of camp. I don't know who you are, but you'vethrust the soul from a living man's body,--there's the blood redon your sleeve,--and, like a second Cain, the hand of all mankindis against you, and there is no place you may lay your head. Now,I have a shack--""For the love of your mother, hold your say, man," interruptedFortune La Pearle, "or I'll make you a second Abel for the joy ofit. So help me, I will! With a thousand men to lay me by theheels, looking high and low, what do I want with your shack? Iwant to get out of here--away! away! away! Cursed swine! I'vehalf a mind to go back and run amuck, and settle for a few ofthem, the pigs! One gorgeous, glorious fight, and end the wholedamn business! It's a skin game, that's what life is, and I'msick of it!"He stopped, appalled, crushed by his great desolation, and UriBram seized the moment. He was not given to speech, this man, andthat which followed was the longest in his life, save one longafterward in another place."That's why I told you about my shack. I can stow you there sothey'll never find you, and I've got grub in plenty. Elsewise youcan't get away. No dogs, no nothing, the sea closed, St. Michaelthe nearest post, runners to carry the news before you, the sameover the portage to Anvik--not a chance in the world for you! Nowwait with me till it blows over. They'll forget all about you ina month or less, what of stampeding to York and what not, and youcan hit the trail under their noses and they won't bother. I'vegot my own ideas of justice. When I ran after you, out of the ElDorado and along the beach, it wasn't to catch you or give you up.My ideas are my own, and that's not one of them."He ceased as the murderer drew a prayer-book from his pocket.With the aurora borealis glimmering yellow in the northeast, headsbared to the frost and naked hands grasping the sacred book,Fortune La Pearle swore him to the words he had spoken--an oathwhich Uri Bram never intended breaking, and never broke.At the door of the shack the gambler hesitated for an instant,marvelling at the strangeness of this man who had befriended him,and doubting. But by the candlelight he found the cabincomfortable and without occupants, and he was quickly rolling acigarette while the other man made coffee. His muscles relaxed inthe warmth and he lay back with half-assumed indolence, intentlystudying Uri's face through the curling wisps of smoke. It was apowerful face, but its strength was of that peculiar sort whichstands girt in and unrelated. The seams were deep-graven, morelike scars, while the stern features were in no way softened byhints of sympathy or humor. Under prominent bushy brows the eyesshone cold and gray. The cheekbones, high and forbidding, wereundermined by deep hollows. The chin and jaw displayed asteadiness of purpose which the narrow forehead advertised assingle, and, if needs be, pitiless. Everything was harsh, thenose, the lips, the voice, the lines about the mouth. It was theface of one who communed much with himself, unused to seekingcounsel from the world; the face of one who wrestled oft of nightswith angels, and rose to face the day with shut lips that no manmight know. He was narrow but deep; and Fortune, his own humanitybroad and shallow, could make nothing of him. Did Uri sing whenmerry and sigh when sad, he could have understood; but as it was,the cryptic features were undecipherable; he could not measure thesoul they concealed."Lend a hand, Mister Man," Uri ordered when the cups had beenemptied. "We've got to fix up for visitors."Fortune purred his name for the other's benefit, and assistedunderstandingly. The bunk was built against a side and end of thecabin. It was a rude affair, the bottom being composed of drift-wood logs overlaid with moss. At the foot the rough ends of thesetimbers projected in an uneven row. From the side next the wallUri ripped back the moss and removed three of the logs. Thejagged ends he sawed off and replaced so that the projecting rowremained unbroken. Fortune carried in sacks of flour from thecache and piled them on the floor beneath the aperture. On theseUri laid a pair of long sea-bags, and over all spread severalthicknesses of moss and blankets. Upon this Fortune could lie,with the sleeping furs stretching over him from one side of thebunk to the other, and all men could look upon it and declare itempty.In the weeks which followed, several domiciliary visits were paid,not a shack or tent in Nome escaping, but Fortune lay in hiscranny undisturbed. In fact, little attention was given to UriBram's cabin; for it was the last place under the sun to expect tofind the murderer of John Randolph. Except during suchinterruptions, Fortune lolled about the cabin, playing long gamesof solitaire and smoking endless cigarettes. Though his volatilenature loved geniality and play of words and laughter, he quicklyaccommodated himself to Uri's taciturnity. Beyond the actions andplans of his pursuers, the state of the trails, and the price ofdogs, they never talked; and these things were only discussed atrare intervals and briefly. But Fortune fell to working out asystem, and hour after hour, and day after day, he shuffled anddealt, shuffled and dealt, noted the combinations of the cards inlong columns, and shuffled and dealt again. Toward the end eventhis absorption failed him, and, head bowed upon the table, hevisioned the lively all-night houses of Nome, where thegamekeepers and lookouts worked in shifts and the clatteringroulette ball never slept. At such times his loneliness andbankruptcy stunned him till he sat for hours in the sameunblinking, unchanging position. At other times, his long-pentbitterness found voice in passionate outbursts; for he had rubbedthe world the wrong way and did not like the feel of it."Life's a skin-game," he was fond of repeating, and on this onenote he rang the changes. "I never had half a chance," hecomplained. "I was faked in my birth and flim-flammed with mymother's milk. The dice were loaded when she tossed the box, andI was born to prove the loss. But that was no reason she shouldblame me for it, and look on me as a cold deck; but she did--ay,she did. Why didn't she give me a show? Why didn't the world?Why did I go broke in Seattle? Why did I take the steerage, andlive like a hog to Nome? Why did I go to the El Dorado? I washeading for Big Pete's and only went for matches. Why didn't Ihave matches? Why did I want to smoke? Don't you see? Allworked out, every bit of it, all parts fitting snug. Before I wasborn, like as not. I'll put the sack I never hope to get on it,before I was born. That's why! That's why John Randolph passedthe word and his checks in at the same time. Damn him! It servedhim well right! Why didn't he keep his tongue between his teethand give me a chance? He knew I was next to broke. Why didn't Ihold my hand? Oh, why? Why? Why?"And Fortune La Pearle would roll upon the floor, vainlyinterrogating the scheme of things. At such outbreaks Uri said noword, gave no sign, save that his grey eyes seemed to turn dulland muddy, as though from lack of interest. There was nothing incommon between these two men, and this fact Fortune graspedsufficiently to wonder sometimes why Uri had stood by him.But the time of waiting came to an end. Even a community's bloodlust cannot stand before its gold lust. The murder of JohnRandolph had already passed into the annals of the camp, and thereit rested. Had the murderer appeared, the men of Nome wouldcertainly have stopped stampeding long enough to see justice done,whereas the whereabouts of Fortune La Pearle was no longer aninsistent problem. There was gold in the creek beds and rubybeaches, and when the sea opened, the men with healthy sacks wouldsail away to where the good things of life were sold absurdlycheap.So, one night, Fortune helped Uri Bram harness the dogs and lashthe sled, and the twain took the winter trail south on the ice.But it was not all south; for they left the sea east from St.Michael's, crossed the divide, and struck the Yukon at Anvik, manyhundred miles from its mouth. Then on, into the northeast, pastKoyokuk, Tanana, and Minook, till they rounded the Great Curve atFort Yukon, crossed and recrossed the Arctic Circle, and headedsouth through the Flats. It was a weary journey, and Fortunewould have wondered why the man went with him, had not Uri toldhim that he owned claims and had men working at Eagle. Eagle layon the edge of the line; a few miles farther on, the British flagwaved over the barracks at Fort Cudahy. Then came Dawson, Pelly,the Five Fingers, Windy Arm, Caribou Crossing, Linderman, theChilcoot and Dyea.On the morning after passing Eagle, they rose early. This wastheir last camp, and they were now to part. Fortune's heart waslight. There was a promise of spring in the land, and the dayswere growing longer. The way was passing into Canadian territory.Liberty was at hand, the sun was returning, and each day saw himnearer to the Great Outside. The world was big, and he could onceagain paint his future in royal red. He whistled about thebreakfast and hummed snatches of light song while Uri put the dogsin harness and packed up. But when all was ready, Fortune's feetitching to be off, Uri pulled an unused back-log to the fire andsat down."Ever hear of the Dead Horse Trail?"He glanced up meditatively and Fortune shook his head, inwardlychafing at the delay."Sometimes there are meetings under circumstances which make menremember," Uri continued, speaking in a low voice and very slowly,"and I met a man under such circumstances on the Dead Horse Trail.Freighting an outfit over the White Pass in '97 broke many a man'sheart, for there was a world of reason when they gave that trailits name. The horses died like mosquitoes in the first frost, andfrom Skaguay to Bennett they rotted in heaps. They died at theRocks, they were poisoned at the Summit, and they starved at theLakes; they fell off the trail, what there was of it, or they wentthrough it; in the river they drowned under their loads, or weresmashed to pieces against the boulders; they snapped their legs inthe crevices and broke their backs falling backwards with theirpacks; in the sloughs they sank from sight or smothered in theslime, and they were disembowelled in the bogs where the corduroylogs turned end up in the mud; men shot them, worked them todeath, and when they were gone, went back to the beach and boughtmore. Some did not bother to shoot them,--stripping the saddlesoff and the shoes and leaving them where they fell. Their heartsturned to stone--those which did not break--and they becamebeasts, the men on Dead Horse Trail."It was there I met a man with the heart of a Christ and thepatience. And he was honest. When he rested at midday he tookthe packs from the horses so that they, too, might rest. He paid$50 a hundred-weight for their fodder, and more. He used his ownbed to blanket their backs when they rubbed raw. Other men letthe saddles eat holes the size of water-buckets. Other men, whenthe shoes gave out, let them wear their hoofs down to the bleedingstumps. He spent his last dollar for horseshoe nails. I knowthis because we slept in the one bed and ate from the one pot, andbecame blood brothers where men lost their grip of things and diedblaspheming God. He was never too tired to ease a strap ortighten a cinch, and often there were tears in his eyes when helooked on all that waste of misery. At a passage in the rocks,where the brutes upreared hindlegged and stretched their forelegsupward like cats to clear the wall, the way was piled withcarcasses where they had toppled back. And here he stood, in thestench of hell, with a cheery word and a hand on the rump at theright time, till the string passed by. And when one bogged heblocked the trail till it was clear again; nor did the man livewho crowded him at such time."At the end of the trail a man who had killed fifty horses wantedto buy, but we looked at him and at our own,--mountain cayusesfrom eastern Oregon. Five thousand he offered, and we were broke,but we remembered the poison grass of the Summit and the passagein the Rocks, and the man who was my brother spoke no word, butdivided the cayuses into two bunches,--his in the one and mine inthe other,--and he looked at me and we understood each other. Sohe drove mine to the one side and I drove his to the other, and wetook with us our rifles and shot them to the last one, while theman who had killed fifty horses cursed us till his throat cracked.But that man, with whom I welded blood-brothership on the DeadHorse Trail--""Why, that man was John Randolph," Fortune, sneering the while,completed the climax for him.Uri nodded, and said, "I am glad you understand.""I am ready," Fortune answered, the old weary bitterness strong inhis face again. "Go ahead, but hurry."Uri Bram rose to his feet."I have had faith in God all the days of my life. I believe Heloves justice. I believe He is looking down upon us now, choosingbetween us. I believe He waits to work His will through my ownright arm. And such is my belief, that we will take equal chanceand let Him speak His own judgment."Fortune's heart leaped at the words. He did not know muchconcerning Uri's God, but he believed in Chance, and Chance hadbeen coming his way ever since the night he ran down the beach andacross the snow. "But there is only one gun," he objected."We will fire turn about," Uri replied, at the same time throwingout the cylinder of the other man's Colt and examining it."And the cards to decide! One hand of seven up!"Fortune's blood was warming to the game, and he drew the deck fromhis pocket as Uri nodded. Surely Chance would not desert him now!He thought of the returning sun as he cut for deal, and hethrilled when he found the deal was his. He shuffled and dealt,and Uri cut him the Jack of Spades. They laid down their hands.Uri's was bare of trumps, while he held ace, deuce. The outsideseemed very near to him as they stepped off the fifty paces."If God withholds His hand and you drop me, the dogs and outfitare yours. You'll find a bill of sale, already made out, in mypocket," Uri explained, facing the path of the bullet, straightand broad-breasted.Fortune shook a vision of the sun shining on the ocean from hiseyes and took aim. He was very careful. Twice he lowered as thespring breeze shook the pines. But the third time he dropped onone knee, gripped the revolver steadily in both hands, and fired.Uri whirled half about, threw up his arms, swayed wildly for amoment, and sank into the snow. But Fortune knew he had fired toofar to one side, else the man would not have whirled.When Uri, mastering the flesh and struggling to his feet, beckonedfor the weapon, Fortune was minded to fire again. But he thrustthe idea from him. Chance had been very good to him already, hefelt, and if he tricked now he would have to pay for it afterward.No, he would play fair. Besides Uri was hard hit and could notpossibly hold the heavy Colt long enough to draw a bead."And where is your God now?" he taunted, as he gave the woundedman the revolver.And Uri answered: "God has not yet spoken. Prepare that He mayspeak."Fortune faced him, but twisted his chest sideways in order topresent less surface. Uri tottered about drunkenly, but waited,too, for the moment's calm between the catspaws. The revolver wasvery heavy, and he doubted, like Fortune, because of its weight.But he held it, arm extended, above his head, and then let itslowly drop forward and down. At the instant Fortune's leftbreast and the sight flashed into line with his eye, he pulled thetrigger. Fortune did not whirl, but gay San Francisco dimmed andfaded, and as the sun-bright snow turned black and blacker, hebreathed his last malediction on the Chance he had misplayed.
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