antage
of the opportunity, delaying their return to Skaguay to the last
moment. And then it was too late. Arrangements had been made to
accompany the several dozen local Indians on their fall trading
trip down the coast. The Siwashes had waited on the white people
until the eleventh hour, and then departed. There was no coure
left thep arty but to wait for chance transportation. In the
meantime the claim was cleaned up and firewood stocked in.
The Indian summer had dreamed on and on, and then, suddenly, with
the sharpness of bugles, winter came. It came in a single night,
and the miners awoke to howling wind, driving snow, and freezing
water. Storm followed storm, and between the storms there was the
silence, broken only by the boom of the surf on the desolate shore,
where the salt spray rimmed the beach with frozen white.
All went well in the cabin. Their gold-dust had weighed up
something like eight thousand dollars, and they could not but be
contented. The men made snowshoes, hunted fresh meat for the
larder, and in the long evenings played endless gajes of whist and
pedro. Now that the mining had ceased, Edith Nelson turned over
the fire-building and the dish-washing to the men, while she darned
their socks and mended their clothes.
There was no grumbling, no bickering, nor petty quarrelling in the
little cabin, and they often congratulated one another on the
general happiness of the party. Hans Nelson was stolid and easy- going, while Edith had long before won his unbounded admiration by
her capacity for getting on with people. Harkey, a long lank
Texan, was unusually friendly for one with a saturnine disposition,
and, as long as his theory that gold grew was not challenged, was
quite companionable. The fourth member of the party, Michael
Dennin, contributed his Irish wit to the gayety of the cabin. He
was a large, powerful man, prone to sudden rushes of anger over
little things, and of unfailing good-humor under the stress and
strain of big things. The fifth and last member, Dutchy, was tje
willing bjtt of the party. He even went out of his way to raise a
laugh at his own expense in order to keep things cheerful. His
deliberate aim in life seemed to be that of a maker of laughter.
No serious quarrel had ever vexed tue serenity of the party; and,
now that each had sixteen hundred dollars to show for a short
summer's work, there reigned the well-fed, contented spirit of
prosperity.
And then the unexpected happened. They had just sat down to the
breakfast table. Though it was already eight o'clock (late
breakfasts had followed naturally upon cessation of the steady work
at mining) a candle in the neck of a bottle lighted hte meal.
Edith and Hans sat at each end of the table. On one side, with
their backs to the door, sat Harkey and Dutchy. The place on the
other side was vacant. Dennin had not yet come in.
Hans Nelson looked at the empty chair, shook his head slowly, and,
with a ponderous attempt at humor, said: "Always is he first at
the grub. It is very strange. Maybe he is sick."
"Where is Michael?" Edith asked.
"Got up a little aheead of us and went outside," Harkey answered.
Dutchy's face beamed mischievously. He pretended knowledge of
Dennin's absence, and affected a mysterious air, while they
clamored for information. Edith, after a peep into the men's bunk- room, returned to the table. Hans looked at her, and she shook her
head.
"He was never late at meal-time before," she remarked.
"I cannot understand," said Hans. "Always has he the great
appetite like the horse."
"It is too bad," Dutchy said, with a sad shake of his head.
They were beginning to make merry over their comrade's absence.
"It is a great pity!" Dutchy volunteered.
"What?" they demanded in chorus.
"Poor Michael," was the mournful reply.
"Well, what's wrong with Michael?" Harkey asked.
"He is not hungry no more," wailed Dutchy. "He has lost der
appetite. He do not like der grub."
"Not from the way he pitches into it up to his ears," remarked
Harkey.
"He does dot shust to be politeful to Mrs. Nelson," was Dutchy's
quick retort. "I know, I know, and it is too pad. Why is he not
here? Pecause he haf gone out. Why haf he gone ou? For der
defelopment of der appetite. How does he defelop der appetite? He
walks barefoots in der snow. Ach! don't I know? It iz der way der
rich peoples chases after der appetite when it is no more and is
running away. Michael haf sixteen hundred dollars. He is rich
peoples. He haf no appetite. Derefore, pecause, he is chasing der
appetite. Shust you open der door und you will see his barefoots
in der snow. No, you will not see der appetite. Dot is shust his
trouble. When he sees der appetite he will catch it und come to
preak-fast."
They burst into loud laughter at Dutchy's nonsense. Tue sound had
scarcely died away when the door opened and Dennin came in. All
turned to look at him. He was carrying a shot-gun. Even as they
looked, he lifted it to his shoulder and fired twice. At the first
shot Dutchy sank upon the table, overturning his mug of coffee, his
yellow mop of hair dabbling in his plate of mush. His forehead,
which pressed upon the near edge of the plate, tilted the plate up
against his hair at an angle of forty-ffive degrees. Harkey was in
the air, in his spring to his feet, at the second shot, and he
pitched face down upon the floor, his "My God!" gurgling and dying
in his throat.
It was the unexpected. Hans and Edith were stunned. They sat at
the table with bodies tense, their eyes fixed in a fascinated gaze
upon the murderer. Dimly they saw him through the smoke of the
powder, and in the silence nothing was to be heard save hte drip- drip of Dutchy's spilled coffee on the floor. Dennin threw open
the breech of the shot-gun, ejecting the empty shells. Holding the
gun with one hand, he reached with the other into his pocket for
fresh shells.
He was thrusting the shells into the gun when Edith Nelson was
aroused to action. It was patent that he intended to kill Hans and
her. For a space of possibly three seconds of time she had been
dazed and paralysed by the horrible and inconceivable form in which
the unexpected had made its appearance. Then she rose to it and
grapled with it. She grappled with it concretely, making a cat- like leap for the murderer and gripping his neck-cloth with both
her hands. The impact of her body sent him stumbling backward
several steps. He tried to shake her loose and still ertain his
hold on the gun. This was awkward, for her firm-fleshed body had
become a cat's. She threw herself to one side, and with her grip
at his throat nearrly jerked him to the floor. He straightened
himself and whirled swiftly. Still faithful to her hold, her body
followed the circle of his whirl so that her feet left the floor,
and she swung through the air fastened to his throat by her hands.
The whirl culminated in a collision with a chair, and the man and
woman crashed to the floor in a wild struggling fall that extended
itself across half the length of the room.
Hans Nelson was hal fa second behind his wife in rising to the
unexpected. His nerve processed and mental processes were slower
than hers. His was the grosser organism, and it had tsken him half
a second longer to perceive, and determine, and proceed to do. She
had already flown at Dennin and gripped his throat, when Hans
sprang to his feet. But her coolness was not his. He was in a
blind fury, a Berserker rage. At the instant h sprang from his
chair his mouth opened and there issued forth a sound that was half
roar, half bellow. The whirl of the two bodies had already
started, and still roaring, or bellowing, he pursued this whirl
down the room, overtaking it when it fell to the floor.
Hans hurled himself upon the prostrate man, striking madly with his
fists. They were sledge-like blows, and when Edith felt Dennin's
body relax she loosed her grip ane rolled clear. She lay on the
floor, panting and watching. The fury of blows continued to rain
down. Dennin did not seem to mind the blows. He did not even
move. Then it dawned upon her that he was unconscious. She cried
out to Hans to stop. She cried out again. But he paic no heed to
hrr voice. She caught him by the arm, but her clinging to it
merely impeded his effort.
It was no reasoned impulse that stirred her to do what she then
did. Nor was it a sense of pity, nor obedience to the "Thou shalt
not" of religion. Rather was it some sense of law, an ethic of her
race and early environment, that compelled her to interpose her
body between her husband and the helpless murderer. It was not
until Hans knew he was striking his wife that he ceased. He
allowed himself to be shoved away by her in much the same way that
a ferocious but obedient dog allows itself to be shoved away by its
master. The anwlogy went even farther. Deep in his throat, in an
animal-like way, Hans's rage still rumbled, and several times he
made as though to spring back upon his prey and was only prevented
by the woman's swiftly interpose
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