This morning was bitter, but the "sour doughs" were lined up outside the store, waiting their turns like a crowd of Parsifal first-nighters, so we fell in with the rest, whipping our arms and stamping our moccasins till the chill ate into our very bones. It took hours to sort the letters, but not a man whimpered. When you wait for vital news a tension comes that chokes complaint. There was no joking here, nor that elephantine persiflage which marks rough men when they forgather in the wilderness. They were the fellows who blazed the trail, bearded, s.h.a.ggy, and not pretty to look at, for they all knew hardship and went out strong-hearted into this silent land, jesting with danger and singing in the solitudes. Here in the presence of the Mail they laid aside their cloaks of carelessness and saw one another bared to the quick, timid with hunger for the wives and little ones behind.

There were a few like Prosser, in whom there was still the glamour of the Northland and the mystery of the unknown, but they were scattered, and in their eyes the anxious light was growing also.

Five months is a wearying time, and silent suspense will sap the courage. If only one could banish worry; but the long, unbearable nights when the mind leaps and scurries out into the voids of conjecture like sparks from a chimney--well, it's then you roll in your bunk and your sigh ain't from the snow-shoe pain.

A half-frozen man in an ice-clogged dory had brought us our last news, one October day, just before the river stopped, and now, after five months, the curtain parted again.

I saw McGill, the lawyer, in the line ahead of me and noted the grayness of his cheeks, the nervous way his lips worked, and the futile, wandering, uselessness of his hands. Then I remembered. When his letter came the fall before it said the wife was very low, that the crisis was near, and that they would write again in a few days. He had lived this endless time with Fear stalking at his shoulder. He had lain down with it nightly and risen with it grinning at him in the slow, cold dawn. The boys had told me how well he fought it back week after week, but now, edging inch by inch toward the door behind which lay his message, it got the best of him.

I wrung his hand and tried to say something.

"I want to run away," he quavered. "But I'm afraid to."

When we got in at last we met men coming out, and in some faces we saw the marks of tragedy. Others smiled, and these put heart into us.

Old man Tomlinson had four little girls back in Idaho. He got two letters. One was a six-months-old tax-receipt, the other a laundry bill.

That meant three months more of silence.

When my turn came and I saw the writing of the little woman something gripped me by the throat, while I saw my hands shake as if they belonged to somebody else. My news was good, though, and I read it slowly--some parts twice--then at last when I looked up I found McGill near me.

Unconsciously we had both sought a quiet corner, but he had sunk on to a box. Now, as I glanced at him I saw what made me shiver. The Fear was there again--naked and ugly--for he held one lonesome letter, and its inscription was in no woman's hand. He had crouched there by my side all this time, staring, staring, staring at it, afraid to read--afraid to open it. Some men smile in their agony, shifting their pitiful masks to the last, others curse, and no two will take their blows alike.

McGill was plucking feebly at the end of his envelope, tearing off tiny bits, dropping the fragments at his feet. Now and then he stopped, and when he did he shuddered.

"Buck up, old pal," I said.

Then, recognizing me, he thrust the missive into my hand.

"Tell me--for G.o.d's sake--tell me quick. I can't--No, no--wait! Not yet.

Don't tell me. I'll know from your face. They said she couldn't live--"

But she had, and he watched me so fiercely that when the light came into my face he s.n.a.t.c.hed the letter from me like a madman.

"Ah-h! Give it to me! Give it to me! I _knew_ it! I told you they couldn't fool me. No, sir. I felt all the time she'd make it. Why, I knew it in my marrow!"

"What's the date?" I inquired.

"September thirtieth," he said. Then, as he realized how old it was, he began to worry again.

"Why didn't they write later? They must know I'll eat my heart out.

Suppose she's had a relapse. That's it. They wrote too soon, and now they don't dare tell me. She--got worse--died--months ago, and they're afraid to let me know."

"Stop it," I said, and reasoned sanity back into him.

Monty had taken his mail and run off like a puppy to feast in quiet, so I went over to Eckert's and had a drink.

Sam winked at me as I came in. A man was reading from a letter.

"Go on. I'm interested," said the proprietor.

The fellow was getting full pretty fast and was down to the garrulous stage, but he began again:

"DEAR HUSBAND,--I am sorry to hear that you have been so unfortunate, but don't get discouraged. I know you will make a good miner if you stick to it long enough. Don't worry about me. I have rented the front room to a very nice man for fifteen dollars a week. The papers here are full of a gold strike in Siberia, just across Bering Sea from where you are. If you don't find something during the next two years, why not try it over there for a couple?"

"That's what I call a persevering woman," said Eckert, solemnly.

"She's a business woman, too," said the husband. "All I ever got for that room was seven-fifty a week."

It seems I'd missed Montague at the store, but when the crowd came out Ollie Marceau found him away in at the back, having gone there to be alone with his letters. She saw the utter abandon and grief in his pose, and the tears came to her eyes. Impulsively she went up and laid her hand on his bowed head. She had followed the frontier enough to know the signs.

"Oh, Mr. Prosser," she said, "I'm so sorry! Is it the little mother?"

"Yes," he answered, without moving.

"Not--not--" she hesitated.

"I don't know. The letters are up to the middle of December, and she was very sick."

Then, with the quick sentiment of her kind, the girl spoke to him, forgetting herself, her life, his prejudice, everything except the lonely little gray woman off there who had waited and longed just as such another had waited and longed for her, and, inasmuch as Ollie had suffered before as this boy suffered now, in her words there was a sweet sympathy and a perfect understanding.

It was very fine, I think, coming so from her, and when the first shock had pa.s.sed over he felt that here, among all these rugged men, there was no one to give him the comfort he craved except this child of the dance-halls. Compa.s.sion and sympathy he could get from any of us, but he was a boy and this was his first grief, so he yearned for something more, something subtler, perhaps the delicate comprehension of a woman.

At any rate, he wouldn't let her leave him, and the tender-hearted la.s.s poured out all the best her warm nature afforded.

In a few days he braced up, however, and stood his sorrow like the rest of us. It made him more of a man in many ways. For one thing, he never scoffed now at any of the nine women, which, taken as an indication, was good. In fact, I saw him several times with the Marceau girl, for he found her always ready and responsive, and came to confide in her rather than in Martin or me, which was quite natural. Martin spoke about it first.

"I hate to see 'em together so much," said he. "One of 'em is going to fall in love, sure, and it won't be reciprocated none. It would serve him right to get it hard, but if _she's_ hit--it'll be too dam' pitiful.

You an' I will have to combine forces and beat him up, I reckon."

The days were growing long and warm, the hills were coming bare on the heights, while the snow packed wet at midday when we went into town to sled out grub for the clean-up. We found everybody else there for the same purpose, so the sap began to run through the camp. We were loading at the trading-post the next day when I heard the name of Ollie Marceau.

It was a big-limbed fellow from Alder Creek talking, and, as he showed no liquor in his face, what he said sounded all the worse. I have heard as bad many a time without offense, for there is no code of loyalty concerning these girls, but Ollie had got my sympathy, somehow, and I resented the remarks, particularly the laughter. So did Prosser, the Puritan. He looked up from his work, white and dangerous.

"Don't talk that way about a girl," said he to the stranger, and it made a sensation among the crowd.

I never knew a man before with courage enough to kick in public on such subjects. As it was, the man said something so much worse that right there the front busted out of the tiger-cage and for a few brief moments we were given over to chaos.

I had seen Whitewater walloped and I knew how full of parlor tricks the kid was, but this time he went insane. He knocked that man off the counter at the first pa.s.s and climbed him with his hobnails as he lay on the floor. A fight is a fight, and a good thing for spectators and partic.i.p.ants, for it does more to keep down scurvy than anything I know of, but the thud of those heavy boots into that helpless flesh sickened me, and we rushed Prosser out of there while he struggled like a maniac.

I never saw such a complete reversal of form. Somewhere, away back yonder, that boy's forefathers were pirates or cannibals or butchers.

When the fog had cleared out of his brain the reaction was just as powerful. I took him out alone while the others worked over the Alder Creek party, and all at once my man fell apart like wet sawdust.

"What made me do it--what made me do it?" he cried. "I'm crazy. Why, I tried to kill him! And yet what he said is true--that's the worst of it--it's true. Think of it, and I fought for her. What am I coming to?"

After the clean-up we came to camp, waiting for the river to break and the first boat to follow. It was then that the suspense began to tell on our partner. He read and reread his letters, but there was little hope in them, and now, with no work to do, he grew nervous. Added to everything else, our food ran short, and we lived on sc.r.a.ps of whatever was left over from our winter grub-stake. Just out of cussedness the break-up was ten days late, the ten longest days I ever put in, but eventually it came, and a week later also came the mail. We needed food and clothes, we needed whisky, we needed news of the great, distant world--but all we thought of was our mail.

The boy had decided to go home. We were sorry to see him leave, too, for he had the makings of a real man in him even if he shaved three times a week, but no sooner was the steamer tied than he came plunging into my tent like a moose, laughing and dancing in his first gladness. The mother was well again.

Later I went aboard to give him the last lonesome good wishes of the fellow who stays behind and fights along for another year. The big freighter, with her neat staterooms and long, gla.s.s-burdened tables, awoke a perfect panic in me to be going with him, to shake this cruel country and drift back to the home and the wife and the pies like mother made.

I found him on the top deck with the Marceau girl, who was saying good-by to him. There was a look about her I had never seen before, and all at once the understanding and the bitter irony of it struck me. This poor waif hadn't had enough to stand, so Love had come to her, just as Kink had predicted--a hopeless love which she would have to fight the way she fought the whole world. It made me bitter and cynical, but I admired her nerve--she was dressed for the sacrifice, trim and well-curried as a thousand-dollar pony. Back of her smile, though, I saw the waiting tears, and my heart bled. Spring is a fierce time for romance, anyhow.