CHAPTER VI.

The case of Morris _versus_ Britton, as developed in the judicial courts, was one of those neurotic society flurries that never fail to arouse interest and promote discussion from highland to sea-down.

Complete details of all legal proceedings, together with copious comment on the demeanor of complainant and defendant, as well as irrelevant addenda concerning such things as dress and facial expression, can be found in the back files of a certain aristocratic journal, but nothing edifying is to be gained by perusal of this voluminous report. The circulation of the sheet in question was given sudden and tremendous impetus, yet this proved merely temporary, for the revengeful note obtruded, the personal animosity broke forth, overstepping all limits of honor and fair play, so that those who had not heretofore followed public topics over-closely wondered what was the editor's quarrel with the defendant. But his quarrel was not with the nephew; although through the nephew he hoped to reach the uncle, the Honorable Oliver Britton, who was abroad, representing England in a consular capacity.

The name of Britton, of Britton Hall, was high enough and proud enough and old enough to afford a splendid target for the batteries of ignominy which were masked within the publishing offices of the warring journal, and the fact that the Honorable Oliver Britton had once humbled by personal opposition the political aspirations of the editor was what made the reputation-shelling process so destructive. Still, in spite of the deliberate use of his heaviest artillery, the man behind the fire of words did not foresee the startling result of such drastic measures.

When, after months of fighting through successive law-courts, the celebrated action came to an end, the journal's editor had to announce, much to his chagrin, that the final verdict was dismissal with a division of costs. This decision, the report intimated, was due entirely to that matchless legal machine, Ainsworth.

However, the enemy of the Britton name enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that his vitriolic pen had done more than he dared to hope, for he soon had the supreme delight of stating that, owing to the disgrace involving the family name, the Honorable Oliver Britton had resigned his post as Consul at a foreign court. Furthermore, the powers that appoint had placed another in the post in the diplomatic service which, it was understood, was being reserved for Rex Britton till his return from the holiday cruise that his honor-graduation at Oxford had earned.

And, later, the journal announced what it had not foreseen, the news that the Honorable Oliver Britton had returned from the Continent, violently quarrelled with his nephew and disinherited him. It gloated over the cruel truth that of all the Brittons, who had for generations counted thousands of pounds upon their rent-rolls, a Britton now stood penniless, except for a paltry three hundred guineas left out of his patrimony, nearly exhausted by the long legal battle; gloated over him because the gentleman's hand must turn to labor, the ambitious trusts of educational and diplomatic posts being denied him on account of the name-smudge.

There the journal's report and comment ends, except for an item telling that Christopher Morris and his wife had gone to America.

The night Rex Britton quarrelled with his uncle, he went out from Britton Hall, down white gravel walks between clipped hedges, under the massed oaks in the familiar grove, and along green Sussex lanes to the depot. There he telegraphed Ainsworth to get Trascott to meet him at the former's rooms, as new developments had arisen which occasioned his departure from what he had considered home since his boyhood days. The night express took him up and whirled him away to London.

Trascott was with a dying woman in the slums, so it was evening of the next day before the three friends could get together in Cyril Ainsworth's rooms. The curate came in, weary and depressed, and with a gravity of bearing caused by association with the near presence of death.

"The uncle has cut the nephew out of the will and kicked him off the estate," Ainsworth plunged, giving Trascott a terse summing-up of Rex Britton's explanations. "He has left three hundred pounds of money, three mountains of pride, and the strength of three bulls. He's off to Canada and the Yukon!"

Trascott stilled his surprise and bent earnestly over the table.

"I'd stay," he advised pointedly. "You can live down the disinheritment and open the barricaded doors of position. I'd stay in England and live it down."

Britton was sullen and decided. "No," he returned, "I'm out of England till I can buy back everything I've lost. Understand? I'm disappearing from the dearly beloved public which takes such an interest in my misfortune and in my future. Isn't that what victims of circumstance try? I'll be welcomed as the prodigal nephew when I return-if I ever do!"

"Don't be cynical," Trascott warned. "It's dangerous in your case."

"What would you have me do?" Rex exclaimed warmly. "Shall I turn gamekeeper or valet? And don't think I'm priggish! I dare be menial, but, by Jove, I won't be a slave! Independency is my obsession. That's why I'm for this new gold-trail."

And the gold-trail held its persistent lure in spite of any arguments.

Two weeks later he sighted Newfoundland from the decks of an Allan Liner, passed through the waters of Belle Isle, chafing on Labrador's iron coast, caught up Heath Point on bleak Anticosti, and won the river-stretch of four hundred and thirty-eight miles to Quebec. Twelve hours more and the liner anchored in the port of Montreal.

Rex Britton had hunted for three seasons in the Laurentians, and at Montreal he hastened to find two comrades of the chase who had always been members of his party. One was the voyageur, Pierre Giraud, and the other a plainsman, Jim Laurance, who had drifted up from some place in the Southern States. Britton inquired for them in their old haunts.

"Pierre?" cried a French riverman, at his question; "Pierre an' Jim Laurance? Dey bot' gon' on de Yukon. Beeg strik' dere-ver' beeg strik'."

Further enquiry elicited the information that Jim Laurance was keeping a road-house at Indian River, on the Dawson Trail, while Pierre Giraud was some place in the land of gold without his whereabouts being definitely known.

On hearing this news Britton dallied no further, but crossed the continent alone, caught a Puget Sound boat and steamed north. All the way up people talked insane things of a new strike east of Juneau, and, like a fool, he listened. Like a fool, also, he rushed in hot haste with the van of the stampede which followed the boat's touching at Juneau. The lure of gold faded somewhat for him when they reached the much-touted valley and found that not a hundredth part of what had been reported was true.

Though hope was lessened in immense proportion, still Britton staked with his fellows, only to have his ardor dampened still more. The bedrock of his claim was as clean of yellow grains as a well-swept floor, and while his neighbors struck pay-gravel of moderate richness, a curse of bad luck blanked his own efforts.

Twice more he did the same thing, once on Admiralty Island and again at Glacier Bay below Mount Crillon. Each time he reported his ill-success to Jim Laurance by letters which he sent with in-going steamers to Dyea, whence they were borne onward over Chilcoot by the Dawson mail-carriers. And Laurance, deprived of the satisfaction of replying on account of Britton's itinerancy, sat in his road-house at Indian River and waited for the Englishman to come to him. He held as a truism his own saying that the Dawson Trail knew every leg in the Yukon at some time or other, and he did not doubt for an instant that Britton's legs would presently appear, straining through the weary miles like the countless pairs of limbs he had seen stamping over the route which led to the Mecca of the gold-lands.

Having wasted the summer months and a great part of his money in three futile stampedes, Britton found himself upon the Dyea beach at the approach of winter, with another _ignis fatuus_ luring him on the inward trail. A tremendous rush was on to Forty Forks, east of Lake Marsh, where, it was said, a prospector had kicked over glistening nuggets with the soles of his hobnailed cruisers. The wildest reports of wealth were circulating, as usual, and men went forward in mad haste to locate on the creek before the white breath of winter should blot out the face of the land.

Britton, grown wary through bitter experience, cut the reports down to a sounder basis of common sense, sifted out apparent exaggerations and discrepancies, and decided that Forty Forks was at least worth trying for, although, when he remembered three successive defeats, he misdoubted the issue.

Dyea was in a ferment. Boat-loads of passengers and baggage crowded the beach and camp, and this tangled rabble resolved itself into a perpetual stream of in-going Klondikers heading over the pass to take advantage of the yet open waterway from Linderman.

The tang of first frost was in the gray morning air as Britton pushed along the rough, bouldered wagon-road which runs up the Dyea Valley. Hundreds went, like him, on foot, while those blessed with a full money-belt procured what teamsters' wagons were to be had and lashed ahead in frantic haste that soon brought Canyon City in sight. From there to Sheep Camp the travel was more congested; the weaker men already began to lag; the first strain of the race told on the physically unfit.

All the way on to the Scales Britton passed faltering fellows, singly or in groups of twos and threes. They cursed him in a despairing way for his stalwart legs and sturdy back, and he came to recognize that here at last was a country where they measured a man according to his manliness, uninfluenced by extraneous attributes.

Where the trail ascended Chilcoot, the footing grew worse, and a mighty climb confronted those who would cross the pass. Britton's strength here stood him in good stead, for in addition to the arduous toil of the ascent there arose the handicap of a bitterly cold wind which began to filter through the mountains, carrying ominous snow-flurries. The icy blast numbed the climbers' muscles and sapped their energies, and as if conscious of its power, the northland loosed its lungs and blew a brawling storm down from the higher plateaus.

Minute by minute the shrieking wind increased in velocity, whirling sleet and snow in the faces of the toiling men, till their persons were encrusted, and the mountain path grew white and obscure. A gold-seeker slipped upon a rock ahead of Britton and rolled back against his legs. Rex pulled him up and turned him round. "Say, old friend, what do you call this?" he gasped.

"Holy road to Nome!" blasphemed the other, rubbing his bruised limbs. "Don't you know a blizzard when you meet one? Keep your mouth shut in this cold, or you won't make the pass."

It was indeed a blizzard of the roaring, ramping type that only the Yukon knows, and it increased to diabolical fury as the toilers reached the steepest pitch of the mountain. Men went down beside the trail in sheer exhaustion, and the agony of their position appealed more strongly to Britton on account of his inability to render any lasting aid. This, of all the northern trails, was the Iron Trail where none but the strong could survive.

Seeing old-timers and hardened sourdoughs fall behind filled Britton with a glow of pride in his own capabilities. He understood that he was one of the fit to whom reward must finally come, and the thought instilled new hope.

Over towering Chilcoot he climbed, in the teeth of that memorable blizzard which froze a score of gold-seekers between the Scales and the divide from Crater Lake. Nothing but his magnificent physique and indomitable purpose carried him on, and when he staggered across the little glacier which sloped to Crater Lake he had won his way to the front, and was once more in the van of a stampede. As Britton thawed himself in the camp there beside a grizzled Alaskan who had followed every strike from Nome to Klondike City, the old-timer regarded him admiringly.

"You're the hot stuff, mate," he averred, "when you can heel old Larry Marsh over Chilcoot in that there hell-warmer. You're some stampeder, too! Wasn't you in the front 'long of me at Juneau and Glacier Bay?"

"I believe I remember you," Britton said, "although it did us precious little good to be in the front."

The old man warmed his hairy paws for the tenth time and shook his gray locks.

"Don't whine! Never whine, friend," he remarked. "You get experience, grantin' nothin' else. You're sure some stampeder, and I reckon they'll be namin' you 'long of Larry Marsh-him that named Marsh Lake!"

And forthwith Britton's name travelled widely in fulfilment of the old-timer's prophecy; they began to designate him as one of their stampeders, that much-respected minority of men who have the grit and the power to stay in the lead of the maddest of all mad races-the gold-rush.

The halt at Crater Lake Camp was, of necessity, very short. The stragglers were limping in, frost-bitten and exhausted, telling of some who would never come in, when Marsh and Britton again hit the trail. Dead men nor mountains, frosts nor blizzards, sufficed to stay the stampede.

The lower levels were strangely quiet after the bellowings of the windy pass, and the cold did not bite so keenly.

The rush passed on by Deep Lake and Long Lake, where fat purses could buy the assistance of pack-trains of mules as far as Linderman. When they reached the shore of this lake, they were twenty-eight miles from Dyea, with the giant bulk of Chilcoot looming between, its rugged head still wrapped in the swirling white blizzard.

From the head of Lake Linderman the boats, bought or built for different individuals, plied on the water-route which led by Lake Marsh and the Forty Forks onward to Dawson. There were small barges, but their sailings were very uncertain and could not be depended on in a rush. Each man who dared the waterway before the very maw of winter had to buy or make his craft at Linderman.

Here on the shore a motley throng congregated, with Marsh and Britton in the front ranks. Some Nevada capitalists who had lost their horses along the trail and hired Indian packers to carry their goods over the pass at sixty cents a pound, clamored for boats to a stocky Dane, who appeared to be a perfect genius at turning out freshly sawn planks as the finished product, ready seamed and caulked, with mast stepped, and altogether seaworthy. However, something else beside clamor and a profligate show of money was necessary for the securing of the vessels, and that was time. Work as they might, the boat-builders could not supply the demand, and any with skill in carpentering fell to toiling of their own will in order to get boat after boat away and thus hasten their own turn. They were pitting human celerity and skill against the unceasing advance of winter. The freeze-up was approaching with chill, unpitying certainty to snuff out delayed hopes by the close of navigation, and through superhuman effort the gold-seekers thought to forestall the frost's advent.

Every day the march of Arctic feet could be defined more clearly; every night the snow-line slid a little farther down the hills; north-east squalls blew up at unexpected hours; and the rivers strained their waters through arrays of icy teeth stuck along the margins.

Amidst the turmoil of Linderman, when others had done with exhortations, expostulations, and entreaties, through the universal desire for speed, Larry Marsh drew one Danish boat-builder aside and conferred with him.

Whatever magic he used or whatever service of old needed repayment, Britton did not know, but he saw the Dane hand over a newly launched skiff to the gray Alaskan.

"Hey! you," the latter called to him, "come and steer this boat. You're the man for me!"

Britton threw in his outfit with glad promptitude, and they shoved off through the seething shore ice, which was ground to fragments as quickly as it formed.

"Keep her head straight," warned Larry Marsh. "I'll 'tend to this here sail."

He busied himself with the squaresail, a large sheet that caught the sweeping wind and whirled them down Lake Linderman like a flash.

A mile portage connected Linderman with the next lake, Bennett. The swift water was not navigable for large boats in the ordinary way, so Britton brought the skiff to in a manner which showed he was a skilful sailor and which Marsh did not fail to note.

"You've held a tiller before now, I'll warrant," he said. "Most greenies would have piled the boat up on them boulders in the rapid. Let's pack the outfits across and line her down to Bennett!"

Accordingly, having first portaged their goods, they lined the skiff carefully through foaming white-water down to Lake Bennett, where they again embarked. From the Police post at the head of the lake the sergeant was watching a Government courier struggling in with a Peterborough through the gale that raged. Britton and Marsh saw him also as they staggered under their press of sail.

"He's in trouble," Rex cried. "Hadn't I better run closer?"

The courier was paddling mightily, but the squall which had caught him half way up Bennett proved too strong. It was gradually defeating him in spite of his desperate efforts.

"It'll swamp him in a minute," Marsh declared, eyeing the helpless man. "I guess you'd better run past."

The skiff bore in toward the canoe just as a huge, white-capped wave threatened to bury it. The stout fellow met it bravely with a sweeping stroke. The spray hid the Peterborough's nose for an instant, and it seemed as if the craft would never rise.

"She's under!" shouted Britton.

"No, she lifts," cried his companion. "See, on the wave-top! By heavens, it's mountain-high! Snap!-there goes his paddle."

The blade had broken clean in two under the tremendous strain. The Peterborough spun round like a cork on the crest of the surf; the courier grasped for his spare paddle, knotted to the thwarts, but another wave capsized him before he could dip it.

Britton brought the boat's head round, and the skiff drifted past the spot. The drenched man clung desperately to the careening, upturned Peterborough. Britton jammed the tiller hard to windward, and Marsh cast a rope. It missed.

"Here," said Rex, "keep the helm down, and I'll catch him as we drift."

Old Larry took his place. Britton stretched himself on the gunwale, like a cat, and grabbed the drowning courier's collar as they rocked alongside. A powerful jerk, and the soaked fellow lay shivering in the bottom of the skiff!

He was a Corsican and spoke bad English. While they reeled down the thirty miles of Bennett before the screaming gale, he patted Britton's shoulder in gratitude.

"I must ask thanks-much thanks for you," he kept reiterating.

They beached the courier at an Indian camp by Cariboo Crossing and drove on through Tagish Lake. The wind veered and baffled them, and the seas gave them hours of icy baling. Britton did not count the tacks they made, but it must have been a hundred before they reached Tagish Post, where the boat was put in for good. The Englishman was not at all sorry to see it permanently tied up and to be free of its cramped quarters, although the skiff had served them such a good turn.

He stretched his toil-stiffened muscles and stamped about on the ice-piled beach, the Alaskan following suit. Rex thought the latter's face had a wan, tired look, and he realized how wearing were these desperate drives in the teeth of overwhelming hardships.

"I reckon we've got the rest beat by a long shot," Marsh observed. "Nevada coin-slingers ain't in it with us! I know a short trail to Forty Forks by skirtin' Lake Marsh, so we can snooze at the Post to-night and hit it in the mornin'."

They slept in comfort for once, sheltered at Mounted Police headquarters, but before sunrise they were afoot and circling the first headland of Lake Marsh. Some hours after, the other boats began to arrive, and the land-rush was renewed with fresh vigor.

"What do you think of my namesake?" asked the Alaskan, as they turned east from Lake Marsh's shore.

Britton looked at the sullen sweep of white-crested water with the rubble of ice rattling on every wave, at the thickening films over the inlets, and at the ever-descending snow-line on the bleak ridges.

"I think it will be closed before thirty-six hours," he said.

It was a tyro's guess, and for the only time within the knowledge of Larry Marsh the tyro's guess came true. The next evening he saw the freeze-up and the death of many a man's hopes. The death of their own hopes crept round in a different way.

A mile below Forty Forks they met Jack McDonald, or "Scotty," as he was generally termed, a famous dog-musher of the Yukon, a skilled prospector, and a friend of Marsh.

"Headin' for the strike?" he asked in his broad Scotch accent. "Then ye maun turn aroun'. 'Tisna worth a dang."

Britton's eager look faded. Larry Marsh glanced up with sharp disgust.

"'Scotty'," he said, "you're not joking?"

"Joke, mon!" exclaimed McDonald. "I cam' frae Le Barge tae look ower the groun', an' yon dinna seem like a joke. I tell ye 'tisna worth a dang."

Marsh believed the announcement because it was uttered by the Scotchman. He relied on McDonald's judgment as he would on his own, and he turned about on the trail.

"That's gospel if 'Scotty' says so," he observed to Rex. "It's no use of us wastin' time. Back-trail's the word!"

Britton was loath to give up so near the goal when his expectations were so summarily scattered.

"It's only a mile to the new camp," he said. "I think I'll go on and have a look. One never can tell what may turn up."

Larry Marsh shouldered his pack-sack again.

"All right," he grunted. "Where you goin', McDonald?"

"South o' Le Barge," the Scotchman answered. "I had a trace there before I cam' awa' on this fool trip."

"I'm with you," cried Marsh, "and we'll follow it to the end." To Britton he added: "Come with us, and we'll put you in right if anything goes!"

The idea seemed vague and forlorn, and Rex shook his head.

"I'll glance over the Forks anyway," he decided.

They took the back-trail, and he tramped on. A week at Forty Forks was convincing enough! He returned to Tagish Post, a very downhearted man, and the first person he saw was the Government courier, Franco Lessari, whom he had pulled out of Lake Bennett.

"I ask much thanks-for you, much thanks," the Corsican greeted with a new show of gratitude. "For your kind heart I repay-so little. Listen! Far up Samson Creek, I tell you for go on the north branch. Look there for gold!"

Britton smiled indulgently. It was only another of the five hundred kindly hints which had been given him by well-disposed people; for well-disposed people never think that these vague pieces of information, very often acquired simply by hearsay, waste a man's time, by sending him off on false and useless scents. Britton had had plenty of such news, and he thought no more of it till he heard it whispered about the Post that there was something big on Samson Creek.

He learned, too, that Franco Lessari had quitted the Government service to go prospecting, and that lent more significance to what the Corsican had told him. When he went to bed that night, he counted the contents of his slack money-belt. There remained about enough to purchase a team of dogs, with some dollars left over for supplies. With his present means he could go on one more stampede. If he failed to strike anything, he would be stranded. Success or failure depended upon which direction he took. There was another rumor in the air, the tale of riches in the Logan Valley, and he did not know which way to turn. In his strait he remembered the fatalistic beliefs of the Arabs in Algiers, and flipped a coin to decide whether he should go on or turn back.

It fell heads-to go on-and Britton accepted the decision. Larry Marsh and McDonald had gone south of Lake Le Barge, so he purchased his dogs from another musher and set forth next day. The frost held lakes and rivers with two-foot ice, and the snow had fallen heavily for a week.

He worked across the frozen lakes; ranged the jammed curves of Thirty Mile River; and reached the ice bridges of the White Horse. The travelling was tedious, and he saved his dogs, going into camp every night at six.

At the Mounted Police post on the Big Salmon, Britton rested half a day, and then mushed along, undeterred by a filled trail, to the Little Salmon, Pelly, and Selkirk, making halts where he must.

Between Selkirk and Stewart River, when Britton pulled out at dawn, he could discern another team travelling behind him at a considerable distance. He watched it with interest because it was the first company he had seen on the trail since leaving Big Salmon, but the sled did not appear to come any nearer no matter how slowly he himself mushed.

"Who's behind?" asked the keeper of the roadhouse at Stewart River, when Britton passed through.

"Don't know," Rex answered. "He will not come close enough for examination."

"A shirker!" was the man's judgment on the laggard team, as he watched the Englishman's sturdy figure breaking the way to Sixty Mile.