The Trail of '98: A Northland Romance

"No, it isn't all right. It's very far from all right, my boy; and this is where you and your little uncle here are going to have a real heart to heart talk."

At last, at last we had climbed over the divide, and left behind us forever the vampire valley. Oh, we were glad! But other troubles were coming. Soon the day came when the last...

He wore a pale-blue undershirt, white flannel trousers girt round the waist with a red silk handkerchief, very gaudy moccasins, and a rakish Panama hat with a band of chocolate...

There we waited, Garry and I, and between us Berna. We heard that heavy tread come up, up the creaking stairway, stumble a moment, then pause on the landing. There was something...

I had rescued him from one of his periodical plunges into the cesspool of debauch, and he was peaked, pallid, penitent. Listlessly he stared at me a long moment, the dull, hollo...

Very softly I approached the cabin, for a fear of encountering her guardians was in my heart. It was in rather a lonely place, perched at the base of that vast mountain abrasion...

I wish it to be understood that I make no excuses for myself at this particular stage of my chronicle. I am only conscious of a desire to tell the truth. Many of the stronger-mi...

The dogs! The dogs were closing in. Nearer and nearer they drew, headed by a fierce Mackenzie River bitch. They wondered why their master did not wake; they wondered why the lit...

I was lying in bed, and a heavy weight was pressing on me, so that, in spite of my struggles, I could not move. I was hot, insufferably hot. The blood ran boiling through my vei...

Day after day, each man of us poured out on the trail the last heel-tap of his strength, and the coming of night found us utterly played out. Salvation Jim was full of device an...

It is with shame I write the following pages. Would I could blot them out of my life. To this day there must be many who remember my meteoric career in the firmament of fast lif...

What with steamer fare and a few small debts to settle, I found when I landed in San Francisco that once more I was flatly broke. I was arrestively seedy, literally on my uppers...

I will always remember my first day in the gold-camp. We were well in front of the Argonaut army, but already thousands were in advance of us. The flat at the mouth of Bonanza w...

The voice was Madam Winklestein's, and the words, hissed in a whisper of incredible malignity, arrested me as if I had been struck by a live wire. I listened. Behind the statero...

"Say, pardner," said he, "I was just getting a bit anxious about you. I thought sure that fairy had you in tow for a sucker. I'm going to stay right with you, and you're not goi...

Two men were crawling over the winter-locked plain. In the aching circle of its immensity they were like little black ants. One, the leader, was of great bulk and of a vast stre...

In the crystalline days that followed I did much to bring about a friendship between Garry and Berna. At first I had difficulty in dragging him to the house, but in a little whi...

"There's something the matter with Jim," the Prodigal 'phoned to me from the Forks; "he's gone off and left the cabin on Ophir, taken to the hills. Some prospectors have just co...

Berna on the dance-halls--words cannot convey all that this simple phrase meant to me. For two months I had been living in a dull apathy of pain, but this news galvanised me int...

Soon I knew that Berna and I must part, and but two nights later it came. It was near midnight, yet in no ways dark, and everywhere the camp was astir. We were sitting by the ri...

Our last load was safely landed in Bennett and the trail of the land was over. We had packed an outfit of four thousand pounds over a thirty-seven-mile trail and it had taken us...

He and I were paying a visit to Jim in the cabin he had built on Ophir. Jim was busy making ready for his hydraulic work of the coming Spring, and once in a while we took a run...

"Hello! Say, Meldrum, this is Murray speaking. Say, just wanted to let you know there's a stage due some time before morning. Locasto's on board, and they say he's heeled for yo...

Puget Sound was behind us and we had entered on that great sea that stretched northward to the Arctic barrens. Misty and wet was the wind, and cold with the kiss of many iceberg...

With one tiger-rush Locasto threw himself on his man. There was no preliminary fiddling here; they were out for blood, and the sooner they wallowed in it the better. Right and l...

Low and sweet and tender was the voice. I was in bed and my head was heavily bandaged, so that the cloths weighed upon my eyelids. It was difficult to see, and I was too weak to...

Never shall I forget the last I saw of her, a forlorn, pathetic figure in black, waving a farewell to me as I stood on the wharf. She wore, I remember, a low collar, and well do...

It comes like a violent jar to be awakened so rudely from a trance of love, to turn suddenly from the one you care for most in all the world, and behold the one you have best re...

I had to see Berna at once. Already I had paid a visit to the Paragon Restaurant, that new and glittering place of resort run by the Winklesteins, but she was not on duty. I saw...

On the flats around the Whitehorse Rapids was a great largess of wild flowers. The shooting stars gladdened the glade with gold; the bluebells brimmed the woodland hollow with a...

"Well, that goes," said he. "It just fits in with my plans. I'm getting Jim to come in, too. I've realised on that stuff I bought, made over three thousand clear profit, and wit...

And indeed there was matter enough, for had I not just received letters from home, one from Garry and one from Mother? Garry's was gravely censorious, almost remonstrant. Mother...

It is odd how people who have been parted a weary while, yet who have thought of each other constantly, will often meet with as little show of feeling as if they had but yesterd...

It was the Prodigal who spoke. "This outfit buying's got gold-mining beaten to a standstill. Here I've been three weeks in the burg and got over ten thousand dollars' worth of g...

The girl had recovered her calm, and I must say she bore herself well. In her clinging dress of simple white her figure was as slimly graceful as that of a wood-nymph, her head...

It was on him now with a swoop and a roar. He was in the thick of a mud-grey darkness, a bitter, blank darkness full of whirling wind-eddies and vast flurries of snow. He could...

The girl was wearing a thin black shawl around her shoulders, but in the icy wind blowing from the lake, she trembled like a wand. Her face was pale, waxen, almost spiritual in...

We were camping in Paradise Valley. Before us and behind us the great Cheechako army laboured along with infinite travail. We had suffered, but the trail of the land was near it...

In this infernal irony of an existence why do the good things of life always come when we no longer have the same appetite to enjoy them? The year following, in which Berna and...

I found the town more animated than ever, the streets more populous, the gaiety more unrestrained. Everywhere were flaunting signs of a plethoric wealth. The anxious Cheechako h...

She came to meet me, lily-white and sweet. She was but thinly wrapped, and shivered so that I put my coat around her. We ventured forward, climbing over a huge anchor to the ver...

Turning the windlass over the shaft was a little, tough mud-rat, who excited in me the liveliest sense of aversion. Pat Doogan was his name, but I will call him the "Worm."

With that I gripped him suddenly and threw him sideways with some force. One of the tent ropes took away his feet violently, and there on the snow he sprawled, glowering at me w...

"One of the largest gambling plays that ever occurred in Dawson came off last night in the Malamute Saloon. Jack Locasto of Eldorado, well known as one of the Klondike's wealthi...

Time went on and the cabin was quietly nearing completion. The roof of poles was in place. It only remained to cover it with moss and thawed-out earth to make it our future home...

As he stood before me once again it seemed as if the years had rolled away, and we were boys together. A spate of tender memories came over me, memories of the days of dreams an...

"Just a month ago. I was keeping it as a surprise for you. I was waiting till you said you liked and thought well of her. Oh, I thought you would be pleased and glad, and I was...

Spring in the Yukon! Majestic mountains crowned with immemorial snow! The mad midnight melodies of birds! From the kindly stars to the leaves of grass that glimmer in the wind,...

Jim and the Prodigal, who were lying on their bunks, leapt up eagerly. No one longs for his letters like your Northern exile, and for two whole months we had not heard from the...

We made McCrimmon comfortable. We kept no whisky in the cabin, but we gave him some hot coffee, which he drank with great satisfaction. Then he twisted a cigarette, lit it, and...

I slept but fitfully, for the night air was nipping, and the bunkhouse nigh as open as a cage. A bonny morning it was, and the sun warmed me nicely, so that over breakfast I was...

All this I saw, and so fascinated was I that I forgot our own peril. I heard a shrill scream of fear; I saw the solitary woman crouch down in the bottom of the scow, burying her...

The waters were wild with joy. From the mountain snows the sun had set them free. Down hill and dale they sparkled, trickling from boulders, dripping from mossy crannies, riotin...

Well, it was a good start, and we were all possessed with a frantic eagerness to go down in the drift. I crawled along the tunnel. There, in the face of it, I could see the gold...

The news was like a flood of sunshine to us. For days we had been fixing up the boxes and getting everything in readiness. The sun beat strongly on the snow, which almost visibl...

It was three days before we made a start again, and to me each day was like a year. I chafed bitterly at the delay. Would those sacks of flour never dry? Longingly I gazed down...

He was wan and weary. Around his sombre eyes were chocolate-coloured hollows. His thick raven hair was disordered. He had lost heavily, and, bidding a curt good-bye to the other...

It was at Balsam City, and things were going badly. Marks and Bullhammer had formed a partnership with the Halfbreed, the Professor and the Bank clerk, and the arrangement was p...

There was no time to lose. Every hour for us meant so much more of that precious pay-dirt that lay under the frozen surface. The Winter leapt on us with a swoop, a harsh, unconc...

It was five o'clock of a crystal Yukon morning, with the world clear-cut and fresh as at the dawn of Things. I was sleep-stupid, sore, stiff in every joint. Racking pains made m...

I left San Francisco blanketed in grey fog and besomed by a roaring wind; when I opened my eyes I was in a land of spacious sky and broad, clean sunshine. Orange groves rushed t...

It was on a day of early Autumn when I stood knee-deep in the heather of Glengyle, and looked wistfully over the grey sea. 'Twas but a month later when, homeless and friendless,...

As far back as I can remember I have faithfully followed the banner of Romance. It has given colour to my life, made me a dreamer of dreams, a player of parts. As a boy, roaming...

I was gaining in experience, and as I hurried down the canyon and the morning burgeoned like a rose, my spirits mounted invincibly. It was the joy of the open road and the care-...

"Wear? Oh, anything. That white dress you've got on--I never saw you looking so sweet. You mind me of a picture I know of Saint Cecilia, the same delicacy of feature, the same p...

On either side of us were swift hills mottled with green and gold, ahead a curdle of snow-capped mountains, above a sky of robin's-egg blue. The morning was lyric and set our he...

Los Angeles will always be written in golden letters in the archives of my memory. Crawling, sore and sullen, from the clutch of toil, I revelled in a lotus life of ease and idl...

Next morning bright and early found me at the side-door, and the tall man admitted me. I slipped a ten-dollar gold piece into his palm, and presently found myself waiting at the...

So in serenity and sunshine the days of my youth went past. I still maintained my character as a drone and a dreamer. I used my time tramping the moorland with a gun, whipping t...

A few days in San Diego reduced my small capital to the vanishing point, yet it was with a light heart I turned north again and took the All-Tie route for Los Angeles. If one of...

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain: "Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane. Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I h...

Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God's land together, And we sang the old, old Earth-Song, for our youth was very sweet; When we drank and fought and lusted, as we...

For once you've panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust, Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell; It's little else you care about; you go because you must, And...

Gold! We leaped from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools. Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools. Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night...