Part 2

“Let us suppose,” Hartwell said, “that in the grip of grief and fear the girl was insanely desperate; that she wanted to get out of the country, and that something put the crazy notion in her head to sell herself as--well, perhaps as many women she had known had done. Under social contract. Marrying money. In order to make a decent guess,” he apologized with a smile, “it is going to be necessary to make some analyses and establish some motives and set up some assumed facts as a theorem. Suppose she feared Clark because--he was her stepfather. Suppose that her life at home had been unhappy. Suppose her only brother, a year younger than herself, had fled from home and struck out for the gold fields.

“Their mother was dead, let us say; she had been married, very young, to a man much older than herself--a wealthy man whom she did not love. Her second marriage to Clark, a man younger than herself, was a rebound from her first mistake--and it proved but a second mistake.

“Her daughter was just blooming into womanhood and the mother saw in her, shortly, an unconscious rival for the fitful affections of her young husband. A situation such as this might give the girl a background and help us make a logical guess. Clark was a scoundrel--you’ve made that clear, Shorty. Particularly despicable where women were concerned. Worse even than Aleck.

“The mother died, leaving the girl to the tender mercies of her stepfather. She died with her son’s name on her lips and pledged the girl to find him. The girl could hardly hope to make the journey into the Klondike and the Yukon alone. In her innocence she did not dream of her stepfather’s feeling toward her. She gladly accepted his offer to accompany her. She was just coming of age when the journey began.

“When she reached Fort Yukon she was of age--in years and in experience--for she had learned of Clark’s feelings and been frightened by them. Terrified, she made a frantic search for her brother, and Clark followed her relentlessly. She had trusted him in everything--even with her money. And--suppose he kept it?

“My guess is that he would be capable of that--and her words, as he flung her the gold, seem to prove it. He had followed her to Dawson, knowing that what little money she had with her soon would give out. And then--her brother was discovered to be dead. It had been a one-way trail for him.

“Fear and grief! These were enough, combined with loneliness and the strange, rough ways of the mining camp, to drive her to the seeming refuge of Aleck’s Place. It was not until after she had been there for a few days that she really discovered what an Alaskan dance-hall saloon meant. Possible disgrace was added to her grief and her fear. It almost unbalanced her mind. Then she met the Red Rover. She felt that he had become infatuated with her almost at first glance--not knowing he had seen her before, on the boat, and had followed her, too.

“She thought of suicide. She was afraid. Aleck’s was no refuge. Aleck, in his own way, had made her understand that. Girls who were willing to be entertaining to miners with money were too plentiful at Aleck’s Place for him to be tolerant of one who was frightened--and grief-stricken. In the courage of desperation she evolved this plan to sell herself at auction. It had been her own mother’s way.”

The last sentence came out like a flash of an icicle touched by fire. It gave Gresham, hardened news hound, a start. He hardly breathed, as he waited for Hartwell to continue. The “analysis” Hartwell was making had got to be more than that. It was parable. Gresham waited for it to become something more.

He studied Hartwell’s face and saw that it was really young, despite deep lines and snow-white hair and brows. It was strong, peaceful, good to look upon. It thrust out of the furred hood of his parka in cameo, and seemed in place here in the frosty wilds. Gresham wondered just why Hartwell was traveling this trail. He had been unable to find out by any of the questions he had asked.

“When the Red Rover knocked Chesty Clark down for touching her, the girl knew that here was a man who would, and could, protect her. Something electric had passed between them at their first meeting of glances. Perhaps she did recognize him as a man she had seen on the steamer. To be sure, she knew that he had been cleaned out by Clark, had no money, and perhaps she had heard the old Alaskan proverb--that a man will not fight for his wife but he will fight for his dog. And she wondered whether he might sacrifice his dogs to get the money. I assume that she did not dream the bidding would go half so high.

“When she found Clark was bidding above any one else, she grew more frightened and, there on the bar, as she walked up and down, showing off her attractions like a slave on the block, she framed up the saving portion of the auction agreement--that she might refuse to accept the bid of any man she did not like.

“Women are far more clever than we give them credit for,” resumed Hartwell; “clever even in their desperation. And besides, the girl had the background of a more sophisticated civilization than Dawson could boast. And as you have described it--the Red Rover made the winning bid, if not the highest bid, and won her.”

“Sure thing! But it was highest, too. He bid five thousand.”

“This was late in the fall, you said, Shorty?” inquired Hartwell musingly.

“It was October.”

Gresham remembered distinctly that Shorty had not defined the time at all except that it was winter. His news nose tingled.

“‘You have freighted food and supplies out to the most isolated spots in the country, in the dead of winter, to some stubborn old sourdoughs who stuck to their diggings,’ Hartwell said. “Not all the miners huddled in town and gambled, drank and danced. And some of them were without dogs, too. So that it was perfectly possible for the Red Rover to pack out, afoot, to some claim he had located back in the hills--and the girl with him, bearing her share. She would do that. I picture her as being proud and brave and willing.”

“You bet you! A magnificent gal for her age! Strong and able to stand a lot of hardship.”

“It was early enough,” Hartwell went on argumentatively, “to kill some game and jerk meat and dry fish. A log hut with double walls, air space between, a good stove made out of telescoped-kerosene tins. Credit established for a grubstake of tinned things; salt, beans, sugar. Some clothing and blankets.

“They would be able to trek back in the hills two hundred miles before the worst weather came, safely hidden from Clark--or anybody else. She didn’t want her mother’s widower killed--by the Red Rover. Not even though he was the gray wolf on her trail. Woman’s reasons. We don’t understand them very well. Her mother had loved Clark. That was enough.

“On the trail together, young, strong, looking gold. Their spirits would run high. The girl was free of the shadow of Clark and the dance hall. The Rover had proven himself decent. Winter would pass quickly. In the spring she would book passage on the first steamer out. When the savage coast of Alaska and the Aleutians had faded from view, all that portion of her life would be past and forgotten. In the States no one would know.

“The winter passed.”

With those three words the very last vestige of Gresham’s professionally skeptical doubt, concerning what sort of fanciful stuff Hartwell was giving them, vanished. Yet he was puzzled. Why did Hartwell talk in parable? He thought Shorty looked puzzled, too--or was it merely that he listened, with his wrinkled face all squinted up as he hunched over by the fire and looked stupid?

“Spring approached,” Hartwell continued, “and the claim, upon which the Red Rover had counted so much, had yielded less than three thousand dollars’ worth of gold. It had been frozen up too hard to pan out gravel or sand. They had burned out dirt with fire and picked it over. They quarreled one day because Red declared he would go down to Dawson and sell out the claim so that he could pay his debts.

“‘You mustn’t do that,’ she objected. ‘I believe there is a rich vein here. You’ve got enough to pay your debts--because I shall take only what you posted in cash from the sale of your dogs. I’ll split with you. It’s pretty good wages for a housekeeper, that twenty-five hundred.’

“‘You will take it all!’ he insisted. The quarrel grew bitter.

“The next morning the Red Rover woke with his feeling that the cabin was empty except for himself. And it was. The girl had packed her sack and gone. How long she had been gone, he did not know. Full daylight was coming, the summer solstice, when it is daylight all the time and warm.

“The Red Rover trailed her thirty solid hours without stopping, and yet did not overtake her. He came, however, to the end of her trail. It was a gorge in the ice of the river. Twenty feet deep, to the rushing, boiling water--and her footprints at the edge. The ice had broken through.

“He risked his own life, crossing at another place to try to pick up the trail on the other side, hoping against hope that the break-up had come after she crossed. There was no trail on the other side.

“There on the ice, with the raging, raving torrent grinding, groaning, thrashing its way toward the sea, in the birth pangs of the spring break-up, Red Rover crouched and suffered the harsh agony of a man with a broken heart. He knew then how much he loved the girl. He had fought it all winter. The quarrel had come because he loved her. He had bought her at auction--for the winter. But he had held out to her, at all times, her chance for freedom, when and if she wanted it. Never again had he proposed what he had announced publicly at Aleck’s Place--marriage. Nor had she reminded him of it. Probably she had taken it as a flourish, an attempt on his part, gallant enough, but insincere as gallantry is likely to be, to save her face. At any rate--this was answer enough for him. So he thought. But there was another answer.

“He found it in his pack later--a note she had written him in farewell. It ran something like this:

“I am sorry, but I can’t go on with this. And I can’t take your money. Not any of it. So, I am going back to Clark. I have a claim against him and I’m going to collect. I was foolish not to do it, in the first place--but I was afraid. This winter has taught me to be afraid of no man. You taught me that, so I owe you--much. God bless you. Good-by.

“When Red Rover finished reading this tear-stained note, it was stained with fresh tears--his own. He knew then that the girl had fled from him because she loved him. She was going back to Clark. No, she could not do that! Because--she was dead. The river had her. She would reach the sea, perhaps some time--free forever.

“And now the full force of new suffering had him. His agony left its mark upon him. Back to his cabin he went, because he could not bear to be with men, to face them. What would they say when he came out--_alone_?

“At the cabin the irony of fate thrust itself upon him with more mockery. He struck it rich. Baking sour dough bread in a hole in the ground, between gold pans, he exposed a vein richer than he had even dreamed to find there. It was a bonanza. You’ve heard of the Ashpit Mine, Shorty?”

“Um!” grunted Shorty, as if he had been pricked awake from sound sleep with a jab. “I should say so! That’s one of the few claims the original discoverer wouldn’t never sell. Why, the railroad built a spur up to it, the other side of the next big ridge, but they is an old trail cuts acrost to it from this one, only forty miles from here. I’ve passed that branch purty often and I allers thinks of the time I let off a woman passenger there, and she----”

“I’ve been there,” cut in Hartwell. “I know something of its history. Well, that was Red Rover’s find, and it was no joy to him when he found it. Only mockery. He went into a sort of melancholia, all alone there, and finally into a fever which was something like brain fever. In his delirium he lived, over and over again, the quarrel they had had--the last words he had snapped at her.

“And then he went back, in his memory, to the auction and lived that over, too. With the clairvoyance of the half insane he saw that the girl had loved him from the very first and, with a woman’s desperate cleverness, had managed to have him the successful bidder at the auction.

“She had loved him; she could not let herself be bought and paid for--and he believed she had grown to despise him and herself, too--so that she had started back. Back to Clark.

“If he had not quarreled with her, if he had but reached out his hand to her, two days before, if he had repeated his proposal of marriage to her, she would be with him, alive, to dance upon the golden floor he had scratched into the light in his fireplace--and they would have gone out to Dawson together.

“As it was, he descended to the lowest depths of brooding sorrow and despair. He lapsed into veritable insanity; he scarcely ate; he went about blindly for hours, calling her name. He forgot to drink, and sleep was never with him. Shorty, I would like another cup of tea.”

Shorty started as if he had been shot. He poured tea for all of them. It was bitter, brackish, full of ashes. Gresham could not down it. Hartwell, however, swallowed it greedily and as if it were sweet nectar.

“Um! that tastes good. I think I’ll never get over liking the taste of strong, hot tea. I went without anything to drink, once, for a long, long time. A cup of hot tea was the first thing I remember tasting. Perhaps that’s the reason---- Oh, you were right about your woman passenger, Shorty. It was--we shall call her May, though that wasn’t her real name----”

“Then the girl--wasn’t dead?” exploded Gresham.

Hartwell smiled, and his smile was like nothing Gresham had ever seen on a man’s face--peaceful, tender, beautiful.

“No! Oh, no! She had gone downriver on the ice for several miles, unaware of her danger. She walked the surface of a hollowed-out ice gorge--and it caved in after she had passed. The Red Rover couldn’t even have guessed that, when he came to the trail’s end, at the brink of a fuming torrent.

“She went to Dawson, and there she found that Clark had been shot to death in a brawl at Aleck’s, caught cheating. His money--including what he had held out from her--went to her. He had piled it up, playing a crooked game, plenty. She could have chartered a steamer for Seattle. The old----” Hartwell checked himself.

“Well, she did start downriver on the first steamer out,” he continued. “She announced publicly at Aleck’s Place that the agreement was broken. She refused the stake that she might have taken--because, you see, it was the break-up. The time was up.

“It was at Fort Yukon, wasn’t it, Shorty, that you picked her up and brought her back--over the old ‘one-way trail’ for women? You sold her your dog team--the one you bought of the Red Rover. You sold it to her for just what you paid for it--twenty-five hundred dollars. And up ahead, at the branch trail, where it goes over the ridge, she left you and went in alone with a load of provisions. With a bale of clothes--like a woman. Some more tea, please?”

Gresham shook his head when Shorty questioned his thirst with a look.

“And so,” Hartwell went on, refreshed by a dark draft, “they came out together, after all. No, they didn’t go down to Dawson. They went on, upriver, up past White Horse Rapids, over Chilkoot, to Dyea, to Juneau, and, by steamer, home. Which proves it a two-way trail--for one woman, eh?”

“The exception, which it proves the rule,” Shorty answered.

Gresham expelled a breath.

“That _is_ a story,” he said. “But how did you get to know it so well? Did you ever meet the Red Rover?”

“Yes,” replied Hartwell. “In fact, I’m up here on business for him. Going up to the Ashpit Mine, over the old trail, for the fun of it. He intends to bring his wife up next season to visit the old claim--and the old cabin which they shared. It is still standing, though moved to another spot. You see, like a woman, she wanted to know just how the Yukon took it after all these years. Down in the States, of course, nobody knows--_and they never will know_.”

He paused abruptly, and Gresham felt the chill of cold, very suddenly--and Hartwell’s eyes upon him, though he did not meet them.

“Well, no,” Gresham said, “it could hardly be told down there.”

Then he gulped strong tea avidly, being mighty thirsty all at once, and didn’t mind that it was cold tea and more bitter than when it was hot.

“Of course,” Hartwell went on casually, “nobody would know the Red Rover to-day. He’s changed so. _You’d_ never know him, Shorty. He was red-headed when you knew him, and now his hair is as white as my own.”

“Well, I dunno,” drawled Shorty, with the sidelong squint he had, and with his one open eye looking at Hartwell; “I dunno about that. I got a habit of watchin’ people’s _eyes_.”

[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the May 7, 1929 issue of _The Popular Magazine_.]