The Golden Mocassins/Chapter 8

I believe that uncommunicative men suffer more than others. I sometimes felt in the week following the discovery that Elizabeth Wilton and Kentucky loved each other, that if I could only find words to tell Dan, I should feel better; for I knew that he surmised that something had gone amiss, for he ceased mentioning trips to the camp, or Bessie. And at times I felt my own selfishness for not extending to him in his troubles more thought.

My pride made me pull myself together enough to make one more visit to her home, and explain that we were working so hard I could not find time to come as frequently as I had, and I could not tell from the expression of her eyes whether she was pleased or not. I conjectured that she would be happier through my absence, and, as for myself, knew that I should be, for to look at her stabbed me with hopeless longing.

To my own credit I affirm that I sustained no bitterness toward my successful rival, and was but glad that, if I could not win her love, he was the fortunate one. But it was more difficult to hide my wound from him than any one else. He had secured a week's work windlassing on a claim but three above ours, and whenever he went to the camp unfailingly stopped and asked me to go with him, and was unfailingly refused on the pretext of hard work. It was just eight days since I had been there that he insisted so vigorously that I was hard put to find pretext for not going.

“You've just got to go with me to-night,” he said, “because if you don't Bess will think you're sore over somethin'. You really ain't, are you?”

I saw that the preservation of my secret demanded the trip, and I went. It was an evening of agony. From her very attitude I felt that she was outdoing herself to be pleasant and agreeable to me, and to conceal what I knew of her relations with Kentucky, which were not mentioned. I appreciated that delicacy, for it is sometimes policy to permit wounds to heal, and I thought they must have surmised that I had some inkling of conditions. It was one of the most bitter evenings I ever passed, and I was glad when we turned down the hill toward the camp.

The Horn Spoon was running as noisily as if its owner had not killed himself, after condemning to slow death two of those who had been its employees. But to me it offered nothing to relieve my mind of gloom.

“Hello, boys!” Windy Jim greeted us, as we stood near the door.

He came toward us, and then stepped to a row of pegs at the end of the bar, and took down an elaborately thrummed and beaded squirrel parka, and stood doubling the big “sunrise” hood so that it would muffle his neck.

“Haven't seen you since the mail came in, Tommy,” he said to me, talking as he prepared to go outside.

“No. Working,” I replied.

“And where in the name of old Solomon and his glory are you going with all that fancy rig?” drawled Kentucky. “What's up? Celebration of some sort? It ain't the Fourth of July, is it?”

Jim laughed, and stood facing us as he pulled on his mittens.

“No,” he said. “Just goin' to see some fun. Big squaw dance over across the river to-night. Some kin folks of old Singer has come down from up above. Say, come on, go over. It'd please the old man a whole lot, and you'll see the real swell Taninaw society there a-shakin' its light fantastic feet. come on over! You got time. We'll come back and sleep in my cabin. It's too dark to mush out to the gulch to-night.”

I was eager for some change—anything to get away from myself. I hesitated, and Kentuck added his insistence, with a boyish fervor.

“Let's go, old Sobersides,” he said. “Dan knows you are liable to stay in the camp if the notion takes you. He won't worry.”

And in an impulsive mood for anything out of the ordinary, I consented.

Singer was a squaw man, who believed in corporal punishment for his better half, but was usually unable to carry it through. He had been a whaler, and in his youth was probably a hardy customer in a rough-and-tumble fight; but his youth had gone, and nothing save his valor and conviction that a man should be master of his own house remained. The lady of his devotion, Black Ellen, weighed about two hundred pounds, while he was a dried-up little wisp of a man, and when he began to exercise his prerogative of punishing her, she usually bore it patiently for about so long, then “turned loose,” and hammered him into a state of submission.

They told the story that after one of these family affairs, when passing prospectors, attracted by the din, came to his rescue, and revived him to consciousness by dumping a pail of water over his “bloody but unbowed head,” he sat weakly up, blinked his swollen eyes, and then said to Ellen: “I guess you'll be good now, won't you? If you don't I'll have to beat you up again!” And Ellen, unscarred, and not even breathing hurriedly, meekly said she would.

The lights of his cabin, the most pretentious on that bank, glowed vividly as a beacon when we followed the worn trail across the river. Long before we reached that side we heard the brazen note of a cornet played by a man who had once been a trumpeter in the regular army, but had forgotten even that accomplishment. The steady, finishing notes of “Ta—da—da-a-a!” prolonged and descending, told that he was doing his best to put an artistic finish to each measure, and that a waltz was in progress.

"The smoke of the stovepipe was curling straight upward, a distinguishable gray, and told us that Singer's big cabin was superheated for the event. The dogs outside were squatted at a distance from the cabin, and howling a melancholy and disturbed accompaniment to the music from within. Boisterous shouts, rendered faint by the log walls, exuded outward, and the major population of the village seemed to be in attendance.

“sounds as if they were raisin' Cain, don't it?” Windy Jim said, as we came to the door. “Singer's ball is certainly doin' itself some proud.”

He opened the door without knocking, and we stepped inside. The noise was coming almost entirely from the white men who were participating, and the natives sat stolidly on the floor at the foot of the wall around the room. Some of them grinned laboriously in an effort to adopt the white man's expression of enjoyment, and Singer himself was just calling “partners for a square dance.”

Kerosene lamps borrowed from every available source rendered the room fairly light. They exposed the bark-covered roof poles above, the heavy ridge log, the logs at the sides, and the peeled poles which formed the partition for a back room. They showed the curling whorls of smoke, the pictures cut from old Sunday newspapers and pasted decoratively on the Wall, and a lurid picture of the Virgin and Child brought from some mission. White men and bucks began to make the circle of the squaws and klootches squatted on the floor in their ludicrous finery, fashioned after the few white women's costumes they had seen, and soon there were eight couples waiting for the music to begin.

“By golly! I didn't see you come in!” Singer exclaimed, discovering us, and hurried over to shake our hands. “Pretty nice of you to come, Tom. Never saw you go to no dance before. Ellen! Oh, Ellen! Why don't you git up, and come and shake hands with your guests?”

Ellen waddled over to us obediently, and shook hands in a limp way, that belied her strength. She interrupted herself to seize a dog that had nosed the door open, and entered. She caught him by the scruff of the neck with those same limp fingers, and he let out an expostulatory howl of agony as she dragged him to the door, and administered a kick with her moccasined toe that sent him flying out into the snow.

“You talk to Ellen,” Singer said. “I'm callin',” and signaled to the so-called orchestra, which sawed into the strains of “Buffalo Gals, Ain't Ye Comin' Out To-night.”

The feet beat rhythmically on the rough slab floor, and the white men lugubriously executed jig steps on the corners when called upon to “Balance all,” and lifted the screaming squaws from the floor, and whirled them bodily when admonished to “swing your pardners.” The bucks danced sedately, as usual, and appeared to accept the amusement as extremely hard work, and a white man's innovation.

Over in one corner an old man threatened to disrupt the orchestra with an alarm clock he had evidently traded for, and which he kept winding to set off the bell. No sooner would its clangor die away than he would gravely start it going again, as if he regarded himself a most valuable adjunct to the music. And I am not sure but he was, for no caterwauling of sound could have been worse than that which emanated from the band.

“See those two fellers dancin'?” Jim asked, catching my arm, and holding his head closer that he might speak in my ear direct.

He pointed at two white men who were in one of the sets, and I have looked upon few harder faces. I had never seen them before, although I thought I knew every white man in the district.

“Yes. What about them?”

“That's Royce and Sparhawk. Ever hear of 'em before?”

The names meant nothing to me, and I said so.

“Well, they're two of the men tried for dynamitin' in the Cœur d'Alene riots. They got off because there wasn't evidence against 'em; but everybody knows they was guilty. Bad medicine, both of 'em! Rob anything from a stage to a sluice box, and a man's life wouldn't stand between them and a dollar.”

The music had stopped between two numbers, and Jim waited patiently for it to renew itself, as if fearing that his comments might be overheard. The instant it began he again mumbled rapidly in my ear:

“There's been a killin' or two on the trail out of Dawson, and while I don't say these fellers did it, they found it mighty convenient to get out and across the line, where there ain't no Mounted Police. I passed their camp on the way down, and you can bet I didn't let 'em know I was carryin' mail. I'm afraid of 'em. They're up to somethin', you can bet!”

I watched them more closely after that, and was impressed by two things—their swaggering bravado, and their shifting eyes. They were heavy men, with the shoulders of those who have worked much underground, stooped, and heavily muscled about the deltoids, and their movements were heavy and sure. One of them stopped after the set was over, made his way outside, and returned with a jug of hutchnu, which he passed around, boisterously insistent that every one should have a drink with him.

To avoid offense, Kentuck, Jim, and I each lifted the jug to his lips. I turned to see who would follow us in this participation of hospitality, and saw behind me the Hatchet. I had not observed him before. He did not unfold his arms, and shook his head, scowling from his fierce black eyes at Royce, who had proffered it.

“You're the first Injun I ever saw that wouldn't drink when it didn't cost him nothin',” the Cœur d'Alener snarled, as if looking for trouble. “You ain't too cussed good to drink with a white man, air you?”

“No; but that doesn't imply that I'd drink with you.”

It took a long time for the significance of that answer to penetrate the befuddled brain of Royce, or else he was surprised at hearing such perfect English from an Indian. He suddenly flared up, and, holding the jug forward with one hand, put the other behind him.

“You'll drink with me, and do it now!” he roared.

What the outcome might have been cannot be told, for the Sioux stood there without wavering, his arms still folded across his great chest, and his eyes unflinching and baleful; but the only man in the room who would perhaps have dared to thus interfere, Sparhawk, jumped behind his partner, caught the hand behind, and gave so sharp a jerk that Royce was whirled squarely around. A heavy gun rattled to the floor, and Sparhawk calmly picked it up and slipped it into his own shirt.

“You fool!” he growled, in a hoarse monotone. “What ails you? Take a fall to yourself. No trouble of any kind here! See? Go on, and shut your trap!”

As if brought to his senses by something suggestive in the speech, Royce lowered his hands, and started to the next guest.

“It's a good thing for you I didn't put it over,” he said, over his shoulder, with a wolfish grin at the Hatchet.

“Perhaps,” the latter sneered, exposing the silver tooth. And there was that in his tone that made me believe it was far better for Mr. Royce, for I believe the Hatchet would have killed him before he could have drawn a breath had that hand with a gun ever started to raise.

The villainous liquor appeared to warm the dancers to further exertions. On Singer's insistence, we danced. Kentuck's partner was one of the visiting “kinswomen.” She had the boldest eyes I ever saw, and she was not without a sort of reckless, wild beauty. She was tall, for a native, and danced with a grace that was almost pantherish. She wore what appeared to be a cast-off silk dress such as dance-hall women sometimes wore. Kentuck had her as a partner in the waltz, and I was surprised to see how well she succeeded. He came back laughing and panting, and said: “What did you think of the 'Big Chicken'?”

“Big Chicken! Is that her name?”

“I don't know; but that's what I called her, and she seemed to like it. She's an educated klootch—that is, in some ways. Been out at Juneau for three years. Long enough to have learned to believe that the mission teachers down at the Holy Cross are a lot of fools, and that about the only thing worth having is plenty of money. Look at that Sioux watching her!”

Truly the Hatchet's eyes were following her as she went round the room, and she, at least, had no objections to hutchnu, for she took the jug from beneath the fiddler's chair, hoisted it on her arm in a manner betokening experience, and took a long pull at its contents.

“Good girl!” boisterously applauded Royce, taking the jug from her hands and following her example, while the Hatchet again backed against the wall, and held his unwavering eyes on him with a look that I should not have cared to have bestowed on me.

“That buck'll get him yet, unless he gets the buck first,” Jim predicted in my ear. “Begins to look like heavy weather. Maybe we'd better pull out.”

I think we should have done so had not some of the natives by the wall begun one of their weird songs, called the “Song of the Canoe,” and they interested us, as they sat there swaying their bodies sidewise, and chanting in a monotonous voice. Others joined in, until the whole side of the room seemed bending in that almost hypnotic regularity of motion.

The singing became more boisterous as they took up another song, and the Big Chicken suddenly got to her feet, and plunged into the little back room of the cabin. She was gone several minutes, and when she returned two couples had begun waltzing, humming as they went, for the musicians had fallen into a pan of doughnuts, and refused to interrupt their feast. The Big Chicken emerged, looking full of Indian devilment; and Royce, seeing her, stumbled across the room, and caught her in his arms.

“This dance goes for me!” he vociferated, and they began to hum with the others, and circle, without reversing. There was some peculiarity in the sound of their shuffling feet. Something that went “clack, clack, clack!” Suddenly an old squaw at the side of the room leaped to her feet, and shrilled: “Ah-h-h-h!” Others sprang up, and drew back against the wall. The other couples stopped, but Royce and the Big Chicken went dizzily on, and the sound was more audible in the silence that seemed to have stopped other sound. All around me natives were straining forward, and, following their direction, I, too, looked.

In the dull light, as she whirled and her short skirts lifted, something at her feet shone gleaming. It was my turn to be held spellbound, for she was dancing, heavily and noisily, in the moccasins of red gold.