Adventure stories, American; American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories; Western stories
There were a lot of things I didn’t
know, but was soon to know—for instance, that the pair were not yet
married. Inside half an hour preparations for the marriage took place.
What of the sick men in the main cabin, and of the crowded condition of
the _Golden Rocket_, the likeliest place for the ceremony was found
forward, on the lower deck, in an open space next to the rail and
gang-plank and shaded by the mountain of freight with the big box on top
and the sleeping dog beside it. There was a missionary on board, getting
off at Eagle City, which was the next step, so they had to use him quick.
That’s what they’d planned to do, get married on the boat.
“But I’ve run ahead of the facts. The reason Dave Walsh wasn’t on the
_Glendale_ was because he was on the _Golden Rocket_. It was this way.
After loiterin’ in Dawson on account of Flush of Gold, he went down to
Mammon Creek on the ice. And there he found Dusky Burns doing so well
with the claim, there was no need for him to be around. So he put some
grub on the sled, harnessed the dogs, took an Indian along, and pulled
out for Surprise Lake. He always had a liking for that section. Maybe
you don’t know how the creek turned out to be a four-flusher; but the
prospects were good at the time, and Dave proceeded to build his cabin
and hers. That’s the cabin we slept in. After he finished it, he went
off on a moose hunt to the forks of the Teelee, takin’ the Indian along.
“And this is what happened. Came on a cold snap. The juice went down
forty, fifty, sixty below zero. I remember that snap—I was at Forty
Mile; and I remember the very day. At eleven o’clock in the morning the
spirit thermometer at the N. A. T. & T. Company’s store went down to
seventy-five below zero. And that morning, near the forks of the Teelee,
Dave Walsh was out after moose with that blessed Indian of his. I got it
all from the Indian afterwards—we made a trip over the ice together to
Dyea. That morning Mr. Indian broke through the ice and wet himself to
the waist. Of course he began to freeze right away. The proper thing
was to build a fire. But Dave Walsh was a bull. It was only half a mile
to camp, where a fire was already burning. What was the good of building
another? He threw Mr. Indian over his shoulder—and ran with him—half a
mile—with the thermometer at seventy-five below. You know what that
means. Suicide. There’s no other name for it. Why, that buck Indian
weighed over two hundred himself, and Dave ran half a mile with him. Of
course he froze his lungs. Must have frozen them near solid. It was a
tomfool trick for any man to do. And anyway, after lingering horribly
for several weeks, Dave Walsh died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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