The Yukon Trail: A Tale of the NorthRaine, William MacLeod
General
The Yukon Trail: A Tale of the North
Raine, William MacLeod
Western stories; Yukon River Valley (Yukon and Alaska) -- Fiction
Elliot tried to settle back to sleep, but after two or three ineffectual
efforts gave it up. He rose and did one or two setting-up exercises to
limber his joints. The first of these flashed the signal to his brain
that he was stiff and sore. This brought to mind the fight on the
hurricane deck, and he smiled. His face was about as mobile as if it
were in a plaster cast. It hurt every time he twitched a muscle.
The young man stepped to the looking-glass. Both eyes were blacked, his
lip had been cut, and there was a purple weal well up on his left cheek.
He stopped himself from grinning only just in time to save another
twinge of pain.
"Some party while it lasted. I never saw more willing mixers. Everybody
seemed anxious to sit in except Mr. Wally Selfridge," he explained to
his reflection. "But Macdonald is the class. He's there with both right
and left. That uppercut of his is vicious. Don't ever get in the way of
it, Gordon Elliot." He examined his injuries more closely in the glass.
"Some one landed a peach on my right lamp and the other is in mourning
out of sympathy. Oh, well, I ain't the only prize beauty on board this
morning." The young man forgot and smiled. "Ouch! Don't do that, Gordon.
Yes, son. 'There's many a black, black eye, they say, but none so bright
as mine.' Now isn't that the truth?"
He bathed, dressed, and went out on the deck.
Early though he was, one passenger at least was up before him. The
young woman he had noticed last evening with the magazine was doing a
constitutional. A slight breeze was stirring, and as she moved against
it the white skirt clung first to one knee and then the other, moulding
itself to the long lines of her limbs with exquisite grace of motion.
It was as though her walk were the expression of a gallant and buoyant
personality.
Irish he guessed her when the deep-blue eyes rested on his for an
instant as she passed, and fortified his conjecture by the coloring of
the clear-skinned face and the marks of the Celtic race delicately
stamped upon it.
The purser came out of his room and joined Elliot. He smiled at sight of
the young man's face.
"Your map's a little out of plumb this morning, sir," he ventured.
"But you ought to see the other fellow," came back Gordon boyishly.
"I've seen him--several of him. We've got the best collection of bruises
on board I ever clapped eyes on. I've got to give it to you and Mr.
Macdonald. You know how to hit."
"Oh, I'm not in his class."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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