Pardners | Page 4

in ninety days, so you'll get news from home by the first of March. Windy Jim will go. He'd leave a good job and a warm camp any time to hit the trail. Just hitch up the dogs, crack a whip, and yell 'Mush on!' and he'll get the snow-shoe itch, and water at the mouth for hardship.'
"Not being house-broke and tame myself, I ain't authority on the joys of getting mail from home, but, next to it, I judge, comes writing to your family. Anyhow, the boy shined up like new money, and there was from one to four million pages in his hurried note. I don't mean to say that he was grouchy at any time. No, sir! He was the nickel-plated sunbeam of the whole creek. Why, I've knowed him to do the cooking for two weeks at a stretch, and never kick--and _wash the dishes, too_,--which last, as anybody knows, is crucifyin'er than that smelter test of the three Jews in the Scripture. Underneath all of his sunshine, though, I saw hints of an awful, aching, devilish, starvation. It made me near hate the woman that caused it.
"He was a wise one, too. I've seen him stirring dog-feed with one hand and spouting 'Gray's Elegy' with the other. I picked up a heap of knowledge from him, for he had American history pat. One story I liked particular was concerning the origin of placer mining in this country, about a Greaser, Jason Somebody, who got the gold fever and grub-staked a mob he called the Augerknots--carpenters, I judge, from the mess they made of it. They chartered a schooner and prospected along Asy Miner, wherever that is. I never seen any boys from there, but the formation was wrong, like Texas, probably, 'cause they sort of drifted into the sheep business. Of course, that was a long ways back, before the '49 rush, but the way he told it was great.
"Well, two weeks after Windy left we worked out of that rich spot and drifted into barren ground. Instead of a fortune, we'd sunk onto the only yellow spot in the whole claim. We cross-cut in three places, and never raised a colour, but we kept gophering around till March, in hopes.
"'Why did I write that letter?' he asked one day. 'I'd give anything to stop it before it gets out. Think of her disappointment when she hears I'm broke!'
"'Nobody can't look into the ground,' says I. 'I don't mind losin' out myself, for I've done it for twenty years and I sort of like it now, but I'm sorry for the girl.'
"'It means another whole season,' he says. 'I wanted to see them this summer, or bring them in next fall.'
"'Sufferin' sluice-boxes! Are you plumb daffy? Bring a woman into the Yukon--and a little baby.'
"'She'd follow me anywhere. She's awful proud; proud as a Kentucky girl can be, and those people would make your uncle Lucifer look like a cringing cripple, but she'd live in an Indian hut with me.'
"'Sure! And follerin' out the simile, nobody but a Siwash would let her. If she don't like some other feller better while you're gone, what're you scared about?'
"He never answered; just looked at me pityfyin', as much as to say, 'Well, you poor, drivelin, old polyp!'
"One day Denny, the squaw-man, drove up the creek:
"'Windy Jim is back with the mail,' says he, and we hit for camp on the run. Only fifteen mile, she is, but I was all in when we got there, keepin' up with Justus. His eyes outshone the snow-glitter and he sang--all the time he wasn't roasting me for being so slow--claimed I was active as a toad-stool. A man ain't got no license to excite hisself unless he's struck pay dirt--or got a divorce.
"'Gi'me my mail, quick!' he says to Windy, who had tinkered up a one-night stand post-office and dealt out letters, at five dollars per let.'
"'Nothing doing,' says Windy.
"'Oh, yes there is,' he replies, still smiling; 'she writes me every week.'
"'I got all there was at Dawson,' Windy give back, 'and there ain't a thing for you!'
"I consider the tragedy of this north country lies in its mail service. Uncle Sam institutes rural deliveries, so the bolomen can register poisoned arrowheads to the Igorrotes in exchange for recipes to make roulade of naval officer, but his American miners in Alaska go shy on home news for eight months every year.
"That was the last mail we had till June.
"When the river broke we cleaned up one hundred and eighty-seven dollars' worth of lovely, yellow dust, and seven hundred and thirty-five dollars in beautiful yellow bills from the post.
"The first boat down from Dawson brought mail, and I stood beside him when he got his. He shook so he held on