Pardners | Page 5

to the purser's window. Instead of a stack of squares overrun with female chiropody, there was only one for him--a long, hungry sport, with indications of a law firm in the northwest corner. It charmed him like a rattler. He seemed scared to open it. Two or three times he tried and stopped.
"'They're dead,' thinks I; and, sure enough, when he'd looked, I knew it was so, and felt for his hand. Sympathy don't travel by word of mouth between pardners. It's the grip of the hand or the look of the eye.
"'What cause?' says I.
"He turned, and s'help me, I never want to see the like again. His face was plumb grey and dead, like wet ashes, while his eyes scorched through, all dry and hot. Lines was sinkin' into it as I looked.
"'It's worse,' says he, 'unless it's a joke.' He handed me the dope: 'In re Olive Troop Morrow vs. Justus Morrow,' and a letter stating that out of regard for her feelings, and bein' a gentleman, he wasn't expected to cause a scandal, but to let her get the divorce by default. No explanation; no word from her; nothing.
"God knows what that boy suffered the next few weeks, but he fought it out alone. She was proud, but he was prouder. Her silence hurt him the worst, of course; but what could he do? Go to her? Fine! Both of us broke and in debt. Also, there's such a thing as diggin' deep enough to scrape the varnish off of a man's self-respect, leavin' it raw and shrinking. No! He done like you or me--let her have her way. He took off the locket and hid it, and I never heard her name mentioned for a year.
"I'd been up creek for a whip-saw one day, and as I came back I heard voices in the cabin. 'Some musher out from town,' thinks I, till something in their tones made me stop in my tracks.
"I could hear the boy's voice, hoarse and throbbing, as though he dragged words out bleeding, then I heard the other one laugh--a nasty, sneering laugh that ended in a choking rattle, like a noose had tightened on his throat.
"I jumped for the door, and rounding the corner, something near took me off my feet; something that shot through the air, all pretty and knickerbockery, with a two-faced cap, and nice brown leggin's. Also, a little camera was harnessed to it by tugs. It arose, displaying the face of R. Alonzo Struthers, black and swollen, with chips stickin' in it where he'd hit the woodpile. He glared at Morrow, and his lips foamed like a crab out of water.
"'I hope I'm not intrudin', I ventures.
"When the kid seen me, he says, soft and weak, like something ailed his palate:
"'Don't let me kill him, Billy.'"
[Illustration: "Don't let me kill him, Billy."]
"Struthers spit, and picked splinters forth from his complexion.
"'I told you for your own good. It's common gossip,' says he. 'Everybody is laughing at you, an--'
"Then I done a leap for life for the kid, 'cause the murder light blazed up white in his face, and he moved at the man like he had something serious in view.
"'Run, you idiot!' I yells to Struthers as I jammed the youngster back into the cabin. All of a sudden the gas went out of him and he broke, hanging to me like a baby.
"'It can't be,' he whispers. 'It can't be.' He throwed hisself on to a goods' box, and buried his face in his hands. It gripes me to hear a man cry, so I went to the creek for a pail of water.
"I never heard what Struthers said, but it don't take no Nick Carter to guess.
"That was the fall of the Fryin' Pan strike--do you mind it? Shakespeare George put us on, so me and the kid got in ahead of the stampede. We located one and two above discovery, and by Christmas we had a streak uncovered that was all gold. She was coarse, and we averaged six ounces a day in pick-ups. Man, that was ground! I've flashed my candle along the drift face, where it looked like gold had been shot in with a scatter-gun.
"We was cleaned up and had our 'pokes' at the post when the first boat from Dawson smoked 'round the bend.
"Now, in them days, a man's averdupoise was his abstract of title. There was nothing said about records and patentees as long as you worked your ground; but, likewise, when you didn't work it, somebody else usually did. We had a thousand feet of as good dirt as ever laid out in the rain; but there was men around drulin' to snipe it, and I knowed it was risky to leave. However, I saw what was