Smoke Bellew | Page 6

your lecture on the hard has done
it," Kit said, at parting. "I just had to get away, somewhere, anywhere,
from O'Hara."
"Who is O'Hara? A Jap?"
"No; he's an Irishman, and a slave-driver, and my best friend. He's the
editor and proprietor and all-around big squeeze of the Billow. What he
says goes. He can make ghosts walk."
That night Kit Bellew wrote a note to O'Hara.
"It's only a several weeks' vacation," he explained. "You'll have to get
some gink to dope out instalments for that serial. Sorry, old man, but
my health demands it. I'll kick in twice as hard when I get back."

II.
Kit Bellew landed through the madness of the Dyea beach, congested
with thousand-pound outfits of thousands of men. This immense mass
of luggage and food, flung ashore in mountains by the steamers, was
beginning slowly to dribble up the Dyea valley and across Chilcoot. It
was a portage of twenty-eight miles, and could be accomplished only
on the backs of men. Despite the fact that the Indian packers had
jumped the freight from eight cents a pound to forty, they were
swamped with the work, and it was plain that winter would catch the
major portion of the outfits on the wrong side of the divide.
Tenderest of the tender-feet was Kit. Like many hundreds of others he
carried a big revolver swung on a cartridge-belt. Of this, his uncle,
filled with memories of old lawless days, was likewise guilty. But Kit
Bellew was romantic. He was fascinated by the froth and sparkle of the
gold rush, and viewed its life and movement with an artist's eye. He did
not take it seriously. As he said on the steamer, it was not his funeral.
He was merely on a vacation, and intended to peep over the top of the
pass for a 'look see' and then to return.
Leaving his party on the sand to wait for the putting ashore of the
freight, he strolled up the beach toward the old trading post. He did not
swagger, though he noticed that many of the be-revolvered individuals
did. A strapping, six-foot Indian passed him, carrying an unusually
large pack. Kit swung in behind, admiring the splendid calves of the
man, and the grace and ease with which he moved along under his
burden. The Indian dropped his pack on the scales in front of the post,
and Kit joined the group of admiring gold-rushers who surrounded him.
The pack weighed one hundred and twenty pounds, which fact was
uttered back and forth in tones of awe. It was going some, Kit decided,
and he wondered if he could lift such a weight, much less walk off with
it.
"Going to Lake Linderman with it, old man?" he asked.

The Indian, swelling with pride, grunted an affirmative.
"How much you make that one pack?"
"Fifty dollar."
Here Kit slid out of the conversation. A young woman, standing in the
doorway, had caught his eye. Unlike other women landing from the
steamers, she was neither short-skirted nor bloomer-clad. She was
dressed as any woman travelling anywhere would be dressed. What
struck him was the justness of her being there, a feeling that somehow
she belonged. Moreover, she was young and pretty. The bright beauty
and colour of her oval face held him, and he looked over-long--looked
till she resented, and her own eyes, long-lashed and dark, met his in
cool survey.
From his face they travelled in evident amusement down to the big
revolver at his thigh. Then her eyes came back to his, and in them was
amused contempt. It struck him like a blow. She turned to the man
beside her and indicated Kit. The man glanced him over with the same
amused contempt.
"Chechaquo," the girl said.
The man, who looked like a tramp in his cheap overalls and dilapidated
woollen jacket, grinned dryly, and Kit felt withered though he knew not
why. But anyway she was an unusually pretty girl, he decided, as the
two moved off. He noted the way of her walk, and recorded the
judgment that he would recognize it after the lapse of a thousand years.
"Did you see that man with the girl?" Kit's neighbour asked him
excitedly. "Know who he is?"
Kit shook his head.
"Cariboo Charley. He was just pointed out to me. He struck it big on
Klondike. Old timer. Been on the Yukon a dozen years. He's just come
out."

"What's chechaquo mean?" Kit asked.
"You're one; I'm one," was the answer.
"Maybe I am, but you've got to search me. What does it mean?"
"Tender-foot."
On his way back to the beach Kit turned the phrase over and over. It
rankled to be called tender-foot by a slender chit of a woman.
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