It was for two reasons that Montana Kid discarded his "chaps" and Mexican spurs, and shook the dust of the Idaho ranges from his feet.In the first place, the encroachments of a steady, sober, and sternly moral civilization had destroyed the primeval status of the western cattle ranges, and refined society turned the cold eye of disfavor upon him and his ilk.In the second place, in one of its cyclopean moments the race had arisen and shoved back its frontier several thousand miles.Thus, with unconscious foresight, did mature society make room for its adolescent members.True, the new territory was mostly barren; but its several hundred thousand square miles of frigidity at least gave breathing space to those who else would have suffocated at home.
Montana Kid was such a one.Heading for the sea-coast, with a haste several sheriff's posses might possibly have explained, and with more nerve than coin of the realm, he succeeded in shipping from a Puget Sound port, and managed to survive the contingent miseries of steerage sea-sickness and steerage grub.He was rather sallow and drawn, but still his own indomitable self, when he landed on the Dyea beach one day in the spring of the year.
Between the cost of dogs, grub, and outfits, and the customs exactions of the two clashing governments, it speedily penetrated to his understanding that the Northland was anything save a poor man's Mecca.So he cast about him in search of quick harvests.
Between the beach and the passes were scattered many thousands of passionate pilgrims.These pilgrims Montana Kid proceeded to farm.At first he dealt faro in a pine-board gambling shack; but disagreeable necessity forced him to drop a sudden period into a man's life, and to move on up trail.Then he effected a corner in horseshoe nails, and they circulated at par with legal tender, four to the dollar, till an unexpected consignment of a hundred barrels or so broke the market and forced him to disgorge his stock at a loss.After that he located at Sheep Camp, organized the professional packers, and jumped the freight ten cents a pound in a single day.In token of their gratitude, the packers patronized his faro and roulette layouts and were mulcted cheerfully of their earnings.But his commercialism was of too lusty a growth to be long endured; so they rushed him one night, burned his shanty, divided the bank, and headed him up the trail with empty pockets.
Ill-luck was his running mate.He engaged with responsible parties to run whisky across the line by way of precarious and unknown trails, lost his Indian guides, and had the very first outfit confiscated by the Mounted Police.Numerous other misfortunes tended to make him bitter of heart and wanton of action, and he celebrated his arrival at Lake Bennett by terrorizing the camp for twenty straight hours.Then a miners'
meeting took him in hand, and commanded him to make himself scarce.He had a wholesome respect for such assemblages, and he obeyed in such haste that he inadvertently removed himself at the tail-end of another man's dog team.This was equivalent to horse-stealing in a more mellow clime, so he hit only the high places across Bennett and down Tagish, and made his first camp a full hundred miles to the north.
Now it happened that the break of spring was at hand, and many of the principal citizens of Dawson were travelling south on the last ice.These he met and talked with, noted their names and possessions, and passed on.He had a good memory, also a fair imagination; nor was veracity one of his virtues.
Dawson, always eager for news, beheld Montana Kid's sled heading down the Yukon, and went out on the ice to meet him.No, he hadn't any newspapers; didn't know whether Durrant was hanged yet, nor who had won the Thanksgiving game; hadn't heard whether the United States and Spain had gone to fighting; didn't know who Dreyfus was; but O'Brien? Hadn't they heard? O'Brien, why, he was drowned in the White Horse; Sitka Charley the only one of the party who escaped.Joe Ladue? Both legs frozen and amputated at the Five Fingers.And Jack Dalton? Blown up on the "Sea Lion"with all hands.And Bettles? Wrecked on the "Carthagina," in Seymour Narrows,--twenty survivors out of three hundred.And Swiftwater Bill? Gone through the rotten ice of Lake LeBarge with six female members of the opera troupe he was convoying.Governor Walsh? Lost with all hands and eight sleds on the Thirty Mile.
Devereaux? Who was Devereaux? Oh, the courier! Shot by Indians on Lake Marsh.
So it went.The word was passed along.Men shouldered in to ask after friends and partners, and in turn were shouldered out, too stunned for blasphemy.By the time Montana Kid gained the bank he was surrounded by several hundred fur-clad miners.When he passed the Barracks he was the centre of a procession.At the Opera House he was the nucleus of an excited mob, each member struggling for a chance to ask after some absent comrade.On every side he was being invited to drink.Never before had the Klondike thus opened its arms to a che-cha-qua.All Dawson was humming.Such a series of catastrophes had never occurred in its history.Every man of note who had gone south in the spring had been wiped out.
The cabins vomited forth their occupants.Wild-eyed men hurried down from the creeks and gulches to seek out this man who had told a tale of such disaster.The Russian half-breed wife of Bettles sought the fireplace, inconsolable, and rocked back and forth, and ever and anon flung white wood-ashes upon her raven hair.The flag at the Barracks flopped dismally at half-mast.Dawson mourned its dead.
Why Montana Kid did this thing no man may know.Nor beyond the fact that the truth was not in him, can explanation be hazarded.