Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1912 — BURNING DAYLIGHT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BURNING DAYLIGHT

by JACK LONDON

Authod Or The Call Or Tee MldL "Mete Lang* 'LLaw/nEdeh frc Illustrations By Dearborn Melvill

(Copyright, 1910, by the New York I b raid Company.) (Copyright. 1919, by the MacMillan Company

CHAPTER VI. It was held by the thousands of Imre-worshipping chechaquos that Daylight was a than absolutely without fear. But Bettles and Dan MacDonald and other sourdoughs shook their heads and laughed as they mentioned women, And they Were right,. He. had ■always been afraid of them from the time, himself a lad of seventeen, when Queen . Anne; or Juneau.. made open and i'blieu'qus ~*e to him. I'or that matter. La never had known -women.’ Bern in a mininc-camp where .they were rare and mystt t Jous. having no sis-ig A.-.', bis mother dying while he was .anyinfenT.-. he had never been in contart v;-h them.•. ' B-t it let: to the Virgin to give him rina'i irjzht. S:.- ‘ -1 tme ..:r...- .dead in her cat-in: A Shot through the- head had done it,•and she had left no.message no explanation. Then came the talk. Some '■vjt. vo- ng -. •’ :.ic < m m.. < llt a Vase of tqp much Daytig; ■. ' She had killed herself I ■■ ause of him. Everybody kt, • this, and said so. The cor.respondents wrote it up, and Once mote Burning Daylight. King of the Klondike, was sensationally featured in the Sunday supplements of the Lpited States. The Virgin hat btraigntened up. so the feature-stories ran, and Correctly so. Never had she ‘entered a Dawson City dance-hall. M hen she first arrived from Circle City, she had earned her living by Washing clothes.... Next, she. had bought, a sewing-machine and made men’s drill parkas, fur caps, and moosehide mittens. Then she had gone as a clerk into the First Yukon Bank. All this, and more, was known and fold, though one and all were agreed that Daylight, while a the cause, had been the innocent causd of her untimely end. And the worst of it was that Daylight knew it was true. Always would he remember that last night he had seen her. He had thought nothing of it at the time: but, looking hack, he was haunted I'y every little thing that had happened. In the light of the tragic event, he could understand everything-—her qUe'-mss, that calm

• °rtih;de as ii al? wxi/g mj<- ticns of L-irg hid be-.n s cotb.i o’" were gone, and th it certain < he real •vs< r-e~- a'..-nt ail : H;?» <?<,! aml dor- that had been a! - , e—t n ;i?e~na!'. H-* fen •gr her- d the wry ,-he had looX-t hi' !v-”' ?•:■. i■ - Ir-h d Jivhti: be narrated Mickey Dolan’s mistake in staking the fraction on Sk< ckurn Gub-h. Her ij.-'ghtet had been lightly joyous, while at the came time it had lacked its t^Lo-iin •• ro' mae-'-. Not that she h? ’:b«”* Xi—n-,-, . r.r > c-’tk. slued. On the contrary. she had been so patently content, so filled with peace. Sb» had fooled him, fool that he was. He had even thought th"’ night that her foeifng for him had passed;, and he bad . taken delight in the thought, and caught visions of the satisfying future friendship that would be theirs with this perturbing love out of the way

And then, when he stood at the door, cap in hand, and said good night. It had struck him at the time as a funny and embarrassing thing, her bending over his hand and kissing it. He had felt like a fool, but he shivered how, when he looked back on it and felt again the touch of her lips on hihand. She was saying good-by. ar eternal good-by, and he had never guessed At that very moment, am for all the moments of the evening, coolly and deliberately. as he well knew her way, «?he had been resolved to die. If he had only known it! Untouched by the contagious malady himself, nevertheless he would have married her if he had had tbe slightest ink.ing of what she contemplated! And yet he knew, furthermore, that hers was a stiff-kneed pride that would hot have permitted tret to accept marriage as an act of phi’anthropy. There had really been no saving her, after all. The love-disease had fastened upon her, ami she had been doomed from the first to perish of it.

six thousand spent the winter of lk?7.in Dawsen, work on the creeks went on apace, whi'e beyond the passes it was rbyorted that one hundred thousahd more were v-aiii>>g for the spring. Late one brief irfte Davlight, on the benches betwm i French Hi!l| and fehookum Hill. cave'-’ a wider vision of things, Apnea th him lay the richest part of Eldorado Creek, while up and down pQnrnwi he comd see for miles, it was- a •scene of a vast devastation. The hills, to t,hoir tops, had been shorn of trees, and their naked sides showed signs of goring and perforating that even the mantle of snow could not hide. Beneath him, in every, direction, w-er’e the cabin? of men. not many men were visible. A blanket of smoke filled the valleys and turned the gray da> to melancholy twilight. Smoke arose from a thousand holes, in the snow, where, dteep down on bed-rock, in the frozen muck and gravel, men crept and scratched and dug, and ever built more fires to brehk the grip of the frofct. Organization was what was needed.

he decided; and his quick imagination sketched Eldorado Creek, from mouth to source, and from mountain top to >"oii;:t;.jn top. in the hands of one capable management. Even steam-thaw-’ ing, a yet untried, hut bound to come, he saw would be a makeshift; What should be done was to hydraulic the yalley sides and benches, and then, on the cre- k htetom, to use gold-dredges. re was the very chance for another big kF;-a. He had wondered just « :• '’. as precisely .the; rea.cn for the Gmmenhammvrs. and the .big English seeding in their high-salaried e q rts. That was their scheme. That it;. they had. approached him for the.sale of v.orkhd-out.claims and tail-ii-.-.s. They were Content to Igt the small mine-owfiers gopher out what : - • 1 ' ! for. there would be mii- >’ . • And, gazing down on the smoky in- ■ n of crude effort, Dayhght outlined .game he would play, a game iii, which the Guggenhammers and the TF’. v.. ~ fl have to reckon with him.' But ate: g with the delight in the new concep-i >n ca:..'- a weariness. He was tired of the long Arctic years, and he was curious about the Outside —the great World of which he had heard Other men talk and of which he was as ignorant as a child. There were games out there to play. It was a larger table, and there was nd reason why he with his millions should not sit in and take a hand So it was, •hat afternoon on Skookum Hill, that he resolved to play this last best Klondike hand and pull tor the Outside. It < pok time, however. He put trusted :gents to work on .the heels of great ' Aperts, and on the creeks where they began to- buy he likewise bought. • ryvcr they tried to corner a work'Cd-out creek, they found him ’ -tiding in the ’.yay., owning blocks of ci ims.or artfully scattered claims that put ?.’! ’heir p’ans to naught. Followed wars, truces, compromises, vi ‘ ri s. and defeats By 1898, sixty - and men were on the Klondike, 1 ail their fortunes and affairs / 1 back and forth and w ere as- ’ th< t att! ~ Daylight -fought. .nd r "e tnd more the taste for the

" 'i ' - T * : " i ; > Daylight’s mouth. ! . ci_> v, • j. !’. lock 'd in grap- ’>’• wstn :!>. ;i Gugg< nhammers, ■■ stb'y t‘ •: eV rc- ■: .-.i ry.-:- was waged oa Ophir, the i. -veriest of moose-pas-tures. whose low-grade dirt was valuable m 1 >*<- of its vastness. The owner hi.n of a l.'ock of seven claims in the 1: ,t’ of it Daylight his grip, and f • ■ -.could not come to terms. Ihe G ignv’.mi mmer experts ccnclud- ' - : ' ig him to handle, and when they g vo hi fir an ui imaturn to that effect he accepted and bought them out The plan was his own, but he sent down to the Sates for .competent cngirccrs to carry it out. In the RinkaciUy watershed, eighty miles away, he built his rr-erveir. and for eighty p iles the huge woe den conduit carried the water across country to Ophir. Estimated at thrift millions, the reservoir ar d conduit cost nearer four. Ncr did he stop with this. Electric power plants were Installed, and his workings were lighted as well as run by elie’ri -i y. Other sourdoughs, who had struck it rich in excess of all their dreams, shook their heads gloomily, warned him that he would go broke, and declined to invest in so ex-

travagant venture, But Daylight ■ u i.edj and scid out the remainder oi his town-.--j. holdings. He sold at the ; li" height of the placer boom. V. h- r. h e prophesied to cionies, i'. the yioc.-jehorii Saloon, that within five years town lots in Dawson co dd rst be given away, w hile the cabins Would be chopped up for firewoc't, he was laughed at roundly, and assured that the mother-lode would be louud ere that time- But he weht ahead, when his need for lumber was finwhed, selling out his sawmills as well. Likewise, he began to get rid

of his scattered holdings on the various creeks, and without thanks to any One he finished his conduit, built his dredges, imported his machinery, and made l the gold of Ophir immediately accessible. And he, who five years before., had crossed over the divide from Indian River and threaded the silent wilderness*! his dogs packing Indian lashion, himself living Indian fashion on straight moose meat, now heard the hoarse whistles calling his hundreds of laborers to work, and watched them toil under the white glare of the arc-lamps. But having done the' thing! he was ready to depart. And when fie let the word go out, the Guggenhammers vied with the English concerns and with a new French company in bidding for Ophir and all its plant. The Guggenhammers hid highest, and the price they paid netted Daylight a clean million. It was current rumor that he was worth anywhere from twenty to thirty . millions. But lie alone knew just how he stood, and, that, with his last claim: sold and the table swept clean of his winnings, he had ridden his hunch to the tune of just a trifle over eleven millions. Jlis departure was a thing that passed into the history of the Yukon along With his other deeds. All the Yukon was his guest, Dawson the seat of the festivity. On that one It.: t night tip man’s dust save his own was good Drinks were not to be pur- < based. Every Saloon ran open, with extra relays of, exhausted bartenders, aii/1; thy. drinks were given away. A man who refused this' hospitality, and persisted in paying, found a dozen fights on his hands. The veriest, chechaquos rose up to defend the name of Daylight from such insult. And through it all, on moccasined feet, moved Daylight, hell-roaring Burning Daylight, OverspiHing with goqd nature and cahiaraderie, howling his fiewolf howl and claiming the night as his, bending men’s arms down on the bars, performing, feats of strength, his bronzed face flushed with drink, his black eyes flashing, clad in overalls and blanket coat, his ear-flaps dangling and his gaunt leied mittens swinging from the cord across the shoulders. But this time it was neither an ante nor a stake that he threw away, but a mere marker in the game that he-who held so many markers would not miss* <_■ (To be Continued.)

Through It Ail Moved, Daylight, Hell. Roaning, Burning Daylight.