Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 May 1912 — BURNING DAYLIGHT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BURNING DAYLIGHT

BY JACK LONDON

Mwff Tang. Wapt/nEdTh Trc Illustrations By Dearborn Melvtu

(Copyright. 1910, by (CoDVright. 1910. by the MacMillan Company

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I.—Elam Harnish, known all through Alaska as “Burning Day--1 ce^ebrate * his 30th birthday with * friendly crowd of miners at the Circle City Tivoli. He is a general favorite, a hero and a pioneer in the new gold fields. The dance leads to heavy gambling in which over SIOO,OOO is staked. Harnish loses his money and his mine but wins the mall contract of the district. CHAPTER n.—Burning Daylight starts on his "trip to deliver the mail with dogs and sledge. He tells his friends that the big Yukon gold strike will soon be on ana he intends to be in it at the start, p ith Indian attendants and dogs he dips over the bank and down the frozen Yukon and in the gray light Is gone.

CHAPTER liL—Harnish makes a sensationally rapid run across country with the mail, appears at the Tivoli and there is another characteristic celebration. He has made a record against cold and exhaustion and is now ready to join his friends in a dash to the new gold fields. CHAPTER IV.—Harnish decides Where the gold will be found in the up-river district and buys two tons of flour, which he declares will be worth its weight In gold before the season is over. CHAPTER V.—When Daylight arrives with his heavy outfit of flour he finds the big flat desolate. A comrade discovers gold and Hamish reaps a rich harvest. He goes to Dawson, begins investing in corner lots and staking other miners and becomes the most prominent figure In the Klondike. CHAPTER Vl.—Hamish makes fortune after fortune. One lucky investment enables him to defeat a great combination of capitalists in a vast mining deal. He determines to return to civilisation qnd gives a farewell celebration to his friends that Is remembered as a kind of blaze of rlory. VH.—The papers are full of The King of the Klondike,” and Daylight is feted by the money magnates of the country. They take him into a big deal and the Alaskan pioneer finds himself amid the bewildering complications of high finance. —--x CHAPTER Vlll.—Daylight Is buncoed by the moneyed men and finds i that he has been led to Invest his eleven millions In a manipulated scheme. He goes to meet his disloyal business partners at their offices in New York City.

CHAPTER IX. —Confronting his partners with a revolver In characteristic I frontier style, he threatens to kill them If his money is not returned. Thev are cowed Into submission, return their stealings and Harnish goes back to San Francisco with his unimpaired fortune. CHAPTER X. —Daylight meets his fate In Dede Mason, a pretty stenographer with a crippled brother, whom she cares for. Harnish is much attracted towards her and Interested in her family affairs. CHAPTER XI. Daylight was in the thick of his spectacular and intensely bitter fight with the Coastwise Steam Navigation Company, and the liawaiian, Nicaraguan, and Pacific-Mexican Steamship Company. He stirred up a bigger muss than he had anticipated, and even he was astounded at the wide ramifications of the struggle and at the unexpected and incongruous interests that were drawn into it. Every ; newspaper in San Francisco turned j upon him. It was true, one or two of them had first intimated that they were open to subsidization, but Day- ' light’s judgment was that the situa- | tion did not warrant such expenditure. ! Up to this time the press had been i amusingly tolerant and good-naturedly \ sensational about him, but now he was to learn what virulent scurrilousness , an antagonized press was capable of. ' Every episode of his life was resurrected to serve as foundations for malicious fabrications. Daylight was frankly amazed at the new interpretation put upon all that he had accomplished and the deeds he had done. From an Alaskan hero he *was metamorphosed into an Alaskan bully, liar, desperado, and all-around “bad man.” The whole affair sa’nk to the deeper deeps of rancor and savageness. The poor woman who had killed herself was dragged out of her grave and paraded on thousands of reams of paper as a martyr and a victim to Daylight’s ferocious brutality. He was like a big bear raiding a bee-hive, and, regardless of the stings, he obstinately persisted in pawing for the honey. He gritted his teeth and struck back. Beginning with a raid on two steamship companies, it developed into a pitched battle with a city, state and continental coast line. Allied with him, on a splendid salary, with princely pickings thrown in, was a lawyer, Larry Hegan, a young Irishman with a reputation to make, and whose peculiar genius had been unrecognized until Daylight had picked up with him. It was Hegan who guided Daylight through the intricacies of modern politics, labor organization, and commercial and corporation law. It was Hegan, prolific of resource and suggestion, who opened Daylight’s eyes to undreamed-of possibilities in twentieth-century warfare; and it was Daylight, rejecting, accepting, and elaborating, who planned the campaigns and prosecuted them. With the Pacific coaSt, from Puget Sound to Panama, buzzing and humming, and with San Francisco furiously about his ears, the two big steamship companies had all the appearance of winning. It looked as if Burning Daylight was being beaten slowly to his knees. And then he struck —at the steamship companies, at San Francisco, at the whole Pacific coast. It was not much of a blow at first. A Christian Endeavor convention was being held in San Francisco, a row

was started by Express Drivers' Union No. 927 over the handling of a small heap of baggage at Ferry Building. A few heads were broken, a score of arrests made, and the baggage was delivered. No one would have guessed that behind this petty wrangle was the fine Irish hand of Hegan, made potent by the Klondike gold of Burning Daylight. It was an insignificant affair at best—or so it, seemed. But the Teamsters’ Union took up the quarrel, backed by the whole Water Front Federation. Step by step, the strike became involved. A refusal of cocks and waiters to serve scab teamsters or teamsters’ employers brought out the cocks and waiters. The butchers and meat cutters refused to handle meat destined for unfair restaurants. The combined Employers’ Associations put up a solid front, and found facing them tie 40,000 organized laborers of San Francisco. The restaurant bakers and the bakery wagon drivers struck, followed by the milkers, milk drivers and chicken pickers. The building trades asserted its position in unambiguous terms, and all San Francisco was in turmoil. But still, it was only San Francisco. Hegan’s intrigues were masterly, and Daylight’s campaign steadily developed. The powerful fighting organi-

zation known as the Pacific Slope Seaman’s Union refused to work vessels the cargoes of which were to be handled by scab longshoremen and freight handlers. The union presented its ultimatum, and then called a strike. This had been Daylight’s objective all the time. Every incoming coastwise vessel was boarded by the union officials and its crew sent ashore. And with the seamen went the firemen, the engineers and the sea cooks and waiters. Daily the number of idle steamers increased. It was impossible to get scab crews, for the men of the Seamen’s Union were fighters trained in the hard school of the sea, and when they went out it meant blood and death to scabs. This phase of the strike spread up and down the entire Pacific coast, until all the ports were filled with idle ships, and sea transportation was at a.standstill. The days and weeks dragged out, and the strike held. The Coastwise Steam Navigation Company and the Hawaiian, Nicaraguan, and Pacific-Mexican Steamship Company were tied up completely. The expenses of combating the strike were tremendous, and they were earning nothing, while daily the situation went from bad to worse, until “peace at any price” became the cry. And still there was no peace, until Daylight and his allies played out their hand, raked in the winnings, and allowed a goodly portion of a continent to resume business.

Daylight’s coming to ciyilization had not improved him. True, he wore better clothes, had learned slightly better manners, and spoke better English. But he had hardened, and at the expense of his old-time, whole-souled geniality. Even his human affiliations were descending. Playing a lone hand, contemptuous of most of the men with whom he played, lacking in sympathy or understanding of them, apd certainly independent of them, he found little in common with those to be encountered, say at the Alta-Pacific. In point of fact, when the battle with the steamship companies was at its height and his raid was inflicting incalculable damage on all business interests, he had been asked to resign from the Alta-Pacific. The idea had been rather to his liking, and he had found new quarters in clubs like the Riverside, organized and practically maintained by the city bosses. One week-end, feeling heavy and depressed and tired of the city and its ways, he obeyed the impulse of a whim that was later to play an important part in his life. The desire to get out of the city for a whiff of country air and for a change of scene was

the cause. Yet. tfo himself, ne maae the excuse of going to ,Glen Ellen for the purpose of inspecting a brickyard which Holdsworthy had sold him. He spent the night in the little country on Sunday morning, astride a saddle horse rented from the Glen Ellen butcher, rode out of the village. The brickyard whs close at hand on the flat beside the Sonoma Creek.

Resolving to have his fun first, and to look over the brickyard afterward, he rode up the hill, prospecting for a way cross country to get “to the knolls. He left the country road at the first gate he came to and cantered through a hayfield. The grain was waist-high on either side the wagonroad, and he sniffed the warm aroma of it with delighted nostrils. At the base of the knolls he encountered a tumble-down stake-and-rider fence. He tethered the horse and wandered on foot aniong the knolls. Their tops were crowned with century-old spruce trees, and thejr sides clothed with oaks and madronos and native holly. But to the perfect redwoods belonged the small but deep canyon that threaded its way among the knolls. Here he found no passage out for his horse, and leading the animal, he forced his way up the hillside. On the crest he came through an amazing thicket of velvet-trunked young madronos, and emerged on an open hillside that led down into a tiny va’ley. The sunshine was at first dazzling in its brightness, and he paused and rested, for he was panting from the exertion. Not of old had he known shortness of breath such as this, and muscles that so easily tired at a stiff climb. A tiny stream ran down the tiny valley through a tiny meadow that was carpeted knee-high with grass and blue and white Crossing the stream, Daylight followed a faint cattle trail over a low, rocky hill and through a wine-wooded forest of manzanita, and emerged upon another tiny valley, down which filtered another spring-fed, . meadowbordered streamlet.

"It sure beats country places and bungalows at Menlo Park,” he communed aloud; “and if ever I get the hankering for country life, it’s me for this every time.” An old wood-road lefl him to a clearing, where a dozen acres of grapes grew on wine-red soil. A cow-path, more trees and thickets, and he dropped down a hillside to the southeast exposure. Here, poised above a big forested canyon, and looking out upon Sonoma Valley, was a small farmhouse. With its barn and outhouses it snuggled into a nook in the hillside, which protected it from the west and north. It was the erosion from this hillside, he judged, that had formed the little level stretch of vegetable garden. The soil was fat and black, and there was water in plenty, for he saw several faucets running wide open. Forgotten was the brickyard. Nobody was at home, but Daylight dismounted and ranged the vegetable garden, eating strawberries and green peas, inspecting the old adobe barn and rusty plow and harrow, and rolling and smoking cigarettes while he watched the antics of several broods of young chicks and the mother hens.

Nothing could satisfy his holiday spirit now but the ascent of Sonoma Mountain. And here on the crest, three hours afterward, he emerged, tired and sweaty, garments torn and face and hands scratched, but with sparkling eyes and an unwonted zestfulness of expression. Pe felt the illicit pleasure of a schoolboy playing truant. The big gaming table of San Francisco seemed very far away. But there was more than Illicit pleasure in his mood. It was as though he were going through a sort of cleansing bath. No room here for all the sordidness, meanness and viciousness that filled the dirty pool of city existence. He was loath to depart, and it was not for an hour that he was able to tear himself away and take the descent of the mountain. Working out a new route just for the fun of it, late afternoon was upon him when he arrived back at the wooded knolls.

Daylight cast about for a trail, and found one leading down the side opposite to his ascent. Circling the base of the knoll, he picked up with his horse and rode on to the farmhouse. Sgioke was rising from the chimney, and he was quickly in conversation with a nervous, slender young man, who, he learned, was only a tenant on the ranch. How large was it? A matter of one hundred and eighty acres, though it seemed much larger. This was because it was so irregularly shaped. Yes, it included the clay-pit and all the knolls, and its boundary that ran along the big canyon was over a mile long. Oh, yes, he and his wife managed to scratch a living without working too hard. They didn’t have to pay much rent. Hillard, .the owner, depended on the Income from the clay-pit. Hillard was well off and had big ranches and vineyards down on the flat of the valley. The brickyard paid ten cents a cubic yard for the clay. As for the rest of the ranch, the land was good in patches, where it was cleared, like the vegetable garden and the vineyard, but the rest of it was too much up-and-down. “You’re not a farmer,” Daylight The young man laughed and shook his head. 1

“No; I’m a telegraph operator. But the wife and I decided to take a twoyears’ vacation, and . - ~ here we are. But the time’s about up. I’m going back into the office this fall after I get the grapes off.” As Daylight listened, there came to him a sudden envy of this young fellow living right in the midst of all this which Daylight had traveled through the last few hours. "What in thunder are you going back to the telegraph office for?” he demanded.

The young man smiled with a certain wistfulness. “Because we can’t get ahead here. . . (he hesitated an instant), “and because there are added expenses cohiing. The rent, small as it is, counts; and besides. I'm not strong enough to effectually farm the place. If I owned it, or if I were a real husky like you, I'd ask nothing better. Nor would the wife.” Again the wistful smile hovered on his face. “You see. we’re country born, and after bucking with cities for a few years, we kind of feel we like the country best. We’ve planned to get ahead, though, and then some day we’ll buy a patch of land and stay with it.” Daylight could not persuade himself to keep to the traveled roads ttiat day, and another cut across coun try to Glen Ellen brought him upon a canyon that so blocked his way, that he was glad to follow a friendly cowpath. This led him to a small frame cabin. The doors and windows were open, and a cat was nursing a litter of kittens in the doorway, but no one seemed at home. He descended the trail that evidently crossed the canyon. Part way down, he met an old man coming. up through the sunset In his hand he carried a pail of foamy milk. He wore no hat, and in his face, framed with snow-white hair and beard, was the ruddy glow and content of the passing summer day. Daylight thought that he had never seen so contented looking a being. "How old are you, daddy?” he queried.

“Eighty-four,” was the reply. “Yes, sty-ree, eighty-four, and spryer than most.” “You must a’ taken good care of yourself," Daylight suggested. “I don’t know about that. I ain’t loafed none. I walked across the plains with an ox team and fit Injuns in ’sl, and I was a family man with seven youngsters. I reckon I was as old then as you are now, or pretty nigh on to it.” “Don’t you find it lonely here?” The old man shifted the pail of milk and reflected. *

“That all depends,” he said oracularly. “I ain’t never been lonely except when the old wife died. Some fellers are lonely in a crowd, and I’m one of them. That's the only time I’m lonely, is when I go to 'Frisco. But I don’t go no more, thank you ’most to death. This is good enough for me. I’ve been right here in this valley since ’s4—one of the first settlers after the Spaniards." The old man chuckled, and Daylight rode on, singularly at peace with himself and all the world. It seemed that the old contentment of trail and camp, he had known on the Yukon had come back to him. He could not shake from his eyes the picture of the old pioneer coming up the trail through the sunset light. He was certainly going some for eighty-four. The thought of following his example entered Daylight’s mind, but the big game of San Francisco vetoed the idea. r (To be Continued.)

“It Sure Beats Country Places and Bungalows at Menlo Park," He Communed Aloud.

A Sudden Envy of This Young Fellow Came Over Daylight.