Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1912 — BURNING DAYLIGHT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BURNING DAYLIGHT

BY JACK LONDON

"Mwrf Fang* Illustrations By Dearborn Meeyill

SYNOPSIS.

I—Elam Harnish, known ail through Alaska as "Burning Day“kbt.” cel «brates his 30th birthday with A f rle ndly crowd of miners at the Circle City Tivoli. He is a general favorite, a £,® ro ®-nd a pioneer in the new gold fields. The dance leads to heavy gambling in t Whlch over <IOO,OOO is staked. Harnish Joses his money and his mine but wins the mall contract of the district. CHAPTER Daylight starts <5n j , t r ’P to deliver the mail with dogs and sledge. He tells his friends that the b, B_ gold strike will soon be on rvov e T intends to be In it at the start. '' Ith Indian attendants and dogs he dips over the bank and down the frozen Yukon and in the gray light is gone. CHAPTER lll.—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 ne 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 Harnish 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 ■iter {prtune. One lucky investment enables him to defeat a great combination (Of capitalists In a vast mining deal. He determines to return to civilization qnd (gives a farewell celebration to his friends that is remembered as a kind of blaze of glory. CHAPTER Vll.—.The papers are full ids The King of the Klondike," and Daylight is feted by the money magnates of the country. They take him into a big Copper deal and the Alaskan pioneer finds himself amid the bewildering complications of high finance. CHAPTER VUI.-Daylight is buncoed -py the moneyed men and finds 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 partiners with a revolver in characteristic frontier style, he threatens to kill them if his money is not returned. They 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 XT.—He becomes an element In large investments on the Pacific coast and gets into the political ring. For a Test he goes to inspect one oftriis properties in the country and momentarily is attracted back ter the old life on the lonesome trail. CHAPTER Xll.—Daylight gets deeper and deenor into high finance in San Francisco. He makes frequent runs into the Country thus getting close to nature, but his xnlnd is still in the speculation trend Verj’ often, however, the longing for the aimpie life well nigh overcomes him. CHAPTER XHT.—Dede Mason buys a horse and Daylight meets her in her saddle trips. He begins to indulge in horseback riding and manages to get into her company quite often. CHAPTER XIV.-One day Daylight asks Dede to go with him on one more ride, his purpose being to ask her to marry him. and they canter away, she trying to analyze her feelings.

CHAPTER XV.

Life at the office went on much the way it had always gone. In spite of their high resolve, there was a very measurable degree of the furtive in their meetings. In essence, these meetings were stolen. They did not ride out brazenly together in the face of the world. On the contrary, they met always unobserved, she riding across the many-gated backroad from Berkeley to meet him halfway. Nor did they ride on any save unfrequented roads, preferring to cross the second range of hills and travel among a church-going farmer folk who would scarcely have recognized even Daylight from his newspaper photographs. He found Dede a good horsewoman — (good not merely in riding, but in endurance. There were days when they covered sixty, seventy, and even eighty miles; nor did Dede ever claim any day too long, nor—another strong recommendation to Daylight—did the hardest day ever see the slightest chafe of the chestnut sorrel’s back. “A sure enough hummer,” was Daylight’s stereotyped but ever enthusiastic verdict to himself. His lifelong fear of woman had originated out of nonunderstanding and had also prevented him from reaching any understanding. Dede on horseback, Dede gathering poppies on a summer hillside. Dede taking down dictation in her swift shorthand strokes —all this was comprehensible to him. But he did not know the Dede who so quickly changed from mood to mood, the Dede who refused steadfastly to ride with him and then suddenly, consented, the Dede in whose eyes the golden glow forever waxed and waned \ and whispered hints and messages that were not lor his ears. In all such things he saw the glimmering profundities of sex, acknowledged their lure, and accepted them as Incomprehensible. But through It all ran the golden thread of love. At first he had been content just to ride with Dede and to be on comradely terms with her; but the desire and the need for her Increased. The more he knew of her, the higher was his appraisal. Had ■she been reserved and haughty with him. or been merely a giggling. slm-

poring creature of a’ woman, It would have been different. Instead, she amazed him with her simplicity and wholesomeness, with her great store of comradellness. The latter was the unexpected. He had never looked upon woman- in that way. Woman, the toy; woman, the harpy; woman, the necessary wife and mother of the race’s offspring—all this had been his expectation and understanding of woman. But woman, the comrade and playfellow’ and joyfellow’—this was what Dede had surprised him in. And the more she became worth while, the more ardently his love burned, unconsciously shading his voice with caresses, and with equal unconsciousness flaring up signal fires in his eyes. Nor was she blind to it, yet, like many women before her, she thought to play with the pretty fire and escape the consequent conflagration,” “Winter will soon be coming on.” she said regretfully, and w’ith provocation, one day, “and then there won’t be any more riding.” “But I must see you in the winter just the same,” he cried hastly. She shook her head. “I’ve been pretty good,” he declared. “I leave it to you if I haven’t. It’s been pretty hard, too, I can tell you. You just think it over. Not once have I said a word about love to you, and me loving you all the time. That’s going some for a man that’s used to having his own way. I’m somewhat of a rusher w’hen it comes to traveling. I reckon I’d rush God Almightly if it came to a race over the ice. And yet I didn’t rush you. I guess this fact is an indication of how’ much I do love you. Of course I want you to marry me. Have I said a word about it, though? Nary a chirp, nary a flutiter. I’ve been quiet and good, though it’s almost made me sick at times, this keeping quiet. I haven’t asked you to marry me.' I’m not asking you now. Oh, not but what you satisfy me. I sure know you’re the wife for me. But how about myself ? Do you know’ me well enough to know’ your own mind?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, and I ain’t going to take chances on it now. You’ve got to know for sure whether you think you could get along with me or not, and I’m playing a slow conservative game. I ain’t a-going to lose for overlooking my hand.” This was love-making of a sort beyond Dede’s experience. Nor had she ever heard of anything like it. • “So you see,” he urged, “just for a square deal we l ve got to see some more of each other this winter. Most likely your mind ain’t made up yet—” “But It is,” she Interrupted. “I wouldn’t dare permit myself to care for you. Happiness, for me, would not lie that way. I like you, Mr. Harnish, and all that, but it can never be more than that.”

“It’s because you don’t like my way of living,” he charged, thinking in his own mind of the sensational joy-rides and general profligacy with which the newspapers had credited him —thinking this, and wondering whether or not, in maiden modesty, she would disclaim knowledge of it. To his surprise, her answer was flat and uncompromising. “No; I don’t.” "I know I’ve been brash on some of those rides that got into the papers,” he began his defence, "and that I’ve been traveling with a lively crowd —” “I don’t mean that,” she said, 1 “though I know about it, too, and can’t say that I like it. But it is your life in general, your business. There are women in the world who could marry a inan like you and be hippy, but I couldn’t And the more I cared for such a man, the more unhappy I should be. You see, my unhappiness, in turn, would tend to make him unhappy. I should make a mistake, and he would make an equal mistake, though his would not be so hard on him because he would still have his business." “Business’” Daylight gasped. “What’s wrong with my business? I play fair and square. There’s nothing underhand about it, which can’t be said of most businesses, whether of the big corporations or of the cheating; lying, little corner-grocerymen. I play the straight rules of the game, and I don’t have to lie or cheat or break my word.” “Don’t you see,” he went on, “the whole game is a gamble. Everybody gambles In one way or another. The farmer gambles against the weather and the market on his crops. So does the "United States Steel Corporation. The business of lots of men is straight robbery of the poor people. But I’ve never made that my business. You know that. I’ve always gone after the robbers.” “I missed my point,” she admitted. “Wait a minute." And for a space they rode in science. “I see it more clearly than I can state it, but it’s something like this. There is legtimate work, and there’s work that —well, that isn’t legitimate. The farmer works the soil and produces sraln. He’s making something

that is good for humanity. He actually, in a way, creates something, the grain that will fill the mouths of the hungry.” “And then the railroads and marketriggers and the rest proceed to rob him of that same . grain,” Daylight broke In. s “There ain’t much difference between playing halfway robber like the railroad hauling that farmer’s wheat to market, and playing all robber and robbing the robbers like I do. And, besides, halfway robbery Is too slow a game for me to sit In. You don’t win quick enough for me?’ “But 'what do you want to win for?” Dede demanded. “You have millions and millions, already; yrhy can’t you do good with all your money?” Daylight laughed. ‘.‘Doing good with your money! Ain’t it funny,i.to go around with brass knuckles and a big club breaking folks’ heads and taking their money away from them until I’ve got a pile, and then, repenting of my ways, going around and bandaging up the heads the other robbers are breaking? I leave it to you. That’s what doing good wi«|k money amounts to. Every once in a while some robber turns softhearted and takes to driving an ambulance. That’s what Carnegie did. He smashed heads in pitched battles at Homestead, regular wholesale headbreaker he was, held up the suckers for a few hundred million, and now he goes around dribbling it back to them. Funny? I leave it to you.” He rolled a cigarette and watched her half curiously, half amusedly. His replies and harsh generalizations of a harsh school were disconcerting, and she came back to her earlier position. “I can’t argue tvith you, and you know that. No matter how right a woman is, men have such a way about them —well, what they say sounds most convincing, and yet the woman Is still certain they are wrong. But there is one thing, the creative joy; and it’s a higher joy than mere gambling. Haven’t you ever made things yourself—a log cabin up in the Yukon, or a canoe, or raft, or something? And don’t you remember how satisfied you w’ere, how good you felt, while you were doing It and after you had It done?” - • While she spoke his memory was busy with the associations she recalled. He saw the deserted flat on the river bank by the Klondike, and he saw the log cabins and warehouses spring up. and all the log structures he had built, and his sawmills working night and day on three shifts. “Why, dog-gone it. Miss Mason, you’re right—in a way. I’ve built hundreds of houses up there, and I remember I was proud and glad to see them go up. I’m proud now, when I remember them. And there’ was Ophir—the most God-forsaken moosepasture of a creek you ever laid eyes on. I made that into the big Ophir. Why, I ran the water in there from the Rlnkabiily, eighty miles away. They, all said I couldn’t, but I did it, and I did it by myself. The dam* and the flume cost me four million. But you should have seen that Ophjr—pow-‘ er plants, electric lights, and hundreds of men on the pay-roll, working night and day. I guess I do get an

inkling of what you mean by making a thing. I made Ophir, and she was a hummer.” “And you won something there that was more than mere money,” Dede encouraged. “Now do you know what I would do if I had lots of money and simply had to go on playing at business? Take all the southerly and westerly slope of these bare hills. I’d buy them in and plant eucalyptus on them. I’d do it for the joy of doing it anyway; but suppose I had that gambling twist in me which you talk about, why, I’d do it just the same and make money out of the trees. And there’s my other point again. Instead of raising the price' of coal without adding an ounce of coal to the market supply, I’d be making thousands and thousands of cords of firewood —making something where nothing was before. And everybody who ev;er crossed on the ferries would look up at these forested hills and be made glad. Who was made glad by your adding four dollars a ton to Rock Wells? It was Daylight’s turn to be silent for a time while she waited an answer. “Would you rather I did things like that?” he asked at last/’ “It would be better for the world, and better for you,” she answered non-committally « (To be Continued.)

“I Like You, Mr. Harnish, and That Is All.”