Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1912 — BURNING DAYLIGHT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BURNING DAYLIGHT

By JACK LONDON

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(Copyright. 1910, by the New York Hfirald Company ) (Copyright. 1910, by the MacMillan Company.

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I.—Elans Harnish, known through Alaska as "Burning Daylight, ' celebrstfcs his 3?th 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 cance leads to heavy gambling in which over flOiyW is staked. Harnish loses his money and his mine but wins the mail contract of the district. CHAPTER II —Burning Daylight starts cn. his trip to deliver the mail with dogs arid sledge He tells his friends that the Yukon gold strike will soon be on he intends to be in it at the start. Ith Indian attendants and dogs he over the bank and down the frozen Yukon and in the gray light is gone. $ CHAPTER Hi.—Harnish makes a sensationally rapid run across country with tne mail, appears at the Tivoli ana there Is another characteristic celebration. > He fits made a record against cold and exhaustion and is now ready to Join his friends In a dash to the new gold fields. CHAPTER TV.—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 fiat desolate. A comrade discovers gold and Harnish reaps a rich Pyy es t He goes to Dawson, begins inin corner lots and staking other miners and becomes the most prominent figure in the Klondike CHAPTER VI. —Harnish makes fortune a ?T er fortune. One lucky investment enables him to defeat a great combination of capitalists tn a vast mining deal. He determines tp return to civilisation qjjd a farewell Celebration to his friends that is remembered as a kind of blaze of glory. P*P«r» »re full ~S. . .* be King of the Klondike," and Daylight is feted by the money magnates of the country. They take- him Into a big an d Alaskan pioneer finds hlrnself amid the bewildering complications of high finance. CHAPTER VI 11. —Daylight is buncoed by we moneyed men and finds that he nas been led to invest his eleven millions tn a manipulated scheme. He goes to theft ms disloyal business partners at ■their offices in New York City. CHAPTER IX—Confronting his partners _ with a revolver in characteristic ftontjer style, he threatens to kIU them it n’s money Is not returned. They are towed into submission, return their stealings and'Haraish goes back tc San Francisco with his unimpaired fortune. CHAFiEK X.—Daylight meets his fate In. Dexie Mason, a pretty stenographer ■with a crippled brother, whom she cares for. Harnish is much attracted towards ter and interested in her family affairs. _ CHAPTER Xl.—He becomes an element Jn .and gets into the political ring. For a rest he goes to inspect one cfw.fs properties in the country and momentarilv is attracted back to the old life on the lonesome trail CHAPTER Xll.—Daylight gets deeper deeper into hUh finance in San Franrtsco. He makes frequent runs into the country thus getting close to nature, but mird is still in the speculation trend Very often, however, the longing for the mmple life well nigh overcorfies him CHAPTER XHl.—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 XlV.—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 analyse her feelings. CHAPTER XV.—Dede tells daylight that she likes him but that her happiness could not He with- a money manipulator. She suggests the vast good he eould do ■with his wealth if so inclined. CHAPTER XVl’—For the sake of his Jove. Daylight undertakes the scheme of building up agreat Industrial community among the httls. He wins her regard by Interesting himself in her crippled brother. CHAPTER X VH.—Dede finally tells Daylight she does not dare marry a man who u so engrossed with the business pure He is Insistent and yet hopes to CHAPTER XVin -Daylight falls back Into bls old drinking ways and then rouses up from the same, realizing that he is not the sturdy pioneer of the rude Alaskan days.

. CHAPTER XIX.

Daylight awoke with the familiar parched mouth and lips and throat, took a long drink of water from the pitcher beside his bed. and gathered up the train of thought where he had left it the night before. He reviewed the easement of the financial strain. Things were mending at last. While the going was still rough, the greatest dangers were already past His mind moved on to the incident at the corner of the bar of the Parthenon. when the young athlete had turned his hand down. He was no longer stunned by the event, but he was shocked and grieved, as only a strong man can be. at this passing of his strength. He had always looked upon this strength .of his as permanent, and here, for years, it had been steadily oozing from him. As he had diagnosed IL he had come in from under the stare to roost in the coops of cities He had almost forgotten how to walk. He had lifted up his feet and been ridden around in automobiles, cabs and carriages, and electric cars. He had not exercised, and he had dry-rotted his muscles with alcohol. And was it worth it? What did all his money mean after all? Dede was right. It could buy him no more than one bed at a time, and at the same time it had made him the abjectest of slaves. It tied him fast. Which was better? he asked himself. All this was Dede’s own thought. It was what she had meant when she prayed he would go broke. He held up his offending right arm. It wasn’t the same old arm. Of course she could not love that arm and that bo4y as ■ i* - /

she had loved the strong, clean arm and body of years before. He didn’t like that arm and body bimself. A young wbippersnapper had been able to take liberties with it. It had,gone back on him. He sat up suddenly. No, he had gone back on it! He had gone back on himself. He had gone back on Dede. She was right, a thousand times right,' and she had sense enough to know it. sense enough to refuse to marry a money-slave with a whisky-rotted carcass. He got out of bed and looked at himself in the long mirror on the wardrobe door. He wasn’t pretty. The old-time lean cheeks were gone. These were heavy, seeming to hang down by their own weight. He looked for the lines of cruelty Dede had spoken of, and he found them, and he found the harshness in the eyes as well, the eyes that were muddy now after all the cocktails of the night before, and of the months and years before. He looked at the clearly defined pouches that showed under his eyes, and they shocked him. He rolled up the sleeve of his pajamas. No wonder the ham-mer-thrower had put his hand down. Those weren’t muscles. A rising tide of fat had submerged them. He stripped off the pajama coat. Again he was shocked, this time by the bulk of his body. It wasn’t pretty. The lean stomach had become a paunch. The rigid muscles of chest and shoulders and abdomen had broken down into rolls of flesh. !And this was age. Then there drifted across the field of vision of his mind’s eye the old man he had encountered at Glen Ellen, coming up the hillside through the fires of sunset, white-headed and white-bearded, eighty-four, in his hand the pail of foaming milk and in his face all the warm glow and content of the passing summer day. That had been age. “Yes siree, eighty-four, and •spryer than most.” he could hear the old man say. Next he remembered Ferguson, the little man who had scuttled into the Yoad like a rabbit, the one-time managing editor of a great newspaper, who was content to live in the chaparral along with his spring of mountain water and his hand-reared and manicured fruit trees. Ferguson had solved a problem. A weakling and an alcoholic, he had run away from the doctors and the chicken-coop of a city, and soaked up health like a thirsty sponge. He sat down suddenly on the bed, startled by the greatness of the idea that had come to him. He did not sit long. His mind, working in its customary way, like a steel trap, canvassed the idea in all its bearings. It was big—bigger than anything he had faced before. And he faced it squarely, picked it up in his two hands and turned it over and around and looked at it. The simplicity of it delighted him. He chuckled over it, reached his decision, and began to dress. Midway in the dressing he stopped in order to use the telephone. < Dede was the first he called up. “Don’t come to the office this morning,” he said. “I’m coming out to see you for a moment.”

He called up others. He ordered nis motor-car. To Jones he gave instructions for the forwarding of Bob and Wolf to Glen Ellen. Hegan he surprised by asking him to look u£ the deed of the Glen Ellen ranch and make out a new one in Dede Mason’s name. ’‘Who?” Hegan demanded. “Dede Mason,” Daylight replied imperturbably—“the ’phone must be indistinct this morning. D-e-d-e M-a-s-on. Got it?” Half an hour later he was flying out to Berkeley. Arid for the first time the big red car halted directly before the house. Dede offered to receive him in the parlor, but he shook his head and nodded toward her rooms "In there,” he said. “No other place would suit.” As the door closed, his arms went out and around her. Then he stood with his hands on her shoulders and looking down into her face. “Dede, if I tell you, flat and straight, that I’m going up to live on that ranch at Glen Ellen, that I ain’t taking a cent with me, that I’m going to scratch for every bite I eat, and that I ain’t going to play ary a card at the business game again, will you come along with me?” She gave a glad little cry, and he nestled her in closely. But the pext moment she had thrust herself out from him to the old position at arm’s length. “How is this possible? How can you leave your business? Has anything happened?” “No, nothing’s happened yet, but it’s going to, blame quick. I’ve taken your preaching to heart, and I’ve come to the penitent form. I’ve taken my last drink.' You’re marrying a whisky-soak, but your husband won’t be that. He’s going to grow into another man so quick you won’t know him. A couple of months from now, up there In Glen Ellen, you’ll w’ake up some morning and find you’ve got a perfect stranger in the house with you. and you’ll have to get Introduced to him all over azain. You’ll say. ‘l’m Mrs.

Harnish, who are you?’ And I’ll say, T’m Elam Harnish’s younger brother. I've just arrived from Alaska to attend the funeral.’ ‘What funeral?’ you 11 say. And I’ll say. ‘Why the funeral of that good-for-nothing, gambling. whisky-drinking Burning Daylight—the man that died of fatty degeneration of the heart from sitting in night and day at the business game.’ 'Yes. ma’am.'l’ll say.‘he’s sure a gone ’coon, but I’ve conje to take his place and make you happy. AnJ how. ma’am, if you’ll allow me. I’ll just meander down to the pasture and milk the cow while you’re getting breakfast.’” “But you haven’t answered my questions.” , she reproached him, as she emerged, rosy and radiant, from the embrace that had accompanied, the culmination of his narrative. “Now just what do you want to know?” he asked.

“I want to know how all this is possible? How you are able to leave your business at a time like this? What you meant by saying that something was going to happen quickly?” “Let’s go and get married." he urged, all the whimsicality of his utterance duplicated in his eyes. ‘Tye been working like forty horses ever since this blamed panic set in. and all the time some of those ideas you’d given me were getting ready to sprout Well, they sprouted this morning, that’s all. I knew I wanted to ride in the hills with you just about thirty million times more than I wanted to go to the office. And I knew all the time it was impossible. And why? Because of the office. The office wouldn’t let me. And then I made up my mind that I was to the dividing of the ways. One way led to the office. The other way led to Berkeley, And I took the Berkeley road. I’m never going to set foot in the office again. That’s all gone, finished, over and done with, and I’m letting it slide clean to smash and then some. I’m wiping the slate clean. I’m letting it all go smash. When them thirty million dollars stood up to my face and said I couldn’t go but with you in the hills today. I knew the timq had come for me to put my foot down. And I’m putting it down. I’ve got you, and my strength to work for you. and that little ranch in Sonoma. That’s all I want, and that’s all I’m going to save out, along

with Bob and Wolf, a suit case and a hundred and forty hair bridles. All the rest goes, and good riddance. It’s that much junk.” A knock at the door interrupted him, and he was left to stare delightedly at the Crouched Venus and on around the room at Dede’s dainty possessions, while she answered the telephone. . “It is Mr. Hegan,” she said, on returning. “He is holding the line. He says it is important” Daylight shook his head and smiled. “Please tell Mr. Hegan to hang up. I’m done with the office and I don’t want to hear anything about anything.” A minute later she was back again. “He refuses to hang up. He told me to tell you that Unwin is in the office now, waiting to see you, and Harrison, too. Mr. Hegan said that Grimshaw and Hodgkins are in trouble. That it looks as if they are going to break. And he said something about protection.” / It was startling information. Both Unwin and Harrison represented big banking corporation*, and Daylight knew that if the house of Grimshaw and Hodgkins went it would precipitate a number of failures and start a flurry of serious dimensions. But Daylight smiled, and shook his head. He caught her by the hand and drew her to him.

“You let Hegan hang on to that line till he’s tired. We can’t be wasting a second on him on a day like this.” “But I know something of the fight you have been making,” Dede contended. “If you stop now, all the work you have done, everything, will be destroyed. You have no right to do it. You cap’t do it.” Daylight was obdurate." He shook his head and smiled tantalizingly. “Nothing will be destroyed. Dede, nothing. You don’t understand this business game. It’s done on paper. AU I stand for is paper. I’ve got the paper for thousands of acres of land. All right. Burn up the paper, and burn me along with it. The land remains, don’t it? Nothing is going to be lost —not one pile out of the docks, not one railroad spike, not one ounce of steam out of the gauge of a ferryboat. The cars will go on running, whether I hold the paper or somebody else holds it.”

By this time Hegan had arrived in an automobile. The honk of it came in through the open window, and they

saw It stop alongside the big red machine. In the car were Unwin and Harrison, while Jones sat with the chauffeur. . I’ll see Hegan.” Daylight told Dede. “There’s no need for the rest. They can wait in the machine.” “Is he.drunk?’’ Hegan whispered to Dede at the door. She shook her head and showed him in. “Good morning. Larry.” was Daylight s greeting. “Sit down and rest your feet. You sure seem to be in a flutter.” "I am,’’ the little Irishman snapped back "Grimshaw and Hodgkins are going to smash if something isn’t done quick. Why didn’t you come to the office? What are”you going to do about it?”

Nothing,” Daylight drawled, lazily. “Except let them smash, I guess. I’ve had no dealfags with Grimshaw and Hodgkins. I don't owe them anything. Besides, I’m going to smash myself. Look here, Larry, you know me. You know when I make up my mind I mean it. Well, I’ve sure made up my mind I’m tired of the whole game. I’m letting go of it as fast as I can!, and a smash is the quickest way to let go. All you’ve got to do is to protect yourself and all our friends. Now you listen to me while I tell you what to do. Everything is In good shape to do it. Nobody must get hurt. Everybody that stood by me must come through without damage. AH the back ffages and salaries must be paid pronto. All the money I've switched away from the water company, the street cars, and the ferries must be switched back. And you won’t get hurt yourself pone. Every company you got stock in will come through—” "What have you done to him?” Hegan snarled at Dede. “Hold on there, Larry.” For the first time Daylight’s voice was sharp, while all the old lines of cruelty in his face stood forth. “Miss Mason is going to be my wife, and while I don’t mind your talking to her all you want, you’ve got to use a different tone of voice or you’ll be heading for a hospital. which will sure be an unexpected sort of smash. And let me telj you one other thing. Thls-ail is my doing. She says Fm crazy, too.” Dede stepped forward where she confronted the two men. “Wait,” she said. “I want to say something. Elam, if you do this insane thing, I won’t marry you. I refuse to marry you.” Hegan, in spite of his misery, gave her a quick, grateful look. “I’ll take my chance on that,” Daylight said. “And now, Larry, you’d better be going. I’ll be at the hotel in a little while, and since I’m not going to step into the office again, bring all papers to sign and the rest over to my rooms. And you can get me on the ’phone there any time. This smash is going through. Sawee? Fm quit and done.” He turned to Dede as soon as Began was gone, and took her by the band. > “And now, little woman, you needn’t come to the office any more. Consider yourself discharged.” “I’d cry, if I thought it would do any good,” she threatened. “In which case I reckon I’d have to hold you in my arms some more and sort of soothe you down,” he threatened back. '■ As he stood at the top of the steps, leaving, she said: ‘You needn’t send those men. There will be no packing, because I am not going to marry you.” “I’m not a bit scared,” he answered, and went down the steps. (To be Continued.)

His Arms Went Out and Around Her.

“Use a Different Tone of Voice, or You’ll Be Heading for a Hospital.”