Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1912 — BURNING DAYLIGHT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BURNING DAYLIGHT

BY JACK LONDON

Authop Of" Tn f Call Ofjte W/af "kfa/TT fANGT 'CfAPT/NrDfNLrc: Illustrations By Dearborn MelvilU

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

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I.—Elam Harnish, known all through Alaska as “Burning Daylight," celebrates his 30th birthday with a 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 mail contract of the district. CHAPTER 11. 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 and he intends to be In it at the start, vvith Indian attendants and dogs he dips over the bank and down the frozen Yukon and in the gray light Is gone. CHAPTER in.—Harnish makes a sensationally rapid run across co.untry 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.—Hamish 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 Harnish reaps a rich harvest. He goes to Dawson, begins investing In comer 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 and drives a farewell celebration to his friends that is remembered as h. kind of blaze of <lory. v 11-—The papers are full King of the Klondike,” and Daylught 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. L CHAPTER Vln.—Daylight is buncoed Ipy 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 part[ners 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 steallings and Hamish goes back to Ban Francisco with his unimpaired fortune. CHATTEk X.—Daylight meets hie fate In Dede Mason, a pretty stenographer •with a crippled brother, whom she cares Ifor. Hamish Is much attracted towards her and interested in her family affairs. , CHAPTER Xl.—He becomes ah element In large investments on the Pacific coast and gets Into thj/ political ring. For a Test he goes to inspect one ofwiis properties in the country and momentarily is attracted back to the old life on the lonesome trail. CHAPTER Xll.—Daylight gets deeper and deeper into nigh finance In San Francisco. He makes frequent runs Into the Country thus getting close to nature, but We mind is still In the speculation trend, ■very often, however, the longing for the «tmple life well nigh overcomes him. CHAPTER Xlll—Dede Mason buys a Ihorse and Daylight meets her In her isaddle trips. He begins to Indulge In horseback riding and manages to get Into her company quite often. CHAPTER XTV.—One day Daylight asks Dede to go with him on one more Tide, his purpose being to ask her to marry him. and they canter away, she trying to analyze 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 could do ■with his wealth If so Inclined. , CHAPTER XVII—For the sake of Ms Hove. Daylight undertakes the scheme of up agreat Industrial community among the hills. He wins her regard by jlnterestlng himself In her crippled brothCHAPTEk XVH— Dede finally tells Daylight she does not dare marry a man who Is so engrossed with the business game. He Is insistent and yet hopes to Win her. , CHAPTER XVlll.—Daylight falls back into his old drinking ways and then rouses up from the same, realizing that he Is not the sturdy pioneer of the rude Alaskan days. CHAPTER XlX.—There Is a flurry tn •the money market, but Daylight tells Dede that he Is going to wipe the slate clean, go to manual work on a ranch land prove to her that he has reformed. CHAPTER XX.—Dede and Daylight »re married at a little backwoods hotel, fae has come back;to wholesome, natural mfe, and they go to housekeeping in a Spot close to nature.

CHAPTER XXI. But there came the day, one year, In early, April, when Dede sat in an easy chair on the porch, sewing on certain small garments, while Daylight jead aloud to her. It was in the afternoon, and a bright sun was chining down on a world of new green. Along the irrigation channels of the vegetable garden streams of water Were flowing, and now and again Daylight broke off from his reading to run out and change the flow of water. iAlso, he was teasingly interested in the certain small garments on which Dede worked, while she was radiantly happy over them, though at times, when his tender fun was too insistent, ■he was rosily confused or affectionately resentful. It was a few minutes later that Daylight, breaking off from his reading to change the streams of lirlgation, found that the water had ceased flowing. He shouldered a pick land shovel, took a hammer and a pipewrench from the tool-house, and returned to Dede on the porch. "I reckon I*ll have to go down and dig the pipe opt,” he told her. “It’s that slide that’s threatened all winter. I guess she’s come down at last” "Don’t you read ahead, now,” he warned, as he passed around the house and took the trail that led down the wall of the canyon.

Halfway down the trail, he came upon the slide. It was a small affair, only a few tons of earth and crumbling rock; but, starting from fifty feet above, it had struck the waterpipe with force sufficient to break it at a connection. Before proceeding to *work, he glanced up the path of the slide, and he saw what made his' eyes startle and cease for the moment 'from questing farther. “Hello,” he communed aloud, “look who’s here.” ’ His glance moved on up the steep broken surface, and across it from side to side. Here and there, in places, small twisted manzanitas w'ere rooted precariously, but in the main, save for weeds and grass, that portion of the canyon was bare. There were signs of a surface that had shifted often as the rain poured a flow of rich eroded soil from above over the lip of the canyon. “A true fissure vein, or I never saw one,” he proclaimed softly. Dropping the hammer and pipewrench, but retaining pick and shovel, he climbed up the slide to where a vague line of out-jutting but mostly soil-covered rock could be seen. It was all but indiscernible, but his practiced eye had sketched the hidden information which it signified. Here and there, along this wall of the vein, he attacked the crumbling rock with the pick and shoveled the encumbering soil away. Several times he examined this rock. So soft was some of it that he could break it in his fingers. Shifting a dozen feet higher up, he again attacked with pick and shovel. And this time, when he rubbed the soil from a chunk of rock and looked, he straightened up suddenly, gasping with delight. And then, like a deer at a drinking pool in fear of its enemies, he flung a quick glance around to see if any eye were gazing upon him. He grinned at his own foolishness and returned to his examination of the chunk. A slant of sunlight fell on it, and it was all aglitter with tiny specks of unmistakable free gold. . • .

“From the grass roots down,” he muttered in an awe-stricken voice, as he swung his pick into the yielding surface.

Sometimes he started small slides of earth that covered up his work and compelled him to dig again. Once he was swept fifty feet down the can-yon-side; but he floundered and scrambled up again without pausing for breath. He hit upon quartz that was so rotten that it was almost like clay, and here the gold was richer than ever. It was a veritable treasure chamber. For a hundred feet up and down he traced the walls of the vein. He even climbed over the canyon-lip to look along the brow of the hill for signs of the outcrop. But that could wait, and he hurried back to his find. He tolled on in the same mad haste, until exhaustion and an intolerable ache in his back compelled him to pause. He straightened up with even a richer piece of gold-laden quartz. Stooping, the sweat from his forehead had fallen to the ground. It now ran into his eyes, blinding him. He wiped it from‘him with the back of his hand and returned to a scrutiny of the gold. It would run thirty thousand to the ton, fifty thousand, anything—he knew that. And as he gazed upon the yellow lure, and panted for air, and wiped the sweat away, his quick vision leaped and set to work. He saw the spur-track that must run up from the valley and across the upland pastures, and he ran the grades and built the bridge that woufll span the canyon, until it was real before his eyes. Across the canyon was the place for the mill, and there he erected it; and he erected, also, the endless chain of buckets, suspended from a cable and operated by gravity, that would cross the canyon to the quartz-crusher. Likewise, the whole mine grew before him and beneath him —tunnels, shafts, and galleries, and hoisting plants. The blasts of the miners were in his ears, and from across the canyon he could hear the roar of the stamps. The hand that held the lump of quartz was trembling, and there was a tired, nervous palpitation apparently in the pit of his stomach. It came to him that what he wanted was a drink—whisky, cocktails, anything, a dplnk. And eveji then, with this new hot yearning for the alcohol upon him, he heard, faint and far, drifting down the gfeen abyss of the canyon, Dede’s voice, crying:— “Here, chick, chick, chick, thick, chick! Here, chick, chick, chick!’’

He was astounded at the lapse of time. She had left her sewing on the porch and was feeding the chickens preparatory to getting supper. The afternoon was gone. He could not conceive that he had been away that long. Again came the call: "Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here, chick, chick, chick!” It was the way she always called—first five, and then three. He had long since noticed it. And from these thoughts of her arose other thoughts that caused a great fear slowly

to grow in nis race. For ft seemed to him that he had almost lost her. Not once had he thought of her in those frenzied hours, and for that much, at least, had she truly been loot to him. He dropped the piece of quartz, slid down the slide, and started up the trail, running heavily. At the edge of the clearing he eased down and almost crept to a point of vantage whence he could peer out, himself unseen. She was feeding the chickens, tossing to them handfuls of grain and laughing at their antics. The sight of her seemed to relieve the panic fear into which he had been flung, and he turned and ran back down the trail. Again he climbed the slide, but this time he climbed higher, carrying the pick and shovel with him. And again he toiled frenziedly, but this time with a different purpose. He worked artfully, loosing slide after slide of the red soil and sending it streaming down and covering up all he had uncovered, hiding from the light of day the treasure he had discovered. He even , went into the woods and scooped armfuls of last year’s fallen leaves, which he scattered over the slide. But this he gave up as a vain task, and he sent more slides of soil down upon the scene of his labor, until no sign remained of the out-jut-ting walls of the vein. . Next he repaired the broken pipe, gathered his tools together, and started up the trail. He walked slowly, feeling a great weariness, as of a man who had passed through a frightful crisis. He put the tools away, took a great drink of the water that again flowed through the pipes, and sat down on the bench by the open kitchen door. Dede was inside, preparing supper, and the sound of her footsteps gave him a vast content. He breathed the balmy mountain air in great gulps, like a diver fresh-risen from the sea. And, as he drank in the air, he gazed with all his eyes at the clouds and sky and valley, as if he were drinking in that, too, along with the air. Dede did not know he had come back, and at times he turned his head and stole glances in at her —at her efficient hands, at the bronze of her brown hair that smouldered with fire when she crossed the path of sunshine that streamed through the window, at the promise of her figure that shot through him a pang most strangely sweet and sweetly dear. He heard

her approaching the door, and kept his head turned resolutely toward the valley. And next, he thrilled, as he had always thrilled, when he felt the caressing gentleness of her fingerfl through his hair. “I didn’t know you were back,” she said. “Was it serious?” “Pretty bad, that slide,” he answered, still gazing away and thrilling to her touch. “More serious than I reckoned. But I’ve got the plan. Do you know what I’m going to do? —I’m going to plant eucalyptus all over it. They’ll hold it. I’ll plant them thick as grass, so that even a hungry rabbit can’t squeeze between them; and when they get their roots agoing, nothing in creation will ever move that dirt again.’ “Why, is it as bad as that?’ He shook his head. “Nothing exciting. But Fd sure like to see any blamed old slide get the best of me, that’s all. I’m going to seal £hat slide down so that it’ll stay there for a million years. And when the last trump sounds, and Sonoma Mountain and all the other mountains pass into nothingness, that old slide will be still a-standlng there, held up by the roots.” He passed his arm around her and pulled her down on his knees. “Say, little woman, you sure miss a lot by living here on the ranch- — music, and theaters, and such things. Don’t you ever have a hankering to drop it all and go back?"

So great was anxiety that he dared not look at her, and when she laughed and shook her head he was aware of a great relief. Also, he noted the undiminshed youth that rang through that same old-time boyish laugh of hers. “Say,” he said, with sudden fierceness, “don’t you go fooling around that slide until after I get the trees in and rooted. It’s mighty dangerous, and I sure can’t afford to lose you now.” He drew her lips to his and kissed her hungrily and passionately. “What a lover!” she said; and pride in him and in her own womanhood was in her voice.

“Look at that, Dede." He removed one encircling arm and swept it In a wide gesture over the valley and the mountains beyond. “The Valley of the Moon—a good name, a good name. Do you know, when I look out over it all, and think of you and of all it means, it kind of makes me ache in

the throat, and I have things Th my heart I can’t fin’d the words to say, and I have a feeling that I can almost understand Browning and those other high-flying poet-fellows. Look at Hood Mountain there. Just where the sun’s striking. It was down in that crease that we found the spring.” “And that was the night you didn’t inllk the cows till ten o’clock,” she laughed. “And if you keep me here much; longer, supper won’t be any earlier than it was that night.” Bot'h rose from the bench, and Daylight caught up the milk-pall from the nail by the door. He paused a moment longer to look out over the valley. “It's sure grand,” he said. "It’s sure grand,” she echoed, laughing joyously at-hlm and with him and herself and all the world, as she passed in through the door. And Daylight, like the old man he once had met, himself went down the hill through the fires of sunset with a milkpall on his arm. THE END.

“Here, Chick, Chick, Chick, Chick!"