Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1911-11-01
CHAPTER vi.

fear. But Beetles ahu OoA =,
and other sourdoughs SHOOK tnei.
heads and laughed as they mentioned
women And they were right. He had
always been afraid Of them from the
time himself q lad Of seventeen, when
Queen Anne, Of Juneau, made open
and ridiculous love to him. For that
n,atter he never had known women.
Rorn In a mining-camp where they
were rare and mysterious, having no
sisters, his mother dying while he was
an infant, he had never been In con-
tact with them.
But it was left to the Virgin to give
him his final fright. She was found
one morning dead In her cabin. a
shot through the head had done it
and she had left no message, no ex
PLANTATION. Then came the talk. Some
wit, voicing public opinion, called 1t q
case Of too much Daylight. She had
killed herself because Of him. Every
body knew this, and said so. The cor
respondents wrote 1t up, and once
more Burning Daylight, King Of the
Klondike, was sensationally featured
In the Sunday supplements Of the
United States. The Virgin had
Strengthened up, so the feature-stories
ran, and correctly so. Never had she
entered q Dawson City dance.hall
When she first arrived from Circle
City, she had earned her living by
washing clothes. Next, she had bought
sewing-machine and made mems
drill parkas. fur caps, and n,oosehide
mittens. Then she had gone as clerk
into the First Yukon Bank. All this
and more, was known and told, though
one and all were agreed that Day
light while the cause, had been the
innocent cause of her untimely end.
And the worst of it was that Day
light knew it was true. Always would
he remember that last night he hao
seen her He had thought nothing OF
1t at the time: but, looking back, ne
was haunted by every little thing that
had happened. In the light of the
tragic event, he could understand
everything quietness. that calm
gertrude as if all vexing questions Of
living had been smoothed out and
were gone, and that certain ethereal
sweetness about all that she had said
and done that had been almost mater.
nal. He remembered the way she had
looked at him, how she had laughed
when he narrated Mickey Dolans mis-
take in stalking the fraction on Shook
UNI Gulch. Her laughter had been
lightly joyous, while at the same time
it had lacked its old-time robustness
Not that she had been grave or sub
dued. On the contrary, she had been
SO patiently content. so filled with
peace. She had fooled him, fool that
he was. He had even thought that
night that her feeling for him had
passed, and he had 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.
1t had struck him at the time as
funny and embarrassing thing, her
bending over his hand and kissing it.
He had felt like fool. but he shivered
now when he looked back on it and
felt again the touch OF her lips on his
hand. She was saying good-by. an
eternal good-by, and he had never
guessed. At that very moment, and
for all the moments of the evening,
coolly and deliberately, as he well
knew her way. she had been resolved
to die. ii he had only known It! I'm.
touched by the contagious malady
himself, nevertheless he would have
married her if he had had the slight
est inkiing Of what she contemplated.
And yet he knew, furthermore. that
hers was a certain stiff-kneed pride
that would not have permitted her to
accept marriage as an act of philan.
thropy. There had really been no saw
ing her, after all. The love-disease
had fastened upon her, and she had
been doomed from the first to perish
of 1t.
Six thousand spent the winter OF
1897 in Dawson, work on the creeks
went on apace, while beyond the pass
es it was reported that one hundred
thousand more were waiting for the
spring. Late one brief afternoon, Day
light, on the benches between French
Hill and Shookum Hill, caught wild
err vision of things. Beneath him lay
the richest part Of Eldorado Creek.
while up and down Bonanza he could
see for miles. 1t was scene of
vast devastation. The hills, to their
tops. had been shorn of trees, and
their naked sides showed signs of gor.
ing and perforating that even the
mantle of snow could not hide. Be.
meath him. in every direction, were
the cabins OF men. But not many
men were visible A blanket OF smoke
hllsd the valleys and turned the gray
day to melancholy twilight. Smoke
arose from a thousand holes in the
snow, where. deep down on bedrock,
in the frozen muck and gravel, men
crspt and scratched and dug, and ever
A.,l l. = 10 cpt