Seated at his desk, through the open windows would drift whiffs of strong tobacco and rumbling voices, and he could not help catching snatches of what the Yukoners talked.
“D’ye recollect that Koyokuk rush in the early nineties?” he would hear one say.“Well, him an’ me was pardners then, tradin’ an’ such.We had a dinky little steamboat, the Blatterbat.He named her that, an’ it stuck.He was a caution.Well, sir, as I was sayin’, him an’ me loaded the little Blatterbat to the guards an’ started up the Koyokuk, me firin’ an’ engineerin’ an’ him steerin’, an’ both of us deck handin’.Once in a while we’d tie to the bank an’ cut firewood.It was the fall, an’ mush ice was comin’ down, an’ everything gettin’ ready for the freeze up.You see, we was north of the Arctic Circle then an’ still headin’ north.But they was two hundred miners in there needin’ grub if they wintered, an’ we had the grub.
“Well, sir, pretty soon they begun to pass us, driftin’ down the river in canoes an’ rafts.They was pullin’ out.We kept track of them.When a hundred an’ ninety four had passed, we didn’t see no reason for keepin’ on.So we turned tail and started down.A cold snap had come, an’ the water was fallin’ fast, an’ dang me if we didn’t ground on a bar up stream side.The Blatterbat hung up solid.Couldn’t budge her.‘It’s a shame to waste all that grub,’ says I, just as we was pullin’ out in a canoe.‘Let’s stay an’ eat it,’ says he.An’ dang me if we didn’t.We wintered right there on the Blatterbat, huntin’ and tradin’ with the Indians, an’ when the river broke next year we brung down eight thousand dollars’ worth of skins.Now a whole winter, just two of us, is goin’ some.But never a cross word out of him.Best tempered pardner I ever seen.But fight!”
“Huh!” came the other voice.“I remember the winter Oily Jones allowed he’d clean out Forty Mile.Only he didn’t, for about the second yap he let off he ran afoul of Husky Travers.It was in the White Caribou.‘I’m a wolf!’ yaps Jones.You know his style, a gun in his belt, fringes on his moccasins, and long hair down his back.‘I’m a wolf,’ he yaps, ‘an’ this is my night to howl.Hear me, you long lean makeshift of a human critter?’ an’ this to Husky Travers.”
“Well?” the other voice queried, after a pause.
“In about a second an’ a half Oily Jones was on the floor an’ Husky on top askin’ somebody kindly to pass him a butcher knife.What’s he do but plumb hack off all of Oily Jones’ long hair.‘Now howl, damn you, howl,’ says Husky, gettin’ up.”
“He was a cool one, for a wild one,” the first voice took up.“I seen him buck roulette in the Little Wolverine, drop nine thousand in two hours, borrow some more, win it back in fifteen minutes, buy the drinks, an’ cash in dang me, all in fifteen minutes.”
“One evening Tom was unusually brightly awake, and Frederick, joining the rapt young circle, sat and listened to his brother’s serio comic narrative of the night of wreck on the island of Blang; of the swim through the sharks where half the crew was lost; of the great pearl which Desay brought ashore with him; of the head decorated palisade that surrounded the grass palace wherein dwelt the Malay queen with her royal consort, a shipwrecked Chinese Eurasian;
“of the intrigue for the pearl of Desay; of mad feasts and dances in the barbaric night, and quick dangers and sudden deaths; of the queen’s love making to Desay, of Desay’s love making to the queen’s daughter, and of Desay, every joint crushed, still alive, staked out on the reef at low tide to be eaten by the sharks; of the coming of the plague; of the beating of tom toms and the exorcising of the devil devil doctors; of the flight over the man trapped, wild pig runs of the mountain bush men; and of the final rescue by Tasman, he who was hatcheted only last year and whose head reposed in some Melanesian stronghold and all breathing of the warmth and abandon and savagery of the burning islands of the sun.
”
And despite himself, Frederick sat entranced; and when all the tale was told, he was aware of a queer emptiness.He remembered back to his boyhood, when he had pored over the illustrations in the old fashioned geography.He, too, had dreamed of amazing adventure in far places and desired to go out on the shining ways.And he had planned to go; yet he had known only work and duty.Perhaps that was the difference.Perhaps that was the secret of the strange wisdom in his brother’s eyes.For the moment, faint and far, vicariously, he glimpsed the lordly vision his brother had seen.
He remembered a sharp saying of Polly’s.“You have missed romance.You traded it for dividends.”She was right, and yet, not fair.He had wanted romance, but the work had been placed ready to his hand.He had toiled and moiled, day and night, and been faithful to his trust.Yet he had missed love and the world living that was forever a whisper in his brother.And what had Tom done to deserve it? a wastrel and an idle singer of songs.
His place was high.He was going to be the next governor of California.But what man would come to him and lie to him out of love?The thought of all his property seemed to put a dry and gritty taste in his mouth.Property!Now that he looked at it, one thousand dollars was like any other thousand dollars; and one day (of his days) was like any other day.He had never made the pictures in the geography come true.He had not struck his man, nor lighted his cigar at a match held in a woman’s hand.A man could sleep in only one bed at a time Tom had said that.He shuddered as he strove to estimate how many beds he owned, how many blankets he had bought.And all the beds and blankets would not buy one man to come from the end of the earth, and grip his hand, and cry, “By the turtles of Tasman!”
Something of all this he told Polly, an undercurrent of complaint at the unfairness of things in his tale.And she had answered:“It couldn’t have been otherwise.Father bought it.He never drove bargains.It was a royal thing, and he paid for it royally.You grudged the price, don’t you see.You saved your arteries and your money and kept your feet dry.”