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EE. oH uti: rab ce mam a eh ------ Copyright, 1924, by The McClure Newspaper Syndicate. By REX E didn't like Montague Pros- ser at first--he was too clean. He wore his virtue Hike a bathrobe, flapping it in our faces. It was Whitewater Kelly who undertook to mitigate him one day, but, being as the nuisance stood an even fathom high and had a double-action football motion about him, Whitewater's endeavors kind of broke through the ice and he languished around in his bunk the next week while we sat up nights and changed his bandages. Yes, Monty was equally active at repartee or rough-house, and he knocked Whitewater out from un- der his cap, slick and clean, just the way you snap a playing-card out from under a coin, which phenom- enon terminated our tendencies to scoff and carp. Personally, I didn't care. If a man wants to wallow about In a disgusting daily debauch of cleanli- ness, it is his privilege. If he squanders the fleeting moments brushing teeth, cleaning finger- nails, and such technicalities, it stands to reason he won't have . much time left to attend to his work and at the same time cultivate the essentials of life Illke smoking, drinking, and the proper valuation of a three-card draw, But, as I say, it's up to him, and outsiders who don't ses merit in such a system shouldn't try to bust up his game unless they've got good -foot-work and a knockout punch. It wasn't so much these physical refinements that riled us as the rarefled atmosphere of his general mental and moral altitudes. To me there's eloquence and sentiment and romance and spiritual uplift in a real, full-grown, black-whiskered cuss-word. It's a great help in a mountainous country. Profanity is like steam In a locomotive--takes more to run you up-hill than on the level, and inasmuch as there's only a few men on the level, a violent vocabulary is a necessity and ap- peals to me like a certificate of good charicter and general capability. There wasn't a thing doing with Prosser in the idiom line, however. His moral make-up was like his body, big and sound and white and manicured, and although his talk, alongside of ours, listened like it was skimmed and seminaried, still when we got to know him we found organs and hair on their chests Just like anybody else's, and at the same time had the advantage of being fit to send through the mails, He had left a widowed mother and come north on the main chance, like the rest of us, only he originated farther east. What made the par- toular ten-strike with us was the pride he took in that same mother. He gloried in her and talked about her in that hushed and nervous way & man speaks about a real mother or a regular sweetheart. We men- folks liked him all the better for it. I say we men, for he was a "shine™ with the women--all nine of them. The camp was fifteen hundred strong that winter, over and above which was the aforesaid galaxy of nine, stranded on their way up- river to a Dawson dance-hall The Yukon froze up and they had to winter with us. Of course there were the three married ladies, too, living with thelr husbands back on the Birch Ridge, but we never saw them, and they didn't count. The others went to work at Eckert's theater, Monty would have been right popular at Hokert's--he was a hand- some lad--but he couldn't see those people with a fleld-glass. They simply scandalized him to death, 'I love to dance" sald he one night, as we looked on, "and the music sends thrills through me, but I won't do it." ; "Why not? Y asked. "This is Alaska. Be democratic. You're not bo 80 awfully nice that a dance-hall sirl will contaminate you." 'It's not democracy that I lack, nor contamination that I'm afraid of" he replied. "It's the principle back of ft all. If we encourage these girls In the lives they lead, we're just as bad as they are" "Look here, son, when I quit salt: water I left all that garbage and she saw me dancing with them?" Well, that's a bad line of talk and I couldn't say much, Of course, when the actresses found out how-he felt they came back at him strong, but he wrapped himself up In kis dignity and held himself aloof when he came to town, s0 he didn't seem to mind it. It was one afternoon in January, cold and sharp, that Ollie Marceau's team went through the ice just he- low our camp. She was a great dog-puncher and had the best team in camp--seven fine malamoota-- which she drove every day. When the animals smelled our place they ran away and dragged her into the open water below the hot springs. She was wet for ten minutes, and by the time she had got out and stumbled to our bunk-house she was all in. Another ten minutes with the "quick" at thirty below would- have finished her, but we rushed her in by the fire and made, her drink a glass of "hootch." Mar- i tin got her parka off somehow while i I slashed the strings to her mukluks and bad her little feet rubbed red as berries before she'd quit apolo- gizing fer the trouble she'd made. A fellow learns to watch toes pretty close in the winter. * "Lord! stop your talk," we said. "This is the first chance we have had to do anything for a lady in two years. It's a downright pleas- ure for us to take you in this way." "Indeed!" she chattered. "Well, it isn't mutual--" And we all laughed. 'We roused up a good fire and made her take off all the wet clothes she felt she could afford to, then wrung them out and hung them up to dry. We ade her gulp down another whisky, too, after which 1 gavo her some footgear and she slipped into one of Martin's Mack- inaw shirts. We knew just how faint and shaky she felt, but she was dead game and joked with us about it. I never realized what a cute trick she was till I saw her in that great, coarse, blue sjirt with her feet in beaded moccasins, her yellow hair tousled, and the sparkle of adven- ture in her bright eyes. She stood out ltke a nugget by candle-light, backed, as she was, by the dingy bark walls of our cabin, I suppose it was a bad instant for Prosser to appear. He certainly cued in wrong and found the sight shocking to his Plymouth Rock proprieties. The raw liquor we had forced on her had gone to her head a bit, as it will when you're fresh from the cold and your stomach is empty, so her face was flushed and had a pretty, reckless, daring look to it. She had feet high up on a chair, too --not so very high, either--where they were thawing out under the warmth of the oven, and we were all laughing at her story of the mishap. Monty stopped on recognizing |8weat instead of perspiring you who she was, while the surprise In his face gave way to disapproval. We could see it as plain as if it was blazoned there in printers ink, and it sobered us. The girl removed hér feet and stood up. "Miss Marceau has just had an accident," I began, but I saw his eyes were fastened on the bottle on the table, and I saw also that he knew what caused the fever in her cheeks. "Too bad," he said, coldly, "If I can be of any assistance you'll find me down at the shaft-house." And out he walked. I knew he didn't intend to .be in- hospitable; that it was just his in- fernal notions of decency, and that he' refused to be a party to any- thing as devilish as this looked--but it wasn't according to sthe Alaska code, and it was like a slap in the girl's face, "I am quite dry," she said. be going now." "You will not. You'll stay to supper and drive home by moon. lght," says we. "Why, you'd freeze in a mile!" And we made her listen to us. During the meal Prosser never opened his mouth except to put something into it, but his manner was as full of language as an ora- tion. He didn't thaw out the way a man should when he sees strang- ers wading into the grub he's paid a dollar a pound for, and when we'd finally sent the young woman off Martin turned on him, "Young feller," said he--and his eyes were black -- "I've rattled around for thirty years and seen many a good and many a bad man, but I never before seen such an in- telligent dam' fool as you are." "What do you mean?" said the 'Tn "Were yoy ever broke and friend- less and hopeless?" "Why, I can't say I ever was." "And you've never Leen downright hungry, either, where you didn't know If you'd ever eat again, have you? Then what license have you got to blame people for the condi- tion you find them in? How do you know what brought this girl where she ia?" "Oh, I pity any womdn who is adrift on the world, if that's what You mean, but I won't make a pet out of her just because she is friendless. She must expect that when she chooses her life. Her kind are bad--bad all through. They must be." "Not on your life, Decency runs deeper than the hives." "Trouble with you," said I, "you've got a juvenile standard--things are all good or all bad In your eyes-- and you can't like a person unless the one overbalances the other. When yoy are older you'll find that people are like gold-mines, "with a thin streak of pay on bed-rock and lots of hard digging above." "I didn't mean to be discourteous," our man continued, "but I'll never change my feelings about such things. Mind you, I'm not preach- ing, nor asking you to change your habits--all IT want is a chance to live my own life clean." The mail came in during March, five hundred pounds of it, and the camp went daffy, Monty had the dogs harnessed ten minutes after we got the news, and we drove the four miles in seven- teen minutes. Ive known men with sweethearts outside, but I never knew one to act gladder than Monty did at the thought of hearing from his mother. "You must come and see us when you make your pile," he told me, "or--what's better--we'll go East together next spring and surprise her. Won't that be great? We'll walk in on her in the summer twilight while she is working in her "The Women Are Worse than the Men," said Monty, "for All the Gamblers Have Honesty" flower-garden, Can't you just see the green trees and smell the good old smells of home? The catbirds will be calling and the grass will be clean and sweet. Why, I'm so tired of the cold and the snow and the white, white mountains that I can hardly stand it." He ran on in that vein all the way to town, glad and hopeful and boy- ish--and I wondered why, with his earnestness and loyalty and broad shoulders, he had never loved any woman but his motheér. When 1 was twenty-three my whole 2 ro- mantic system had been mangled ind shredded from heart to gizzard. Still, some men get their age all in a lump; they're boys up till the last minute, then they get the Rip Van Winkle while you walt. This morning was bitter, but the "sour doughs" were lined up outside "You've broke about the only law that this here country boasts of-- the law of hospitality." "He didn't mean it that way," 1 spoke up. "Did you, Monty?" "Certainly not. 1d help anybody out of trouble--man or woman--but I refuse to mix with that kind of People socially." " 'That kind of people, * yelled the old man. "And what's the mat. ter with that kind of people? You come creeping out of the milk-and- water East, all pink and perfumed up, and when you get into a bacon- and-beans country where people wrinkle your nose Itke a calf and whine about the kind of people you find. What do you know about peo- ple. anyhow? Did yoy ever want to steal ™ A "Of course not," sald Prosser, who kept his temper, ! "Did yoy ever want to drink Niiisky 80 bad you couldnt stand "No." "Did you ever want to kill a man ™ the store, waiting their turns like a crowd of Parsifal first-nighters, so we fell in with the rest, whipping our arms and stamping our moc- casins till the chill ate into our very bones. It took hours to sort letters, but not a man whimpered. When you wait for vital news a tension comes that chokes comi- Plaint. "There was no joking here. nor that elephantine persifiage which marks rough men when they foregatheér in the wilderness. They were the fellows who blazed the trail, ed, shaggy, and not pretty to look at, for they all knew hardship and went out strong- hearted into this silent land, jest- Ing with danger and singing in the solitudes, Here In the presence of the mail they laid aside their cloaks of carelessness and saw one another bared to the quick, timid with hunger for the wives and little ones behind, ; p There were a few lke Prosser, r. in whom there was still the glamour of the Northland and the mystery of the unknown, but they were scattered. and in their eyes the "No.* - anxious light was growing also. Five months is a wearying time, and silent suspense will sap the courage. If only one could banish Worry; but the long, unbearable nights when the mind leaps and scurries out into the voids of con- Jecture like sparks from a chimney --well, it's then you roll in your bunk and your sigh ain't from the snow-shoe pain. » A half-frozen man in" an Ice- cloggtd dory had brought us our last news, one October day, just before the river stopped, and now, after five months, the curtain parted again. I saw McGill, the lawyer, in the line ahead of me and noted the grayness of his cheeks, the nervous way his lips worked, and the futile, wandering, uselessness of his hands. Then I remembered. When his letter came the fall before it sald the wife was very low, that the crisis was near, and that they would write again In a few days. He had lived thie endless time with Fear stalking at his shoulder. He had lain down with it nightly and risen with it grinning at him in the slow, Lost is Their cold dawn, The boys had told me how well he fought it back week after week, but now, edging inch by inch toward the door behind which lay his message, it got the best of him. I wrung his hand and tried to say something. "I want to run away," he quav- ered. "But I'm afraid to." When. we got in at last we met men coming out, and in some faces We saw the marks of tragedy. Others smiled, and these put heart into us, Old man Tomlinson had four little girls back in Idaho. He got twe letters. One was a six-months. old tax receipt, the other a laundry bill. That meant three months more of -silence. 3 = When my turn came and I saw Jz writing of the little woman scmething gripped me by the throat, while-I saw my hands shake as if SRYEI Sv ~ they belong to somebody else. My news was good, though, and I read it slowly--some parts twice--then at last when I looked up I found McGill near me. Unconsciously we had both sought a quiet corner, but he hdd sunk on to a box. Now, as I glanced at him I saw what made me shiver, The Fear was there agaln--naked and ugly--for he held one lonesome letter, and its inscrip- tion wae in no woman's hand. He had crouched thergtby my side all this time, staring{ staring, staring at it, afraid to re afraid to open it. Some men smile in their agony, shifting their pitiful 'masks to the last, others curse, and no, two will take their blows alike. McGill was plucking feebly at the end of his envelope, tearing off tiny bits, dropping the fragments at his feet. Now and then he stopped, and when he did he shuddered. t "Buck up, oid pal," I said. Then, recognizing me, he thrust the missive into my hand. "Tell me--for God's sake--tell me quick. I can't-- No, no--walit! Not vet. Don't tell me, I'l know [rom your face. They sald she couldn't live--" & But she had, and he watched me so fiercely that when the light came into my face he snatched the letter from me like a madman. , Ah-h! Give it to me! Give it to me! I knew it! I told you fhey couldn't fool me. No, sir. 1 téft an the time she'd make it. Why, 1 knew it In my marrow!" "What's the date?" I inquired. "September thirtieth," he sald. Then, as he realized how old it was, he hegan to worry again. i "Why didn't they write laters They must know I'll out. Suppose she's had a relapse. That's it. They wrote too soon, and now they don't dare tell me. She-- got worse--dled----months ago, and they're afraid to let me know." "Stop it." I sald, and reasoned sanity back into him. Ce 4 =) N= ST IN 4 Monty had taken his mail and run off like a puppy to feast in quiet, so I went over to Eckert's and had a drink. Sam winked at me as I came In. A man was reading from a letter. "Go on. I'm /interested," sald the proprietor. The fellow was getting full pretty fast and was down to the garrulous stage, but he began again: "Dear Husband--I am sorry to hear that you have been so unfor- tunate, but don't get discouraged. I know you will make a good miner if you stick to it long enough. Don't worry about me. 1 have rented the front room to a very nice man for fifteen dollars a week. The papers here are full of a gold strike in Siberia, Just across Bering Sea from where you are. If yoy don't find something during the next two years, why not try it over there for a couple 7" "That's what I call & persevering woman," sald Eckert, solemnly. "She's a business woman, too," said the husband. "All I ever got for that room was seven-fifty a week." 8 It seems I'd missed Montague at the store, but when the crowd came out Ollle Marceau found him away in at the back, having gone there to be alone with his letters. She saw the utter abandon and grief in his pose, and the tears came to her eyes. Impulsively she went up and laid her hand on his bowed hehd. She had followed the frontier enough to know the signs. "Oh, Mr. Prosser," she sald, 'I'm 80 sorry! Is It the little mother?" "Yes," he answered, without mov- ing. "Not--not--" she hesitated. "I don't know. The letters are up to the middle of December, and she was very sick." . Then, with the quick sentiment of her kind, the girl spoke to him, for- getting berself, her life, his preju- dice, everything except the lonely little gray woman oft there who had waited and longed just as such an- other had waited and longer for her, and, inasmuch as Ollie had suffered before as this boy suffered now, in her words there was a sweet sym- pathy and a perfect understanding. It was very fine, I think, coming 80 from her, and when the first shock had passed over he felt that here, among all these rugged men, there was no one to give him the comfort he craved except this child of the dance-halls. Compassion and sympathy he could get from any of us, but he was a boy and this was his first grief, so he yearned for something more, something subtler, perhaps the delicate comprehension of a. woman. At any rate, he Wouldn't let her leave With, and the tender-hearted lass poured out all the best her warm nature afforded. In a few days he braced up, how- ever, and stood his sorrow like the rest of us. It made him more of & man In many ways. For one thing. he never scoffed now at any of the nine women, which, taken as an indication, was good. In fact, 1 saw him several times with the Marceau girl, for he found her al- ways ready and responsive, and came to confide In her rather than In Martin or me, which was quite Ristoral Martin spoke about ft were loading at the trading-post the next day when I heard the name of Olile Marceau. It was a big-limbed fellow from Alder Creek talking, and, as he showed no liquor in his face, what he said sounded all the worse. I have heard as bad many a time without offense, for there is no code of loyalty concern- ing these girls, but Ollie had got my sympathy, somehow, and I re- sented the remarks, particularly the laughter. So 'did Prosser,'the Puri- tan. He looked up from his work, white and dangerous. "Don't talk that way about a girl," said he to the stranger, and it made a sensation among the crowd, I never knew a man before with courage enough to kick in public on such subjects. As it was, the man sald something so much worse that right there the front busted out of the tiger-cage and for a few brief moments we were given over to chaos. I had seen Whitewater walloped and I knew how full of parlor tricks the kid was, but this time he went insane. He knocked that man off the counter at the first pass and climbed him with his hobnails as he lay on the floor. A fight is a fight, and a good thing for spectators and participants, for it does more to keep down scurvy than anything I know of, but the thud of those heavy boots Into that helpless flesh sickened me, and we rushed Prosser out of there while he struggled like a maniac. I never saw such a com- plete reyersal of form, Somewftere, away back yonder, that boy's fore- fathers were pirates or cannibals or butchers. When the fog had cleared out of his brain the reaction was Just as powerful. I took him' out alone while 'the others worked over the Alder Creek party, and all at once my man fell apart like wet sawdust. "What made me do it--what made me do it?" he cried. "I'm| crazy. Why, I tried to kill him! Ana yet what he said is true--that's the worst of it--it's true. Think of it, and I fought for her. What am 1 coming to After the clean-up we came to camp, waiting for the river to break and the first boat to follow. It was then that the suspense began to tell on our partner. He read and reread his 'letters, but there was little hope in them, and now, with no work to do, he grew nervous. Added to everything else, our food ran short, and we lived on scraps of whatever was left over from our winter grub-stake. Just out of cussedness the break-up was ten days late, the ten longest days 1 ever put In, but eventually it came, and a week later also came the mall, We needed food and clothes, we needed whisky, we needed news of the great, distant world--but all we thought of was our mail. The boy had decided to go homae, We were sorry to see him leave, too, for he had the makings of a real man in him even if he shaved three times a week, but no sooner was the steamer tied than he came plunging into my tent like a moose, laughing and dancing in his first gladness. The mother was well again. Later I went aboard to give him the last lonesome good wishes of the fellow who stays behind and fights along for another year. The big freighter, with her neat staterooms and long, glass-burdened tables, awoke a perfect panic in me to be going with him, to shake this cruel country and drift back to the home and the wife and the ples Ilke mother made, I found him on the top deck with the Marceau girl, who was saying good-by to him. There was a look about her I had never seen before, and all at once the understanding and the bitter irony of it struck me. This poor waif hadn't had enough to stand, so Love had come #0 her, just as Kink had predicted--a hope- less love which she would have to fight the way she fought the whole world. It made me bitter and eynical, but I. admired her nerve-- she was dressed for the sacrifice, trim and well-curried as a thou- sand-dollar pony. Back of her smile, though, I saw the waiting tears, and my heart bled. Spring is a flerce time for romance, anyhow, There wasn't time to say much, %0 I squeezed Monty's hand like a clder-press. "God bless you, lad! You must come back to us" I sald, but he shook his head, and I heard the sirl's breath catch. I continued: "Come on, Ollle; I'l help you ashore." We stood on the bank there to- Tether and watched the last of him. tall and clear-cut against the white of the wheel-house, and it seemed fo me when he had gone that some- thing bright ang vital and young had passed out of me, leaving in its stead discouragement and dark- ness and age. "Would wou mind walking with me up to my cabin?" Ollle asked. "Of course not" I said, and we went down the long street, past the theater, the trading-post, and the sa "tll we came to the hill wh ® her little nest was perched. one spoke and smiled to her and she answered in the same way, though I knew she was on de and holding herself with firm iy As we came near to the end and her pace quickened, however, and I guessed the panic that was on her to be alone where she could drop her mask and become a woman--a poor, weak, grief-stricken woman. But when we were inside at last, her manner astounded me. She didn't throw herself on her couch nor go to pleces, as I had dreaded, but turned. on me with burning re a). her hands tight clenched, her voice was throaty and hoarse. The words came tumbling out in confusion. "T've let him go." she said. , "Yes, and you helped me. Only for you I'd have broken down: but I want You to know I've done one good thing at last in my miserable life. Ive held in. He never knew--he never knew. O God! what fools men are!" "Yes," I sald, "yoy did mighty well. He's a sensitive'chap, and if you'd broken down he'd have felt awful bad." "What!" She grasped me by the coat lapels and shook me. Yes! That weak little woman shook me, while her face went perfectly livid. "He'd have felt badly,' eh? Man! Man! Didn't you see! Are you blind? Why, he asked me to go with him. He asked me to marry him. Think of it--that great, won- derful man asked me to be his wife ----me--Olive Marceau, the dancer! Oh, oh! Isn't it fungy? Why don't you laugh?" I didn't laugh. I' stood thers, picking pieces of fur out of my cap and wondering If ever I should see another woman like this one. She paced about over the skin rugs, tearing at the throat of her dress as If it choked her. There were no tears in her eyes, but her whole frame shook 'and"'shuddered as if from great cold, deep set in her bones. "Why didn't you go?" I asked, stupidly. "Yoy love him, don't you?" "You know why I didn't go," she cried, fiercely. "I couldn't. - How could I go back and meet his mother? Some day she'd find me out and it would spoil his life. No, ro! If only she hadn't recovered-- No, I don't mean that, either. I'm not his kind, that's all. Ah, God! [ let him go--I let him go, and he never knew!" She was writhing now on her bed in a perfect frenzy, calling to him brokenly, stretching out her arms while great, dry, coughing sobs wrenched her. "Little one," 1 said, unsteadily, and my throat ached so that I couldn't trust m _ 'You're a brave--girl, and yo his kind or anybody's kind." With that the rain came, and so I left her alone with her comforting misery. When I told Kink he sput- tered llke a pinwheel, and every evening thereafter woe two. went up to her house and sat with her. We could do this because she'd quit the theater the day the boat took Pros ser away, and she wouldn't heed Eckert's offers to go back. "I'm through with it for good," she told us, "though I don't knaw what else I'm gqod for. You see, I don't know anything useful, but I suppose I can learn." "Now, if 1 wasn't ready---" I sald, "Humph!" snorted Kink. *T ain't 80 young as neither one of my pard- ners, miss, but I'm possessed of rare intellectual treasures." married al- - When a week had passed after the first boat went down with Prosser, we began to look daily for the first up- rivér steamer, bringing word direct {rom _the outside world. It came one dnight, and as we were get- ting dressed to go to the landing our tent was torn open and Montague tumbled in upon us. "What brought you back? we questioned when we'd finished maul- ing him. It was June, and the nights were as light as day In this latitude, so we could see his face plainly. "Why--er--". He hesitated for an instant, then threw back his head, squared his great young shoulders, and looked us in the eyes, while all his embarrassment fled. "I came back to marry Olive Mabkceau," sald he. "I came to take her back home to the little mother." He stared out wistfully at the dis. tant southern mountains, effulgent and glorified by the midnight sun which lay so close behind thelr crests, and I winked at Martin. "She's left--" "What!" He whirled quickly. "--the theater, and I don't sup- Pose you can see her until tomeor- row." Disappointment darkened his face. "Besides," Kink added, gloomily, "when you quit her ltke a dog I slicked myself up some, and I ain't anyways sure she'll care to see you now---only jest as a friend of mine. Notice I've cut my whiskers, don't you?" . We made Monty pay for that in. stant's hesitation, the last he ever had, and then I said: "You walk up the river trafl for a Quarter of a mile and waft, If I ean persuade her to come out at this hour I'll send her to you, No, you couldn't find her. She's moved since voy left." . "lI wouldn't gamble none on her meetin' you," Martin said, discour- agingly, and combed out his new- mown beard with ostentation. She was up the moment 1 knocked, and when I said that a man needed help I heard her mur- mur sympathetically as she dressed, When we came to our tent I stopped her. "He's up yonder a place," sald I. "You run alofig while I fetch Kink and the medicine-kit. We'll over- take you'™ "Is it anything serious? "Yes, it's apt to be unless you hurry. "He seems to think he needs You pretty badly." And so she went ap the river trail to where he was waiting. her way golden with the beams of the nin whose rim peeped nt her over the far-off hills. And there, in the free, (still air, among the virgin spruce, with the clean, sweet moss beneath their feet. they met. The good sun smiled broadly at th now, and the grim Yikon past, chuckling under its banks and swiggering among the roots, while the song it sang was of spring and of long, bright days that had no night. 7 Ne She luughed at/both of us...» .. ;. fin Ss='J) WHEN THE MAIL CAME IN BE ACH World Famed Author of Successful Fiction N