James B. Hendryx

“ How we used to curse the country and ourselves, as we fought the gravel way up there on the edge of things! Copper's a banker's game. Gold's the real mining. I'd like to take a hunk of sourdough bread and mop up the grease from a half-dozen slices of limber-fried bacon right now. No one that hasn't gouged gravel knows how to eat! ”

“ I take hold of a proposition, and work and plot and fight twenty hours out of twenty-four to put it through, and when the game is won—when any other man would sit back and look with pride on the work of his head and hands, and enjoy its benefits—right then I lose interest in it. I've worked all my life for something I've never got—for something I know I will never get—by work. There's only one measure of work—money. ”

“ It's knowing that a man lives who has double-crossed me and got away with it!" And then the figure of Jess Ward faded, as his mind drifted backward, far backward, before Dyea beach, when Alaska was only a name. He flung his half-smoked cigar viciously outboard, and turned impatiently from the rail—turned to meet squarely the eyes of the woman in grey. She was seated in a deck-chair a half-dozen paces from where he stood, and she was alone. ”

“ He remembered even the feel of the throb of the engines, as the rickety little steamer ploughed northward, her deck piled high with packs and outfits of the stampeders—remembered the hotchpotch of humanity that rubbed elbows at the rotten rail. ”

“ But whether the talk was of mines, or politics, or growing things, Downey perceived a deep-seated pessimism—an underlying bitterness—in his friend's viewpoint that invariably found outlet in the damning of Jess Ward. Revenge had become an obsession.
"You're a good hater, John," observed the officer, at the end of one of these jaundiced tirades. "But hate needs a balance. Too much of it makes a man lopsided, an' lopsided men ain't happy. Trouble is, you ain't never learned how to enjoy yourself. ”

“ There is no fight to a good mine—one that couldn't help but roll up profits—so I began hunting for a rotten one. Found lots of 'em, but they didn't suit me. Either they never ought to have been dug, or they was worked out. At last I heard of the Bramble Patch. The ore was there all right, but the men that owned her had got cold feet. They couldn't keep her pumped out, and a half-dozen other little things ailed her—things that make yellow men quit. I bought the outfit, hired the best engineer that was loose, and went at her. ”

“ But they're satisfied and they're happy, and that's what makes life worth living. You can't buy happiness. The man that's learnt to live and be happy on a hundred a month is a heap richer than the man that ain't learnt to on a hundred thousand. But tell me," he asked so suddenly that his voice sounded harsh, "you didn't marry one of 'em, did you?"
The woman's eyes turned slowly from the distant mountains. ”

“ I've knowed lots of men in my time—rich ones and poor ones—poor ones that was happy, and rich ones that wasn't. You're one of them last. I've been studying over what you said the other evenin', about me not knowin' what I was talkin' about—about luck, you know. I guess you're right about that. 'Tain't how much a man gets that makes him lucky—it's knowin' how to enjoy what he has got. You're restless, John. What you need is a wife. ”

“ Then came the telegram from Downey that he'd located Jess Ward. I've always swore to get him, if he's still alive. So I told Goodwin to tell the Morman-Gugenspiel crowd to go to the devil. You see, they have been in the habit of reaching out and grabbing everything that looks good to 'em, and bucking 'em will get under their hide. They may get the Bramble Patch at that, but, if they do, they'll earn it." Dennis held a match to his dead cigar, and the strong, hard lines of his face stood out with startling distinctness in the flare of the tiny flame. ”

“ Dennis's only answer was an inarticulate growl, nor did he speak again that evening.
"Thought I'd prod round till I found the sore spot," mused Downey to himself, as lie drew the blankets over his head. "I've been wonderin' what put the acid in his heart. It's a woman—an' that settles it. Trouble with men is, they get it into their head there ain't but one partic'lar woman that's fit for 'em to marry. Which it ain't reasonable, an' it ain't accordin' to facts. Then, if somethin' turns up so's he can't get her, he goes mopin' round like a dog that's lost his last flea. ”

“ I turned for satisfaction to winning out where other men failed. The satisfaction ain't there. I've beat men at their own game, and I've piled up more money than I can ever spend, and I'm right where I started. ”

“ But hard work won't get you nowheres unless you're lucky along with it. Take that winter around Dawson. Why, who'd ha' picked you, without no claim, an' workin' with your two hands for a bare livin', to be one of the lucky ones! There was other fellows workin' that winter—plenty of 'em—but they didn't none of 'em get rich. No, you're just naturally lucky, John." The other made no reply, but continued to stare moodily into the fire. "Why, the sourdoughs are tellin' round here yet how you barely wintered through, an' a few years later pulled out of Nome with half a million. ”