Lost Face

J >> Jack London >> Lost Face


Having disposed of Arizona Jack and watched him out of sight, the
population turned from the bank and went to work on its claims--all
except Curly Jim, who ran the one faro layout in all the Northland and
who speculated in prospect-holes on the sides. Two things happened that
day that were momentous. In the late morning Marcus O'Brien struck it.
He washed out a dollar, a dollar and a half, and two dollars, from three
successive pans. He had found the streak. Curly Jim looked into the
hole, washed a few pans himself, and offered O'Brien ten thousand dollars
for all rights--five thousand in dust, and, in lieu of the other five
thousand, a half interest in his faro layout. O'Brien refused the offer.
He was there to make money out of the earth, he declared with heat, and
not out of his fellow-men. And anyway, he didn't like faro. Besides, he
appraised his strike at a whole lot more than ten thousand.

The second event of moment occurred in the afternoon, when Siskiyou
Pearly ran his boat into the bank and tied up. He was fresh from the
Outside, and had in his possession a four-months-old newspaper.
Furthermore, he had half a dozen barrels of whisky, all consigned to
Curly Jim. The men of Red Cow quit work. They sampled the whisky--at a
dollar a drink, weighed out on Curly's scales; and they discussed the
news. And all would have been well, had not Curly Jim conceived a
nefarious scheme, which was, namely, first to get Marcus O'Brien drunk,
and next, to buy his mine from him.

The first half of the scheme worked beautifully. It began in the early
evening, and by nine o'clock O'Brien had reached the singing stage. He
clung with one arm around Curly Jim's neck, and even essayed the late
lamented Ferguson's song about the little birds. He considered he was
quite safe in this, what of the fact that the only man in camp with
artistic feelings was even then speeding down the Yukon on the breast of
a five-mile current.

But the second half of the scheme failed to connect. No matter how much
whisky was poured down his neck, O'Brien could not be brought to realize
that it was his bounden and friendly duty to sell his claim. He
hesitated, it is true, and trembled now and again on the verge of giving
in. Inside his muddled head, however, he was chuckling to himself. He
was up to Curly Jim's game, and liked the hands that were being dealt
him. The whisky was good. It came out of one special barrel, and was
about a dozen times better than that in the other five barrels.

Siskiyou Pearly was dispensing drinks in the bar-room to the remainder of
the population of Red Cow, while O'Brien and Curly had out their business
orgy in the kitchen. But there was nothing small about O'Brien. He went
into the bar-room and returned with Mucluc Charley and Percy Leclaire.

"Business 'sociates of mine, business 'sociates," he announced, with a
broad wink to them and a guileless grin to Curly. "Always trust their
judgment, always trust 'em. They're all right. Give 'em some
fire-water, Curly, an' le's talk it over."

This was ringing in; but Curly Jim, making a swift revaluation of the
claim, and remembering that the last pan he washed had turned out seven
dollars, decided that it was worth the extra whisky, even if it was
selling in the other room at a dollar a drink.

"I'm not likely to consider," O'Brien was hiccoughing to his two friends
in the course of explaining to them the question at issue. "Who?
Me?--sell for ten thousand dollars! No indeed. I'll dig the gold
myself, an' then I'm goin' down to God's country--Southern
California--that's the place for me to end my declinin' days--an' then
I'll start . . . as I said before, then I'll start . . . what did I say I
was goin' to start?"

"Ostrich farm," Mucluc Charley volunteered.

"Sure, just what I'm goin' to start." O'Brien abruptly steadied himself
and looked with awe at Mucluc Charley. "How did you know? Never said
so. Jes' thought I said so. You're a min' reader, Charley. Le's have
another."

Curly Jim filled the glasses and had the pleasure of seeing four dollars'
worth of whisky disappear, one dollar's worth of which he punished
himself--O'Brien insisted that he should drink as frequently as his
guests.

"Better take the money now," Leclaire argued. "Take you two years to dig
it out the hole, an' all that time you might be hatchin' teeny little
baby ostriches an' pulling feathers out the big ones."

O'Brien considered the proposition and nodded approval. Curly Jim looked
gratefully at Leclaire and refilled the glasses.

"Hold on there!" spluttered Mucluc Charley, whose tongue was beginning to
wag loosely and trip over itself. "As your father confessor--there I
go--as your brother--O hell!" He paused and collected himself for
another start. "As your frien'--business frien', I should say, I would
suggest, rather--I would take the liberty, as it was, to mention--I mean,
suggest, that there may be more ostriches . . . O hell!" He downed
another glass, and went on more carefully. "What I'm drivin' at is . . .
what am I drivin' at?" He smote the side of his head sharply half a
dozen times with the heel of his palm to shake up his ideas. "I got it!"
he cried jubilantly. "Supposen there's slathers more'n ten thousand
dollars in that hole!"

O'Brien, who apparently was all ready to close the bargain, switched
about.

"Great!" he cried. "Splen'd idea. Never thought of it all by myself."
He took Mucluc Charley warmly by the hand. "Good frien'! Good
's'ciate!" He turned belligerently on Curly Jim. "Maybe hundred
thousand dollars in that hole. You wouldn't rob your old frien', would
you, Curly? Course you wouldn't. I know you--better'n yourself,
better'n yourself. Le's have another: We're good frien's, all of us, I
say, all of us."

And so it went, and so went the whisky, and so went Curly Jim's hopes up
and down. Now Leclaire argued in favour of immediate sale, and almost
won the reluctant O'Brien over, only to lose him to the more brilliant
counter-argument of Mucluc Charley. And again, it was Mucluc Charley who
presented convincing reasons for the sale and Percy Leclaire who held
stubbornly back. A little later it was O'Brien himself who insisted on
selling, while both friends, with tears and curses, strove to dissuade
him. The more whiskey they downed, the more fertile of imagination they
became. For one sober pro or con they found a score of drunken ones; and
they convinced one another so readily that they were perpetually changing
sides in the argument.

The time came when both Mucluc Charley and Leclaire were firmly set upon
the sale, and they gleefully obliterated O'Brien's objections as fast as
he entered them. O'Brien grew desperate. He exhausted his last argument
and sat speechless. He looked pleadingly at the friends who had deserted
him. He kicked Mucluc Charley's shins under the table, but that
graceless hero immediately unfolded a new and most logical reason for the
sale. Curly Jim got pen and ink and paper and wrote out the bill of
sale. O'Brien sat with pen poised in hand.

"Le's have one more," he pleaded. "One more before I sign away a hundred
thousan' dollars."

Curly Jim filled the glasses triumphantly. O'Brien downed his drink and
bent forward with wobbling pen to affix his signature. Before he had
made more than a blot, he suddenly started up, impelled by the impact of
an idea colliding with his consciousness. He stood upon his feet and
swayed back and forth before them, reflecting in his startled eyes the
thought process that was taking place behind. Then he reached his
conclusion. A benevolent radiance suffused his countenance. He turned
to the faro dealer, took his hand, and spoke solemnly.

"Curly, you're my frien'. There's my han'. Shake. Ol' man, I won't do
it. Won't sell. Won't rob a frien'. No son-of-a-gun will ever have
chance to say Marcus O'Brien robbed frien' cause frien' was drunk. You're
drunk, Curly, an' I won't rob you. Jes' had thought--never thought it
before--don't know what the matter 'ith me, but never thought it before.
Suppose, jes' suppose, Curly, my ol' frien', jes' suppose there ain't ten
thousan' in whole damn claim. You'd be robbed. No, sir; won't do it.
Marcus O'Brien makes money out of the groun', not out of his frien's."

Percy Leclaire and Mucluc Charley drowned the faro dealer's objections in
applause for so noble a sentiment. They fell upon O'Brien from either
side, their arms lovingly about his neck, their mouths so full of words
they could not hear Curly's offer to insert a clause in the document to
the effect that if there weren't ten thousand in the claim he would be
given back the difference between yield and purchase price. The longer
they talked the more maudlin and the more noble the discussion became.
All sordid motives were banished. They were a trio of philanthropists
striving to save Curly Jim from himself and his own philanthropy. They
insisted that he was a philanthropist. They refused to accept for a
moment that there could be found one ignoble thought in all the world.
They crawled and climbed and scrambled over high ethical plateaux and
ranges, or drowned themselves in metaphysical seas of sentimentality.

Curly Jim sweated and fumed and poured out the whisky. He found himself
with a score of arguments on his hands, not one of which had anything to
do with the gold-mine he wanted to buy. The longer they talked the
farther away they got from that gold-mine, and at two in the morning
Curly Jim acknowledged himself beaten. One by one he led his helpless
guests across the kitchen floor and thrust them outside. O'Brien came
last, and the three, with arms locked for mutual aid, titubated gravely
on the stoop.

"Good business man, Curly," O'Brien was saying. "Must say like your
style--fine an' generous, free-handed hospital . . . hospital . . .
hospitality. Credit to you. Nothin' base 'n graspin' in your make-up.
As I was sayin'--"

But just then the faro dealer slammed the door.

The three laughed happily on the stoop. They laughed for a long time.
Then Mucluc Charley essayed speech.

"Funny--laughed so hard--ain't what I want to say. My idea is . . . what
wash it? Oh, got it! Funny how ideas slip. Elusive idea--chasin'
elusive idea--great sport. Ever chase rabbits, Percy, my frien'? I had
dog--great rabbit dog. Whash 'is name? Don't know name--never had no
name--forget name--elusive name--chasin' elusive name--no, idea--elusive
idea, but got it--what I want to say was--O hell!"

Thereafter there was silence for a long time. O'Brien slipped from their
arms to a sitting posture on the stoop, where he slept gently. Mucluc
Charley chased the elusive idea through all the nooks and crannies of his
drowning consciousness. Leclaire hung fascinated upon the delayed
utterance. Suddenly the other's hand smote him on the back.

"Got it!" Mucluc Charley cried in stentorian tones.

The shock of the jolt broke the continuity of Leclaire's mental process.

"How much to the pan?" he demanded.

"Pan nothin'!" Mucluc Charley was angry. "Idea--got it--got leg-hold--ran
it down."

Leclaire's face took on a rapt, admiring expression, and again he hung
upon the other's lips.

" . . . O hell!" said Mucluc Charley.

At this moment the kitchen door opened for an instant, and Curly Jim
shouted, "Go home!"

"Funny," said Mucluc Charley. "Shame idea--very shame as mine. Le's go
home."

They gathered O'Brien up between them and started. Mucluc Charley began
aloud the pursuit of another idea. Leclaire followed the pursuit with
enthusiasm. But O'Brien did not follow it. He neither heard, nor saw,
nor knew anything. He was a mere wobbling automaton, supported
affectionately and precariously by his two business associates.

They took the path down by the bank of the Yukon. Home did not lie that
way, but the elusive idea did. Mucluc Charley giggled over the idea that
he could not catch for the edification of Leclaire. They came to where
Siskiyou Pearly's boat lay moored to the bank. The rope with which it
was tied ran across the path to a pine stump. They tripped over it and
went down, O'Brien underneath. A faint flash of consciousness lighted
his brain. He felt the impact of bodies upon his and struck out madly
for a moment with his fists. Then he went to sleep again. His gentle
snore arose on the air, and Mucluc Charley began to giggle.

"New idea," he volunteered, "brand new idea. Jes' caught it--no trouble
at all. Came right up an' I patted it on the head. It's mine. 'Brien's
drunk--beashly drunk. Shame--damn shame--learn'm lesshon. Trash
Pearly's boat. Put 'Brien in Pearly's boat. Casht off--let her go down
Yukon. 'Brien wake up in mornin'. Current too strong--can't row boat
'gainst current--mush walk back. Come back madder 'n hatter. You an' me
headin' for tall timber. Learn 'm lesshon jes' shame, learn 'm lesshon."

Siskiyou Pearly's boat was empty, save for a pair of oars. Its gunwale
rubbed against the bank alongside of O'Brien. They rolled him over into
it. Mucluc Charley cast off the painter, and Leclaire shoved the boat
out into the current. Then, exhausted by their labours, they lay down on
the bank and slept.

Next morning all Red Cow knew of the joke that had been played on Marcus
O'Brien. There were some tall bets as to what would happen to the two
perpetrators when the victim arrived back. In the afternoon a lookout
was set, so that they would know when he was sighted. Everybody wanted
to see him come in. But he didn't come, though they sat up till
midnight. Nor did he come next day, nor the next. Red Cow never saw
Marcus O'Brien again, and though many conjectures were entertained, no
certain clue was ever gained to dispel the mystery of his passing.

* * * * *

Only Marcus O'Brien knew, and he never came back to tell. He awoke next
morning in torment. His stomach had been calcined by the inordinate
quantity of whisky he had drunk, and was a dry and raging furnace. His
head ached all over, inside and out; and, worse than that, was the pain
in his face. For six hours countless thousands of mosquitoes had fed
upon him, and their ungrateful poison had swollen his face tremendously.
It was only by a severe exertion of will that he was able to open narrow
slits in his face through which he could peer. He happened to move his
hands, and they hurt. He squinted at them, but failed to recognize them,
so puffed were they by the mosquito virus. He was lost, or rather, his
identity was lost to him. There was nothing familiar about him, which,
by association of ideas, would cause to rise in his consciousness the
continuity of his existence. He was divorced utterly from his past, for
there was nothing about him to resurrect in his consciousness a memory of
that past. Besides, he was so sick and miserable that he lacked energy
and inclination to seek after who and what he was.

It was not until he discovered a crook in a little finger, caused by an
unset breakage of years before, that he knew himself to be Marcus
O'Brien. On the instant his past rushed into his consciousness. When he
discovered a blood-blister under a thumb-nail, which he had received the
previous week, his self-identification became doubly sure, and he knew
that those unfamiliar hands belonged to Marcus O'Brien, or, just as much
to the point, that Marcus O'Brien belonged to the hands. His first
thought was that he was ill--that he had had river fever. It hurt him so
much to open his eyes that he kept them closed. A small floating branch
struck the boat a sharp rap. He thought it was some one knocking on the
cabin door, and said, "Come in." He waited for a while, and then said
testily, "Stay out, then, damn you." But just the same he wished they
would come in and tell him about his illness.

But as he lay there, the past night began to reconstruct itself in his
brain. He hadn't been sick at all, was his thought; he had merely been
drunk, and it was time for him to get up and go to work. Work suggested
his mine, and he remembered that he had refused ten thousand dollars for
it. He sat up abruptly and squeezed open his eyes. He saw himself in a
boat, floating on the swollen brown flood of the Yukon. The
spruce-covered shores and islands were unfamiliar. He was stunned for a
time. He couldn't make it out. He could remember the last night's orgy,
but there was no connection between that and his present situation.

He closed his eyes and held his aching head in his hands. What had
happened? Slowly the dreadful thought arose in his mind. He fought
against it, strove to drive it away, but it persisted: he had killed
somebody. That alone could explain why he was in an open boat drifting
down the Yukon. The law of Red Cow that he had so long administered had
now been administered to him. He had killed some one and been set
adrift. But whom? He racked his aching brain for the answer, but all
that came was a vague memory of bodies falling upon him and of striking
out at them. Who were they? Maybe he had killed more than one. He
reached to his belt. The knife was missing from its sheath. He had done
it with that undoubtedly. But there must have been some reason for the
killing. He opened his eyes and in a panic began to search about the
boat. There was no grub, not an ounce of grub. He sat down with a
groan. He had killed without provocation. The extreme rigour of the law
had been visited upon him.

For half an hour he remained motionless, holding his aching head and
trying to think. Then he cooled his stomach with a drink of water from
overside and felt better. He stood up, and alone on the wide-stretching
Yukon, with naught but the primeval wilderness to hear, he cursed strong
drink. After that he tied up to a huge floating pine that was deeper
sunk in the current than the boat and that consequently drifted faster.
He washed his face and hands, sat down in the stern-sheets, and did some
more thinking. It was late in June. It was two thousand miles to Bering
Sea. The boat was averaging five miles an hour. There was no darkness
in such high latitudes at that time of the year, and he could run the
river every hour of the twenty-four. This would mean, daily, a hundred
and twenty miles. Strike out the twenty for accidents, and there
remained a hundred miles a day. In twenty days he would reach Bering
Sea. And this would involve no expenditure of energy; the river did the
work. He could lie down in the bottom of the boat and husband his
strength.

For two days he ate nothing. Then, drifting into the Yukon Flats, he
went ashore on the low-lying islands and gathered the eggs of wild geese
and ducks. He had no matches, and ate the eggs raw. They were strong,
but they kept him going. When he crossed the Arctic Circle, he found the
Hudson Bay Company's post. The brigade had not yet arrived from the
Mackenzie, and the post was completely out of grub. He was offered wild-
duck eggs, but he informed them that he had a bushel of the same on the
boat. He was also offered a drink of whisky, which he refused with an
exhibition of violent repugnance. He got matches, however, and after
that he cooked his eggs. Toward the mouth of the river head-winds
delayed him, and he was twenty-four days on the egg diet. Unfortunately,
while asleep he had drifted by both the missions of St. Paul and Holy
Cross. And he could sincerely say, as he afterward did, that talk about
missions on the Yukon was all humbug. There weren't any missions, and he
was the man to know.

Once on Bering Sea he exchanged the egg diet for seal diet, and he never
could make up his mind which he liked least. In the fall of the year he
was rescued by a United States revenue cutter, and the following winter
he made quite a hit in San Francisco as a temperance lecturer. In this
field he found his vocation. "Avoid the bottle" is his slogan and battle-
cry. He manages subtly to convey the impression that in his own life a
great disaster was wrought by the bottle. He has even mentioned the loss
of a fortune that was caused by that hell-bait of the devil, but behind
that incident his listeners feel the loom of some terrible and unguessed
evil for which the bottle is responsible. He has made a success in his
vocation, and has grown grey and respected in the crusade against strong
drink. But on the Yukon the passing of Marcus O'Brien remains tradition.
It is a mystery that ranks at par with the disappearance of Sir John
Franklin.




THE WIT OF PORPORTUK


El-Soo had been a Mission girl. Her mother had died when she was very
small, and Sister Alberta had plucked El-Soo as a brand from the burning,
one summer day, and carried her away to Holy Cross Mission and dedicated
her to God. El-Soo was a full-blooded Indian, yet she exceeded all the
half-breed and quarter-breed girls. Never had the good sisters dealt
with a girl so adaptable and at the same time so spirited.

El-Soo was quick, and deft, and intelligent; but above all she was fire,
the living flame of life, a blaze of personality that was compounded of
will, sweetness, and daring. Her father was a chief, and his blood ran
in her veins. Obedience, on the part of El-Soo, was a matter of terms
and arrangement. She had a passion for equity, and perhaps it was
because of this that she excelled in mathematics.

But she excelled in other things. She learned to read and write English
as no girl had ever learned in the Mission. She led the girls in
singing, and into song she carried her sense of equity. She was an
artist, and the fire of her flowed toward creation. Had she from birth
enjoyed a more favourable environment, she would have made literature or
music.

Instead, she was El-Soo, daughter of Klakee-Nah, a chief, and she lived
in the Holy Cross Mission where were no artists, but only pure-souled
Sisters who were interested in cleanliness and righteousness and the
welfare of the spirit in the land of immortality that lay beyond the
skies.

The years passed. She was eight years old when she entered the Mission;
she was sixteen, and the Sisters were corresponding with their superiors
in the Order concerning the sending of El-Soo to the United States to
complete her education, when a man of her own tribe arrived at Holy Cross
and had talk with her. El-Soo was somewhat appalled by him. He was
dirty. He was a Caliban-like creature, primitively ugly, with a mop of
hair that had never been combed. He looked at her disapprovingly and
refused to sit down.

"Thy brother is dead," he said shortly.

El-Soo was not particularly shocked. She remembered little of her
brother. "Thy father is an old man, and alone," the messenger went on.
"His house is large and empty, and he would hear thy voice and look upon
thee."

Him she remembered--Klakee-Nah, the headman of the village, the friend of
the missionaries and the traders, a large man thewed like a giant, with
kindly eyes and masterful ways, and striding with a consciousness of
crude royalty in his carriage.

"Tell him that I will come," was El-Soo's answer.

Much to the despair of the Sisters, the brand plucked from the burning
went back to the burning. All pleading with El-Soo was vain. There was
much argument, expostulation, and weeping. Sister Alberta even revealed
to her the project of sending her to the United States. El-Soo stared
wide-eyed into the golden vista thus opened up to her, and shook her
head. In her eyes persisted another vista. It was the mighty curve of
the Yukon at Tana-naw Station. With the St. George Mission on one side,
and the trading post on the other, and midway between the Indian village
and a certain large log house where lived an old man tended upon by
slaves.

All dwellers on the Yukon bank for twice a thousand miles knew the large
log house, the old man and the tending slaves; and well did the Sisters
know the house, its unending revelry, its feasting and its fun. So there
was weeping at Holy Cross when El-Soo departed.

There was a great cleaning up in the large house when El-Soo arrived.
Klakee-Nah, himself masterful, protested at this masterful conduct of his
young daughter; but in the end, dreaming barbarically of magnificence, he
went forth and borrowed a thousand dollars from old Porportuk, than whom
there was no richer Indian on the Yukon. Also, Klakee-Nah ran up a heavy
bill at the trading post. El-Soo re-created the large house. She
invested it with new splendour, while Klakee-Nah maintained its ancient
traditions of hospitality and revelry.

All this was unusual for a Yukon Indian, but Klakee-Nah was an unusual
Indian. Not alone did he like to render inordinate hospitality, but,
what of being a chief and of acquiring much money, he was able to do it.
In the primitive trading days he had been a power over his people, and he
had dealt profitably with the white trading companies. Later on, with
Porportuk, he had made a gold-strike on the Koyokuk River. Klakee-Nah
was by training and nature an aristocrat. Porportuk was bourgeois, and
Porportuk bought him out of the gold-mine. Porportuk was content to plod
and accumulate. Klakee-Nah went back to his large house and proceeded to
spend. Porportuk was known as the richest Indian in Alaska. Klakee-Nah
was known as the whitest. Porportuk was a money-lender and a usurer.
Klakee-Nah was an anachronism--a mediaeval ruin, a fighter and a feaster,
happy with wine and song.