The White Grave

Harrison and his wife were plainly newcomers, unused to the wilderness. Worse, they had never set foot outside New York City, and why a young man like Harrison, inexperienced and city-bred, should have tried to haul a year’s worth of supplies—weighing a ton—over the Chilkoot Pass and tempt fate in the bleak Yukon, no one could understand.

The real reason was Harrison’s wife. Tired of a modest salary in the city, she caught the gold fever when word of the Klondike gold-fields reached the world in 1897. She insisted that Harrison quit his clerkship at an insurance company and take her to Alaska. They were deeply in love and could not bear to be apart. So they put their savings into sacks of flour, blankets, tins of coffee, and tickets to Dyea.

They landed in December. It was a foolish time to arrive, but they didn’t know that, and there were plenty of other fools around. When Harrison realized he would have to drag all their provisions over the desolate mountain range rising before him, his heart sank; as the Yukoners say, he got cold feet. But his wife cheered him. She was young and full of hope, a pretty little woman with a mass of flaxen hair. On her account, many a rough packer on the trail gave Harrison a lift with his load in the steeper places.

They struggled onward through storms and snowdrifts. Little by little, they neared the summit that had lain eighteen miles away when they first landed. Every morning Harrison would load about two hundred and fifty pounds onto the sled, pull it up the trail seven miles or so, and come back in the afternoon. And the girl—for she was nothing more—would cook their small meals on the sheet-iron stove, dry Harrison’s moccasins, coddle him, and tell him how much it was like a picnic and how she enjoyed the life. Which was not true.

They passed through Canyon City, beyond which, the packers say, there is no God, and up to Sheep Camp, far up in the mountains at the timber line, beyond which lies a frozen wasteland that supports no living thing—not even the scrubby spruce that can survive on bare rock at lower altitudes. There they disappeared from view, for horses do not go past Sheep Camp, the trail being too rough; and the packers, not seeing them, could bring no word.

Now, there were hotels of a kind in Dyea at this time, but the entire downstairs was usually turned into one room used as a bar, dance-hall, and gambling house. So when Harrison came back down the trail two weeks later, at three o’clock in the morning, he had to elbow his way up to the bar in the Comique to ask for a room. The first bartender looked at him curiously, for he had seen the Harrisons on the trail, and the teamsters had said they must be over the summit by now. His curiosity got the better of him.

“Are you the party that went up with a little blonde lady three weeks ago?” he asked.

“I may be,” said Harrison.

“She seemed kind of light for this country,” the bartender pressed. “Hope she’s standing it all right. Did she come down with you?”

“I brought her with me,” said Harrison.

“Isn’t she coming in? She doesn’t have to pass through the saloon here if she doesn’t like. She can—”

Harrison’s hand went to his forehead. “She’s dead,” he said.

A teamster came in from the side door and spoke to him, and he followed the man outside. So did two of the dance-hall girls and the first bartender. Outside, in one of the big freight sleds, lay Mrs. Harrison. Her flaxen hair waved as in life over the girlish face, hard now as marble and colder. The moon shone fully upon her, and a snow crystal hung here and there on the little fur parka she wore. She might have been a marble Madonna there in the moonlight. Through the open door came the noise of the next waltz. One of the girls slipped in, and the orchestra stopped. Quickly a small group began to gather, but Harrison did not move. He seemed as if in a trance, staring open-eyed, mistily, at the frozen woman in the sled.

Presently, Blanche, the girl who had stopped the music, touched his arm.

“I know there is not much I can do for you,” she said. “I know how it feels; but I thought perhaps you’d like to bring her inside, and you can have my room until—until the funeral.”

Harrison thanked her. But the next day he moved the body to an empty cabin that stood on the riverbank in the pine grove behind the Comique. He could not bury her, he could not give her up, he said. True, she could not speak or move, but even to have her body with him was something, a kind of comfort. The bitter cold of the Northland, the icy winds that roared in untamed fury down the canyon—these had killed her; now they would preserve the beauty they had stilled, keep her forever young, as he had known and loved her. Why should he bury her? When they spoke to him of burial, he bade them leave him alone.

Only in the afternoons, when there was no dancing in the Comique, Blanche would go daily to the cabin in the pines, bringing him a padlock for the door, a lantern, and other things.

It all might have gone on like that indefinitely, had it not been that in a month Harrison had no money left to buy meals, and Blanche asked him plainly about it.

“Why don’t you go over and ask Coughlin for something to do?” she said, when Harrison admitted he hadn’t eaten dinner that day. Coughlin ran the Comique.

“What could I do?” asked Harrison. “I’m only a bookkeeper.”

But that night he asked Coughlin. Now, twice a day Coughlin put all the gold and banknotes from the cash drawer into his pocket, leaving the silver for change; he kept his few accounts in his head; and he didn’t need a bookkeeper. But he felt sorry for Harrison, and besides, Blanche had spoken to him, and he wanted to oblige her. Blanche was popular among the men, asked to drink more often than any other girl in the house, and was valuable on that account in a country where one gets a dollar for two drinks. So he told Harrison he could go to work.

“In the morning?” said Harrison.

“Any time,” said Coughlin.

Harrison looked around a moment. “If you’ll show me the books, I might look them over now.”

“Books?” said Coughlin, hesitating. “There aren’t any, but I guess you can figure all right in this, perhaps.” He produced a small paper-covered blank book from under the bottle rack. “You’ll find a lead pencil in the drawer any time.” And he bustled over to the faro bank, satisfied that he had shown he knew about bookkeeping. He came back to ask Harrison what wages he wanted.

“Anything,” said Harrison. “In New York I got seventy-five dollars a month.”

“That ain’t much,” said Coughlin. “I never asked a man to take less than three dollars a day and board. You can eat in the restaurant there.” Then he introduced Harrison to Big Joe, the day bartender, telling Joe this was the bookkeeper.

An hour later, Joe called Harrison to say that Red Sheehan had got a drink without paying for it.

“He never will pay for it either,” said the experienced Joe, “but I suppose you’ll put it down in the bookkeeping.”

Harrison seemed uncertain about the value of that entry, and his uncertainty settled it, for after that Joe never mentioned such items, and as for Coughlin, he continued to dump the uncounted contents of the cash drawer into his pocket at odd times, paying his debts from the same source with no regard for cash balances, daily receipts, or outstanding accounts, which made Harrison’s methodical hair stand on end.

Occasionally, however, Coughlin would ask Harrison how he was getting along, and Harrison, who had debited Red Sheehan’s account with one drink and never had occasion to make a second entry of any kind, generally replied that the work was pretty light.

“That’s all right,” Coughlin would say. “Bookkeepers are mighty handy to have around in case you want to figure some time.”

And so Harrison drew his three dollars a day and ate in the restaurant, where Blanche usually managed to sit opposite him. In the evenings he sat idle in the Comique, watching the roulette wheels spin and the cards drop monotonously from the faro box, hearing the metallic calls of the dealers and the buzz of the ball in the roulette wheel; seeing the dancing girls in all the glories of scarlet satin, free affection, and peroxide hair waltz by; listening to the wandering musicians of the orchestra play some good music and much bad; sitting near the end of the bar, watching the carnival of sin and revelry around him. Then about midnight, when he felt entitled to leave, he went back to the lonely cabin where his wife lay in her changeless sleep, to sit and keep his vigil with her he had loved in life and still adored in death.

In the restaurant, he had many conversations with Blanche. “How long will you stay here?” she asked once.

“Always, I suppose,” he said.

“But this is only a boom town,” she answered. “Next year there will be no one here but the Siwashes, and they will be quarreling among themselves for these buildings.”

“I’ll stay,” Harrison insisted.

“But how can you live? Coughlin is going down the river this summer, and a man must eat. Why don’t you come along with the rest of us? He’ll take everyone working here, for he means to open up again in the Yukon country.” Harrison shook his head.

To Blanche, he was interesting. Even in the depths to which she had fallen, or rather deliberately descended, there exists an unconfessed desire for the better things of the past, for the moral levels that have been ridiculed and deserted, for the things that are bitter with the sourness of the grapes the fox could not reach. To talk with Harrison was a breath from the old world, monotonous perhaps but lovable, where she, too... but she never thought of those things. What was the use? It made her sad, and she would undoubtedly drink more than usual, get reckless, buy wine with her salary and tips, and be in debt to the house for a month afterward. So she didn’t think much. It never occurred to her that her interest in Harrison was passing the danger line. And even if it had, it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.

* * * * *

A month later, Coughlin announced that the Comique would have a grand closing one week from that night. “The money is about through in this town,” he said in explanation. “We’ll move on to the gold mines.”

Blanche discussed it with Harrison in the restaurant that evening. The news disturbed him.

“You’ll come, too?” she said. He didn’t know. “There’ll be nothing here,” she went on, “and it will be so lonely.”

“I don’t mind the loneliness,” said Harrison.

“But I’ll be lonely.”

“Perhaps Coughlin wouldn’t want me, anyway. I haven’t done a stroke of work while I’ve been here.”

“But he’ll want you if I say so. I’m the best girl he’s got,” said Blanche modestly, “and if I say so it goes. And I do say so.”

Harrison was silent. He had often thought of this. He had known, of course, that he could not live forever at the Comique. Many times he had decided that death would be easier than a final parting from the dead. He had thought he could never leave her, but now—well, the lust of life is strong. We do not know how far the fall is until we stand at the brink and look over. Besides, there is no coming back. If only we could try it for a while and return again!

“Harrison,” said Blanche suddenly, “listen. I think I know what you are thinking, and I know I can’t argue with you about it. No one could. You know best, and no one else can know anything about it. But I want to tell you one fact that perhaps you haven’t thought of. You want to stay here with her—always. But you can’t. I know it is horrible to talk of, but it is not always winter even in Alaska, and the summer is almost here.” The man winced. “Go to bed, Harrison,” she said. “I can’t talk of such things. You know best.”

He went away to the cabin. He knew Blanche was right. It must be—but the anguish of it. How could he say the last farewell?

At the foot of the mountains that stretch upward from the Dyea sands, he dug a grave, four feet deep. And that night he would bury her. But his resolution failed him. All night he sat beside the unreplying dead and stroked her icy hands. “Tomorrow I will do it,” he said. But the next day he dug the grave deeper, to six feet. And neither could he say farewell that night.

Then Blanche came to him. “We leave on Saturday. You know today is Wednesday,” she said, and went away quickly, for she saw the sheeted form and understood something of his pain. On Thursday she came again. Harrison had not been at the restaurant all day, so she carried a tray with her. The cabin was empty, but a note on the table said: “I cannot give her up. I could not hide her in a grave of earth. I will lay her on the mountain top above the glacier. Thank you. Good-by.”

Now the glacier lies in a great crater of the mountains there, above the snow line, five thousand feet above Dyea; and behind it towers a solitary peak that juts needle-like, head and shoulders over the lesser crags of the crater. Up above the world, far from the sound of man, into the great silence it reaches, where only the northern lights keep the long vigils with its wind-tormented top.

That night Blanche asked Billy Matthews—who ought to know, being a squaw-man and an old-timer—how long it would take to go to the glacier. He said the Siwashes called it two days. “And how long to the top of the big peak?” Matthews smiled. “Why, no one’s ever gone, sis, and I don’t scarcely think they will.”

But the next day Blanche borrowed the glasses from the trading post and watched the snow line. About four o’clock a black speck gradually emerged at the timber limit, showing sharply against the snow-fields beyond. The glasses revealed a man with a long bundle on his back. Blanche put the glasses down and watched the speck with her naked eye. Slowly it crept to the foot of the great ice rampart, and as it mounted the green precipices, a bank of cloud engulfed it.

Early next morning Blanche searched the mountain with the glasses. The speck had crossed the miles of glacier in the night and was half way up the mighty pinnacle behind. There it clung to a precarious hold on the storm-swept crag, its ghastly burden still upon its shoulders. Five hundred feet below it lay a great snow-field, hundreds of feet deep. Five hundred feet above hung the mountain crest. Blanche could see the wind sweep great banks of snow around the speck. The footing must have been slippery, for the speck climbed less than a hundred feet in an hour, and then, as a wind-gust swept a swirling eddy of sleet across the precipice, it fell—fell straight to the eternal snows five hundred feet beneath, and disappeared. Even with the glasses, Blanche could see no hole in the drift, and besides, the wind would fill it in again almost at once.

Grey-lipped, she sought out Matthews. “Billy,” she asked, “how far would a man sink in that snow up there if he fell off the top of the peak?”

“My God, what questions,” said Billy. “How do I know? He’d stay a thousand years, anyway.”