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The God of His Fathers: Tales of the Klondyke

Jack London

THE MAN WITH THE GASH


Jacob Kent had suffered from cupidity all the days of his life.  This, in
turn, had engendered a chronic distrustfulness, and his mind and
character had become so warped that he was a very disagreeable man to
deal with.  He was also a victim to somnambulic propensities, and very
set in his ideas.  He had been a weaver of cloth from the cradle, until
the fever of Klondike had entered his blood and torn him away from his
loom.  His cabin stood midway between Sixty Mile Post and the Stuart
River; and men who made it a custom to travel the trail to Dawson,
likened him to a robber baron, perched in his fortress and exacting toll
from the caravans that used his ill-kept roads.  Since a certain amount
of history was required in the construction of this figure, the less
cultured wayfarers from Stuart River were prone to describe him after a
still more primordial fashion, in which a command of strong adjectives
was to be chiefly noted.

This cabin was not his, by the way, having been built several years
previously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of logs at that
point for a grub-stake.  They had been most hospitable lads, and, after
they abandoned it, travelers who knew the route made it an object to
arrive there at nightfall.  It was very handy, saving them all the time
and toil of pitching camp; and it was an unwritten rule that the last man
left a neat pile of firewood for the next comer.  Rarely a night passed
but from half a dozen to a score of men crowded into its shelter.  Jacob
Kent noted these things, exercised squatter sovereignty, and moved in.
Thenceforth, the weary travelers were mulcted a dollar per head for the
privilege of sleeping on the floor, Jacob Kent weighing the dust and
never failing to steal the down-weight.  Besides, he so contrived that
his transient guests chopped his wood for him and carried his water.  This
was rank piracy, but his victims were an easy-going breed, and while they
detested him, they yet permitted him to flourish in his sins.

One afternoon in April he sat by his door,--for all the world like a
predatory spider,--marvelling at the heat of the returning sun, and
keeping an eye on the trail for prospective flies.  The Yukon lay at his
feet, a sea of ice, disappearing around two great bends to the north and
south, and stretching an honest two miles from bank to bank.  Over its
rough breast ran the sled-trail, a slender sunken line, eighteen inches
wide and two thousand miles in length, with more curses distributed to
the linear foot than any other road in or out of all Christendom.

Jacob Kent was feeling particularly good that afternoon.  The record had
been broken the previous night, and he had sold his hospitality to no
less than twenty-eight visitors.  True, it had been quite uncomfortable,
and four had snored beneath his bunk all night; but then it had added
appreciable weight to the sack in which he kept his gold dust.  That
sack, with its glittering yellow treasure, was at once the chief delight
and the chief bane of his existence.  Heaven and hell lay within its
slender mouth.  In the nature of things, there being no privacy to his
one-roomed dwelling, he was tortured by a constant fear of theft.  It
would be very easy for these bearded, desperate-looking strangers to make
away with it.  Often he dreamed that such was the case, and awoke in the
grip of nightmare.  A select number of these robbers haunted him through
his dreams, and he came to know them quite well, especially the bronzed
leader with the gash on his right cheek.  This fellow was the most
persistent of the lot, and, because of him, he had, in his waking
moments, constructed several score of hiding-places in and about the
cabin.  After a concealment he would breathe freely again, perhaps for
several nights, only to collar the Man with the Gash in the very act of
unearthing the sack.  Then, on awakening in the midst of the usual
struggle, he would at once get up and transfer the bag to a new and more
ingenious crypt.  It was not that he was the direct victim of these
phantasms; but he believed in omens and thought-transference, and he
deemed these dream-robbers to be the astral projection of real personages
who happened at those particular moments, no matter where they were in
the flesh, to be harboring designs, in the spirit, upon his wealth.  So
he continued to bleed the unfortunates who crossed his threshold, and at
the same time to add to his trouble with every ounce that went into the
sack.

As he sat sunning himself, a thought came to Jacob Kent that brought him
to his feet with a jerk.  The pleasures of life had culminated in the
continual weighing and reweighing of his dust; but a shadow had been
thrown upon this pleasant avocation, which he had hitherto failed to
brush aside.  His gold-scales were quite small; in fact, their maximum
was a pound and a half,--eighteen ounces,--while his hoard mounted up to
something like three and a third times that.  He had never been able to
weigh it all at one operation, and hence considered himself to have been
shut out from a new and most edifying coign of contemplation.  Being
denied this, half the pleasure of possession had been lost; nay, he felt
that this miserable obstacle actually minimized the fact, as it did the
strength, of possession.  It was the solution of this problem flashing
across his mind that had just brought him to his feet.  He searched the
trail carefully in either direction.  There was nothing in sight, so he
went inside.

In a few seconds he had the table cleared away and the scales set up.  On
one side he placed the stamped disks to the equivalent of fifteen ounces,
and balanced it with dust on the other.  Replacing the weights with dust,
he then had thirty ounces precisely balanced.  These, in turn, he placed
together on one side and again balanced with more dust.  By this time the
gold was exhausted, and he was sweating liberally.  He trembled with
ecstasy, ravished beyond measure.  Nevertheless he dusted the sack
thoroughly, to the last least grain, till the balance was overcome and
one side of the scales sank to the table.  Equilibrium, however, was
restored by the addition of a pennyweight and five grains to the opposite
side.  He stood, head thrown back, transfixed.  The sack was empty, but
the potentiality of the scales had become immeasurable.  Upon them he
could weigh any amount, from the tiniest grain to pounds upon pounds.
Mammon laid hot fingers on his heart.  The sun swung on its westering way
till it flashed through the open doorway, full upon the yellow-burdened
scales.  The precious heaps, like the golden breasts of a bronze
Cleopatra, flung back the light in a mellow glow.  Time and space were
not.

"Gawd blime me! but you 'ave the makin' of several quid there, 'aven't
you?"

Jacob Kent wheeled about, at the same time reaching for his
double-barrelled shotgun, which stood handy.  But when his eyes lit on
the intruder's face, he staggered back dizzily.  _It was the face of the
Man with the Gash_!

The man looked at him curiously.

"Oh, that's all right," he said, waving his hand deprecatingly.  "You
needn't think as I'll 'arm you or your blasted dust.

"You're a rum 'un, you are," he added reflectively, as he watched the
sweat pouring from off Kent's face and the quavering of his knees.

"W'y don't you pipe up an' say somethin'?" he went on, as the other
struggled for breath.  "Wot's gone wrong o' your gaff?  Anythink the
matter?"

"W--w--where'd you get it?" Kent at last managed to articulate, raising a
shaking forefinger to the ghastly scar which seamed the other's cheek.

"Shipmate stove me down with a marlin-spike from the main-royal.  An' now
as you 'ave your figger'ead in trim, wot I want to know is, wot's it to
you?  That's wot I want to know--wot's it to you?  Gawd blime me! do it
'urt you?  Ain't it smug enough for the likes o' you?  That's wot I want
to know!"

"No, no," Kent answered, sinking upon a stool with a sickly grin.  "I was
just wondering."

"Did you ever see the like?" the other went on truculently.

"No."

"Ain't it a beute?"

"Yes."  Kent nodded his head approvingly, intent on humoring this strange
visitor, but wholly unprepared for the outburst which was to follow his
effort to be agreeable.

"You blasted, bloomin', burgoo-eatin' son-of-a-sea-swab!  Wot do you
mean, a sayin' the most onsightly thing Gawd Almighty ever put on the
face o' man is a beute?  Wot do you mean, you--"

And thereat this fiery son of the sea broke off into a string of Oriental
profanity, mingling gods and devils, lineages and men, metaphors and
monsters, with so savage a virility that Jacob Kent was paralyzed.  He
shrank back, his arms lifted as though to ward off physical violence.  So
utterly unnerved was he that the other paused in the mid-swing of a
gorgeous peroration and burst into thunderous laughter.

"The sun's knocked the bottom out o' the trail," said the Man with the
Gash, between departing paroxysms of mirth.  "An' I only 'ope as you'll
appreciate the hoppertunity of consortin' with a man o' my mug.  Get
steam up in that fire-box o' your'n.  I'm goin' to unrig the dogs an'
grub 'em.  An' don't be shy o' the wood, my lad; there's plenty more
where that come from, and it's you've got the time to sling an axe.  An'
tote up a bucket o' water while you're about it.  Lively! or I'll run you
down, so 'elp me!"

Such a thing was unheard of.  Jacob Kent was making the fire, chopping
wood, packing water--doing menial tasks for a guest!  When Jim Cardegee
left Dawson, it was with his head filled with the iniquities of this
roadside Shylock; and all along the trail his numerous victims had added
to the sum of his crimes.  Now, Jim Cardegee, with the sailor's love for
a sailor's joke, had determined, when he pulled into the cabin, to bring
its inmate down a peg or so.  That he had succeeded beyond expectation he
could not help but remark, though he was in the dark as to the part the
gash on his cheek had played in it.  But while he could not understand,
he saw the terror it created, and resolved to exploit it as remorselessly
as would any modern trader a choice bit of merchandise.

"Strike me blind, but you're a 'ustler," he said admiringly, his head
cocked to one side, as his host bustled about.  "You never 'ort to 'ave
gone Klondiking.  It's the keeper of a pub' you was laid out for.  An'
it's often as I 'ave 'eard the lads up an' down the river speak o' you,
but I 'adn't no idea you was so jolly nice."

Jacob Kent experienced a tremendous yearning to try his shotgun on him,
but the fascination of the gash was too potent.  This was the real Man
with the Gash, the man who had so often robbed him in the spirit.  This,
then, was the embodied entity of the being whose astral form had been
projected into his dreams, the man who had so frequently harbored designs
against his hoard; hence--there could be no other conclusion--this Man
with the Gash had now come in the flesh to dispossess him.  And that
gash!  He could no more keep his eyes from it than stop the beating of
his heart.  Try as he would, they wandered back to that one point as
inevitably as the needle to the pole.

"Do it 'urt you?" Jim Cardegee thundered suddenly, looking up from the
spreading of his blankets and encountering the rapt gaze of the other.
"It strikes me as 'ow it 'ud be the proper thing for you to draw your
jib, douse the glim, an' turn in, seein' as 'ow it worrits you.  Jes' lay
to that, you swab, or so 'elp me I'll take a pull on your
peak-purchases!"

Kent was so nervous that it took three puffs to blow out the slush-lamp,
and he crawled into his blankets without even removing his moccasins.  The
sailor was soon snoring lustily from his hard bed on the floor, but Kent
lay staring up into the blackness, one hand on the shotgun, resolved not
to close his eyes the whole night.  He had not had an opportunity to
secrete his five pounds of gold, and it lay in the ammunition box at the
head of his bunk.  But, try as he would, he at last dozed off with the
weight of his dust heavy on his soul.  Had he not inadvertently fallen
asleep with his mind in such condition, the somnambulic demon would not
have been invoked, nor would Jim Cardegee have gone mining next day with
a dish-pan.

The fire fought a losing battle, and at last died away, while the frost
penetrated the mossy chinks between the logs and chilled the inner
atmosphere.  The dogs outside ceased their howling, and, curled up in the
snow, dreamed of salmon-stocked heavens where dog-drivers and kindred
task-masters were not.  Within, the sailor lay like a log, while his host
tossed restlessly about, the victim of strange fantasies.  As midnight
drew near he suddenly threw off the blankets and got up.  It was
remarkable that he could do what he then did without ever striking a
light.  Perhaps it was because of the darkness that he kept his eyes
shut, and perhaps it was for fear he would see the terrible gash on the
cheek of his visitor; but, be this as it may, it is a fact that,
unseeing, he opened his ammunition box, put a heavy charge into the
muzzle of the shotgun without spilling a particle, rammed it down with
double wads, and then put everything away and got back into bed.

Just as daylight laid its steel-gray fingers on the parchment window,
Jacob Kent awoke.  Turning on his elbow, he raised the lid and peered
into the ammunition box.  Whatever he saw, or whatever he did not see,
exercised a very peculiar effect upon him, considering his neurotic
temperament.  He glanced at the sleeping man on the floor, let the lid
down gently, and rolled over on his back.  It was an unwonted calm that
rested on his face.  Not a muscle quivered.  There was not the least sign
of excitement or perturbation.  He lay there a long while, thinking, and
when he got up and began to move about, it was in a cool, collected
manner, without noise and without hurry.

It happened that a heavy wooden peg had been driven into the ridge-pole
just above Jim Cardegee's head.  Jacob Kent, working softly, ran a piece
of half-inch manila over it, bringing both ends to the ground.  One end
he tied about his waist, and in the other he rove a running noose.  Then
he cocked his shotgun and laid it within reach, by the side of numerous
moose-hide thongs.  By an effort of will he bore the sight of the scar,
slipped the noose over the sleeper's head, and drew it taut by throwing
back on his weight, at the same time seizing the gun and bringing it to
bear.

Jim Cardegee awoke, choking, bewildered, staring down the twin wells of
steel.

"Where is it?" Kent asked, at the same time slacking on the rope.

"You blasted--ugh--"

Kent merely threw back his weight, shutting off the other's wind.

"Bloomin'--Bur--ugh--"

"Where is it?" Kent repeated.

"Wot?"  Cardegee asked, as soon as he had caught his breath.

"The gold-dust."

"Wot gold-dust?" the perplexed sailor demanded.

"You know well enough,--mine."

"Ain't seen nothink of it.  Wot do ye take me for?  A safe-deposit?  Wot
'ave I got to do with it, any'ow?"

"Mebbe you know, and mebbe you don't know, but anyway, I'm going to stop
your breath till you do know.  And if you lift a hand, I'll blow your
head off!"

"Vast heavin'!" Cardegee roared, as the rope tightened.

Kent eased away a moment, and the sailor, wriggling his neck as though
from the pressure, managed to loosen the noose a bit and work it up so
the point of contact was just under the chin.

"Well?" Kent questioned, expecting the disclosure.

But Cardegee grinned.  "Go ahead with your 'angin', you bloomin' old pot-
wolloper!"

Then, as the sailor had anticipated, the tragedy became a farce.  Cardegee
being the heavier of the two, Kent, throwing his body backward and down,
could not lift him clear of the ground.  Strain and strive to the
uttermost, the sailor's feet still stuck to the floor and sustained a
part of his weight.  The remaining portion was supported by the point of
contact just under his chin.  Failing to swing him clear, Kent clung on,
resolved to slowly throttle him or force him to tell what he had done
with the hoard.  But the Man with the Gash would not throttle.  Five,
ten, fifteen minutes passed, and at the end of that time, in despair,
Kent let his prisoner down.

"Well," he remarked, wiping away the sweat, "if you won't hang you'll
shoot.  Some men wasn't born to be hanged, anyway."

"An' it's a pretty mess as you'll make o' this 'ere cabin floor."
Cardegee was fighting for time.  "Now, look 'ere, I'll tell you wot we
do; we'll lay our 'eads 'longside an' reason together.  You've lost some
dust.  You say as 'ow I know, an' I say as 'ow I don't.  Let's get a
hobservation an' shape a course--"

"Vast heavin'!"  Kent dashed in, maliciously imitating the other's
enunciation.  "I'm going to shape all the courses of this shebang, and
you observe; and if you do anything more, I'll bore you as sure as
Moses!"

"For the sake of my mother--"

"Whom God have mercy upon if she loves you.  Ah!  Would you?"  He
frustrated a hostile move on the part of the other by pressing the cold
muzzle against his forehead.  "Lay quiet, now!  If you lift as much as a
hair, you'll get it."

It was rather an awkward task, with the trigger of the gun always within
pulling distance of the finger; but Kent was a weaver, and in a few
minutes had the sailor tied hand and foot.  Then he dragged him without
and laid him by the side of the cabin, where he could overlook the river
and watch the sun climb to the meridian.

"Now I'll give you till noon, and then--"

"Wot?"

"You'll be hitting the brimstone trail.  But if you speak up, I'll keep
you till the next bunch of mounted police come by."

"Well, Gawd blime me, if this ain't a go!  'Ere I be, innercent as a
lamb, an' 'ere you be, lost all o' your top 'amper an' out o' your
reckonin', run me foul an' goin' to rake me into 'ell-fire.  You bloomin'
old pirut!  You--"

Jim Cardegee loosed the strings of his profanity and fairly outdid
himself.  Jacob Kent brought out a stool that he might enjoy it in
comfort.  Having exhausted all the possible combinations of his
vocabulary, the sailor quieted down to hard thinking, his eyes constantly
gauging the progress of the sun, which tore up the eastern slope of the
heavens with unseemly haste.  His dogs, surprised that they had not long
since been put to harness, crowded around him.  His helplessness appealed
to the brutes.  They felt that something was wrong, though they knew not
what, and they crowded about, howling their mournful sympathy.

"Chook!  Mush-on! you Siwashes!" he cried, attempting, in a vermicular
way, to kick at them, and discovering himself to be tottering on the edge
of a declivity.  As soon as the animals had scattered, he devoted himself
to the significance of that declivity which he felt to be there but could
not see.  Nor was he long in arriving at a correct conclusion.  In the
nature of things, he figured, man is lazy.  He does no more than he has
to.  When he builds a cabin he must put dirt on the roof.  From these
premises it was logical that he should carry that dirt no further than
was absolutely necessary.  Therefore, he lay upon the edge of the hole
from which the dirt had been taken to roof Jacob Kent's cabin.  This
knowledge, properly utilized, might prolong things, he thought; and he
then turned his attention to the moose-hide thongs which bound him.  His
hands were tied behind him, and pressing against the snow, they were wet
with the contact.  This moistening of the raw-hide he knew would tend to
make it stretch, and, without apparent effort, he endeavored to stretch
it more and more.

He watched the trail hungrily, and when in the direction of Sixty Mile a
dark speck appeared for a moment against the white background of an ice-
jam, he cast an anxious eye at the sun.  It had climbed nearly to the
zenith.  Now and again he caught the black speck clearing the hills of
ice and sinking into the intervening hollows; but he dared not permit
himself more than the most cursory glances for fear of rousing his
enemy's suspicion.  Once, when Jacob Kent rose to his feet and searched
the trail with care, Cardegee was frightened, but the dog-sled had struck
a piece of trail running parallel with a jam, and remained out of sight
till the danger was past.

"I'll see you 'ung for this," Cardegee threatened, attempting to draw the
other's attention.  "An' you'll rot in 'ell, jes' you see if you don't.

"I say," he cried, after another pause; "d'ye b'lieve in ghosts?"  Kent's
sudden start made him sure of his ground, and he went on: "Now a ghost
'as the right to 'aunt a man wot don't do wot he says; and you can't
shuffle me off till eight bells--wot I mean is twelve o'clock--can you?
'Cos if you do, it'll 'appen as 'ow I'll 'aunt you.  D'ye 'ear?  A
minute, a second too quick, an' I'll 'aunt you, so 'elp me, I will!"

Jacob Kent looked dubious, but declined to talk.

"'Ow's your chronometer?  Wot's your longitude?  'Ow do you know as your
time's correct?" Cardegee persisted, vainly hoping to beat his
executioner out of a few minutes.  "Is it Barrack's time you 'ave, or is
it the Company time?  'Cos if you do it before the stroke o' the bell,
I'll not rest.  I give you fair warnin'.  I'll come back.  An' if you
'aven't the time, 'ow will you know?  That's wot I want--'ow will you
tell?"

"I'll send you off all right," Kent replied.  "Got a sun-dial here."

"No good.  Thirty-two degrees variation o' the needle."

"Stakes are all set."

"'Ow did you set 'em?  Compass?"

"No; lined them up with the North Star."

"Sure?"

"Sure."

Cardegee groaned, then stole a glance at the trail.  The sled was just
clearing a rise, barely a mile away, and the dogs were in full lope,
running lightly.

"'Ow close is the shadows to the line?"

Kent walked to the primitive timepiece and studied it.  "Three inches,"
he announced, after a careful survey.

"Say, jes' sing out 'eight bells' afore you pull the gun, will you?"

Kent agreed, and they lapsed into silence.  The thongs about Cardegee's
wrists were slowly stretching, and he had begun to work them over his
hands.

"Say, 'ow close is the shadows?"

"One inch."

The sailor wriggled slightly to assure himself that he would topple over
at the right moment, and slipped the first turn over his hands.

"'Ow close?"

"Half an inch."  Just then Kent heard the jarring churn of the runners
and turned his eyes to the trail.  The driver was lying flat on the sled
and the dogs swinging down the straight stretch to the cabin.  Kent
whirled back, bringing his rifle to shoulder.

"It ain't eight bells yet!" Cardegee expostulated.  "I'll 'aunt you,
sure!"

Jacob Kent faltered.  He was standing by the sun-dial, perhaps ten paces
from his victim.  The man on the sled must have seen that something
unusual was taking place, for he had risen to his knees, his whip singing
viciously among the dogs.

The shadows swept into line.  Kent looked along the sights.

"Make ready!" he commanded solemnly.  "Eight b--"

But just a fraction of a second too soon, Cardegee rolled backward into
the hole.  Kent held his fire and ran to the edge.  Bang!  The gun
exploded full in the sailor's face as he rose to his feet.  But no smoke
came from the muzzle; instead, a sheet of flame burst from the side of
the barrel near its butt, and Jacob Kent went down.  The dogs dashed up
the bank, dragging the sled over his body, and the driver sprang off as
Jim Cardegee freed his hands and drew himself from the hole.

"Jim!"  The new-comer recognized him.  "What's the matter?"

"Wot's the matter?  Oh, nothink at all.  It jest 'appens as I do little
things like this for my 'ealth.  Wot's the matter, you bloomin' idjit?
Wot's the matter, eh?  Cast me loose or I'll show you wot!  'Urry up, or
I'll 'olystone the decks with you!"

"Huh!" he added, as the other went to work with his sheath-knife.  "Wot's
the matter?  I want to know.  Jes' tell me that, will you, wot's the
matter?  Hey?"

Kent was quite dead when they rolled him over.  The gun, an
old-fashioned, heavy-weighted muzzle-loader, lay near him.  Steel and
wood had parted company.  Near the butt of the right-hand barrel, with
lips pressed outward, gaped a fissure several inches in length.  The
sailor picked it up, curiously.  A glittering stream of yellow dust ran
out through the crack.  The facts of the case dawned upon Jim Cardegee.

"Strike me standin'!" he roared; "'ere's a go!  'Ere's 'is bloomin' dust!
Gawd blime me, an' you, too, Charley, if you don't run an' get the dish-
pan!"
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