"For there's never a law of God or man Runs north of Fifty-three."Jan rolled over, clawing and kicking.He was fighting hand and foot now, and he fought grimly, silently.Two of the three men who hung upon him, shouted directions to each other, and strove to curb the short, hairy devil who would not curb.The third man howled.His finger was between Jan's teeth.
"Quit yer tantrums, Jan, an' ease up!" panted Red Bill, getting a strangle-hold on Jan's neck."Why on earth can't yeh hang decent and peaceable?"But Jan kept his grip on the third man's finger, and squirmed over the floor of the tent, into the pots and pans.
"Youah no gentleman, suh," reproved Mr.Taylor, his body following his finger, and endeavoring to accommodate itself to every jerk of Jan's head."You hev killed Mistah Gordon, as brave and honorable a gentleman as ever hit the trail aftah the dogs.Youah a murderah, suh, and without honah.""An' yer no comrade," broke in Red Bill."If you was, you'd hang 'thout rampin' around an' roarin'.Come on, Jan, there's a good fellow.Don't give us no more trouble.Jes' quit, an' we'll hang yeh neat and handy, an' be done with it.""Steady, all!" Lawson, the sailorman, bawled."Jam his head into the bean pot and batten down.""But my fingah, suh," Mr.Taylor protested.
"Leggo with y'r finger, then! Always in the way!""But I can't, Mistah Lawson.It's in the critter's gullet, and nigh chewed off as 't is.""Stand by for stays!" As Lawson gave the warning, Jan half lifted himself, and the struggling quartet floundered across the tent into a muddle of furs and blankets.In its passage it cleared the body of a man, who lay motionless, bleeding from a bullet-wound in the neck.
All this was because of the madness which had come upon Jan--the madness which comes upon a man who has stripped off the raw skin of earth and grovelled long in primal nakedness, and before whose eyes rises the fat vales of the homeland, and into whose nostrils steals the whiff of bay, and grass, and flower, and new-turned soil.Through five frigid years Jan had sown the seed.Stuart River, Forty Mile, Circle City, Koyokuk, Kotzebue, had marked his bleak and strenuous agriculture, and now it was Nome that bore the harvest,--not the Nome of golden beaches and ruby sands, but the Nome of '97, before Anvil City was located, or Eldorado District organized.John Gordon was a Yankee, and should have known better.But he passed the sharp word at a time when Jan's blood-shot eyes blazed and his teeth gritted in torment.And because of this, there was a smell of saltpetre in the tent, and one lay quietly, while the other fought like a cornered rat, and refused to hang in the decent and peacable manner suggested by his comrades.
"If you will allow me, Mistah Lawson, befoah we go further in this rumpus, I would say it wah a good idea to pry this hyer varmint's teeth apart.Neither will he bite off, nor will he let go.He has the wisdom of the sarpint, suh, the wisdom of the sarpint.""Lemme get the hatchet to him!" vociferated the sailor."Lemme get the hatchet!" He shoved the steel edge close to Mr.Taylor's finger and used the man's teeth as a fulcrum.Jan held on and breathed through his nose, snorting like a grampus."Steady, all!
Now she takes it!"
"Thank you, suh; it is a powerful relief." And Mr.Taylor proceeded to gather into his arms the victim's wildly waving legs.
But Jan upreared in his Berserker rage; bleeding, frothing, cursing; five frozen years thawing into sudden hell.They swayed backward and forward, panted, sweated, like some cyclopean, many-legged monster rising from the lower deeps.The slush-lamp went over, drowned in its own fat, while the midday twilight scarce percolated through the dirty canvas of the tent.
"For the love of Gawd, Jan, get yer senses back!" pleaded Red Bill."We ain't goin' to hurt yeh, 'r kill yeh, 'r anythin' of that sort.Jes' want to hang yeh, that's all, an' you a-messin'
round an' rampagin' somethin' terrible.To think of travellin'
trail together an' then bein' treated this-a way.Wouldn't 'bleeved it of yeh, Jan!""He's got too much steerage-way.Grab holt his legs, Taylor, and heave'm over!""Yes, suh, Mistah Lawson.Do you press youah weight above, after I give the word." The Kentuckian groped about him in the murky darkness."Now, suh, now is the accepted time!"There was a great surge, and a quarter of a ton of human flesh tottered and crashed to its fall against the side-wall.Pegs drew and guy-ropes parted, and the tent, collapsing, wrapped the battle in its greasy folds.
"Yer only makin' it harder fer yerself," Red Bill continued, at the same time driving both his thumbs into a hairy throat, the possessor of which he had pinned down."You've made nuisance enough a' ready, an' it'll take half the day to get things straightened when we've strung yeh up.""I'll thank you to leave go, suh," spluttered Mr.Taylor.
Red Bill grunted and loosed his grip, and the twain crawled out into the open.At the same instant Jan kicked clear of the sailor, and took to his heels across the snow.
"Hi! you lazy devils! Buck! Bright! Sic'm! Pull 'm down!" sang out Lawson, lunging through the snow after the fleeing man.Buck and Bright, followed by the rest of the dogs, outstripped him and rapidly overhauled the murderer.
There was no reason that these men should do this; no reason for Jan to run away; no reason for them to attempt to prevent him.On the one hand stretched the barren snow-land; on the other, the frozen sea.With neither food nor shelter, he could not run far.
All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent, as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him.
But these men did not stop to think.There was a certain taint of madness running in the veins of all of them.Besides, blood had been spilled, and upon them was the blood-lust, thick and hot.