Smoke Bellew
Smoke BellewTHE TASTE OF THE MEAT.I.II.III.IV.V.VI.VII.VIII.THE MEAT.I.II.III.IV.V.VI.VII.THE STAMPEDE TO SQUAW CREEK.I.II.III.SHORTY DREAMS.I.II.III.IV.V.VI.VII.VIII.THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK.I.II.III.IV.V.VI.THE RACE FOR NUMBER ONE.I.II.III.IV.V.VI.Copyright
Smoke Bellew
Jack London
THE TASTE OF THE MEAT.
I.
I.
In the beginning he was Christopher Bellew. By the time he
was at college he had become Chris Bellew. Later, in the Bohemian
crowd of San Francisco, he was called Kit Bellew. And in the end he
was known by no other name than Smoke Bellew. And this history of
the evolution of his name is the history of his evolution. Nor
would it have happened had he not had a fond mother and an iron
uncle, and had he not received a letter from Gillet
Bellamy."I have just seen a copy of the Billow," Gillet wrote from
Paris. "Of course O'Hara will succeed with it. But he's missing
some plays." (Here followed details in the improvement of the
budding society weekly.) "Go down and see him. Let him think
they're your own suggestions. Don't let him know they're from me.
If he does, he'll make me Paris correspondent, which I can't
afford, because I'm getting real money for my stuff from the big
magazines. Above all, don't forget to make him fire that dub who's
doing the musical and art criticism. Another thing, San Francisco
has always had a literature of her own. But she hasn't any now.
Tell him to kick around and get some gink to turn out a live
serial, and to put into it the real romance and glamour and colour
of San Francisco."And down to the office of the Billow went Kit Bellew
faithfully to instruct. O'Hara listened. O'Hara debated. O'Hara
agreed. O'Hara fired the dub who wrote criticism. Further, O'Hara
had a way with him—the very way that was feared by Gillet in
distant Paris. When O'Hara wanted anything, no friend could deny
him. He was sweetly and compellingly irresistible. Before Kit
Bellew could escape from the office he had become an associate
editor, had agreed to write weekly columns of criticism till some
decent pen was found, and had pledged himself to write a weekly
instalment of ten thousand words on the San Francisco serial—and
all this without pay. The Billow wasn't paying yet, O'Hara
explained; and just as convincingly had he exposited that there was
only one man in San Francisco capable of writing the serial, and
that man Kit Bellew."Oh, Lord, I'm the gink!" Kit had groaned to himself
afterwards on the narrow stairway.And thereat had begun his servitude to O'Hara and the
insatiable columns of the Billow. Week after week he held down an
office chair, stood off creditors, wrangled with printers, and
turned out twenty-five thousand words of all sorts weekly. Nor did
his labours lighten. The Billow was ambitious. It went in for
illustration. The processes were expensive. It never had any money
to pay Kit Bellew, and by the same token it was unable to pay for
any additions to the office staff."This is what comes of being a good fellow," Kit grumbled one
day."Thank God for good fellows then," O'Hara cried, with tears
in his eyes as he gripped Kit's hand. "You're all that's saved me,
Kit. But for you I'd have gone bust. Just a little longer, old man,
and things will be easier.""Never," was Kit's plaint. "I see my fate clearly. I shall be
here always."A little later he thought he saw his way out. Watching his
chance, in O'Hara's presence, he fell over a chair. A few minutes
afterwards he bumped into the corner of the desk, and, with
fumbling fingers, capsized a paste pot."Out late?" O'Hara queried.Kit brushed his eyes with his hands and peered about him
anxiously before replying."No, it's not that. It's my eyes. They seem to be going back
on me, that's all."For several days he continued to fall over and bump into the
office furniture. But O'Hara's heart was not softened."I tell you what, Kit," he said one day, "you've got to see
an oculist. There's Doctor Hassdapple. He's a crackerjack. And it
won't cost you anything. We can get it for advertizing. I'll see
him myself."And, true to his word, he dispatched Kit to the
oculist."There's nothing the matter with your eyes," was the doctor's
verdict, after a lengthy examination. "In fact, your eyes are
magnificent—a pair in a million.""Don't tell O'Hara," Kit pleaded. "And give me a pair of
black glasses."The result of this was that O'Hara sympathized and talked
glowingly of the time when the Billow would be on its
feet.Luckily for Kit Bellew, he had his own income. Small it was,
compared with some, yet it was large enough to enable him to belong
to several clubs and maintain a studio in the Latin Quarter. In
point of fact, since his associate editorship, his expenses had
decreased prodigiously. He had no time to spend money. He never saw
the studio any more, nor entertained the local Bohemians with his
famous chafing-dish suppers. Yet he was always broke, for the
Billow, in perennial distress, absorbed his cash as well as his
brains. There were the illustrators who periodically refused to
illustrate, the printers who periodically refused to print, and the
office boy who frequently refused to officiate. At such times
O'Hara looked at Kit, and Kit did the rest.When the steamship Excelsior arrived from Alaska, bringing
the news of the Klondike strike that set the country mad, Kit made
a purely frivolous proposition."Look here, O'Hara," he said. "This gold rush is going to be
big—the days of '49 over again. Suppose I cover it for the Billow?
I'll pay my own expenses."O'Hara shook his head."Can't spare you from the office, Kit. Then there's that
serial. Besides, I saw Jackson not an hour ago. He's starting for
the Klondike to-morrow, and he's agreed to send a weekly letter and
photos. I wouldn't let him get away till he promised. And the
beauty of it is, that it doesn't cost us anything."The next Kit heard of the Klondike was when he dropped into
the club that afternoon, and, in an alcove off the library,
encountered his uncle."Hello, avuncular relative," Kit greeted, sliding into a
leather chair and spreading out his legs. "Won't you join
me?"He ordered a cocktail, but the uncle contented himself with
the thin native claret he invariably drank. He glanced with
irritated disapproval at the cocktail, and on to his nephew's face.
Kit saw a lecture gathering."I've only a minute," he announced hastily. "I've got to run
and take in that Keith exhibition at Ellery's and do half a column
on it.""What's the matter with you?" the other demanded. "You're
pale. You're a wreck."Kit's only answer was a groan."I'll have the pleasure of burying you, I can see
that."Kit shook his head sadly."No destroying worm, thank you. Cremation for
mine."John Bellew came of the old hard and hardy stock that had
crossed the plains by ox-team in the fifties, and in him was this
same hardness and the hardness of a childhood spent in the
conquering of a new land."You're not living right, Christopher. I'm ashamed of
you.""Primrose path, eh?" Kit chuckled.The older man shrugged his shoulders."Shake not your gory locks at me, avuncular. I wish it were
the primrose path. But that's all cut out. I have no
time.""Then what in-?""Overwork."John Bellew laughed harshly and incredulously."Honest?"Again came the laughter."Men are the products of their environment," Kit proclaimed,
pointing at the other's glass. "Your mirth is thin and bitter as
your drink.""Overwork!" was the sneer. "You never earned a cent in your
life.""You bet I have—only I never got it. I'm earning five hundred
a week right now, and doing four men's work.""Pictures that won't sell? Or—er—fancy work of some sort? Can
you swim?""I used to.""Sit a horse?""I have essayed that adventure."John Bellew snorted his disgust."I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory
of your gracelessness," he said. "Your father was a man, every inch
of him. Do you get it? A Man. I think he'd have whaled all this
musical and artistic tomfoolery out of you.""Alas! these degenerate days," Kit sighed."I could understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on
savagely, "if you succeeded at it. You've never earned a cent in
your life, nor done a tap of man's work.""Etchings, and pictures, and fans," Kit contributed
unsoothingly."You're a dabbler and a failure. What pictures have you
painted? Dinky water-colours and nightmare posters. You've never
had one exhibited, even here in San Francisco-""Ah, you forget. There is one in the jinks room of this very
club.""A gross cartoon. Music? Your dear fool of a mother spent
hundreds on lessons. You've dabbled and failed. You've never even
earned a five-dollar piece by accompanying some one at a concert.
Your songs?—rag-time rot that's never printed and that's sung only
by a pack of fake Bohemians.""I had a book published once—those sonnets, you remember,"
Kit interposed meekly."What did it cost you?""Only a couple of hundred.""Any other achievements?""I had a forest play acted at the summer jinks.""What did you get for it?""Glory.""And you used to swim, and you have essayed to sit a horse!"
John Bellew set his glass down with unnecessary violence. "What
earthly good are you anyway? You were well put up, yet even at
university you didn't play football. You didn't row. You
didn't-""I boxed and fenced—some.""When did you last box?""Not since; but I was considered an excellent judge of time
and distance, only I was—er-""Go on.""Considered desultory.""Lazy, you mean.""I always imagined it was an euphemism.""My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a
man with a blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years
old.""The man?""No, your—you graceless scamp! But you'll never kill a
mosquito at sixty-nine.""The times have changed, oh, my avuncular. They send men to
state prisons for homicide now.""Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without
sleeping, and killed three horses.""Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a
Pullman."The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but
swallowed it down and managed to articulate:"How old are you?""I have reason to believe-""I know. Twenty-seven. You finished college at twenty-two.
You've dabbled and played and frilled for five years. Before God
and man, of what use are you? When I was your age I had one suit of
underclothes. I was riding with the cattle in Colusa. I was hard as
rocks, and I could sleep on a rock. I lived on jerked beef and
bear-meat. I am a better man physically right now than you are. You
weigh about one hundred and sixty-five. I can throw you right now,
or thrash you with my fists.""It doesn't take a physical prodigy to mop up cocktails or
pink tea," Kit murmured deprecatingly. "Don't you see, my
avuncular, the times have changed. Besides, I wasn't brought up
right. My dear fool of a mother-"John Bellew started angrily."-As you described her, was too good to me; kept me in cotton
wool and all the rest. Now, if when I was a youngster I had taken
some of those intensely masculine vacations you go in for—I wonder
why you didn't invite me sometimes? You took Hal and Robbie all
over the Sierras and on that Mexico trip.""I guess you were too Lord Fauntleroyish.""Your fault, avuncular, and my dear—er—mother's. How was I to
know the hard? I was only a chee-ild. What was there left but
etchings and pictures and fans? Was it my fault that I never had to
sweat?"The older man looked at his nephew with unconcealed disgust.
He had no patience with levity from the lips of
softness."Well, I'm going to take another one of those what-you-call
masculine vacations. Suppose I asked you to come
along?""Rather belated, I must say. Where is it?""Hal and Robert are going in to Klondike, and I'm going to
see them across the Pass and down to the Lakes, then
return-"He got no further, for the young man had sprung forward and
gripped his hand."My preserver!"John Bellew was immediately suspicious. He had not dreamed
the invitation would be accepted."You don't mean it," he said."When do we start?""It will be a hard trip. You'll be in the way.""No, I won't. I'll work. I've learned to work since I went on
theBillow.""Each man has to take a year's supplies in with him. There'll
be such a jam the Indian packers won't be able to handle it. Hal
and Robert will have to pack their outfits across themselves.
That's what I'm going along for—to help them pack. It you come
you'll have to do the same.""Watch me.""You can't pack," was the objection."When do we start?""To-morrow.""You needn't take it to yourself that your lecture on the
hard has done it," Kit said, at parting. "I just had to get away,
somewhere, anywhere, from O'Hara.""Who is O'Hara? A Jap?""No; he's an Irishman, and a slave-driver, and my best
friend. He's the editor and proprietor and all-around big squeeze
of the Billow. What he says goes. He can make ghosts
walk."That night Kit Bellew wrote a note to O'Hara."It's only a several weeks' vacation," he explained. "You'll
have to get some gink to dope out instalments for that serial.
Sorry, old man, but my health demands it. I'll kick in twice as
hard when I get back."
II.
Kit Bellew landed through the madness of the Dyea beach,
congested with thousand-pound outfits of thousands of men. This
immense mass of luggage and food, flung ashore in mountains by the
steamers, was beginning slowly to dribble up the Dyea valley and
across Chilcoot. It was a portage of twenty-eight miles, and could
be accomplished only on the backs of men. Despite the fact that the
Indian packers had jumped the freight from eight cents a pound to
forty, they were swamped with the work, and it was plain that
winter would catch the major portion of the outfits on the wrong
side of the divide.
Tenderest of the tender-feet was Kit. Like many hundreds of
others he carried a big revolver swung on a cartridge-belt. Of
this, his uncle, filled with memories of old lawless days, was
likewise guilty. But Kit Bellew was romantic. He was fascinated by
the froth and sparkle of the gold rush, and viewed its life and
movement with an artist's eye. He did not take it seriously. As he
said on the steamer, it was not his funeral. He was merely on a
vacation, and intended to peep over the top of the pass for a 'look
see' and then to return.
Leaving his party on the sand to wait for the putting ashore
of the freight, he strolled up the beach toward the old trading
post. He did not swagger, though he noticed that many of the
be-revolvered individuals did. A strapping, six-foot Indian passed
him, carrying an unusually large pack. Kit swung in behind,
admiring the splendid calves of the man, and the grace and ease
with which he moved along under his burden. The Indian dropped his
pack on the scales in front of the post, and Kit joined the group
of admiring gold-rushers who surrounded him. The pack weighed one
hundred and twenty pounds, which fact was uttered back and forth in
tones of awe. It was going some, Kit decided, and he wondered if he
could lift such a weight, much less walk off with it.
"Going to Lake Linderman with it, old man?" he asked.
The Indian, swelling with pride, grunted an
affirmative.
"How much you make that one pack?"
"Fifty dollar."
Here Kit slid out of the conversation. A young woman,
standing in the doorway, had caught his eye. Unlike other women
landing from the steamers, she was neither short-skirted nor
bloomer-clad. She was dressed as any woman travelling anywhere
would be dressed. What struck him was the justness of her being
there, a feeling that somehow she belonged. Moreover, she was young
and pretty. The bright beauty and colour of her oval face held him,
and he looked over-long—looked till she resented, and her own eyes,
long-lashed and dark, met his in cool survey.
From his face they travelled in evident amusement down to the
big revolver at his thigh. Then her eyes came back to his, and in
them was amused contempt. It struck him like a blow. She turned to
the man beside her and indicated Kit. The man glanced him over with
the same amused contempt.
"Chechaquo," the girl said.
The man, who looked like a tramp in his cheap overalls and
dilapidated woollen jacket, grinned dryly, and Kit felt withered
though he knew not why. But anyway she was an unusually pretty
girl, he decided, as the two moved off. He noted the way of her
walk, and recorded the judgment that he would recognize it after
the lapse of a thousand years.
"Did you see that man with the girl?" Kit's neighbour asked
him excitedly. "Know who he is?"
Kit shook his head.
"Cariboo Charley. He was just pointed out to me. He struck it
big on Klondike. Old timer. Been on the Yukon a dozen years. He's
just come out."
"What's chechaquo mean?" Kit asked.
"You're one; I'm one," was the answer.
"Maybe I am, but you've got to search me. What does it
mean?"
"Tender-foot."
On his way back to the beach Kit turned the phrase over and
over. It rankled to be called tender-foot by a slender chit of a
woman.
Going into a corner among the heaps of freight, his mind
still filled with the vision of the Indian with the redoubtable
pack, Kit essayed to learn his own strength. He picked out a sack
of flour which he knew weighed an even hundred pounds. He stepped
astride of it, reached down, and strove to get it on his shoulder.
His first conclusion was that one hundred pounds was the real
heavy. His next was that his back was weak. His third was an oath,
and it occurred at the end of five futile minutes, when he
collapsed on top of the burden with which he was wrestling. He
mopped his forehead, and across a heap of grub-sacks saw John
Bellew gazing at him, wintry amusement in his eyes.
"God!" proclaimed that apostle of the hard. "Out of our loins
has come a race of weaklings. When I was sixteen I toyed with
things like that."
"You forget, avuncular," Kit retorted, "that I wasn't raised
on bear-meat."
"And I'll toy with it when I'm sixty."
"You've got to show me."
John Bellew did. He was forty-eight, but he bent over the
sack, applied a tentative, shifting grip that balanced it, and,
with a quick heave, stood erect, the somersaulted sack of flour on
his shoulder.
"Knack, my boy, knack—and a spine."
Kit took off his hat reverently.
"You're a wonder, avuncular, a shining wonder. D'ye think I
can learn the knack?"
John Bellew shrugged his shoulders.
"You'll be hitting the back trail before we get
started."
"Never you fear," Kit groaned. "There's O'Hara, the roaring
lion, down there. I'm not going back till I have to."
III.
Kit's first pack was a success. Up to Finnegan's Crossing
they had managed to get Indians to carry the twenty-five
hundred-pound outfit. From that point their own backs must do the
work. They planned to move forward at the rate of a mile a day. It
looked easy—on paper. Since John Bellew was to stay in camp and do
the cooking, he would be unable to make more than an occasional
pack; so, to each of the three young men fell the task of carrying
eight hundred pounds one mile each day. If they made fifty-pound
packs, it meant a daily walk of sixteen miles loaded and of fifteen
miles light—"Because we don't back-trip the last time," Kit
explained the pleasant discovery; eighty-pound packs meant nineteen
miles travel each day; and hundred-pound packs meant only fifteen
miles.
"I don't like walking," said Kit. "Therefore I shall carry
one hundred pounds." He caught the grin of incredulity on his
uncle's face, and added hastily: "Of course I shall work up to it.
A fellow's got to learn the ropes and tricks. I'll start with
fifty."
He did, and ambled gaily along the trail. He dropped the sack
at the next camp-site and ambled back. It was easier than he had
thought. But two miles had rubbed off the velvet of his strength
and exposed the underlying softness. His second pack was sixty-five
pounds. It was more difficult, and he no longer ambled. Several
times, following the custom of all packers, he sat down on the
ground, resting the pack behind him on a rock or stump. With the
third pack he became bold. He fastened the straps to a
ninety-five-pound sack of beans and started. At the end of a
hundred yards he felt that he must collapse. He sat down and mopped
his face.
"Short hauls and short rests," he muttered. "That's the
trick."
Sometimes he did not make a hundred yards, and each time he
struggled to his feet for another short haul the pack became
undeniably heavier. He panted for breath, and the sweat streamed
from him. Before he had covered a quarter of a mile he stripped off
his woollen shirt and hung it on a tree. A little later he
discarded his hat. At the end of half a mile he decided he was
finished. He had never exerted himself so in his life, and he knew
that he was finished. As he sat and panted, his gaze fell upon the
big revolver and the heavy cartridge-belt.
"Ten pounds of junk," he sneered, as he unbuckled it.
He did not bother to hang it on a tree, but flung it into the
underbush. And as the steady tide of packers flowed by him, up
trail and down, he noted that the other tender-feet were beginning
to shed their shooting irons.
His short hauls decreased. At times a hundred feet was all he
could stagger, and then the ominous pounding of his heart against
his ear-drums and the sickening totteriness of his knees compelled
him to rest. And his rests grew longer. But his mind was busy. It
was a twenty-eight mile portage, which represented as many days,
and this, by all accounts, was the easiest part of it. "Wait till
you get to Chilcoot," others told him as they rested and talked,
"where you climb with hands and feet."
"They ain't going to be no Chilcoot," was his answer. "Not
for me.Long before that I'll be at peace in my little couch beneath
the moss."
A slip, and a violent wrenching effort at recovery,
frightened him. He felt that everything inside him had been torn
asunder.
"If ever I fall down with this on my back I'm a goner," he
told another packer.
"That's nothing," came the answer. "Wait till you hit the
Canyon. You'll have to cross a raging torrent on a sixty-foot pine
tree. No guide ropes, nothing, and the water boiling at the sag of
the log to your knees. If you fall with a pack on your back,
there's no getting out of the straps. You just stay there and
drown."
"Sounds good to me," he retorted; and out of the depths of
his exhaustion he almost half meant it.
"They drown three or four a day there," the man assured him.
"I helped fish a German out there. He had four thousand in
greenbacks on him."
"Cheerful, I must say," said Kit, battling his way to his
feet and tottering on.
