Burning Daylight | Page 7

largess, his gifts of toil or heroic effort falling generously
from his hands. To pack for days over the gale-swept passes or across
the mosquito-ridden marshes, and to pack double the weight his
comrade packed, did not involve unfairness or compulsion. Each did
his best. That was the business essence of it. Some men were stronger
than others--true; but so long as each man did his best it was fair
exchange, the business spirit was observed, and the square deal
obtained.
But with women--no. Women gave little and wanted all. Women had
apron-strings and were prone to tie them about any man who looked
twice in their direction. There was the Virgin, yawning her head off
when he came in and mightily pleased that he asked her to dance. One
dance was all very well, but because he danced twice and thrice with
her and several times more, she squeezed his arm when they asked him
to sit in at poker. It was the obnoxious apron-string, the first of the
many compulsions she would exert upon him if he gave in. Not that she
was not a nice bit of a woman, healthy and strapping and good to look
upon, also a very excellent dancer, but that she was a woman with all a
woman's desire to rope him with her apron-strings and tie him hand and
foot for the branding. Better poker. Besides, he liked poker as well as
he did dancing.
He resisted the pull on his arm by the mere negative mass of him, and
said:-
"I sort of feel a hankering to give you-all a flutter."
Again came the pull on his arm. She was trying to pass the apron-string
around him. For the fraction of an instant he was a savage, dominated
by the wave of fear and murder that rose up in him. For that

infinitesimal space of time he was to all purposes a frightened tiger
filled with rage and terror at the apprehension of the trap. Had he been
no more than a savage, he would have leapt wildly from the place or
else sprung upon her and destroyed her. But in that same instant there
stirred in him the generations of discipline by which man had become
an inadequate social animal. Tact and sympathy strove with him, and
he smiled with his eyes into the Virgin's eyes as he said:-
"You-all go and get some grub. I ain't hungry. And we'll dance some
more by and by. The night's young yet. Go to it, old girl."
He released his arm and thrust her playfully on the shoulder, at the
same time turning to the poker-players.
"Take off the limit and I'll go you-all."
"Limit's the roof," said Jack Kearns.
"Take off the roof."
The players glanced at one another, and Kearns announced, "The roof's
off."
Elam Harnish dropped into the waiting chair, started to pull out his
gold-sack, and changed his mind. The Virgin pouted a moment, then
followed in the wake of the other dancers.
"I'll bring you a sandwich, Daylight," she called back over her
shoulder.
He nodded. She was smiling her forgiveness. He had escaped the
apron-string, and without hurting her feelings too severely.
"Let's play markers," he suggested. "Chips do everlastingly clutter up
the table....If it's agreeable to you-all?"
"I'm willing," answered Hal Campbell. "Let mine run at five hundred."
"Mine, too," answered Harnish, while the others stated the values they

put on their own markers, French Louis, the most modest, issuing his at
a hundred dollars each.
In Alaska, at that time, there were no rascals and no tin-horn gamblers.
Games were conducted honestly, and men trusted one another. A man's
word was as good as his gold in the blower. A marker was a flat,
oblong composition chip worth, perhaps, a cent. But when a man betted
a marker in a game and said it was worth five hundred dollars, it was
accepted as worth five hundred dollars. Whoever won it knew that the
man who issued it would redeem it with five hundred dollars' worth of
dust weighed out on the scales. The markers being of different colors,
there was no difficulty in identifying the owners. Also, in that early
Yukon day, no one dreamed of playing table-stakes. A man was good
in a game for all that he possessed, no matter where his possessions
were or what was their nature.
Harnish cut and got the deal. At this good augury, and while shuffling
the deck, he called to the barkeepers to set up the drinks for the house.
As he dealt the first card to Dan MacDonald, on his left, he called out:
"Get down to the ground, you-all, Malemutes, huskies, and Siwash
purps! Get down and dig in! Tighten up them traces! Put your