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SMOKE BELLEW
SMOKE BELLEW JACK LONDON "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
tricks." 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 you do
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 criticisms. 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 afterward 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. 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 tom foolery 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 box last?"
"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
prison 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 Coluso. 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 The
Billow."
"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. If 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-round 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."
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 Chilkoot.
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 tenderfeet 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-five
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.
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