Daylight, whose whim it was to make them drunk by hundreds and by thousands, was the one who initiated this life saving.
He wanted Dawson to have its night, but, in his deeper processes never careless nor wanton, he saw to it that it was a night without accident.
And, like his olden nights, his ukase went forth that there should be no quarrelling nor fighting, offenders to be dealt with by him personally.
Nor did he have to deal with any. Hundreds of devoted followers saw to it that the evilly disposed were rolled in the snow and hustled off to bed.
In the great world, where great captains of industry die, all wheels under their erstwhile management are stopped for a minute.
But in the Klondike, such was its hilarious sorrow at the departure of its captain, that for twenty-four hours no wheels revolved.
Even great Ophir, with its thousand men on the pay-roll, closed down.
On the day after the night there were no men present or fit to go to work.
Next morning, at break of day, Dawson said good-by.
The thousands that lined the bank wore mittens and their ear-flaps pulled down and tied.
It was thirty below zero, the rim-ice was thickening, and the Yukon carried a run of mush-ice.
From the deck of the Seattle, Daylight waved and called his farewells.
As the lines were cast off and the steamer swung out into the current, those near him saw the moisture well up in Daylight's eyes.
In a way, it was to him departure from his native land, this grim Arctic region which was practically the only land he had known.
He tore off his cap and waved it.
"Good-by, you-all!" he called.
"Good-by, you-all!"
PART II
CHAPTER I
In no blaze of glory did Burning Daylight descend upon San Francisco.
Not only had he been forgotten, but the Klondike along with him.
The world was interested in other things, and the Alaskan adventure, like the Spanish War, was an old story.
Many things had happened since then.
Exciting things were happening every day, and the sensation-space of newspapers was limited.
The effect of being ignored, however, was an exhilaration.
Big man as he had been in the Arctic game, it merely showed how much bigger was this new game, when a man worth eleven millions, and with a history such as his, passed unnoticed.
He settled down in St. Francis Hotel, was interviewed by the cub-reporters on the hotel-run, and received brief paragraphs of notice for twenty-four hours.
He grinned to himself, and began to look around and get acquainted with the new order of beings and things.
He was very awkward and very self-possessed.
In addition to the stiffening afforded his backbone by the conscious ownership of eleven millions, he possessed an enormous certitude.
Nothing abashed him, nor was he appalled by the display and culture and power around him.
It was another kind of wilderness, that was all; and it was for him to learn the ways of it, the signs and trails and water-holes where good hunting lay, and the bad stretches of field and flood to be avoided.
As usual, he fought shy of the women.
He was still too badly scared to come to close quarters with the dazzling and resplendent creatures his own millions made accessible.
They looked and longed, but he so concealed his timidity that he had all the seeming of moving boldly among them.
Nor was it his wealth alone that attracted them. He was too much a man, and too much an unusual type of man.
Young yet, barely thirty-six, eminently handsome, magnificently strong, almost bursting with a splendid virility, his free trail-stride, never learned on pavements, and his black eyes, hinting of great spaces and unwearied with the close perspective of the city dwellers, drew many a curious and wayward feminine glance.
He saw, grinned knowingly to himself, and faced them as so many dangers, with a cool demeanor that was a far greater personal achievement than had they been famine, frost, or flood.
He had come down to the States to play the man's game, not the woman's game; and the men he had not yet learned.
They struck him as soft—soft physically; yet he divined them hard in their dealings, but hard under an exterior of supple softness. It struck him that there was something cat-like about them.
He met them in the clubs, and wondered how real was the good-fellowship they displayed and how quickly they would unsheathe their claws and gouge and rend.
"That's the proposition," he repeated to himself; "what will they-all do when the play is close and down to brass tacks?"
He felt unwarrantably suspicious of them.
"They're sure slick," was his secret judgment; and from bits of gossip dropped now and again he felt his judgment well buttressed.
On the other hand, they radiated an atmosphere of manliness and the fair play that goes with manliness.
They might gouge and rend in a fight—which was no more than natural; but he felt, somehow, that they would gouge and rend according to rule.
This was the impression he got of them—a generalization tempered by knowledge that there was bound to be a certain percentage of scoundrels among them.
Several months passed in San Francisco during which time he studied the game and its rules, and prepared himself to take a hand.
He even took private instruction in English, and succeeded in eliminating his worst faults, though in moments of excitement he was prone to lapse into "you-all," "knowed," "sure," and similar solecisms.
He learned to eat and dress and generally comport himself after the manner of civilized man; but through it all he remained himself, not unduly reverential nor considerative, and never hesitating to stride rough-shod over any soft-faced convention if it got in his way and the provocation were great enough.