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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Son of the Wolf, by Jack London
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Son of the Wolf
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Posting Date: March 1, 2009 [EBook #2377]
+Release Date: October, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SON OF THE WOLF ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer. HTML
+version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Son of the Wolf
+
+Jack London
+
+
+1900
+
+
+
+Contains
+
+  The White Silence
+  The Son of the Wolf
+  The Men of Forty Mile
+  In a Far Country
+  To the Man on the Trail
+  The Priestly Prerogative
+  The Wisdom of the Trail
+  The Wife of a King
+  An Odyssey of the North
+
+
+
+
+The White Silence
+
+'Carmen won't last more than a couple of days.' Mason spat out a chunk
+of ice and surveyed the poor animal ruefully, then put her foot in his
+mouth and proceeded to bite out the ice which clustered cruelly between
+the toes.
+
+'I never saw a dog with a highfalutin' name that ever was worth a rap,'
+he said, as he concluded his task and shoved her aside. 'They just fade
+away and die under the responsibility. Did ye ever see one go wrong
+with a sensible name like Cassiar, Siwash, or Husky? No, sir! Take a
+look at Shookum here, he's--' Snap! The lean brute flashed up, the
+white teeth just missing Mason's throat.
+
+'Ye will, will ye?' A shrewd clout behind the ear with the butt of the
+dog whip stretched the animal in the snow, quivering softly, a yellow
+slaver dripping from its fangs.
+
+'As I was saying, just look at Shookum here--he's got the spirit. Bet
+ye he eats Carmen before the week's out.' 'I'll bank another
+proposition against that,' replied Malemute Kid, reversing the frozen
+bread placed before the fire to thaw. 'We'll eat Shookum before the
+trip is over. What d'ye say, Ruth?' The Indian woman settled the coffee
+with a piece of ice, glanced from Malemute Kid to her husband, then at
+the dogs, but vouchsafed no reply. It was such a palpable truism that
+none was necessary. Two hundred miles of unbroken trail in prospect,
+with a scant six days' grub for themselves and none for the dogs, could
+admit no other alternative. The two men and the woman grouped about the
+fire and began their meager meal. The dogs lay in their harnesses for
+it was a midday halt, and watched each mouthful enviously.
+
+'No more lunches after today,' said Malemute Kid. 'And we've got to
+keep a close eye on the dogs--they're getting vicious. They'd just as
+soon pull a fellow down as not, if they get a chance.' 'And I was
+president of an Epworth once, and taught in the Sunday school.' Having
+irrelevantly delivered himself of this, Mason fell into a dreamy
+contemplation of his steaming moccasins, but was aroused by Ruth
+filling his cup.
+
+'Thank God, we've got slathers of tea! I've seen it growing, down in
+Tennessee. What wouldn't I give for a hot corn pone just now! Never
+mind, Ruth; you won't starve much longer, nor wear moccasins either.'
+The woman threw off her gloom at this, and in her eyes welled up a
+great love for her white lord--the first white man she had ever
+seen--the first man whom she had known to treat a woman as something
+better than a mere animal or beast of burden.
+
+'Yes, Ruth,' continued her husband, having recourse to the macaronic
+jargon in which it was alone possible for them to understand each
+other; 'wait till we clean up and pull for the Outside. We'll take the
+White Man's canoe and go to the Salt Water. Yes, bad water, rough
+water--great mountains dance up and down all the time. And so big, so
+far, so far away--you travel ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep'--he
+graphically enumerated the days on his fingers--'all the time water,
+bad water. Then you come to great village, plenty people, just the same
+mosquitoes next summer. Wigwams oh, so high--ten, twenty pines.
+
+'Hi-yu skookum!' He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance at
+Malemute Kid, then laboriously placed the twenty pines, end on end, by
+sign language. Malemute Kid smiled with cheery cynicism; but Ruth's
+eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she half believed he
+was joking, and such condescension pleased her poor woman's heart.
+
+'And then you step into a--a box, and pouf! up you go.' He tossed his
+empty cup in the air by way of illustration and, as he deftly caught
+it, cried: 'And biff! down you come. Oh, great medicine men! You go
+Fort Yukon. I go Arctic City--twenty-five sleep--big string, all the
+time--I catch him string--I say, "Hello, Ruth! How are ye?"--and you
+say, "Is that my good husband?"--and I say, "Yes"--and you say, "No can
+bake good bread, no more soda"--then I say, "Look in cache, under
+flour; good-by." You look and catch plenty soda. All the time you Fort
+Yukon, me Arctic City. Hi-yu medicine man!' Ruth smiled so ingenuously
+at the fairy story that both men burst into laughter. A row among the
+dogs cut short the wonders of the Outside, and by the time the snarling
+combatants were separated, she had lashed the sleds and all was ready
+for the trail.--'Mush! Baldy! Hi! Mush on!' Mason worked his whip
+smartly and, as the dogs whined low in the traces, broke out the sled
+with the gee pole. Ruth followed with the second team, leaving Malemute
+Kid, who had helped her start, to bring up the rear. Strong man, brute
+that he was, capable of felling an ox at a blow, he could not bear to
+beat the poor animals, but humored them as a dog driver rarely
+does--nay, almost wept with them in their misery.
+
+'Come, mush on there, you poor sore-footed brutes!' he murmured, after
+several ineffectual attempts to start the load. But his patience was at
+last rewarded, and though whimpering with pain, they hastened to join
+their fellows.
+
+No more conversation; the toil of the trail will not permit such
+extravagance.
+
+And of all deadening labors, that of the Northland trail is the worst.
+Happy is the man who can weather a day's travel at the price of
+silence, and that on a beaten track.  And of all heartbreaking labors,
+that of breaking trail is the worst. At every step the great webbed
+shoe sinks till the snow is level with the knee. Then up, straight up,
+the deviation of a fraction of an inch being a certain precursor of
+disaster, the snowshoe must be lifted till the surface is cleared; then
+forward, down, and the other foot is raised perpendicularly for the
+matter of half a yard. He who tries this for the first time, if haply
+he avoids bringing his shoes in dangerous propinquity and measures not
+his length on the treacherous footing, will give up exhausted at the
+end of a hundred yards; he who can keep out of the way of the dogs for
+a whole day may well crawl into his sleeping bag with a clear
+conscience and a pride which passeth all understanding; and he who
+travels twenty sleeps on the Long Trail is a man whom the gods may envy.
+
+The afternoon wore on, and with the awe, born of the White Silence, the
+voiceless travelers bent to their work. Nature has many tricks
+wherewith she convinces man of his finity--the ceaseless flow of the
+tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long
+roll of heaven's artillery--but the most tremendous, the most
+stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All
+movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the
+slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at
+the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the
+ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes
+that his is a maggot's life, nothing more.
+
+Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things
+strives for utterance.
+
+And the fear of death, of God, of the universe, comes over him--the
+hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the yearning for immortality,
+the vain striving of the imprisoned essence--it is then, if ever, man
+walks alone with God.
+
+So wore the day away. The river took a great bend, and Mason headed his
+team for the cutoff across the narrow neck of land. But the dogs balked
+at the high bank. Again and again, though Ruth and Malemute Kid were
+shoving on the sled, they slipped back. Then came the concerted effort.
+The miserable creatures, weak from hunger, exerted their last strength.
+Up--up--the sled poised on the top of the bank; but the leader swung
+the string of dogs behind him to the right, fouling Mason's snowshoes.
+The result was grievous.
+
+Mason was whipped off his feet; one of the dogs fell in the traces; and
+the sled toppled back, dragging everything to the bottom again.
+
+Slash! the whip fell among the dogs savagely, especially upon the one
+which had fallen.
+
+'Don't,--Mason,' entreated Malemute Kid; 'the poor devil's on its last
+legs.  Wait and we'll put my team on.' Mason deliberately withheld the
+whip till the last word had fallen, then out flashed the long lash,
+completely curling about the offending creature's body.
+
+Carmen--for it was Carmen--cowered in the snow, cried piteously, then
+rolled over on her side.
+
+It was a tragic moment, a pitiful incident of the trail--a dying dog,
+two comrades in anger.
+
+Ruth glanced solicitously from man to man. But Malemute Kid restrained
+himself, though there was a world of reproach in his eyes, and, bending
+over the dog, cut the traces. No word was spoken. The teams were
+doublespanned and the difficulty overcome; the sleds were under way
+again, the dying dog dragging herself along in the rear. As long as an
+animal can travel, it is not shot, and this last chance is accorded
+it--the crawling into camp, if it can, in the hope of a moose being
+killed.
+
+Already penitent for his angry action, but too stubborn to make amends,
+Mason toiled on at the head of the cavalcade, little dreaming that
+danger hovered in the air. The timber clustered thick in the sheltered
+bottom, and through this they threaded their way. Fifty feet or more
+from the trail towered a lofty pine. For generations it had stood
+there, and for generations destiny had had this one end in
+view--perhaps the same had been decreed of Mason.
+
+He stooped to fasten the loosened thong of his moccasin. The sleds came
+to a halt, and the dogs lay down in the snow without a whimper. The
+stillness was weird; not a breath rustled the frost-encrusted forest;
+the cold and silence of outer space had chilled the heart and smote the
+trembling lips of nature. A sigh pulsed through the air--they did not
+seem to actually hear it, but rather felt it, like the premonition of
+movement in a motionless void. Then the great tree, burdened with its
+weight of years and snow, played its last part in the tragedy of life.
+He heard the warning crash and attempted to spring up but, almost
+erect, caught the blow squarely on the shoulder.
+
+The sudden danger, the quick death--how often had Malemute Kid faced
+it! The pine needles were still quivering as he gave his commands and
+sprang into action. Nor did the Indian girl faint or raise her voice in
+idle wailing, as might many of her white sisters. At his order, she
+threw her weight on the end of a quickly extemporized handspike, easing
+the pressure and listening to her husband's groans, while Malemute Kid
+attacked the tree with his ax. The steel rang merrily as it bit into
+the frozen trunk, each stroke being accompanied by a forced, audible
+respiration, the 'Huh!' 'Huh!' of the woodsman.
+
+At last the Kid laid the pitiable thing that was once a man in the
+snow. But worse than his comrade's pain was the dumb anguish in the
+woman's face, the blended look of hopeful, hopeless query. Little was
+said; those of the Northland are early taught the futility of words and
+the inestimable value of deeds. With the temperature at sixty-five
+below zero, a man cannot lie many minutes in the snow and live. So the
+sled lashings were cut, and the sufferer, rolled in furs, laid on a
+couch of boughs. Before him roared a fire, built of the very wood which
+wrought the mishap. Behind and partially over him was stretched the
+primitive fly--a piece of canvas, which caught the radiating heat and
+threw it back and down upon him--a trick which men may know who study
+physics at the fount.
+
+And men who have shared their bed with death know when the call is
+sounded. Mason was terribly crushed. The most cursory examination
+revealed it.
+
+His right arm, leg, and back were broken; his limbs were paralyzed from
+the hips; and the likelihood of internal injuries was large. An
+occasional moan was his only sign of life.
+
+No hope; nothing to be done. The pitiless night crept slowly by--Ruth's
+portion, the despairing stoicism of her race, and Malemute Kid adding
+new lines to his face of bronze.
+
+In fact, Mason suffered least of all, for he spent his time in eastern
+Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountains, living over the scenes of his
+childhood. And most pathetic was the melody of his long-forgotten
+Southern vernacular, as he raved of swimming holes and coon hunts and
+watermelon raids. It was as Greek to Ruth, but the Kid understood and
+felt--felt as only one can feel who has been shut out for years from
+all that civilization means.
+
+Morning brought consciousness to the stricken man, and Malemute Kid
+bent closer to catch his whispers.
+
+'You remember when we foregathered on the Tanana, four years come next
+ice run? I didn't care so much for her then. It was more like she was
+pretty, and there was a smack of excitement about it, I think. But d'ye
+know, I've come to think a heap of her. She's been a good wife to me,
+always at my shoulder in the pinch. And when it comes to trading, you
+know there isn't her equal. D'ye recollect the time she shot the
+Moosehorn Rapids to pull you and me off that rock, the bullets whipping
+the water like hailstones?--and the time of the famine at
+Nuklukyeto?--when she raced the ice run to bring the news?
+
+'Yes, she's been a good wife to me, better'n that other one. Didn't
+know I'd been there?
+
+'Never told you, eh? Well, I tried it once, down in the States. That's
+why I'm here. Been raised together, too. I came away to give her a
+chance for divorce. She got it.
+
+'But that's got nothing to do with Ruth. I had thought of cleaning up
+and pulling for the Outside next year--her and I--but it's too late.
+Don't send her back to her people, Kid. It's beastly hard for a woman
+to go back. Think of it!--nearly four years on our bacon and beans and
+flour and dried fruit, and then to go back to her fish and caribou.
+It's not good for her to have tried our ways, to come to know they're
+better'n her people's, and then return to them. Take care of her, Kid,
+why don't you--but no, you always fought shy of them--and you never
+told me why you came to this country. Be kind to her, and send her back
+to the States as soon as you can. But fix it so she can come
+back--liable to get homesick, you know.
+
+'And the youngster--it's drawn us closer, Kid. I only hope it is a boy.
+Think of it!--flesh of my flesh, Kid. He mustn't stop in this country.
+And if it's a girl, why, she can't. Sell my furs; they'll fetch at
+least five thousand, and I've got as much more with the company. And
+handle my interests with yours. I think that bench claim will show up.
+See that he gets a good schooling; and Kid, above all, don't let him
+come back. This country was not made for white men.
+
+'I'm a gone man, Kid. Three or four sleeps at the best. You've got to
+go on.  You must go on! Remember, it's my wife, it's my boy--O God! I
+hope it's a boy! You can't stay by me--and I charge you, a dying man,
+to pull on.'
+
+'Give me three days,' pleaded Malemute Kid. 'You may change for the
+better; something may turn up.'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Just three days.'
+
+'You must pull on.'
+
+'Two days.'
+
+'It's my wife and my boy, Kid. You would not ask it.'
+
+'One day.'
+
+'No, no! I charge--'
+
+'Only one day. We can shave it through on the grub, and I might knock
+over a moose.'
+
+'No--all right; one day, but not a minute more. And, Kid, don't--don't
+leave me to face it alone. Just a shot, one pull on the trigger. You
+understand. Think of it! Think of it! Flesh of my flesh, and I'll never
+live to see him!
+
+'Send Ruth here. I want to say good-by and tell her that she must think
+of the boy and not wait till I'm dead. She might refuse to go with you
+if I didn't. Goodby, old man; good-by.
+
+'Kid! I say--a--sink a hole above the pup, next to the slide. I panned
+out forty cents on my shovel there.
+
+'And, Kid!' He stooped lower to catch the last faint words, the dying
+man's surrender of his pride. 'I'm sorry--for--you know--Carmen.'
+Leaving the girl crying softly over her man, Malemute Kid slipped into
+his parka and snowshoes, tucked his rifle under his arm, and crept away
+into the forest. He was no tyro in the stern sorrows of the Northland,
+but never had he faced so stiff a problem as this. In the abstract, it
+was a plain, mathematical proposition--three possible lives as against
+one doomed one. But now he hesitated. For five years, shoulder to
+shoulder, on the rivers and trails, in the camps and mines, facing
+death by field and flood and famine, had they knitted the bonds of
+their comradeship. So close was the tie that he had often been
+conscious of a vague jealousy of Ruth, from the first time she had come
+between. And now it must be severed by his own hand.
+
+Though he prayed for a moose, just one moose, all game seemed to have
+deserted the land, and nightfall found the exhausted man crawling into
+camp, lighthanded, heavyhearted. An uproar from the dogs and shrill
+cries from Ruth hastened him.
+
+Bursting into the camp, he saw the girl in the midst of the snarling
+pack, laying about her with an ax. The dogs had broken the iron rule of
+their masters and were rushing the grub.
+
+He joined the issue with his rifle reversed, and the hoary game of
+natural selection was played out with all the ruthlessness of its
+primeval environment. Rifle and ax went up and down, hit or missed with
+monotonous regularity; lithe bodies flashed, with wild eyes and
+dripping fangs; and man and beast fought for supremacy to the bitterest
+conclusion. Then the beaten brutes crept to the edge of the firelight,
+licking their wounds, voicing their misery to the stars.
+
+The whole stock of dried salmon had been devoured, and perhaps five
+pounds of flour remained to tide them over two hundred miles of
+wilderness. Ruth returned to her husband, while Malemute Kid cut up the
+warm body of one of the dogs, the skull of which had been crushed by
+the ax. Every portion was carefully put away, save the hide and offal,
+which were cast to his fellows of the moment before.
+
+Morning brought fresh trouble. The animals were turning on each other.
+Carmen, who still clung to her slender thread of life, was downed by
+the pack. The lash fell among them unheeded. They cringed and cried
+under the blows, but refused to scatter till the last wretched bit had
+disappeared--bones, hide, hair, everything.
+
+Malemute Kid went about his work, listening to Mason, who was back in
+Tennessee, delivering tangled discourses and wild exhortations to his
+brethren of other days.
+
+Taking advantage of neighboring pines, he worked rapidly, and Ruth
+watched him make a cache similar to those sometimes used by hunters to
+preserve their meat from the wolverines and dogs. One after the other,
+he bent the tops of two small pines toward each other and nearly to the
+ground, making them fast with thongs of moosehide. Then he beat the
+dogs into submission and harnessed them to two of the sleds, loading
+the same with everything but the furs which enveloped Mason. These he
+wrapped and lashed tightly about him, fastening either end of the robes
+to the bent pines. A single stroke of his hunting knife would release
+them and send the body high in the air.
+
+Ruth had received her husband's last wishes and made no struggle. Poor
+girl, she had learned the lesson of obedience well. From a child, she
+had bowed, and seen all women bow, to the lords of creation, and it did
+not seem in the nature of things for woman to resist. The Kid permitted
+her one outburst of grief, as she kissed her husband--her own people
+had no such custom--then led her to the foremost sled and helped her
+into her snowshoes. Blindly, instinctively, she took the gee pole and
+whip, and 'mushed' the dogs out on the trail. Then he returned to
+Mason, who had fallen into a coma, and long after she was out of sight
+crouched by the fire, waiting, hoping, praying for his comrade to die.
+
+It is not pleasant to be alone with painful thoughts in the White
+Silence. The silence of gloom is merciful, shrouding one as with
+protection and breathing a thousand intangible sympathies; but the
+bright White Silence, clear and cold, under steely skies, is pitiless.
+
+An hour passed--two hours--but the man would not die. At high noon the
+sun, without raising its rim above the southern horizon, threw a
+suggestion of fire athwart the heavens, then quickly drew it back.
+Malemute Kid roused and dragged himself to his comrade's side. He cast
+one glance about him. The White Silence seemed to sneer, and a great
+fear came upon him. There was a sharp report; Mason swung into his
+aerial sepulcher, and Malemute Kid lashed the dogs into a wild gallop
+as he fled across the snow.
+
+
+
+The Son of the Wolf
+
+Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not
+until deprived of them. He has no conception of the subtle atmosphere
+exhaled by the sex feminine, so long as he bathes in it; but let it be
+withdrawn, and an ever-growing void begins to manifest itself in his
+existence, and he becomes hungry, in a vague sort of way, for a
+something so indefinite that he cannot characterize it. If his comrades
+have no more experience than himself, they will shake their heads
+dubiously and dose him with strong physic. But the hunger will continue
+and become stronger; he will lose interest in the things of his
+everyday life and wax morbid; and one day, when the emptiness has
+become unbearable, a revelation will dawn upon him.
+
+In the Yukon country, when this comes to pass, the man usually
+provisions a poling boat, if it is summer, and if winter, harnesses his
+dogs, and heads for the Southland. A few months later, supposing him to
+be possessed of a faith in the country, he returns with a wife to share
+with him in that faith, and incidentally in his hardships. This but
+serves to show the innate selfishness of man. It also brings us to the
+trouble of 'Scruff' Mackenzie, which occurred in the old days, before
+the country was stampeded and staked by a tidal-wave of the
+che-cha-quas, and when the Klondike's only claim to notice was its
+salmon fisheries.
+
+'Scruff' Mackenzie bore the earmarks of a frontier birth and a frontier
+life.
+
+His face was stamped with twenty-five years of incessant struggle with
+Nature in her wildest moods,--the last two, the wildest and hardest of
+all, having been spent in groping for the gold which lies in the shadow
+of the Arctic Circle. When the yearning sickness came upon him, he was
+not surprised, for he was a practical man and had seen other men thus
+stricken. But he showed no sign of his malady, save that he worked
+harder. All summer he fought mosquitoes and washed the sure-thing bars
+of the Stuart River for a double grubstake. Then he floated a raft of
+houselogs down the Yukon to Forty Mile, and put together as comfortable
+a cabin as any the camp could boast of. In fact, it showed such cozy
+promise that many men elected to be his partner and to come and live
+with him. But he crushed their aspirations with rough speech, peculiar
+for its strength and brevity, and bought a double supply of grub from
+the trading-post.
+
+As has been noted, 'Scruff' Mackenzie was a practical man. If he wanted
+a thing he usually got it, but in doing so, went no farther out of his
+way than was necessary. Though a son of toil and hardship, he was
+averse to a journey of six hundred miles on the ice, a second of two
+thousand miles on the ocean, and still a third thousand miles or so to
+his last stamping-grounds,--all in the mere quest of a wife. Life was
+too short. So he rounded up his dogs, lashed a curious freight to his
+sled, and faced across the divide whose westward slopes were drained by
+the head-reaches of the Tanana.
+
+He was a sturdy traveler, and his wolf-dogs could work harder and
+travel farther on less grub than any other team in the Yukon. Three
+weeks later he strode into a hunting-camp of the Upper Tanana Sticks.
+They marveled at his temerity; for they had a bad name and had been
+known to kill white men for as trifling a thing as a sharp ax or a
+broken rifle.
+
+But he went among them single-handed, his bearing being a delicious
+composite of humility, familiarity, sang-froid, and insolence. It
+required a deft hand and deep knowledge of the barbaric mind
+effectually to handle such diverse weapons; but he was a past-master in
+the art, knowing when to conciliate and when to threaten with Jove-like
+wrath.
+
+He first made obeisance to the Chief Thling-Tinneh, presenting him with
+a couple of pounds of black tea and tobacco, and thereby winning his
+most cordial regard. Then he mingled with the men and maidens, and that
+night gave a potlach.
+
+The snow was beaten down in the form of an oblong, perhaps a hundred
+feet in length and quarter as many across. Down the center a long fire
+was built, while either side was carpeted with spruce boughs. The
+lodges were forsaken, and the fivescore or so members of the tribe gave
+tongue to their folk-chants in honor of their guest.
+
+'Scruff' Mackenzie's two years had taught him the not many hundred
+words of their vocabulary, and he had likewise conquered their deep
+gutturals, their Japanese idioms, constructions, and honorific and
+agglutinative particles. So he made oration after their manner,
+satisfying their instinctive poetry-love with crude flights of
+eloquence and metaphorical contortions. After Thling-Tinneh and the
+Shaman had responded in kind, he made trifling presents to the menfolk,
+joined in their singing, and proved an expert in their fifty-two-stick
+gambling game.
+
+And they smoked his tobacco and were pleased. But among the younger men
+there was a defiant attitude, a spirit of braggadocio, easily
+understood by the raw insinuations of the toothless squaws and the
+giggling of the maidens. They had known few white men, 'Sons of the
+Wolf,' but from those few they had learned strange lessons.
+
+Nor had 'Scruff' Mackenzie, for all his seeming carelessness, failed to
+note these phenomena. In truth, rolled in his sleeping-furs, he thought
+it all over, thought seriously, and emptied many pipes in mapping out a
+campaign. One maiden only had caught his fancy,--none other than
+Zarinska, daughter to the chief. In features, form, and poise,
+answering more nearly to the white man's type of beauty, she was almost
+an anomaly among her tribal sisters. He would possess her, make her his
+wife, and name her--ah, he would name her Gertrude! Having thus
+decided, he rolled over on his side and dropped off to sleep, a true
+son of his all-conquering race, a Samson among the Philistines.
+
+It was slow work and a stiff game; but 'Scruff' Mackenzie maneuvered
+cunningly, with an unconcern which served to puzzle the Sticks. He took
+great care to impress the men that he was a sure shot and a mighty
+hunter, and the camp rang with his plaudits when he brought down a
+moose at six hundred yards. Of a night he visited in Chief
+Thling-Tinneh's lodge of moose and cariboo skins, talking big and
+dispensing tobacco with a lavish hand. Nor did he fail to likewise
+honor the Shaman; for he realized the medicine-man's influence with his
+people, and was anxious to make of him an ally. But that worthy was
+high and mighty, refused to be propitiated, and was unerringly marked
+down as a prospective enemy.
+
+Though no opening presented for an interview with Zarinska, Mackenzie
+stole many a glance to her, giving fair warning of his intent. And well
+she knew, yet coquettishly surrounded herself with a ring of women
+whenever the men were away and he had a chance. But he was in no hurry;
+besides, he knew she could not help but think of him, and a few days of
+such thought would only better his suit.
+
+At last, one night, when he deemed the time to be ripe, he abruptly
+left the chief's smoky dwelling and hastened to a neighboring lodge. As
+usual, she sat with squaws and maidens about her, all engaged in sewing
+moccasins and beadwork. They laughed at his entrance, and badinage,
+which linked Zarinska to him, ran high. But one after the other they
+were unceremoniously bundled into the outer snow, whence they hurried
+to spread the tale through all the camp.
+
+His cause was well pleaded, in her tongue, for she did not know his,
+and at the end of two hours he rose to go.
+
+'So Zarinska will come to the White Man's lodge? Good! I go now to have
+talk with thy father, for he may not be so minded. And I will give him
+many tokens; but he must not ask too much. If he say no? Good! Zarinska
+shall yet come to the White Man's lodge.'
+
+He had already lifted the skin flap to depart, when a low exclamation
+brought him back to the girl's side. She brought herself to her knees
+on the bearskin mat, her face aglow with true Eve-light, and shyly
+unbuckled his heavy belt. He looked down, perplexed, suspicious, his
+ears alert for the slightest sound without.
+
+But her next move disarmed his doubt, and he smiled with pleasure. She
+took from her sewing bag a moosehide sheath, brave with bright
+beadwork, fantastically designed. She drew his great hunting-knife,
+gazed reverently along the keen edge, half tempted to try it with her
+thumb, and shot it into place in its new home. Then she slipped the
+sheath along the belt to its customary resting-place, just above the
+hip.  For all the world, it was like a scene of olden time,--a lady and
+her knight.
+
+Mackenzie drew her up full height and swept her red lips with his
+moustache, the, to her, foreign caress of the Wolf. It was a meeting of
+the stone age and the steel; but she was none the less a woman, as her
+crimson cheeks and the luminous softness of her eyes attested.
+
+There was a thrill of excitement in the air as 'Scruff' Mackenzie, a
+bulky bundle under his arm, threw open the flap of Thling-Tinneh's
+tent. Children were running about in the open, dragging dry wood to the
+scene of the potlach, a babble of women's voices was growing in
+intensity, the young men were consulting in sullen groups, while from
+the Shaman's lodge rose the eerie sounds of an incantation.
+
+The chief was alone with his blear-eyed wife, but a glance sufficed to
+tell Mackenzie that the news was already told. So he plunged at once
+into the business, shifting the beaded sheath prominently to the fore
+as advertisement of the betrothal.
+
+'O Thling-Tinneh, mighty chief of the Sticks And the land of the
+Tanana, ruler of the salmon and the bear, the moose and the cariboo!
+The White Man is before thee with a great purpose. Many moons has his
+lodge been empty, and he is lonely. And his heart has eaten itself in
+silence, and grown hungry for a woman to sit beside him in his lodge,
+to meet him from the hunt with warm fire and good food. He has heard
+strange things, the patter of baby moccasins and the sound of
+children's voices. And one night a vision came upon him, and he beheld
+the Raven, who is thy father, the great Raven, who is the father of all
+the Sticks. And the Raven spake to the lonely White Man, saying: "Bind
+thou thy moccasins upon thee, and gird thy snow-shoes on, and lash thy
+sled with food for many sleeps and fine tokens for the Chief
+Thling-Tinneh. For thou shalt turn thy face to where the mid-spring sun
+is wont to sink below the land and journey to this great chief's
+hunting-grounds. There thou shalt make big presents, and Thling-Tinneh,
+who is my son, shall become to thee as a father. In his lodge there is
+a maiden into whom I breathed the breath of life for thee. This maiden
+shalt thou take to wife." 'O Chief, thus spake the great Raven; thus do
+I lay many presents at thy feet; thus am I come to take thy daughter!'
+The old man drew his furs about him with crude consciousness of
+royalty, but delayed reply while a youngster crept in, delivered a
+quick message to appear before the council, and was gone.
+
+'O White Man, whom we have named Moose-Killer, also known as the Wolf,
+and the Son of the Wolf! We know thou comest of a mighty race; we are
+proud to have thee our potlach-guest; but the king-salmon does not mate
+with the dogsalmon, nor the Raven with the Wolf.' 'Not so!' cried
+Mackenzie. 'The daughters of the Raven have I met in the camps of the
+Wolf,--the squaw of Mortimer, the squaw of Tregidgo, the squaw of
+Barnaby, who came two ice-runs back, and I have heard of other squaws,
+though my eyes beheld them not.' 'Son, your words are true; but it were
+evil mating, like the water with the sand, like the snow-flake with the
+sun. But met you one Mason and his squaw' No?
+
+He came ten ice-runs ago,--the first of all the Wolves. And with him
+there was a mighty man, straight as a willow-shoot, and tall; strong as
+the bald-faced grizzly, with a heart like the full summer moon; his-'
+'Oh!' interrupted Mackenzie, recognizing the well-known Northland
+figure, 'Malemute Kid!' 'The same,--a mighty man. But saw you aught of
+the squaw? She was full sister to Zarinska.' 'Nay, Chief; but I have
+heard. Mason--far, far to the north, a spruce-tree, heavy with years,
+crushed out his life beneath. But his love was great, and he had much
+gold. With this, and her boy, she journeyed countless sleeps toward the
+winter's noonday sun, and there she yet lives,--no biting frost, no
+snow, no summer's midnight sun, no winter's noonday night.'
+
+A second messenger interrupted with imperative summons from the council.
+
+As Mackenzie threw him into the snow, he caught a glimpse of the
+swaying forms before the council-fire, heard the deep basses of the men
+in rhythmic chant, and knew the Shaman was fanning the anger of his
+people. Time pressed. He turned upon the chief.
+
+'Come! I wish thy child. And now, see! Here are tobacco, tea, many cups
+of sugar, warm blankets, handkerchiefs, both good and large; and here,
+a true rifle, with many bullets and much powder.' 'Nay,' replied the
+old man, struggling against the great wealth spread before him. 'Even
+now are my people come together. They will not have this marriage.'
+
+'But thou art chief.' 'Yet do my young men rage because the Wolves have
+taken their maidens so that they may not marry.' 'Listen, O
+Thling-Tinneh! Ere the night has passed into the day, the Wolf shall
+face his dogs to the Mountains of the East and fare forth to the
+Country of the Yukon. And Zarinska shall break trail for his dogs.'
+'And ere the night has gained its middle, my young men may fling to the
+dogs the flesh of the Wolf, and his bones be scattered in the snow till
+the springtime lay them bare.' It was threat and counter-threat.
+Mackenzie's bronzed face flushed darkly. He raised his voice. The old
+squaw, who till now had sat an impassive spectator, made to creep by
+him for the door.
+
+The song of the men broke suddenly and there was a hubbub of many
+voices as he whirled the old woman roughly to her couch of skins.
+
+'Again I cry--listen, O Thling-Tinneh! The Wolf dies with teeth
+fast-locked, and with him there shall sleep ten of thy strongest
+men,--men who are needed, for the hunting is not begun, and the fishing
+is not many moons away. And again, of what profit should I die? I know
+the custom of thy people; thy share of my wealth shall be very small.
+Grant me thy child, and it shall all be thine. And yet again, my
+brothers will come, and they are many, and their maws are never filled;
+and the daughters of the Raven shall bear children in the lodges of the
+Wolf. My people are greater than thy people. It is destiny. Grant, and
+all this wealth is thine.' Moccasins were crunching the snow without.
+Mackenzie threw his rifle to cock, and loosened the twin Colts in his
+belt.
+
+'Grant, O Chief!' 'And yet will my people say no.' 'Grant, and the
+wealth is thine. Then shall I deal with thy people after.' 'The Wolf
+will have it so. I will take his tokens,--but I would warn him.'
+Mackenzie passed over the goods, taking care to clog the rifle's
+ejector, and capping the bargain with a kaleidoscopic silk kerchief.
+The Shaman and half a dozen young braves entered, but he shouldered
+boldly among them and passed out.
+
+'Pack!' was his laconic greeting to Zarinska as he passed her lodge and
+hurried to harness his dogs. A few minutes later he swept into the
+council at the head of the team, the woman by his side. He took his
+place at the upper end of the oblong, by the side of the chief. To his
+left, a step to the rear, he stationed Zarinska, her proper place.
+Besides, the time was ripe for mischief, and there was need to guard
+his back.
+
+On either side, the men crouched to the fire, their voices lifted in a
+folk-chant out of the forgotten past. Full of strange, halting cadences
+and haunting recurrences, it was not beautiful. 'Fearful' may
+inadequately express it. At the lower end, under the eye of the Shaman,
+danced half a score of women. Stern were his reproofs of those who did
+not wholly abandon themselves to the ecstasy of the rite. Half hidden
+in their heavy masses of raven hair, all dishevelled and falling to
+their waists, they slowly swayed to and fro, their forms rippling to an
+ever-changing rhythm.
+
+It was a weird scene; an anachronism. To the south, the nineteenth
+century was reeling off the few years of its last decade; here
+flourished man primeval, a shade removed from the prehistoric
+cave-dweller, forgotten fragment of the Elder World. The tawny
+wolf-dogs sat between their skin-clad masters or fought for room, the
+firelight cast backward from their red eyes and dripping fangs. The
+woods, in ghostly shroud, slept on unheeding.
+
+The White Silence, for the moment driven to the rimming forest, seemed
+ever crushing inward; the stars danced with great leaps, as is their
+wont in the time of the Great Cold; while the Spirits of the Pole
+trailed their robes of glory athwart the heavens.
+
+'Scruff' Mackenzie dimly realized the wild grandeur of the setting as
+his eyes ranged down the fur-fringed sides in quest of missing faces.
+They rested for a moment on a newborn babe, suckling at its mother's
+naked breast. It was forty below,--seven and odd degrees of frost. He
+thought of the tender women of his own race and smiled grimly. Yet from
+the loins of some such tender woman had he sprung with a kingly
+inheritance,--an inheritance which gave to him and his dominance over
+the land and sea, over the animals and the peoples of all the zones.
+Single-handed against fivescore, girt by the Arctic winter, far from
+his own, he felt the prompting of his heritage, the desire to possess,
+the wild danger--love, the thrill of battle, the power to conquer or to
+die.
+
+The singing and the dancing ceased, and the Shaman flared up in rude
+eloquence.
+
+Through the sinuosities of their vast mythology, he worked cunningly
+upon the credulity of his people. The case was strong. Opposing the
+creative principles as embodied in the Crow and the Raven, he
+stigmatized Mackenzie as the Wolf, the fighting and the destructive
+principle. Not only was the combat of these forces spiritual, but men
+fought, each to his totem. They were the children of Jelchs, the Raven,
+the Promethean fire-bringer; Mackenzie was the child of the Wolf, or in
+other words, the Devil. For them to bring a truce to this perpetual
+warfare, to marry their daughters to the arch-enemy, were treason and
+blasphemy of the highest order. No phrase was harsh nor figure vile
+enough in branding Mackenzie as a sneaking interloper and emissary of
+Satan. There was a subdued, savage roar in the deep chests of his
+listeners as he took the swing of his peroration.
+
+'Aye, my brothers, Jelchs is all-powerful! Did he not bring
+heaven-borne fire that we might be warm? Did he not draw the sun, moon,
+and stars, from their holes that we might see? Did he not teach us that
+we might fight the Spirits of Famine and of Frost? But now Jelchs is
+angry with his children, and they are grown to a handful, and he will
+not help.
+
+'For they have forgotten him, and done evil things, and trod bad
+trails, and taken his enemies into their lodges to sit by their fires.
+And the Raven is sorrowful at the wickedness of his children; but when
+they shall rise up and show they have come back, he will come out of
+the darkness to aid them. O brothers! the Fire-Bringer has whispered
+messages to thy Shaman; the same shall ye hear. Let the young men take
+the young women to their lodges; let them fly at the throat of the
+Wolf; let them be undying in their enmity! Then shall their women
+become fruitful and they shall multiply into a mighty people! And the
+Raven shall lead great tribes of their fathers and their fathers'
+fathers from out of the North; and they shall beat back the Wolves till
+they are as last year's campfires; and they shall again come to rule
+over all the land! 'Tis the message of Jelchs, the Raven.' This
+foreshadowing of the Messiah's coming brought a hoarse howl from the
+Sticks as they leaped to their feet. Mackenzie slipped the thumbs of
+his mittens and waited. There was a clamor for the 'Fox,' not to be
+stilled till one of the young men stepped forward to speak.
+
+'Brothers! The Shaman has spoken wisely. The Wolves have taken our
+women, and our men are childless. We are grown to a handful. The Wolves
+have taken our warm furs and given for them evil spirits which dwell in
+bottles, and clothes which come not from the beaver or the lynx, but
+are made from the grass.
+
+And they are not warm, and our men die of strange sicknesses. I, the
+Fox, have taken no woman to wife; and why? Twice have the maidens which
+pleased me gone to the camps of the Wolf. Even now have I laid by skins
+of the beaver, of the moose, of the cariboo, that I might win favor in
+the eyes of Thling-Tinneh, that I might marry Zarinska, his daughter.
+Even now are her snow-shoes bound to her feet, ready to break trail for
+the dogs of the Wolf. Nor do I speak for myself alone.
+
+As I have done, so has the Bear. He, too, had fain been the father of
+her children, and many skins has he cured thereto. I speak for all the
+young men who know not wives. The Wolves are ever hungry. Always do
+they take the choice meat at the killing. To the Ravens are left the
+leavings.
+
+'There is Gugkla,' he cried, brutally pointing out one of the women,
+who was a cripple.
+
+'Her legs are bent like the ribs of a birch canoe. She cannot gather
+wood nor carry the meat of the hunters. Did the Wolves choose her?'
+'Ai! ai!' vociferated his tribesmen.
+
+'There is Moyri, whose eyes are crossed by the Evil Spirit. Even the
+babes are affrighted when they gaze upon her, and it is said the
+bald-face gives her the trail.
+
+'Was she chosen?' Again the cruel applause rang out.
+
+'And there sits Pischet. She does not hearken to my words. Never has
+she heard the cry of the chit-chat, the voice of her husband, the
+babble of her child.
+
+'She lives in the White Silence. Cared the Wolves aught for her? No!
+Theirs is the choice of the kill; ours is the leavings.
+
+'Brothers, it shall not be! No more shall the Wolves slink among our
+campfires. The time is come.' A great streamer of fire, the aurora
+borealis, purple, green, and yellow, shot across the zenith, bridging
+horizon to horizon. With head thrown back and arms extended, he swayed
+to his climax.
+
+'Behold! The spirits of our fathers have arisen and great deeds are
+afoot this night!' He stepped back, and another young man somewhat
+diffidently came forward, pushed on by his comrades. He towered a full
+head above them, his broad chest defiantly bared to the frost. He swung
+tentatively from one foot to the other.
+
+Words halted upon his tongue, and he was ill at ease. His face was
+horrible to look upon, for it had at one time been half torn away by
+some terrific blow. At last he struck his breast with his clenched
+fist, drawing sound as from a drum, and his voice rumbled forth as does
+the surf from an ocean cavern.
+
+'I am the Bear,--the Silver-Tip and the Son of the Silver-Tip! When my
+voice was yet as a girl's, I slew the lynx, the moose, and the cariboo;
+when it whistled like the wolverines from under a cache, I crossed the
+Mountains of the South and slew three of the White Rivers; when it
+became as the roar of the Chinook, I met the bald-faced grizzly, but
+gave no trail.' At this he paused, his hand significantly sweeping
+across his hideous scars.
+
+'I am not as the Fox. My tongue is frozen like the river. I cannot make
+great talk. My words are few. The Fox says great deeds are afoot this
+night. Good! Talk flows from his tongue like the freshets of the
+spring, but he is chary of deeds.
+
+'This night shall I do battle with the Wolf. I shall slay him, and
+Zarinska shall sit by my fire. The Bear has spoken.' Though pandemonium
+raged about him, 'Scruff' Mackenzie held his ground.
+
+Aware how useless was the rifle at close quarters, he slipped both
+holsters to the fore, ready for action, and drew his mittens till his
+hands were barely shielded by the elbow gauntlets. He knew there was no
+hope in attack en masse, but true to his boast, was prepared to die
+with teeth fast-locked. But the Bear restrained his comrades, beating
+back the more impetuous with his terrible fist. As the tumult began to
+die away, Mackenzie shot a glance in the direction of Zarinska. It was
+a superb picture. She was leaning forward on her snow-shoes, lips apart
+and nostrils quivering, like a tigress about to spring. Her great black
+eyes were fixed upon her tribesmen, in fear and defiance. So extreme
+the tension, she had forgotten to breathe. With one hand pressed
+spasmodically against her breast and the other as tightly gripped about
+the dog-whip, she was as turned to stone. Even as he looked, relief
+came to her. Her muscles loosened; with a heavy sigh she settled back,
+giving him a look of more than love--of worship.
+
+Thling-Tinneh was trying to speak, but his people drowned his voice.
+Then Mackenzie strode forward. The Fox opened his mouth to a piercing
+yell, but so savagely did Mackenzie whirl upon him that he shrank back,
+his larynx all agurgle with suppressed sound. His discomfiture was
+greeted with roars of laughter, and served to soothe his fellows to a
+listening mood.
+
+'Brothers! The White Man, whom ye have chosen to call the Wolf, came
+among you with fair words. He was not like the Innuit; he spoke not
+lies. He came as a friend, as one who would be a brother. But your men
+have had their say, and the time for soft words is past.
+
+'First, I will tell you that the Shaman has an evil tongue and is a
+false prophet, that the messages he spake are not those of the
+Fire-Bringer. His ears are locked to the voice of the Raven, and out of
+his own head he weaves cunning fancies, and he has made fools of you.
+He has no power.
+
+'When the dogs were killed and eaten, and your stomachs were heavy with
+untanned hide and strips of moccasins; when the old men died, and the
+old women died, and the babes at the dry dugs of the mothers died; when
+the land was dark, and ye perished as do the salmon in the fall; aye,
+when the famine was upon you, did the Shaman bring reward to your
+hunters? did the Shaman put meat in your bellies? Again I say, the
+Shaman is without power. Thus I spit upon his face!' Though taken aback
+by the sacrilege, there was no uproar. Some of the women were even
+frightened, but among the men there was an uplifting, as though in
+preparation or anticipation of the miracle. All eyes were turned upon
+the two central figures. The priest realized the crucial moment, felt
+his power tottering, opened his mouth in denunciation, but fled
+backward before the truculent advance, upraised fist, and flashing
+eyes, of Mackenzie. He sneered and resumed.
+
+'Was I stricken dead? Did the lightning burn me? Did the stars fall
+from the sky and crush me? Pish! I have done with the dog. Now will I
+tell you of my people, who are the mightiest of all the peoples, who
+rule in all the lands. At first we hunt as I hunt, alone.
+
+'After that we hunt in packs; and at last, like the cariboo-run, we
+sweep across all the land.
+
+'Those whom we take into our lodges live; those who will not come die.
+Zarinska is a comely maiden, full and strong, fit to become the mother
+of Wolves. Though I die, such shall she become; for my brothers are
+many, and they will follow the scent of my dogs.
+
+'Listen to the Law of the Wolf: Whoso taketh the life of one Wolf, the
+forfeit shall ten of his people pay. In many lands has the price been
+paid; in many lands shall it yet be paid.
+
+'Now will I deal with the Fox and the Bear. It seems they have cast
+eyes upon the maiden. So? Behold, I have bought her! Thling-Tinneh
+leans upon the rifle; the goods of purchase are by his fire. Yet will I
+be fair to the young men. To the Fox, whose tongue is dry with many
+words, will I give of tobacco five long plugs.
+
+'Thus will his mouth be wetted that he may make much noise in the
+council. But to the Bear, of whom I am well proud, will I give of
+blankets two; of flour, twenty cups; of tobacco, double that of the
+Fox; and if he fare with me over the Mountains of the East, then will I
+give him a rifle, mate to Thling-Tinneh's. If not? Good! The Wolf is
+weary of speech. Yet once again will he say the Law: Whoso taketh the
+life of one Wolf, the forfeit shall ten of his people pay.'
+
+Mackenzie smiled as he stepped back to his old position, but at heart
+he was full of trouble. The night was yet dark. The girl came to his
+side, and he listened closely as she told of the Bear's battle-tricks
+with the knife.
+
+The decision was for war. In a trice, scores of moccasins were widening
+the space of beaten snow by the fire. There was much chatter about the
+seeming defeat of the Shaman; some averred he had but withheld his
+power, while others conned past events and agreed with the Wolf. The
+Bear came to the center of the battle-ground, a long naked
+hunting-knife of Russian make in his hand. The Fox called attention to
+Mackenzie's revolvers; so he stripped his belt, buckling it about
+Zarinska, into whose hands he also entrusted his rifle. She shook her
+head that she could not shoot,--small chance had a woman to handle such
+precious things.
+
+'Then, if danger come by my back, cry aloud, "My husband!" No; thus,
+"My husband!"'
+
+He laughed as she repeated it, pinched her cheek, and reentered the
+circle. Not only in reach and stature had the Bear the advantage of
+him, but his blade was longer by a good two inches. 'Scruff' Mackenzie
+had looked into the eyes of men before, and he knew it was a man who
+stood against him; yet he quickened to the glint of light on the steel,
+to the dominant pulse of his race.
+
+Time and again he was forced to the edge of the fire or the deep snow,
+and time and again, with the foot tactics of the pugilist, he worked
+back to the center.  Not a voice was lifted in encouragement, while his
+antagonist was heartened with applause, suggestions, and warnings. But
+his teeth only shut the tighter as the knives clashed together, and he
+thrust or eluded with a coolness born of conscious strength. At first
+he felt compassion for his enemy; but this fled before the primal
+instinct of life, which in turn gave way to the lust of slaughter. The
+ten thousand years of culture fell from him, and he was a cave-dweller,
+doing battle for his female.
+
+Twice he pricked the Bear, getting away unscathed; but the third time
+caught, and to save himself, free hands closed on fighting hands, and
+they came together.
+
+Then did he realize the tremendous strength of his opponent. His
+muscles were knotted in painful lumps, and cords and tendons threatened
+to snap with the strain; yet nearer and nearer came the Russian steel.
+He tried to break away, but only weakened himself. The fur-clad circle
+closed in, certain of and anxious to see the final stroke. But with
+wrestler's trick, swinging partly to the side, he struck at his
+adversary with his head. Involuntarily the Bear leaned back, disturbing
+his center of gravity. Simultaneous with this, Mackenzie tripped
+properly and threw his whole weight forward, hurling him clear through
+the circle into the deep snow. The Bear floundered out and came back
+full tilt.
+
+'O my husband!' Zarinska's voice rang out, vibrant with danger.
+
+To the twang of a bow-string, Mackenzie swept low to the ground, and a
+bonebarbed arrow passed over him into the breast of the Bear, whose
+momentum carried him over his crouching foe. The next instant Mackenzie
+was up and about. The bear lay motionless, but across the fire was the
+Shaman, drawing a second arrow. Mackenzie's knife leaped short in the
+air. He caught the heavy blade by the point. There was a flash of light
+as it spanned the fire. Then the Shaman, the hilt alone appearing
+without his throat, swayed and pitched forward into the glowing embers.
+
+Click! Click!--the Fox had possessed himself of Thling-Tinneh's rifle
+and was vainly trying to throw a shell into place. But he dropped it at
+the sound of Mackenzie's laughter.
+
+'So the Fox has not learned the way of the plaything? He is yet a woman.
+
+'Come! Bring it, that I may show thee!' The Fox hesitated.
+
+'Come, I say!' He slouched forward like a beaten cur.
+
+'Thus, and thus; so the thing is done.' A shell flew into place and the
+trigger was at cock as Mackenzie brought it to shoulder.
+
+'The Fox has said great deeds were afoot this night, and he spoke true.
+There have been great deeds, yet least among them were those of the
+Fox. Is he still intent to take Zarinska to his lodge? Is he minded to
+tread the trail already broken by the Shaman and the Bear?
+
+'No? Good!'
+
+Mackenzie turned contemptuously and drew his knife from the priest's
+throat.
+
+'Are any of the young men so minded? If so, the Wolf will take them by
+two and three till none are left. No? Good! Thling-Tinneh, I now give
+thee this rifle a second time. If, in the days to come, thou shouldst
+journey to the Country of the Yukon, know thou that there shall always
+be a place and much food by the fire of the Wolf. The night is now
+passing into the day. I go, but I may come again. And for the last
+time, remember the Law of the Wolf!' He was supernatural in their sight
+as he rejoined Zarinska. She took her place at the head of the team,
+and the dogs swung into motion. A few moments later they were swallowed
+up by the ghostly forest. Till now Mackenzie had waited; he slipped
+into his snow-shoes to follow.
+
+'Has the Wolf forgotten the five long plugs?' Mackenzie turned upon the
+Fox angrily; then the humor of it struck him.
+
+'I will give thee one short plug.' 'As the Wolf sees fit,' meekly
+responded the Fox, stretching out his hand.
+
+
+
+The Men of Forty Mile
+
+When Big Jim Belden ventured the apparently innocuous proposition that
+mush-ice was 'rather pecooliar,' he little dreamed of what it would
+lead to.
+
+Neither did Lon McFane, when he affirmed that anchor-ice was even more
+so; nor did Bettles, as he instantly disagreed, declaring the very
+existence of such a form to be a bugaboo.
+
+'An' ye'd be tellin' me this,' cried Lon, 'after the years ye've spint
+in the land! An' we atin' out the same pot this many's the day!' 'But
+the thing's agin reasin,' insisted Bettles.
+
+'Look you, water's warmer than ice--' 'An' little the difference, once
+ye break through.'
+
+'Still it's warmer, because it ain't froze. An' you say it freezes on
+the bottom?' 'Only the anchor-ice, David, only the anchor-ice. An' have
+ye niver drifted along, the water clear as glass, whin suddin, belike a
+cloud over the sun, the mushy-ice comes bubblin' up an' up till from
+bank to bank an' bind to bind it's drapin' the river like a first
+snowfall?' 'Unh, hunh! more'n once when I took a doze at the
+steering-oar. But it allus come out the nighest side-channel, an' not
+bubblin' up an' up.' 'But with niver a wink at the helm?'
+
+'No; nor you. It's agin reason. I'll leave it to any man!' Bettles
+appealed to the circle about the stove, but the fight was on between
+himself and Lon McFane.
+
+'Reason or no reason, it's the truth I'm tellin' ye. Last fall, a year
+gone, 'twas Sitka Charley and meself saw the sight, droppin' down the
+riffle ye'll remember below Fort Reliance. An' regular fall weather it
+was--the glint o' the sun on the golden larch an' the quakin' aspens;
+an' the glister of light on ivery ripple; an' beyand, the winter an'
+the blue haze of the North comin' down hand in hand. It's well ye know
+the same, with a fringe to the river an' the ice formin' thick in the
+eddies--an' a snap an' sparkle to the air, an' ye a-feelin' it through
+all yer blood, a-takin' new lease of life with ivery suck of it. 'Tis
+then, me boy, the world grows small an' the wandtherlust lays ye by the
+heels.
+
+'But it's meself as wandthers. As I was sayin', we a-paddlin', with
+niver a sign of ice, barrin' that by the eddies, when the Injun lifts
+his paddle an' sings out, "Lon McFane! Look ye below!" So have I heard,
+but niver thought to see! As ye know, Sitka Charley, like meself, niver
+drew first breath in the land; so the sight was new. Then we drifted,
+with a head over ayther side, peerin' down through the sparkly water.
+For the world like the days I spint with the pearlers, watchin' the
+coral banks a-growin' the same as so many gardens under the sea. There
+it was, the anchor-ice, clingin' an' clusterin' to ivery rock, after
+the manner of the white coral.
+
+'But the best of the sight was to come. Just after clearin' the tail of
+the riffle, the water turns quick the color of milk, an' the top of it
+in wee circles, as when the graylin' rise in the spring, or there's a
+splatter of wet from the sky. 'Twas the anchor-ice comin' up. To the
+right, to the lift, as far as iver a man cud see, the water was covered
+with the same.
+
+An' like so much porridge it was, slickin' along the bark of the canoe,
+stickin' like glue to the paddles. It's many's the time I shot the
+self-same riffle before, and it's many's the time after, but niver a
+wink of the same have I seen. 'Twas the sight of a lifetime.' 'Do
+tell!' dryly commented Bettles. 'D'ye think I'd b'lieve such a yarn?
+I'd ruther say the glister of light'd gone to your eyes, and the snap
+of the air to your tongue.' ''Twas me own eyes that beheld it, an' if
+Sitka Charley was here, he'd be the lad to back me.' 'But facts is
+facts, an' they ain't no gettin' round 'em. It ain't in the nature of
+things for the water furtherest away from the air to freeze first.'
+'But me own eyes-' 'Don't git het up over it,' admonished Bettles, as
+the quick Celtic anger began to mount.
+
+'Then yer not after belavin' me?' 'Sence you're so blamed forehanded
+about it, no; I'd b'lieve nature first, and facts.'
+
+'Is it the lie ye'd be givin' me?' threatened Lon. 'Ye'd better be
+askin' that Siwash wife of yours. I'll lave it to her, for the truth I
+spake.' Bettles flared up in sudden wrath. The Irishman had unwittingly
+wounded him; for his wife was the half-breed daughter of a Russian
+fur-trader, married to him in the Greek Mission of Nulato, a thousand
+miles or so down the Yukon, thus being of much higher caste than the
+common Siwash, or native, wife. It was a mere Northland nuance, which
+none but the Northland adventurer may understand.
+
+'I reckon you kin take it that way,' was his deliberate affirmation.
+
+The next instant Lon McFane had stretched him on the floor, the circle
+was broken up, and half a dozen men had stepped between.
+
+Bettles came to his feet, wiping the blood from his mouth. 'It hain't
+new, this takin' and payin' of blows, and don't you never think but
+that this will be squared.' 'An' niver in me life did I take the lie
+from mortal man,' was the retort courteous. 'An' it's an avil day I'll
+not be to hand, waitin' an' willin' to help ye lift yer debts, barrin'
+no manner of way.'
+
+'Still got that 38-55?' Lon nodded.
+
+'But you'd better git a more likely caliber. Mine'll rip holes through
+you the size of walnuts.'
+
+'Niver fear; it's me own slugs smell their way with soft noses, an'
+they'll spread like flapjacks against the coming out beyand. An'
+when'll I have the pleasure of waitin' on ye? The waterhole's a
+strikin' locality.' ''Tain't bad. Jest be there in an hour, and you
+won't set long on my coming.' Both men mittened and left the Post,
+their ears closed to the remonstrances of their comrades. It was such a
+little thing; yet with such men, little things, nourished by quick
+tempers and stubborn natures, soon blossomed into big things.
+
+Besides, the art of burning to bedrock still lay in the womb of the
+future, and the men of Forty-Mile, shut in by the long Arctic winter,
+grew high-stomached with overeating and enforced idleness, and became
+as irritable as do the bees in the fall of the year when the hives are
+overstocked with honey.
+
+There was no law in the land. The mounted police was also a thing of
+the future. Each man measured an offense, and meted out the punishment
+inasmuch as it affected himself.
+
+Rarely had combined action been necessary, and never in all the dreary
+history of the camp had the eighth article of the Decalogue been
+violated.
+
+Big Jim Belden called an impromptu meeting. Scruff Mackenzie was placed
+as temporary chairman, and a messenger dispatched to solicit Father
+Roubeau's good offices. Their position was paradoxical, and they knew
+it. By the right of might could they interfere to prevent the duel; yet
+such action, while in direct line with their wishes, went counter to
+their opinions. While their rough-hewn, obsolete ethics recognized the
+individual prerogative of wiping out blow with blow, they could not
+bear to think of two good comrades, such as Bettles and McFane, meeting
+in deadly battle. Deeming the man who would not fight on provocation a
+dastard, when brought to the test it seemed wrong that he should fight.
+
+But a scurry of moccasins and loud cries, rounded off with a
+pistol-shot, interrupted the discussion. Then the storm-doors opened
+and Malemute Kid entered, a smoking Colt's in his hand, and a merry
+light in his eye.
+
+'I got him.' He replaced the empty shell, and added, 'Your dog,
+Scruff.' 'Yellow Fang?'
+
+Mackenzie asked.
+
+'No; the lop-eared one.' 'The devil! Nothing the matter with him.'
+'Come out and take a look.' 'That's all right after all. Buess he's got
+'em, too. Yellow Fang came back this morning and took a chunk out of
+him, and came near to making a widower of me. Made a rush for Zarinska,
+but she whisked her skirts in his face and escaped with the loss of the
+same and a good roll in the snow. Then he took to the woods again. Hope
+he don't come back. Lost any yourself?' 'One--the best one of the
+pack--Shookum. Started amuck this morning, but didn't get very far. Ran
+foul of Sitka Charley's team, and they scattered him all over the
+street. And now two of them are loose, and raging mad; so you see he
+got his work in. The dog census will be small in the spring if we don't
+do something.'
+
+'And the man census, too.' 'How's that? Who's in trouble now?' 'Oh,
+Bettles and Lon McFane had an argument, and they'll be down by the
+waterhole in a few minutes to settle it.' The incident was repeated for
+his benefit, and Malemute Kid, accustomed to an obedience which his
+fellow men never failed to render, took charge of the affair. His
+quickly formulated plan was explained, and they promised to follow his
+lead implicitly.
+
+'So you see,' he concluded, 'we do not actually take away their
+privilege of fighting; and yet I don't believe they'll fight when they
+see the beauty of the scheme. Life's a game and men the gamblers.
+They'll stake their whole pile on the one chance in a thousand.
+
+'Take away that one chance, and--they won't play.' He turned to the man
+in charge of the Post. 'Storekeeper, weight out three fathoms of your
+best half-inch manila.
+
+'We'll establish a precedent which will last the men of Forty-Mile to
+the end of time,' he prophesied. Then he coiled the rope about his arm
+and led his followers out of doors, just in time to meet the principals.
+
+'What danged right'd he to fetch my wife in?' thundered Bettles to the
+soothing overtures of a friend. ''Twa'n't called for,' he concluded
+decisively. ''Twa'n't called for,' he reiterated again and again,
+pacing up and down and waiting for Lon McFane.
+
+And Lon McFane--his face was hot and tongue rapid as he flaunted
+insurrection in the face of the Church. 'Then, father,' he cried, 'it's
+with an aisy heart I'll roll in me flamy blankets, the broad of me back
+on a bed of coals. Niver shall it be said that Lon McFane took a lie
+'twixt the teeth without iver liftin' a hand! An' I'll not ask a
+blessin'. The years have been wild, but it's the heart was in the right
+place.' 'But it's not the heart, Lon,' interposed Father Roubeau; 'It's
+pride that bids you forth to slay your fellow man.' 'Yer Frinch,' Lon
+replied. And then, turning to leave him, 'An' will ye say a mass if the
+luck is against me?' But the priest smiled, thrust his moccasined feet
+to the fore, and went out upon the white breast of the silent river. A
+packed trail, the width of a sixteen-inch sled, led out to the
+waterhole. On either side lay the deep, soft snow. The men trod in
+single file, without conversation; and the black-stoled priest in their
+midst gave to the function the solemn aspect of a funeral. It was a
+warm winter's day for Forty-Mile--a day in which the sky, filled with
+heaviness, drew closer to the earth, and the mercury sought the
+unwonted level of twenty below. But there was no cheer in the warmth.
+There was little air in the upper strata, and the clouds hung
+motionless, giving sullen promise of an early snowfall. And the earth,
+unresponsive, made no preparation, content in its hibernation.
+
+When the waterhole was reached, Bettles, having evidently reviewed the
+quarrel during the silent walk, burst out in a final ''Twa'n't called
+for,' while Lon McFane kept grim silence. Indignation so choked him
+that he could not speak.
+
+Yet deep down, whenever their own wrongs were not uppermost, both men
+wondered at their comrades. They had expected opposition, and this
+tacit acquiescence hurt them. It seemed more was due them from the men
+they had been so close with, and they felt a vague sense of wrong,
+rebelling at the thought of so many of their brothers coming out, as on
+a gala occasion, without one word of protest, to see them shoot each
+other down. It appeared their worth had diminished in the eyes of the
+community. The proceedings puzzled them.
+
+'Back to back, David. An' will it be fifty paces to the man, or double
+the quantity?'
+
+'Fifty,' was the sanguinary reply, grunted out, yet sharply cut.
+
+But the new manila, not prominently displayed, but casually coiled
+about Malemute Kid's arm, caught the quick eye of the Irishman, and
+thrilled him with a suspicious fear.
+
+'An' what are ye doin' with the rope?' 'Hurry up!' Malemute Kid glanced
+at his watch.
+
+'I've a batch of bread in the cabin, and I don't want it to fall.
+Besides, my feet are getting cold.' The rest of the men manifested
+their impatience in various suggestive ways.
+
+'But the rope, Kid' It's bran' new, an' sure yer bread's not that heavy
+it needs raisin' with the like of that?' Bettles by this time had faced
+around. Father Roubeau, the humor of the situation just dawning on him,
+hid a smile behind his mittened hand.
+
+'No, Lon; this rope was made for a man.' Malemute Kid could be very
+impressive on occasion.
+
+'What man?' Bettles was becoming aware of a personal interest.
+
+'The other man.' 'An' which is the one ye'd mane by that?' 'Listen,
+Lon--and you, too, Bettles! We've been talking this little trouble of
+yours over, and we've come to one conclusion. We know we have no right
+to stop your fighting-' 'True for ye, me lad!' 'And we're not going to.
+But this much we can do, and shall do--make this the only duel in the
+history of Forty-Mile, set an example for every che-cha-qua that comes
+up or down the Yukon. The man who escapes killing shall be hanged to
+the nearest tree. Now, go ahead!'
+
+Lon smiled dubiously, then his face lighted up. 'Pace her off,
+David--fifty paces, wheel, an' niver a cease firin' till a lad's down
+for good. 'Tis their hearts'll niver let them do the deed, an' it's
+well ye should know it for a true Yankee bluff.'
+
+He started off with a pleased grin on his face, but Malemute Kid halted
+him.
+
+'Lon! It's a long while since you first knew me?' 'Many's the day.'
+'And you, Bettles?'
+
+'Five year next June high water.' 'And have you once, in all that time,
+known me to break my word' Or heard of me breaking it?' Both men shook
+their heads, striving to fathom what lay beyond.
+
+'Well, then, what do you think of a promise made by me?' 'As good as
+your bond,' from Bettles.
+
+'The thing to safely sling yer hopes of heaven by,' promptly endorsed
+Lon McFane.
+
+'Listen! I, Malemute Kid, give you my word--and you know what that
+means that the man who is not shot stretches rope within ten minutes
+after the shooting.' He stepped back as Pilate might have done after
+washing his hands.
+
+A pause and a silence came over the men of Forty-Mile. The sky drew
+still closer, sending down a crystal flight of frost--little geometric
+designs, perfect, evanescent as a breath, yet destined to exist till
+the returning sun had covered half its northern journey.
+
+Both men had led forlorn hopes in their time--led with a curse or a
+jest on their tongues, and in their souls an unswerving faith in the
+God of Chance. But that merciful deity had been shut out from the
+present deal. They studied the face of Malemute Kid, but they studied
+as one might the Sphinx. As the quiet minutes passed, a feeling that
+speech was incumbent on them began to grow. At last the howl of a
+wolf-dog cracked the silence from the direction of Forty-Mile. The
+weird sound swelled with all the pathos of a breaking heart, then died
+away in a long-drawn sob.
+
+'Well I be danged!' Bettles turned up the collar of his mackinaw jacket
+and stared about him helplessly.
+
+'It's a gloryus game yer runnin', Kid,' cried Lon McFane. 'All the
+percentage of the house an' niver a bit to the man that's buckin'. The
+Devil himself'd niver tackle such a cinch--and damned if I do.' There
+were chuckles, throttled in gurgling throats, and winks brushed away
+with the frost which rimed the eyelashes, as the men climbed the
+ice-notched bank and started across the street to the Post. But the
+long howl had drawn nearer, invested with a new note of menace. A woman
+screamed round the corner. There was a cry of, 'Here he comes!' Then an
+Indian boy, at the head of half a dozen frightened dogs, racing with
+death, dashed into the crowd. And behind came Yellow Fang, a bristle of
+hair and a flash of gray. Everybody but the Yankee fled.
+
+The Indian boy had tripped and fallen. Bettles stopped long enough to
+grip him by the slack of his furs, then headed for a pile of cordwood
+already occupied by a number of his comrades. Yellow Fang, doubling
+after one of the dogs, came leaping back. The fleeing animal, free of
+the rabies, but crazed with fright, whipped Bettles off his feet and
+flashed on up the street. Malemute Kid took a flying shot at Yellow
+Fang. The mad dog whirled a half airspring, came down on his back,
+then, with a single leap, covered half the distance between himself and
+Bettles.
+
+But the fatal spring was intercepted. Lon McFane leaped from the
+woodpile, countering him in midair. Over they rolled, Lon holding him
+by the throat at arm's length, blinking under the fetid slaver which
+sprayed his face. Then Bettles, revolver in hand and coolly waiting a
+chance, settled the combat.
+
+''Twas a square game, Kid,' Lon remarked, rising to his feet and
+shaking the snow from out his sleeves; 'with a fair percentage to
+meself that bucked it.' That night, while Lon McFane sought the
+forgiving arms of the Church in the direction of Father Roubeau's
+cabin, Malemute Kid talked long to little purpose.
+
+'But would you,' persisted Mackenzie, 'supposing they had fought?'
+'Have I ever broken my word?' 'No; but that isn't the point. Answer the
+question. Would you?' Malemute Kid straightened up. 'Scruff, I've been
+asking myself that question ever since, and--'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Well, as yet, I haven't found the answer.'
+
+
+
+In a Far Country
+
+When a man journeys into a far country, he must be prepared to forget
+many of the things he has learned, and to acquire such customs as are
+inherent with existence in the new land; he must abandon the old ideals
+and the old gods, and oftentimes he must reverse the very codes by
+which his conduct has hitherto been shaped. To those who have the
+protean faculty of adaptability, the novelty of such change may even be
+a source of pleasure; but to those who happen to be hardened to the
+ruts in which they were created, the pressure of the altered
+environment is unbearable, and they chafe in body and in spirit under
+the new restrictions which they do not understand. This chafing is
+bound to act and react, producing divers evils and leading to various
+misfortunes. It were better for the man who cannot fit himself to the
+new groove to return to his own country; if he delay too long, he will
+surely die.
+
+The man who turns his back upon the comforts of an elder civilization,
+to face the savage youth, the primordial simplicity of the North, may
+estimate success at an inverse ratio to the quantity and quality of his
+hopelessly fixed habits. He will soon discover, if he be a fit
+candidate, that the material habits are the less important. The
+exchange of such things as a dainty menu for rough fare, of the stiff
+leather shoe for the soft, shapeless moccasin, of the feather bed for a
+couch in the snow, is after all a very easy matter. But his pinch will
+come in learning properly to shape his mind's attitude toward all
+things, and especially toward his fellow man. For the courtesies of
+ordinary life, he must substitute unselfishness, forbearance, and
+tolerance. Thus, and thus only, can he gain that pearl of great
+price--true comradeship. He must not say 'thank you'; he must mean it
+without opening his mouth, and prove it by responding in kind. In
+short, he must substitute the deed for the word, the spirit for the
+letter.
+
+When the world rang with the tale of Arctic gold, and the lure of the
+North gripped the heartstrings of men, Carter Weatherbee threw up his
+snug clerkship, turned the half of his savings over to his wife, and
+with the remainder bought an outfit. There was no romance in his
+nature--the bondage of commerce had crushed all that; he was simply
+tired of the ceaseless grind, and wished to risk great hazards in view
+of corresponding returns. Like many another fool, disdaining the old
+trails used by the Northland pioneers for a score of years, he hurried
+to Edmonton in the spring of the year; and there, unluckily for his
+soul's welfare, he allied himself with a party of men.
+
+There was nothing unusual about this party, except its plans. Even its
+goal, like that of all the other parties, was the Klondike. But the
+route it had mapped out to attain that goal took away the breath of the
+hardiest native, born and bred to the vicissitudes of the Northwest.
+Even Jacques Baptiste, born of a Chippewa woman and a renegade voyageur
+(having raised his first whimpers in a deerskin lodge north of the
+sixty-fifth parallel, and had the same hushed by blissful sucks of raw
+tallow), was surprised. Though he sold his services to them and agreed
+to travel even to the never-opening ice, he shook his head ominously
+whenever his advice was asked.
+
+Percy Cuthfert's evil star must have been in the ascendant, for he,
+too, joined this company of argonauts. He was an ordinary man, with a
+bank account as deep as his culture, which is saying a good deal. He
+had no reason to embark on such a venture--no reason in the world save
+that he suffered from an abnormal development of sentimentality. He
+mistook this for the true spirit of romance and adventure. Many another
+man has done the like, and made as fatal a mistake.
+
+The first break-up of spring found the party following the ice-run of
+Elk River. It was an imposing fleet, for the outfit was large, and they
+were accompanied by a disreputable contingent of half-breed voyageurs
+with their women and children. Day in and day out, they labored with
+the bateaux and canoes, fought mosquitoes and other kindred pests, or
+sweated and swore at the portages. Severe toil like this lays a man
+naked to the very roots of his soul, and ere Lake Athabasca was lost in
+the south, each member of the party had hoisted his true colors.
+
+The two shirks and chronic grumblers were Carter Weatherbee and Percy
+Cuthfert. The whole party complained less of its aches and pains than
+did either of them. Not once did they volunteer for the thousand and
+one petty duties of the camp. A bucket of water to be brought, an extra
+armful of wood to be chopped, the dishes to be washed and wiped, a
+search to be made through the outfit for some suddenly indispensable
+article--and these two effete scions of civilization discovered sprains
+or blisters requiring instant attention.
+
+They were the first to turn in at night, with score of tasks yet
+undone; the last to turn out in the morning, when the start should be
+in readiness before the breakfast was begun.
+
+They were the first to fall to at mealtime, the last to have a hand in
+the cooking; the first to dive for a slim delicacy, the last to
+discover they had added to their own another man's share. If they
+toiled at the oars, they slyly cut the water at each stroke and allowed
+the boat's momentum to float up the blade. They thought nobody noticed;
+but their comrades swore under their breaths and grew to hate them,
+while Jacques Baptiste sneered openly and damned them from morning till
+night. But Jacques Baptiste was no gentleman.
+
+At the Great Slave, Hudson Bay dogs were purchased, and the fleet sank
+to the guards with its added burden of dried fish and pemican. Then
+canoe and bateau answered to the swift current of the Mackenzie, and
+they plunged into the Great Barren Ground. Every likely-looking
+'feeder' was prospected, but the elusive 'pay-dirt' danced ever to the
+north. At the Great Bear, overcome by the common dread of the Unknown
+Lands, their voyageurs began to desert, and Fort of Good Hope saw the
+last and bravest bending to the towlines as they bucked the current
+down which they had so treacherously glided.
+
+Jacques Baptiste alone remained. Had he not sworn to travel even to the
+never-opening ice? The lying charts, compiled in main from hearsay,
+were now constantly consulted.
+
+And they felt the need of hurry, for the sun had already passed its
+northern solstice and was leading the winter south again. Skirting the
+shores of the bay, where the Mackenzie disembogues into the Arctic
+Ocean, they entered the mouth of the Little Peel River. Then began the
+arduous up-stream toil, and the two Incapables fared worse than ever.
+Towline and pole, paddle and tumpline, rapids and portages--such
+tortures served to give the one a deep disgust for great hazards, and
+printed for the other a fiery text on the true romance of adventure.
+One day they waxed mutinous, and being vilely cursed by Jacques
+Baptiste, turned, as worms sometimes will. But the half-breed thrashed
+the twain, and sent them, bruised and bleeding, about their work. It
+was the first time either had been manhandled.
+
+Abandoning their river craft at the headwaters of the Little Peel, they
+consumed the rest of the summer in the great portage over the Mackenzie
+watershed to the West Rat. This little stream fed the Porcupine, which
+in turn joined the Yukon where that mighty highway of the North
+countermarches on the Arctic Circle.
+
+But they had lost in the race with winter, and one day they tied their
+rafts to the thick eddy-ice and hurried their goods ashore. That night
+the river jammed and broke several times; the following morning it had
+fallen asleep for good. 'We can't be more'n four hundred miles from the
+Yukon,' concluded Sloper, multiplying his thumb nails by the scale of
+the map. The council, in which the two Incapables had whined to
+excellent disadvantage, was drawing to a close.
+
+'Hudson Bay Post, long time ago. No use um now.' Jacques Baptiste's
+father had made the trip for the Fur Company in the old days,
+incidentally marking the trail with a couple of frozen toes.
+
+Sufferin' cracky!' cried another of the party. 'No whites?' 'Nary
+white,' Sloper sententiously affirmed; 'but it's only five hundred more
+up the Yukon to Dawson. Call it a rough thousand from here.' Weatherbee
+and Cuthfert groaned in chorus.
+
+'How long'll that take, Baptiste?' The half-breed figured for a moment.
+'Workum like hell, no man play out, ten--twenty--forty--fifty days. Um
+babies come' (designating the Incapables), 'no can tell. Mebbe when
+hell freeze over; mebbe not then.' The manufacture of snowshoes and
+moccasins ceased. Somebody called the name of an absent member, who
+came out of an ancient cabin at the edge of the campfire and joined
+them. The cabin was one of the many mysteries which lurk in the vast
+recesses of the North. Built when and by whom, no man could tell.
+
+Two graves in the open, piled high with stones, perhaps contained the
+secret of those early wanderers. But whose hand had piled the stones?
+The moment had come. Jacques Baptiste paused in the fitting of a
+harness and pinned the struggling dog in the snow. The cook made mute
+protest for delay, threw a handful of bacon into a noisy pot of beans,
+then came to attention. Sloper rose to his feet. His body was a
+ludicrous contrast to the healthy physiques of the Incapables. Yellow
+and weak, fleeing from a South American fever-hole, he had not broken
+his flight across the zones, and was still able to toil with men. His
+weight was probably ninety pounds, with the heavy hunting knife thrown
+in, and his grizzled hair told of a prime which had ceased to be. The
+fresh young muscles of either Weatherbee or Cuthfert were equal to ten
+times the endeavor of his; yet he could walk them into the earth in a
+day's journey. And all this day he had whipped his stronger comrades
+into venturing a thousand miles of the stiffest hardship man can
+conceive. He was the incarnation of the unrest of his race, and the old
+Teutonic stubbornness, dashed with the quick grasp and action of the
+Yankee, held the flesh in the bondage of the spirit.
+
+'All those in favor of going on with the dogs as soon as the ice sets,
+say ay.' 'Ay!' rang out eight voices--voices destined to string a trail
+of oaths along many a hundred miles of pain.
+
+'Contrary minded?' 'No!' For the first time the Incapables were united
+without some compromise of personal interests.
+
+'And what are you going to do about it?' Weatherbee added belligerently.
+
+'Majority rule! Majority rule!' clamored the rest of the party.
+
+'I know the expedition is liable to fall through if you don't come,'
+Sloper replied sweetly; 'but I guess, if we try real hard, we can
+manage to do without you.
+
+What do you say, boys?' The sentiment was cheered to the echo.
+
+'But I say, you know,' Cuthfert ventured apprehensively; 'what's a chap
+like me to do?'
+
+'Ain't you coming with us.' 'No--o.' 'Then do as you damn well please.
+We won't have nothing to say.' 'Kind o' calkilate yuh might settle it
+with that canoodlin' pardner of yourn,' suggested a heavy-going
+Westerner from the Dakotas, at the same time pointing out Weatherbee.
+'He'll be shore to ask yuh what yur a-goin' to do when it comes to
+cookin' an' gatherin' the wood.' 'Then we'll consider it all arranged,'
+concluded Sloper.
+
+'We'll pull out tomorrow, if we camp within five miles--just to get
+everything in running order and remember if we've forgotten anything.'
+The sleds groaned by on their steel-shod runners, and the dogs strained
+low in the harnesses in which they were born to die.
+
+Jacques Baptiste paused by the side of Sloper to get a last glimpse of
+the cabin. The smoke curled up pathetically from the Yukon stovepipe.
+The two Incapables were watching them from the doorway.
+
+Sloper laid his hand on the other's shoulder.
+
+'Jacques Baptiste, did you ever hear of the Kilkenny cats?' The
+half-breed shook his head.
+
+'Well, my friend and good comrade, the Kilkenny cats fought till
+neither hide, nor hair, nor yowl, was left. You understand?--till
+nothing was left. Very good.
+
+Now, these two men don't like work. They'll be all alone in that cabin
+all winter--a mighty long, dark winter. Kilkenny cats--well?' The
+Frenchman in Baptiste shrugged his shoulders, but the Indian in him was
+silent. Nevertheless, it was an eloquent shrug, pregnant with prophecy.
+Things prospered in the little cabin at first. The rough badinage of
+their comrades had made Weatherbee and Cuthfert conscious of the mutual
+responsibility which had devolved upon them; besides, there was not so
+much work after all for two healthy men. And the removal of the cruel
+whiphand, or in other words the bulldozing half-breed, had brought with
+it a joyous reaction. At first, each strove to outdo the other, and
+they performed petty tasks with an unction which would have opened the
+eyes of their comrades who were now wearing out bodies and souls on the
+Long Trail.
+
+All care was banished. The forest, which shouldered in upon them from
+three sides, was an inexhaustible woodyard. A few yards from their door
+slept the Porcupine, and a hole through its winter robe formed a
+bubbling spring of water, crystal clear and painfully cold. But they
+soon grew to find fault with even that. The hole would persist in
+freezing up, and thus gave them many a miserable hour of ice-chopping.
+The unknown builders of the cabin had extended the sidelogs so as to
+support a cache at the rear. In this was stored the bulk of the party's
+provisions.
+
+Food there was, without stint, for three times the men who were fated
+to live upon it. But the most of it was the kind which built up brawn
+and sinew, but did not tickle the palate.
+
+True, there was sugar in plenty for two ordinary men; but these two
+were little else than children. They early discovered the virtues of
+hot water judiciously saturated with sugar, and they prodigally swam
+their flapjacks and soaked their crusts in the rich, white syrup.
+
+Then coffee and tea, and especially the dried fruits, made disastrous
+inroads upon it. The first words they had were over the sugar question.
+And it is a really serious thing when two men, wholly dependent upon
+each other for company, begin to quarrel.
+
+Weatherbee loved to discourse blatantly on politics, while Cuthfert,
+who had been prone to clip his coupons and let the commonwealth jog on
+as best it might, either ignored the subject or delivered himself of
+startling epigrams. But the clerk was too obtuse to appreciate the
+clever shaping of thought, and this waste of ammunition irritated
+Cuthfert.
+
+He had been used to blinding people by his brilliancy, and it worked
+him quite a hardship, this loss of an audience. He felt personally
+aggrieved and unconsciously held his muttonhead companion responsible
+for it.
+
+Save existence, they had nothing in common--came in touch on no single
+point.
+
+Weatherbee was a clerk who had known naught but clerking all his life;
+Cuthfert was a master of arts, a dabbler in oils, and had written not a
+little. The one was a lower-class man who considered himself a
+gentleman, and the other was a gentleman who knew himself to be such.
+From this it may be remarked that a man can be a gentleman without
+possessing the first instinct of true comradeship. The clerk was as
+sensuous as the other was aesthetic, and his love adventures, told at
+great length and chiefly coined from his imagination, affected the
+supersensitive master of arts in the same way as so many whiffs of
+sewer gas. He deemed the clerk a filthy, uncultured brute, whose place
+was in the muck with the swine, and told him so; and he was
+reciprocally informed that he was a milk-and-water sissy and a cad.
+Weatherbee could not have defined 'cad' for his life; but it satisfied
+its purpose, which after all seems the main point in life.
+
+Weatherbee flatted every third note and sang such songs as 'The Boston
+Burglar' and 'the Handsome Cabin Boy,' for hours at a time, while
+Cuthfert wept with rage, till he could stand it no longer and fled into
+the outer cold. But there was no escape. The intense frost could not be
+endured for long at a time, and the little cabin crowded them--beds,
+stove, table, and all--into a space of ten by twelve. The very presence
+of either became a personal affront to the other, and they lapsed into
+sullen silences which increased in length and strength as the days went
+by. Occasionally, the flash of an eye or the curl of a lip got the
+better of them, though they strove to wholly ignore each other during
+these mute periods.
+
+And a great wonder sprang up in the breast of each, as to how God had
+ever come to create the other.
+
+With little to do, time became an intolerable burden to them. This
+naturally made them still lazier. They sank into a physical lethargy
+which there was no escaping, and which made them rebel at the
+performance of the smallest chore. One morning when it was his turn to
+cook the common breakfast, Weatherbee rolled out of his blankets, and
+to the snoring of his companion, lighted first the slush lamp and then
+the fire. The kettles were frozen hard, and there was no water in the
+cabin with which to wash. But he did not mind that. Waiting for it to
+thaw, he sliced the bacon and plunged into the hateful task of
+bread-making. Cuthfert had been slyly watching through his half-closed
+lids.
+
+Consequently there was a scene, in which they fervently blessed each
+other, and agreed, henceforth, that each do his own cooking. A week
+later, Cuthfert neglected his morning ablutions, but none the less
+complacently ate the meal which he had cooked. Weatherbee grinned.
+After that the foolish custom of washing passed out of their lives.
+
+As the sugar-pile and other little luxuries dwindled, they began to be
+afraid they were not getting their proper shares, and in order that
+they might not be robbed, they fell to gorging themselves. The luxuries
+suffered in this gluttonous contest, as did also the men.
+
+In the absence of fresh vegetables and exercise, their blood became
+impoverished, and a loathsome, purplish rash crept over their bodies.
+Yet they refused to heed the warning.
+
+Next, their muscles and joints began to swell, the flesh turning black,
+while their mouths, gums, and lips took on the color of rich cream.
+Instead of being drawn together by their misery, each gloated over the
+other's symptoms as the scurvy took its course.
+
+They lost all regard for personal appearance, and for that matter,
+common decency. The cabin became a pigpen, and never once were the beds
+made or fresh pine boughs laid underneath. Yet they could not keep to
+their blankets, as they would have wished; for the frost was
+inexorable, and the fire box consumed much fuel. The hair of their
+heads and faces grew long and shaggy, while their garments would have
+disgusted a ragpicker. But they did not care. They were sick, and there
+was no one to see; besides, it was very painful to move about.
+
+To all this was added a new trouble--the Fear of the North. This Fear
+was the joint child of the Great Cold and the Great Silence, and was
+born in the darkness of December, when the sun dipped below the horizon
+for good. It affected them according to their natures.
+
+Weatherbee fell prey to the grosser superstitions, and did his best to
+resurrect the spirits which slept in the forgotten graves. It was a
+fascinating thing, and in his dreams they came to him from out of the
+cold, and snuggled into his blankets, and told him of their toils and
+troubles ere they died. He shrank away from the clammy contact as they
+drew closer and twined their frozen limbs about him, and when they
+whispered in his ear of things to come, the cabin rang with his
+frightened shrieks. Cuthfert did not understand--for they no longer
+spoke--and when thus awakened he invariably grabbed for his revolver.
+Then he would sit up in bed, shivering nervously, with the weapon
+trained on the unconscious dreamer. Cuthfert deemed the man going mad,
+and so came to fear for his life.
+
+His own malady assumed a less concrete form. The mysterious artisan who
+had laid the cabin, log by log, had pegged a wind-vane to the
+ridgepole. Cuthfert noticed it always pointed south, and one day,
+irritated by its steadfastness of purpose, he turned it toward the
+east. He watched eagerly, but never a breath came by to disturb it.
+Then he turned the vane to the north, swearing never again to touch it
+till the wind did blow. But the air frightened him with its unearthly
+calm, and he often rose in the middle of the night to see if the vane
+had veered--ten degrees would have satisfied him. But no, it poised
+above him as unchangeable as fate.
+
+His imagination ran riot, till it became to him a fetish. Sometimes he
+followed the path it pointed across the dismal dominions, and allowed
+his soul to become saturated with the Fear. He dwelt upon the unseen
+and the unknown till the burden of eternity appeared to be crushing
+him. Everything in the Northland had that crushing effect--the absence
+of life and motion; the darkness; the infinite peace of the brooding
+land; the ghastly silence, which made the echo of each heartbeat a
+sacrilege; the solemn forest which seemed to guard an awful,
+inexpressible something, which neither word nor thought could compass.
+
+The world he had so recently left, with its busy nations and great
+enterprises, seemed very far away. Recollections occasionally
+obtruded--recollections of marts and galleries and crowded
+thoroughfares, of evening dress and social functions, of good men and
+dear women he had known--but they were dim memories of a life he had
+lived long centuries agone, on some other planet. This phantasm was the
+Reality. Standing beneath the wind-vane, his eyes fixed on the polar
+skies, he could not bring himself to realize that the Southland really
+existed, that at that very moment it was a-roar with life and action.
+
+There was no Southland, no men being born of women, no giving and
+taking in marriage.
+
+Beyond his bleak skyline there stretched vast solitudes, and beyond
+these still vaster solitudes.
+
+There were no lands of sunshine, heavy with the perfume of flowers.
+Such things were only old dreams of paradise. The sunlands of the West
+and the spicelands of the East, the smiling Arcadias and blissful
+Islands of the Blest--ha! ha! His laughter split the void and shocked
+him with its unwonted sound. There was no sun.
+
+This was the Universe, dead and cold and dark, and he its only citizen.
+Weatherbee? At such moments Weatherbee did not count. He was a Caliban,
+a monstrous phantom, fettered to him for untold ages, the penalty of
+some forgotten crime.
+
+He lived with Death among the dead, emasculated by the sense of his own
+insignificance, crushed by the passive mastery of the slumbering ages.
+The magnitude of all things appalled him. Everything partook of the
+superlative save himself--the perfect cessation of wind and motion, the
+immensity of the snow-covered wildness, the height of the sky and the
+depth of the silence. That wind-vane--if it would only move. If a
+thunderbolt would fall, or the forest flare up in flame.
+
+The rolling up of the heavens as a scroll, the crash of Doom--anything,
+anything! But no, nothing moved; the Silence crowded in, and the Fear
+of the North laid icy fingers on his heart.
+
+Once, like another Crusoe, by the edge of the river he came upon a
+track--the faint tracery of a snowshoe rabbit on the delicate
+snow-crust. It was a revelation.
+
+There was life in the Northland. He would follow it, look upon it,
+gloat over it.
+
+He forgot his swollen muscles, plunging through the deep snow in an
+ecstasy of anticipation. The forest swallowed him up, and the brief
+midday twilight vanished; but he pursued his quest till exhausted
+nature asserted itself and laid him helpless in the snow.
+
+There he groaned and cursed his folly, and knew the track to be the
+fancy of his brain; and late that night he dragged himself into the
+cabin on hands and knees, his cheeks frozen and a strange numbness
+about his feet. Weatherbee grinned malevolently, but made no offer to
+help him. He thrust needles into his toes and thawed them out by the
+stove. A week later mortification set in.
+
+But the clerk had his own troubles. The dead men came out of their
+graves more frequently now, and rarely left him, waking or sleeping. He
+grew to wait and dread their coming, never passing the twin cairns
+without a shudder. One night they came to him in his sleep and led him
+forth to an appointed task. Frightened into inarticulate horror, he
+awoke between the heaps of stones and fled wildly to the cabin. But he
+had lain there for some time, for his feet and cheeks were also frozen.
+
+Sometimes he became frantic at their insistent presence, and danced
+about the cabin, cutting the empty air with an axe, and smashing
+everything within reach.
+
+During these ghostly encounters, Cuthfert huddled into his blankets and
+followed the madman about with a cocked revolver, ready to shoot him if
+he came too near.
+
+But, recovering from one of these spells, the clerk noticed the weapon
+trained upon him.
+
+His suspicions were aroused, and thenceforth he, too, lived in fear of
+his life. They watched each other closely after that, and faced about
+in startled fright whenever either passed behind the other's back. The
+apprehensiveness became a mania which controlled them even in their
+sleep. Through mutual fear they tacitly let the slush-lamp burn all
+night, and saw to a plentiful supply of bacon-grease before retiring.
+The slightest movement on the part of one was sufficient to arouse the
+other, and many a still watch their gazes countered as they shook
+beneath their blankets with fingers on the trigger-guards.
+
+What with the Fear of the North, the mental strain, and the ravages of
+the disease, they lost all semblance of humanity, taking on the
+appearance of wild beasts, hunted and desperate. Their cheeks and
+noses, as an aftermath of the freezing, had turned black.
+
+Their frozen toes had begun to drop away at the first and second
+joints. Every movement brought pain, but the fire box was insatiable,
+wringing a ransom of torture from their miserable bodies. Day in, day
+out, it demanded its food--a veritable pound of flesh--and they dragged
+themselves into the forest to chop wood on their knees. Once, crawling
+thus in search of dry sticks, unknown to each other they entered a
+thicket from opposite sides.
+
+Suddenly, without warning, two peering death's-heads confronted each
+other. Suffering had so transformed them that recognition was
+impossible. They sprang to their feet, shrieking with terror, and
+dashed away on their mangled stumps; and falling at the cabin's door,
+they clawed and scratched like demons till they discovered their
+mistake.
+
+Occasionally they lapsed normal, and during one of these sane
+intervals, the chief bone of contention, the sugar, had been divided
+equally between them. They guarded their separate sacks, stored up in
+the cache, with jealous eyes; for there were but a few cupfuls left,
+and they were totally devoid of faith in each other.
+
+But one day Cuthfert made a mistake. Hardly able to move, sick with
+pain, with his head swimming and eyes blinded, he crept into the cache,
+sugar canister in hand, and mistook Weatherbee's sack for his own.
+
+January had been born but a few days when this occurred. The sun had
+some time since passed its lowest southern declination, and at meridian
+now threw flaunting streaks of yellow light upon the northern sky. On
+the day following his mistake with the sugar-bag, Cuthfert found
+himself feeling better, both in body and in spirit. As noontime drew
+near and the day brightened, he dragged himself outside to feast on the
+evanescent glow, which was to him an earnest of the sun's future
+intentions. Weatherbee was also feeling somewhat better, and crawled
+out beside him. They propped themselves in the snow beneath the
+moveless wind-vane, and waited.
+
+The stillness of death was about them. In other climes, when nature
+falls into such moods, there is a subdued air of expectancy, a waiting
+for some small voice to take up the broken strain. Not so in the North.
+The two men had lived seeming eons in this ghostly peace.
+
+They could remember no song of the past; they could conjure no song of
+the future. This unearthly calm had always been--the tranquil silence
+of eternity.
+
+Their eyes were fixed upon the north. Unseen, behind their backs,
+behind the towering mountains to the south, the sun swept toward the
+zenith of another sky than theirs. Sole spectators of the mighty
+canvas, they watched the false dawn slowly grow. A faint flame began to
+glow and smoulder. It deepened in intensity, ringing the changes of
+reddish-yellow, purple, and saffron. So bright did it become that
+Cuthfert thought the sun must surely be behind it--a miracle, the sun
+rising in the north! Suddenly, without warning and without fading, the
+canvas was swept clean. There was no color in the sky. The light had
+gone out of the day.
+
+They caught their breaths in half-sobs. But lo! the air was aglint with
+particles of scintillating frost, and there, to the north, the
+wind-vane lay in vague outline of the snow.
+
+A shadow! A shadow! It was exactly midday. They jerked their heads
+hurriedly to the south. A golden rim peeped over the mountain's snowy
+shoulder, smiled upon them an instant, then dipped from sight again.
+
+There were tears in their eyes as they sought each other. A strange
+softening came over them. They felt irresistibly drawn toward each
+other. The sun was coming back again. It would be with them tomorrow,
+and the next day, and the next.
+
+And it would stay longer every visit, and a time would come when it
+would ride their heaven day and night, never once dropping below the
+skyline. There would be no night.
+
+The ice-locked winter would be broken; the winds would blow and the
+forests answer; the land would bathe in the blessed sunshine, and life
+renew.
+
+Hand in hand, they would quit this horrid dream and journey back to the
+Southland. They lurched blindly forward, and their hands met--their
+poor maimed hands, swollen and distorted beneath their mittens.
+
+But the promise was destined to remain unfulfilled. The Northland is
+the Northland, and men work out their souls by strange rules, which
+other men, who have not journeyed into far countries, cannot come to
+understand.
+
+An hour later, Cuthfert put a pan of bread into the oven, and fell to
+speculating on what the surgeons could do with his feet when he got
+back. Home did not seem so very far away now. Weatherbee was rummaging
+in the cache. Of a sudden, he raised a whirlwind of blasphemy, which in
+turn ceased with startling abruptness. The other man had robbed his
+sugar-sack. Still, things might have happened differently, had not the
+two dead men come out from under the stones and hushed the hot words in
+his throat. They led him quite gently from the cache, which he forgot
+to close. That consummation was reached; that something they had
+whispered to him in his dreams was about to happen. They guided him
+gently, very gently, to the woodpile, where they put the axe in his
+hands.
+
+Then they helped him shove open the cabin door, and he felt sure they
+shut it after him--at least he heard it slam and the latch fall sharply
+into place. And he knew they were waiting just without, waiting for him
+to do his task.
+
+'Carter! I say, Carter!' Percy Cuthfert was frightened at the look on
+the clerk's face, and he made haste to put the table between them.
+
+Carter Weatherbee followed, without haste and without enthusiasm. There
+was neither pity nor passion in his face, but rather the patient,
+stolid look of one who has certain work to do and goes about it
+methodically.
+
+'I say, what's the matter?'
+
+The clerk dodged back, cutting off his retreat to the door, but never
+opening his mouth.
+
+'I say, Carter, I say; let's talk. There's a good chap.' The master of
+arts was thinking rapidly, now, shaping a skillful flank movement on
+the bed where his Smith & Wesson lay. Keeping his eyes on the madman,
+he rolled backward on the bunk, at the same time clutching the pistol.
+
+'Carter!' The powder flashed full in Weatherbee's face, but he swung
+his weapon and leaped forward. The axe bit deeply at the base of the
+spine, and Percy Cuthfert felt all consciousness of his lower limbs
+leave him. Then the clerk fell heavily upon him, clutching him by the
+throat with feeble fingers. The sharp bite of the axe had caused
+Cuthfert to drop the pistol, and as his lungs panted for release, he
+fumbled aimlessly for it among the blankets. Then he remembered. He
+slid a hand up the clerk's belt to the sheath-knife; and they drew very
+close to each other in that last clinch.
+
+Percy Cuthfert felt his strength leave him. The lower portion of his
+body was useless, The inert weight of Weatherbee crushed him--crushed
+him and pinned him there like a bear under a trap. The cabin became
+filled with a familiar odor, and he knew the bread to be burning. Yet
+what did it matter? He would never need it. And there were all of six
+cupfuls of sugar in the cache--if he had foreseen this he would not
+have been so saving the last several days. Would the wind-vane ever
+move? Why not' Had he not seen the sun today? He would go and see. No;
+it was impossible to move. He had not thought the clerk so heavy a man.
+
+How quickly the cabin cooled! The fire must be out. The cold was
+forcing in.
+
+It must be below zero already, and the ice creeping up the inside of
+the door. He could not see it, but his past experience enabled him to
+gauge its progress by the cabin's temperature. The lower hinge must be
+white ere now. Would the tale of this ever reach the world? How would
+his friends take it? They would read it over their coffee, most likely,
+and talk it over at the clubs. He could see them very clearly, 'Poor
+Old Cuthfert,' they murmured; 'not such a bad sort of a chap, after
+all.' He smiled at their eulogies, and passed on in search of a Turkish
+bath. It was the same old crowd upon the streets.
+
+Strange, they did not notice his moosehide moccasins and tattered
+German socks! He would take a cab. And after the bath a shave would not
+be bad. No; he would eat first.
+
+Steak, and potatoes, and green things how fresh it all was! And what
+was that? Squares of honey, streaming liquid amber! But why did they
+bring so much? Ha! ha! he could never eat it all.
+
+Shine! Why certainly. He put his foot on the box. The bootblack looked
+curiously up at him, and he remembered his moosehide moccasins and went
+away hastily.
+
+Hark! The wind-vane must be surely spinning. No; a mere singing in his
+ears.
+
+That was all--a mere singing. The ice must have passed the latch by
+now. More likely the upper hinge was covered. Between the moss-chinked
+roof-poles, little points of frost began to appear. How slowly they
+grew! No; not so slowly. There was a new one, and there another.
+Two--three--four; they were coming too fast to count. There were two
+growing together. And there, a third had joined them.
+
+Why, there were no more spots. They had run together and formed a sheet.
+
+Well, he would have company. If Gabriel ever broke the silence of the
+North, they would stand together, hand in hand, before the great White
+Throne. And God would judge them, God would judge them!
+
+Then Percy Cuthfert closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep.
+
+
+
+To the Man on the Trail
+
+'Dump it in!.' 'But I say, Kid, isn't that going it a little too
+strong? Whisky and alcohol's bad enough; but when it comes to brandy
+and pepper sauce and-' 'Dump it in. Who's making this punch, anyway?'
+And Malemute Kid smiled benignantly through the clouds of steam. 'By
+the time you've been in this country as long as I have, my son, and
+lived on rabbit tracks and salmon belly, you'll learn that Christmas
+comes only once per annum.
+
+And a Christmas without punch is sinking a hole to bedrock with nary a
+pay streak.'
+
+'Stack up on that fer a high cyard,' approved Big Jim Belden, who had
+come down from his claim on Mazy May to spend Christmas, and who, as
+everyone knew, had been living the two months past on straight moose
+meat. 'Hain't fergot the hooch we-uns made on the Tanana, hey yeh?'
+'Well, I guess yes. Boys, it would have done your hearts good to see
+that whole tribe fighting drunk--and all because of a glorious ferment
+of sugar and sour dough. That was before your time,' Malemute Kid said
+as he turned to Stanley Prince, a young mining expert who had been in
+two years. 'No white women in the country then, and Mason wanted to get
+married. Ruth's father was chief of the Tananas, and objected, like the
+rest of the tribe. Stiff? Why, I used my last pound of sugar; finest
+work in that line I ever did in my life. You should have seen the
+chase, down the river and across the portage.' 'But the squaw?' asked
+Louis Savoy, the tall French Canadian, becoming interested; for he had
+heard of this wild deed when at Forty Mile the preceding winter.
+
+Then Malemute Kid, who was a born raconteur, told the unvarnished tale
+of the Northland Lochinvar. More than one rough adventurer of the North
+felt his heartstrings draw closer and experienced vague yearnings for
+the sunnier pastures of the Southland, where life promised something
+more than a barren struggle with cold and death.
+
+'We struck the Yukon just behind the first ice run,' he concluded, 'and
+the tribe only a quarter of an hour behind. But that saved us; for the
+second run broke the jam above and shut them out. When they finally got
+into Nuklukyeto, the whole post was ready for them.
+
+'And as to the forgathering, ask Father Roubeau here: he performed the
+ceremony.' The Jesuit took the pipe from his lips but could only
+express his gratification with patriarchal smiles, while Protestant and
+Catholic vigorously applauded.
+
+'By gar!' ejaculated Louis Savoy, who seemed overcome by the romance of
+it. 'La petite squaw: mon Mason brav. By gar!' Then, as the first tin
+cups of punch went round, Bettles the Unquenchable sprang to his feet
+and struck up his favorite drinking song: 'There's Henry Ward Beecher
+And Sunday-school teachers, All drink of the sassafras root; But you
+bet all the same, If it had its right name, It's the juice of the
+forbidden fruit.'
+
+'Oh, the juice of the forbidden fruit,' roared out the bacchanalian
+chorus, 'Oh, the juice of the forbidden fruit; But you bet all the
+same, If it had its right name, It's the juice of the forbidden fruit.'
+
+Malemute Kid's frightful concoction did its work; the men of the camps
+and trails unbent in its genial glow, and jest and song and tales of
+past adventure went round the board.
+
+Aliens from a dozen lands, they toasted each and all. It was the
+Englishman, Prince, who pledged 'Uncle Sam, the precocious infant of
+the New World'; the Yankee, Bettles, who drank to 'The Queen, God bless
+her'; and together, Savoy and Meyers, the German trader, clanged their
+cups to Alsace and Lorraine.
+
+Then Malemute Kid arose, cup in hand, and glanced at the greased-paper
+window, where the frost stood full three inches thick. 'A health to the
+man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their
+legs; may his matches never miss fire.' Crack!
+
+Crack! heard the familiar music of the dog whip, the whining howl of
+the Malemutes, and the crunch of a sled as it drew up to the cabin.
+Conversation languished while they waited the issue.
+
+'An old-timer; cares for his dogs and then himself,' whispered Malemute
+Kid to Prince as they listened to the snapping jaws and the wolfish
+snarls and yelps of pain which proclaimed to their practiced ears that
+the stranger was beating back their dogs while he fed his own.
+
+Then came the expected knock, sharp and confident, and the stranger
+entered.
+
+Dazzled by the light, he hesitated a moment at the door, giving to all
+a chance for scrutiny. He was a striking personage, and a most
+picturesque one, in his Arctic dress of wool and fur. Standing six foot
+two or three, with proportionate breadth of shoulders and depth of
+chest, his smooth-shaven face nipped by the cold to a gleaming pink,
+his long lashes and eyebrows white with ice, and the ear and neck flaps
+of his great wolfskin cap loosely raised, he seemed, of a verity, the
+Frost King, just stepped in out of the night.
+
+Clasped outside his Mackinaw jacket, a beaded belt held two large
+Colt's revolvers and a hunting knife, while he carried, in addition to
+the inevitable dog whip, a smokeless rifle of the largest bore and
+latest pattern. As he came forward, for all his step was firm and
+elastic, they could see that fatigue bore heavily upon him.
+
+An awkward silence had fallen, but his hearty 'What cheer, my lads?'
+put them quickly at ease, and the next instant Malemute Kid and he had
+gripped hands. Though they had never met, each had heard of the other,
+and the recognition was mutual. A sweeping introduction and a mug of
+punch were forced upon him before he could explain his errand.
+
+How long since that basket sled, with three men and eight dogs,
+passed?' he asked.
+
+'An even two days ahead. Are you after them?' 'Yes; my team. Run them
+off under my very nose, the cusses. I've gained two days on them
+already--pick them up on the next run.' 'Reckon they'll show spunk?'
+asked Belden, in order to keep up the conversation, for Malemute Kid
+already had the coffeepot on and was busily frying bacon and moose meat.
+
+The stranger significantly tapped his revolvers.
+
+'When'd yeh leave Dawson?' 'Twelve o'clock.' 'Last night?'--as a matter
+of course.
+
+'Today.' A murmur of surprise passed round the circle. And well it
+might; for it was just midnight, and seventy-five miles of rough river
+trail was not to be sneered at for a twelve hours' run.
+
+The talk soon became impersonal, however, harking back to the trails of
+childhood. As the young stranger ate of the rude fare Malemute Kid
+attentively studied his face. Nor was he long in deciding that it was
+fair, honest, and open, and that he liked it. Still youthful, the lines
+had been firmly traced by toil and hardship.
+
+Though genial in conversation, and mild when at rest, the blue eyes
+gave promise of the hard steel-glitter which comes when called into
+action, especially against odds. The heavy jaw and square-cut chin
+demonstrated rugged pertinacity and indomitability. Nor, though the
+attributes of the lion were there, was there wanting the certain
+softness, the hint of womanliness, which bespoke the emotional nature.
+
+'So thet's how me an' the ol' woman got spliced,' said Belden,
+concluding the exciting tale of his courtship. '"Here we be, Dad," sez
+she. "An' may yeh be damned," sez he to her, an' then to me, "Jim,
+yeh--yeh git outen them good duds o' yourn; I want a right peart slice
+o' thet forty acre plowed 'fore dinner." An' then he sort o' sniffled
+an' kissed her. An' I was thet happy--but he seen me an' roars out,
+"Yeh, Jim!" An' yeh bet I dusted fer the barn.' 'Any kids waiting for
+you back in the States?' asked the stranger.
+
+'Nope; Sal died 'fore any come. Thet's why I'm here.' Belden
+abstractedly began to light his pipe, which had failed to go out, and
+then brightened up with, 'How 'bout yerself, stranger--married man?'
+For reply, he opened his watch, slipped it from the thong which served
+for a chain, and passed it over. Belden picked up the slush lamp,
+surveyed the inside of the case critically, and, swearing admiringly to
+himself, handed it over to Louis Savoy. With numerous 'By gars!' he
+finally surrendered it to Prince, and they noticed that his hands
+trembled and his eyes took on a peculiar softness. And so it passed
+from horny hand to horny hand--the pasted photograph of a woman, the
+clinging kind that such men fancy, with a babe at the breast. Those who
+had not yet seen the wonder were keen with curiosity; those who had
+became silent and retrospective. They could face the pinch of famine,
+the grip of scurvy, or the quick death by field or flood; but the
+pictured semblance of a stranger woman and child made women and
+children of them all.
+
+'Never have seen the youngster yet--he's a boy, she says, and two years
+old,' said the stranger as he received the treasure back. A lingering
+moment he gazed upon it, then snapped the case and turned away, but not
+quick enough to hide the restrained rush of tears.  Malemute Kid led
+him to a bunk and bade him turn in.
+
+'Call me at four sharp. Don't fail me,' were his last words, and a
+moment later he was breathing in the heaviness of exhausted sleep.
+
+'By Jove! He's a plucky chap,' commented Prince. 'Three hours' sleep
+after seventy-five miles with the dogs, and then the trail again. Who
+is he, Kid?' 'Jack Westondale. Been in going on three years, with
+nothing but the name of working like a horse, and any amount of bad
+luck to his credit. I never knew him, but Sitka Charley told me about
+him.' 'It seems hard that a man with a sweet young wife like his should
+be putting in his years in this Godforsaken hole, where every year
+counts two on the outside.' 'The trouble with him is clean grit and
+stubbornness. He's cleaned up twice with a stake, but lost it both
+times.' Here the conversation was broken off by an uproar from Bettles,
+for the effect had begun to wear away. And soon the bleak years of
+monotonous grub and deadening toil were being forgotten in rough
+merriment. Malemute Kid alone seemed unable to lose himself, and cast
+many an anxious look at his watch. Once he put on his mittens and
+beaver-skin cap, and, leaving the cabin, fell to rummaging about in the
+cache.
+
+Nor could he wait the hour designated; for he was fifteen minutes ahead
+of time in rousing his guest. The young giant had stiffened badly, and
+brisk rubbing was necessary to bring him to his feet. He tottered
+painfully out of the cabin, to find his dogs harnessed and everything
+ready for the start. The company wished him good luck and a short
+chase, while Father Roubeau, hurriedly blessing him, led the stampede
+for the cabin; and small wonder, for it is not good to face
+seventy-four degrees below zero with naked ears and hands.
+
+Malemute Kid saw him to the main trail, and there, gripping his hand
+heartily, gave him advice.
+
+'You'll find a hundred pounds of salmon eggs on the sled,' he said.
+'The dogs will go as far on that as with one hundred and fifty of fish,
+and you can't get dog food at Pelly, as you probably expected.' The
+stranger started, and his eyes flashed, but he did not interrupt. 'You
+can't get an ounce of food for dog or man till you reach Five Fingers,
+and that's a stiff two hundred miles. Watch out for open water on the
+Thirty Mile River, and be sure you take the big cutoff above Le Barge.'
+'How did you know it? Surely the news can't be ahead of me already?' 'I
+don't know it; and what's more, I don't want to know it. But you never
+owned that team you're chasing. Sitka Charley sold it to them last
+spring. But he sized you up to me as square once, and I believe him.
+I've seen your face; I like it. And I've seen--why, damn you, hit the
+high places for salt water and that wife of yours, and--' Here the Kid
+unmittened and jerked out his sack.
+
+'No; I don't need it,' and the tears froze on his cheeks as he
+convulsively gripped Malemute Kid's hand.
+
+'Then don't spare the dogs; cut them out of the traces as fast as they
+drop; buy them, and think they're cheap at ten dollars a pound. You can
+get them at Five Fingers, Little Salmon, and Hootalinqua. And watch out
+for wet feet,' was his parting advice. 'Keep a-traveling up to
+twenty-five, but if it gets below that, build a fire and change your
+socks.'
+
+Fifteen minutes had barely elapsed when the jingle of bells announced
+new arrivals. The door opened, and a mounted policeman of the Northwest
+Territory entered, followed by two half-breed dog drivers. Like
+Westondale, they were heavily armed and showed signs of fatigue. The
+half-breeds had been born to the trail and bore it easily; but the
+young policeman was badly exhausted. Still, the dogged obstinacy of his
+race held him to the pace he had set, and would hold him till he
+dropped in his tracks.
+
+'When did Westondale pull out?' he asked. 'He stopped here, didn't he?'
+This was supererogatory, for the tracks told their own tale too well.
+
+Malemute Kid had caught Belden's eye, and he, scenting the wind,
+replied evasively, 'A right peart while back.' 'Come, my man; speak
+up,' the policeman admonished.
+
+'Yeh seem to want him right smart. Hez he ben gittin' cantankerous down
+Dawson way?'
+
+'Held up Harry McFarland's for forty thousand; exchanged it at the P.C.
+store for a check on Seattle; and who's to stop the cashing of it if we
+don't overtake him? When did he pull out?'
+
+Every eye suppressed its excitement, for Malemute Kid had given the
+cue, and the young officer encountered wooden faces on every hand.
+
+Striding over to Prince, he put the question to him. Though it hurt
+him, gazing into the frank, earnest face of his fellow countryman, he
+replied inconsequentially on the state of the trail.
+
+Then he espied Father Roubeau, who could not lie. 'A quarter of an hour
+ago,' the priest answered; 'but he had four hours' rest for himself and
+dogs.' 'Fifteen minutes' start, and he's fresh! My God!' The poor
+fellow staggered back, half fainting from exhaustion and
+disappointment, murmuring something about the run from Dawson in ten
+hours and the dogs being played out.
+
+Malemute Kid forced a mug of punch upon him; then he turned for the
+door, ordering the dog drivers to follow. But the warmth and promise of
+rest were too tempting, and they objected strenuously. The Kid was
+conversant with their French patois, and followed it anxiously.
+
+They swore that the dogs were gone up; that Siwash and Babette would
+have to be shot before the first mile was covered; that the rest were
+almost as bad; and that it would be better for all hands to rest up.
+
+'Lend me five dogs?' he asked, turning to Malemute Kid.
+
+But the Kid shook his head.
+
+'I'll sign a check on Captain Constantine for five thousand--here's my
+papers--I'm authorized to draw at my own discretion.'
+
+Again the silent refusal.
+
+'Then I'll requisition them in the name of the Queen.' Smiling
+incredulously, the Kid glanced at his well-stocked arsenal, and the
+Englishman, realizing his impotency, turned for the door. But the dog
+drivers still objecting, he whirled upon them fiercely, calling them
+women and curs. The swart face of the older half-breed flushed angrily
+as he drew himself up and promised in good, round terms that he would
+travel his leader off his legs, and would then be delighted to plant
+him in the snow.
+
+The young officer--and it required his whole will--walked steadily to
+the door, exhibiting a freshness he did not possess. But they all knew
+and appreciated his proud effort; nor could he veil the twinges of
+agony that shot across his face. Covered with frost, the dogs were
+curled up in the snow, and it was almost impossible to get them to
+their feet. The poor brutes whined under the stinging lash, for the dog
+drivers were angry and cruel; nor till Babette, the leader, was cut
+from the traces, could they break out the sled and get under way.
+
+'A dirty scoundrel and a liar!' 'By gar! Him no good!' 'A thief!'
+'Worse than an Indian!'
+
+It was evident that they were angry--first at the way they had been
+deceived; and second at the outraged ethics of the Northland, where
+honesty, above all, was man's prime jewel.
+
+'An' we gave the cuss a hand, after knowin' what he'd did.' All eyes
+turned accusingly upon Malemute Kid, who rose from the corner where he
+had been making Babette comfortable, and silently emptied the bowl for
+a final round of punch.
+
+'It's a cold night, boys--a bitter cold night,' was the irrelevant
+commencement of his defense. 'You've all traveled trail, and know what
+that stands for. Don't jump a dog when he's down. You've only heard one
+side. A whiter man than Jack Westondale never ate from the same pot nor
+stretched blanket with you or me.
+
+'Last fall he gave his whole clean-up, forty thousand, to Joe Castrell,
+to buy in on Dominion. Today he'd be a millionaire. But, while he
+stayed behind at Circle City, taking care of his partner with the
+scurvy, what does Castell do? Goes into McFarland's, jumps the limit,
+and drops the whole sack. Found him dead in the snow the next day. And
+poor Jack laying his plans to go out this winter to his wife and the
+boy he's never seen. You'll notice he took exactly what his partner
+lost--forty thousand. Well, he's gone out; and what are you going to do
+about it?' The Kid glanced round the circle of his judges, noted the
+softening of their faces, then raised his mug aloft. 'So a health to
+the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep
+their legs; may his matches never miss fire.
+
+'God prosper him; good luck go with him; and--' 'Confusion to the
+Mounted Police!' cried Bettles, to the crash of the empty cups.
+
+
+
+The Priestly Prerogative
+
+This is the story of a man who did not appreciate his wife; also, of a
+woman who did him too great an honor when she gave herself to him.
+Incidentally, it concerns a Jesuit priest who had never been known to
+lie. He was an appurtenance, and a very necessary one, to the Yukon
+country; but the presence of the other two was merely accidental. They
+were specimens of the many strange waifs which ride the breast of a
+gold rush or come tailing along behind.
+
+Edwin Bentham and Grace Bentham were waifs; they were also tailing
+along behind, for the Klondike rush of '97 had long since swept down
+the great river and subsided into the famine-stricken city of Dawson.
+When the Yukon shut up shop and went to sleep under a three-foot
+ice-sheet, this peripatetic couple found themselves at the Five Finger
+Rapids, with the City of Gold still a journey of many sleeps to the
+north.
+
+Many cattle had been butchered at this place in the fall of the year,
+and the offal made a goodly heap. The three fellow-voyagers of Edwin
+Bentham and wife gazed upon this deposit, did a little mental
+arithmetic, caught a certain glimpse of a bonanza, and decided to
+remain. And all winter they sold sacks of bones and frozen hides to the
+famished dog-teams. It was a modest price they asked, a dollar a pound,
+just as it came. Six months later, when the sun came back and the Yukon
+awoke, they buckled on their heavy moneybelts and journeyed back to the
+Southland, where they yet live and lie mightily about the Klondike they
+never saw.
+
+But Edwin Bentham--he was an indolent fellow, and had he not been
+possessed of a wife, would have gladly joined issued in the dog-meat
+speculation. As it was, she played upon his vanity, told him how great
+and strong he was, how a man such as he certainly was could overcome
+all obstacles and of a surety obtain the Golden Fleece. So he squared
+his jaw, sold his share in the bones and hides for a sled and one dog,
+and turned his snowshoes to the north. Needless to state, Grace
+Bentham's snowshoes never allowed his tracks to grow cold. Nay, ere
+their tribulations had seen three days, it was the man who followed in
+the rear, and the woman who broke trail in advance. Of course, if
+anybody hove in sight, the position was instantly reversed. Thus did
+his manhood remain virgin to the travelers who passed like ghosts on
+the silent trail. There are such men in this world.
+
+How such a man and such a woman came to take each other for better and
+for worse is unimportant to this narrative. These things are familiar
+to us all, and those people who do them, or even question them too
+closely, are apt to lose a beautiful faith which is known as Eternal
+Fitness.
+
+Edwin Bentham was a boy, thrust by mischance into a man's body,--a boy
+who could complacently pluck a butterfly, wing from wing, or cower in
+abject terror before a lean, nervy fellow, not half his size. He was a
+selfish cry-baby, hidden behind a man's mustache and stature, and
+glossed over with a skin-deep veneer of culture and conventionality.
+Yes; he was a clubman and a society man, the sort that grace social
+functions and utter inanities with a charm and unction which is
+indescribable; the sort that talk big, and cry over a toothache; the
+sort that put more hell into a woman's life by marrying her than can
+the most graceless libertine that ever browsed in forbidden pastures.
+We meet these men every day, but we rarely know them for what they are.
+Second to marrying them, the best way to get this knowledge is to eat
+out of the same pot and crawl under the same blanket with them
+for--well, say a week; no greater margin is necessary.
+
+To see Grace Bentham, was to see a slender, girlish creature; to know
+her, was to know a soul which dwarfed your own, yet retained all the
+elements of the eternal feminine. This was the woman who urged and
+encouraged her husband in his Northland quest, who broke trail for him
+when no one was looking, and cried in secret over her weakling woman's
+body.
+
+So journeyed this strangely assorted couple down to old Fort Selkirk,
+then through fivescore miles of dismal wilderness to Stuart River. And
+when the short day left them, and the man lay down in the snow and
+blubbered, it was the woman who lashed him to the sled, bit her lips
+with the pain of her aching limbs, and helped the dog haul him to
+Malemute Kid's cabin. Malemute Kid was not at home, but Meyers, the
+German trader, cooked great moose-steaks and shook up a bed of fresh
+pine boughs. Lake, Langham, and Parker, were excited, and not unduly so
+when the cause was taken into account.
+
+'Oh, Sandy! Say, can you tell a porterhouse from a round? Come out and
+lend us a hand, anyway!' This appeal emanated from the cache, where
+Langham was vainly struggling with divers quarters of frozen moose.
+
+'Don't you budge from those dishes!' commanded Parker.
+
+'I say, Sandy; there's a good fellow--just run down to the Missouri
+Camp and borrow some cinnamon,' begged Lake.
+
+'Oh! oh! hurry up! Why don't--' But the crash of meat and boxes, in the
+cache, abruptly quenched this peremptory summons.
+
+'Come now, Sandy; it won't take a minute to go down to the Missouri--'
+
+'You leave him alone,' interrupted Parker. 'How am I to mix the
+biscuits if the table isn't cleared off?'
+
+Sandy paused in indecision, till suddenly the fact that he was
+Langham's 'man' dawned upon him. Then he apologetically threw down the
+greasy dishcloth, and went to his master's rescue.
+
+These promising scions of wealthy progenitors had come to the Northland
+in search of laurels, with much money to burn, and a 'man' apiece.
+Luckily for their souls, the other two men were up the White River in
+search of a mythical quartz-ledge; so Sandy had to grin under the
+responsibility of three healthy masters, each of whom was possessed of
+peculiar cookery ideas. Twice that morning had a disruption of the
+whole camp been imminent, only averted by immense concessions from one
+or the other of these knights of the chafing-dish. But at last their
+mutual creation, a really dainty dinner, was completed.
+
+Then they sat down to a three-cornered game of 'cut-throat,'--a
+proceeding which did away with all casus belli for future hostilities,
+and permitted the victor to depart on a most important mission.
+
+This fortune fell to Parker, who parted his hair in the middle, put on
+his mittens and bearskin cap, and stepped over to Malemute Kid's cabin.
+And when he returned, it was in the company of Grace Bentham and
+Malemute Kid,--the former very sorry her husband could not share with
+her their hospitality, for he had gone up to look at the Henderson
+Creek mines, and the latter still a trifle stiff from breaking trail
+down the Stuart River.
+
+Meyers had been asked, but had declined, being deeply engrossed in an
+experiment of raising bread from hops.
+
+Well, they could do without the husband; but a woman--why they had not
+seen one all winter, and the presence of this one promised a new era in
+their lives.
+
+They were college men and gentlemen, these three young fellows,
+yearning for the flesh-pots they had been so long denied. Probably
+Grace Bentham suffered from a similar hunger; at least, it meant much
+to her, the first bright hour in many weeks of darkness.
+
+But that wonderful first course, which claimed the versatile Lake for
+its parent, had no sooner been served than there came a loud knock at
+the door.
+
+'Oh! Ah! Won't you come in, Mr. Bentham?' said Parker, who had stepped
+to see who the newcomer might be.
+
+'Is my wife here?' gruffly responded that worthy.
+
+'Why, yes. We left word with Mr. Meyers.' Parker was exerting his most
+dulcet tones, inwardly wondering what the deuce it all meant. 'Won't
+you come in? Expecting you at any moment, we reserved a place. And just
+in time for the first course, too.' 'Come in, Edwin, dear,' chirped
+Grace Bentham from her seat at the table.
+
+Parker naturally stood aside.
+
+'I want my wife,' reiterated Bentham hoarsely, the intonation savoring
+disagreeably of ownership.
+
+Parker gasped, was within an ace of driving his fist into the face of
+his boorish visitor, but held himself awkwardly in check. Everybody
+rose. Lake lost his head and caught himself on the verge of saying,
+'Must you go?' Then began the farrago of leave-taking. 'So nice of
+you--' 'I am awfully sorry' 'By Jove! how things did brighten--'
+'Really now, you--'
+
+'Thank you ever so much--' 'Nice trip to Dawson--' etc., etc.
+
+In this wise the lamb was helped into her jacket and led to the
+slaughter. Then the door slammed, and they gazed woefully upon the
+deserted table.
+
+'Damn!' Langham had suffered disadvantages in his early training, and
+his oaths were weak and monotonous. 'Damn!' he repeated, vaguely
+conscious of the incompleteness and vainly struggling for a more virile
+term. It is a clever woman who can fill out the many weak places in an
+inefficient man, by her own indomitability, re-enforce his vacillating
+nature, infuse her ambitious soul into his, and spur him on to great
+achievements. And it is indeed a very clever and tactful woman who can
+do all this, and do it so subtly that the man receives all the credit
+and believes in his inmost heart that everything is due to him and him
+alone.
+
+This is what Grace Bentham proceeded to do. Arriving in Dawson with a
+few pounds of flour and several letters of introduction, she at once
+applied herself to the task of pushing her big baby to the fore. It was
+she who melted the stony heart and wrung credit from the rude barbarian
+who presided over the destiny of the P. C. Company; yet it was Edwin
+Bentham to whom the concession was ostensibly granted. It was she who
+dragged her baby up and down creeks, over benches and divides, and on a
+dozen wild stampedes; yet everybody remarked what an energetic fellow
+that Bentham was. It was she who studied maps, and catechised miners,
+and hammered geography and locations into his hollow head, till
+everybody marveled at his broad grasp of the country and knowledge of
+its conditions. Of course, they said the wife was a brick, and only a
+few wise ones appreciated and pitied the brave little woman.
+
+She did the work; he got the credit and reward. In the Northwest
+Territory a married woman cannot stake or record a creek, bench, or
+quartz claim; so Edwin Bentham went down to the Gold Commissioner and
+filed on Bench Claim 23, second tier, of French Hill. And when April
+came they were washing out a thousand dollars a day, with many, many
+such days in prospect.
+
+At the base of French Hill lay Eldorado Creek, and on a creek claim
+stood the cabin of Clyde Wharton. At present he was not washing out a
+diurnal thousand dollars; but his dumps grew, shift by shift, and there
+would come a time when those dumps would pass through his sluice-boxes,
+depositing in the riffles, in the course of half a dozen days, several
+hundred thousand dollars. He often sat in that cabin, smoked his pipe,
+and dreamed beautiful little dreams,--dreams in which neither the dumps
+nor the half-ton of dust in the P. C. Company's big safe, played a part.
+
+And Grace Bentham, as she washed tin dishes in her hillside cabin,
+often glanced down into Eldorado Creek, and dreamed,--not of dumps nor
+dust, however. They met frequently, as the trail to the one claim
+crossed the other, and there is much to talk about in the Northland
+spring; but never once, by the light of an eye nor the slip of a
+tongue, did they speak their hearts.
+
+This is as it was at first. But one day Edwin Bentham was brutal. All
+boys are thus; besides, being a French Hill king now, he began to think
+a great deal of himself and to forget all he owed to his wife. On this
+day, Wharton heard of it, and waylaid Grace Bentham, and talked wildly.
+This made her very happy, though she would not listen, and made him
+promise to not say such things again. Her hour had not come.
+
+But the sun swept back on its northern journey, the black of midnight
+changed to the steely color of dawn, the snow slipped away, the water
+dashed again over the glacial drift, and the wash-up began. Day and
+night the yellow clay and scraped bedrock hurried through the swift
+sluices, yielding up its ransom to the strong men from the Southland.
+
+And in that time of tumult came Grace Bentham's hour.
+
+To all of us such hours at some time come,--that is, to us who are not
+too phlegmatic.
+
+Some people are good, not from inherent love of virtue, but from sheer
+laziness. But those of us who know weak moments may understand.
+
+Edwin Bentham was weighing dust over the bar of the saloon at the
+Forks--altogether too much of his dust went over that pine board--when
+his wife came down the hill and slipped into Clyde Wharton's cabin.
+Wharton was not expecting her, but that did not alter the case. And
+much subsequent misery and idle waiting might have been avoided, had
+not Father Roubeau seen this and turned aside from the main creek
+trail. 'My child,--' 'Hold on, Father Roubeau! Though I'm not of your
+faith, I respect you; but you can't come in between this woman and me!'
+'You know what you are doing?' 'Know! Were you God Almighty, ready to
+fling me into eternal fire, I'd bank my will against yours in this
+matter.' Wharton had placed Grace on a stool and stood belligerently
+before her.
+
+'You sit down on that chair and keep quiet,' he continued, addressing
+the Jesuit. 'I'll take my innings now. You can have yours after.'
+
+Father Roubeau bowed courteously and obeyed. He was an easy-going man
+and had learned to bide his time. Wharton pulled a stool alongside the
+woman's, smothering her hand in his.
+
+'Then you do care for me, and will take me away?' Her face seemed to
+reflect the peace of this man, against whom she might draw close for
+shelter.
+
+'Dear, don't you remember what I said before? Of course I-' 'But how
+can you?--the wash-up?' 'Do you think that worries? Anyway, I'll give
+the job to Father Roubeau, here.
+
+'I can trust him to safely bank the dust with the company.' 'To think
+of it!--I'll never see him again.' 'A blessing!' 'And to go--O, Clyde,
+I can't! I can't!' 'There, there; of course you can, just let me plan
+it.--You see, as soon as we get a few traps together, we'll start,
+and-' 'Suppose he comes back?' 'I'll break every-' 'No, no! No
+fighting, Clyde! Promise me that.' 'All right! I'll just tell the men
+to throw him off the claim. They've seen how he's treated you, and
+haven't much love for him.'
+
+'You mustn't do that. You mustn't hurt him.' 'What then? Let him come
+right in here and take you away before my eyes?' 'No-o,' she half
+whispered, stroking his hand softly.
+
+'Then let me run it, and don't worry. I'll see he doesn't get hurt.
+Precious lot he cared whether you got hurt or not! We won't go back to
+Dawson. I'll send word down for a couple of the boys to outfit and pole
+a boat up the Yukon. We'll cross the divide and raft down the Indian
+River to meet them. Then--' 'And then?' Her head was on his shoulder.
+
+Their voices sank to softer cadences, each word a caress. The Jesuit
+fidgeted nervously.
+
+'And then?' she repeated.
+
+'Why we'll pole up, and up, and up, and portage the White Horse Rapids
+and the Box Canon.' 'Yes?' 'And the Sixty-Mile River; then the lakes,
+Chilcoot, Dyea, and Salt Water.' 'But, dear, I can't pole a boat.' 'You
+little goose! I'll get Sitka Charley; he knows all the good water and
+best camps, and he is the best traveler I ever met, if he is an Indian.
+All you'll have to do, is to sit in the middle of the boat, and sing
+songs, and play Cleopatra, and fight--no, we're in luck; too early for
+mosquitoes.'
+
+'And then, O my Antony?' 'And then a steamer, San Francisco, and the
+world! Never to come back to this cursed hole again. Think of it! The
+world, and ours to choose from! I'll sell out. Why, we're rich! The
+Waldworth Syndicate will give me half a million for what's left in the
+ground, and I've got twice as much in the dumps and with the P. C.
+Company. We'll go to the Fair in Paris in 1900. We'll go to Jerusalem,
+if you say so.
+
+'We'll buy an Italian palace, and you can play Cleopatra to your
+heart's content. No, you shall be Lucretia, Acte, or anybody your
+little heart sees fit to become. But you mustn't, you really mustn't-'
+'The wife of Caesar shall be above reproach.' 'Of course, but--' 'But I
+won't be your wife, will I, dear?' 'I didn't mean that.' 'But you'll
+love me just as much, and never even think--oh! I know you'll be like
+other men; you'll grow tired, and--and-'
+
+'How can you? I--' 'Promise me.' 'Yes, yes; I do promise.' 'You say it
+so easily, dear; but how do you know?--or I know? I have so little to
+give, yet it is so much, and all I have. O, Clyde! promise me you
+won't?'
+
+'There, there! You mustn't begin to doubt already. Till death do us
+part, you know.'
+
+'Think! I once said that to--to him, and now?' 'And now, little
+sweetheart, you're not to bother about such things any more.
+
+Of course, I never, never will, and--' And for the first time, lips
+trembled against lips.
+
+Father Roubeau had been watching the main trail through the window, but
+could stand the strain no longer.
+
+He cleared his throat and turned around.
+
+'Your turn now, Father!' Wharton's face was flushed with the fire of
+his first embrace.
+
+There was an exultant ring to his voice as he abdicated in the other's
+favor. He had no doubt as to the result. Neither had Grace, for a smile
+played about her mouth as she faced the priest.
+
+'My child,' he began, 'my heart bleeds for you. It is a pretty dream,
+but it cannot be.'
+
+'And why, Father? I have said yes.' 'You knew not what you did. You did
+not think of the oath you took, before your God, to that man who is
+your husband. It remains for me to make you realize the sanctity of
+such a pledge.' 'And if I do realize, and yet refuse?'
+
+'Then God'
+
+'Which God? My husband has a God which I care not to worship. There
+must be many such.' 'Child! unsay those words! Ah! you do not mean
+them. I understand. I, too, have had such moments.' For an instant he
+was back in his native France, and a wistful, sad-eyed face came as a
+mist between him and the woman before him.
+
+'Then, Father, has my God forsaken me? I am not wicked above women. My
+misery with him has been great. Why should it be greater? Why shall I
+not grasp at happiness? I cannot, will not, go back to him!' 'Rather is
+your God forsaken. Return. Throw your burden upon Him, and the darkness
+shall be lifted. O my child,--' 'No; it is useless; I have made my bed
+and so shall I lie. I will go on. And if God punishes me, I shall bear
+it somehow. You do not understand. You are not a woman.' 'My mother was
+a woman.'
+
+'But--' 'And Christ was born of a woman.' She did not answer. A silence
+fell. Wharton pulled his mustache impatiently and kept an eye on the
+trail. Grace leaned her elbow on the table, her face set with resolve.
+The smile had died away. Father Roubeau shifted his ground.
+
+'You have children?'
+
+'At one time I wished--but now--no. And I am thankful.' 'And a mother?'
+'Yes.' 'She loves you?' 'Yes.' Her replies were whispers.
+
+'And a brother?--no matter, he is a man. But a sister?' Her head
+drooped a quavering 'Yes.' 'Younger? Very much?' 'Seven years.' 'And
+you have thought well about this matter? About them? About your mother?
+And your sister? She stands on the threshold of her woman's life, and
+this wildness of yours may mean much to her. Could you go before her,
+look upon her fresh young face, hold her hand in yours, or touch your
+cheek to hers?'
+
+To his words, her brain formed vivid images, till she cried out,
+'Don't! don't!' and shrank away as do the wolf-dogs from the lash.
+
+'But you must face all this; and better it is to do it now.' In his
+eyes, which she could not see, there was a great compassion, but his
+face, tense and quivering, showed no relenting.
+
+She raised her head from the table, forced back the tears, struggled
+for control.
+
+'I shall go away. They will never see me, and come to forget me. I
+shall be to them as dead. And--and I will go with Clyde--today.' It
+seemed final. Wharton stepped forward, but the priest waved him back.
+
+'You have wished for children?' A silent 'Yes.' 'And prayed for them?'
+'Often.' 'And have you thought, if you should have children?' Father
+Roubeau's eyes rested for a moment on the man by the window.
+
+A quick light shot across her face. Then the full import dawned upon
+her. She raised her hand appealingly, but he went on.
+
+'Can you picture an innocent babe in your arms? A boy? The world is not
+so hard upon a girl. Why, your very breast would turn to gall! And you
+could be proud and happy of your boy, as you looked on other
+children?--' 'O, have pity! Hush!' 'A scapegoat--'
+
+'Don't! don't! I will go back!' She was at his feet.
+
+'A child to grow up with no thought of evil, and one day the world to
+fling a tender name in his face. A child to look back and curse you
+from whose loins he sprang!'
+
+'O my God! my God!' She groveled on the floor. The priest sighed and
+raised her to her feet.
+
+Wharton pressed forward, but she motioned him away.
+
+'Don't come near me, Clyde! I am going back!' The tears were coursing
+pitifully down her face, but she made no effort to wipe them away.
+
+'After all this? You cannot! I will not let you!' 'Don't touch me!' She
+shivered and drew back.
+
+'I will! You are mine! Do you hear? You are mine!' Then he whirled upon
+the priest. 'O what a fool I was to ever let you wag your silly tongue!
+Thank your God you are not a common man, for I'd--but the priestly
+prerogative must be exercised, eh? Well, you have exercised it. Now get
+out of my house, or I'll forget who and what you are!' Father Roubeau
+bowed, took her hand, and started for the door. But Wharton cut them
+off.
+
+'Grace! You said you loved me?' 'I did.' 'And you do now?' 'I do.' 'Say
+it again.'
+
+'I do love you, Clyde; I do.' 'There, you priest!' he cried. 'You have
+heard it, and with those words on her lips you would send her back to
+live a lie and a hell with that man?'
+
+But Father Roubeau whisked the woman into the inner room and closed the
+door. 'No words!' he whispered to Wharton, as he struck a casual
+posture on a stool. 'Remember, for her sake,' he added.
+
+The room echoed to a rough knock at the door; the latch raised and
+Edwin Bentham stepped in.
+
+'Seen anything of my wife?' he asked as soon as salutations had been
+exchanged.
+
+Two heads nodded negatively.
+
+'I saw her tracks down from the cabin,' he continued tentatively, 'and
+they broke off, just opposite here, on the main trail.' His listeners
+looked bored.
+
+'And I--I thought--'
+
+'She was here!' thundered Wharton.
+
+The priest silenced him with a look. 'Did you see her tracks leading up
+to this cabin, my son?' Wily Father Roubeau--he had taken good care to
+obliterate them as he came up the same path an hour before.
+
+'I didn't stop to look, I--' His eyes rested suspiciously on the door
+to the other room, then interrogated the priest. The latter shook his
+head; but the doubt seemed to linger.
+
+Father Roubeau breathed a swift, silent prayer, and rose to his feet.
+'If you doubt me, why--' He made as though to open the door.
+
+A priest could not lie. Edwin Bentham had heard this often, and
+believed it.
+
+'Of course not, Father,' he interposed hurriedly. 'I was only wondering
+where my wife had gone, and thought maybe--I guess she's up at Mrs.
+Stanton's on French Gulch. Nice weather, isn't it? Heard the news?
+Flour's gone down to forty dollars a hundred, and they say the
+che-cha-quas are flocking down the river in droves.
+
+'But I must be going; so good-by.' The door slammed, and from the
+window they watched him take his guest up French Gulch. A few weeks
+later, just after the June high-water, two men shot a canoe into
+mid-stream and made fast to a derelict pine. This tightened the painter
+and jerked the frail craft along as would a tow-boat. Father Roubeau
+had been directed to leave the Upper Country and return to his swarthy
+children at Minook. The white men had come among them, and they were
+devoting too little time to fishing, and too much to a certain deity
+whose transient habitat was in countless black bottles.
+
+Malemute Kid also had business in the Lower Country, so they journeyed
+together.
+
+But one, in all the Northland, knew the man Paul Roubeau, and that man
+was Malemute Kid. Before him alone did the priest cast off the
+sacerdotal garb and stand naked. And why not? These two men knew each
+other. Had they not shared the last morsel of fish, the last pinch of
+tobacco, the last and inmost thought, on the barren stretches of Bering
+Sea, in the heartbreaking mazes of the Great Delta, on the terrible
+winter journey from Point Barrow to the Porcupine? Father Roubeau
+puffed heavily at his trail-worn pipe, and gazed on the reddisked sun,
+poised somberly on the edge of the northern horizon.
+
+Malemute Kid wound up his watch. It was midnight.
+
+'Cheer up, old man!' The Kid was evidently gathering up a broken thread.
+
+'God surely will forgive such a lie. Let me give you the word of a man
+who strikes a true note: If She have spoken a word, remember thy lips
+are sealed, And the brand of the Dog is upon him by whom is the secret
+revealed.
+
+If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can clear,
+Lie, while thy lips can move or a man is alive to hear.'
+
+Father Roubeau removed his pipe and reflected. 'The man speaks true,
+but my soul is not vexed with that. The lie and the penance stand with
+God; but--but--'
+
+'What then? Your hands are clean.' 'Not so. Kid, I have thought much,
+and yet the thing remains. I knew, and made her go back.' The clear
+note of a robin rang out from the wooden bank, a partridge drummed the
+call in the distance, a moose lunged noisily in the eddy; but the twain
+smoked on in silence.
+
+
+
+The Wisdom of the Trail
+
+Sitka Charley had achieved the impossible. Other Indians might have
+known as much of the wisdom of the trail as he did; but he alone knew
+the white man's wisdom, the honor of the trail, and the law. But these
+things had not come to him in a day. The aboriginal mind is slow to
+generalize, and many facts, repeated often, are required to compass an
+understanding. Sitka Charley, from boyhood, had been thrown continually
+with white men, and as a man he had elected to cast his fortunes with
+them, expatriating himself, once and for all, from his own people. Even
+then, respecting, almost venerating their power, and pondering over it,
+he had yet to divine its secret essence--the honor and the law. And it
+was only by the cumulative evidence of years that he had finally come
+to understand. Being an alien, when he did know, he knew it better than
+the white man himself; being an Indian, he had achieved the impossible.
+
+And of these things had been bred a certain contempt for his own
+people--a contempt which he had made it a custom to conceal, but which
+now burst forth in a polyglot whirlwind of curses upon the heads of
+Kah-Chucte and Gowhee. They cringed before him like a brace of snarling
+wolf dogs, too cowardly to spring, too wolfish to cover their fangs.
+They were not handsome creatures. Neither was Sitka Charley. All three
+were frightful-looking. There was no flesh to their faces; their
+cheekbones were massed with hideous scabs which had cracked and frozen
+alternately under the intense frost; while their eyes burned luridly
+with the light which is born of desperation and hunger. Men so
+situated, beyond the pale of the honor and the law, are not to be
+trusted. Sitka Charley knew this; and this was why he had forced them
+to abandon their rifles with the rest of the camp outfit ten days
+before. His rifle and Captain Eppingwell's were the only ones that
+remained.
+
+'Come, get a fire started,' he commanded, drawing out the precious
+matchbox with its attendant strips of dry birchbark.
+
+The two Indians fell sullenly to the task of gathering dead branches
+and underwood. They were weak and paused often, catching themselves, in
+the act of stooping, with giddy motions, or staggering to the center of
+operations with their knees shaking like castanets.
+
+After each trip they rested for a moment, as though sick and deadly
+weary. At times their eyes took on the patient stoicism of dumb
+suffering; and again the ego seemed almost burst forth with its wild
+cry, 'I, I, I want to exist!'--the dominant note of the whole living
+universe.
+
+A light breath of air blew from the south, nipping the exposed portions
+of their bodies and driving the frost, in needles of fire, through fur
+and flesh to the bones. So, when the fire had grown lusty and thawed a
+damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka Charley forced his reluctant
+comrades to lend a hand in pitching a fly. It was a primitive affair,
+merely a blanket stretched parallel with the fire and to windward of
+it, at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees. This shut out the chill
+wind and threw the heat backward and down upon those who were to huddle
+in its shelter. Then a layer of green spruce boughs were spread, that
+their bodies might not come in contact with the snow. When this task
+was completed, Kah-Chucte and Gowhee proceeded to take care of their
+feet. Their icebound moccasins were sadly worn by much travel, and the
+sharp ice of the river jams had cut them to rags.
+
+Their Siwash socks were similarly conditioned, and when these had been
+thawed and removed, the dead-white tips of the toes, in the various
+stages of mortification, told their simple tale of the trail.
+
+Leaving the two to the drying of their footgear, Sitka Charley turned
+back over the course he had come. He, too, had a mighty longing to sit
+by the fire and tend his complaining flesh, but the honor and the law
+forbade. He toiled painfully over the frozen field, each step a
+protest, every muscle in revolt. Several times, where the open water
+between the jams had recently crusted, he was forced to miserably
+accelerate his movements as the fragile footing swayed and threatened
+beneath him. In such places death was quick and easy; but it was not
+his desire to endure no more.
+
+His deepening anxiety vanished as two Indians dragged into view round a
+bend in the river. They staggered and panted like men under heavy
+burdens; yet the packs on their backs were a matter of but a few
+pounds. He questioned them eagerly, and their replies seemed to relieve
+him. He hurried on. Next came two white men, supporting between them a
+woman. They also behaved as though drunken, and their limbs shook with
+weakness. But the woman leaned lightly upon them, choosing to carry
+herself forward with her own strength. At the sight of her a flash of
+joy cast its fleeting light across Sitka Charley's face. He cherished a
+very great regard for Mrs. Eppingwell. He had seen many white women,
+but this was the first to travel the trail with him. When Captain
+Eppingwell proposed the hazardous undertaking and made him an offer for
+his services, he had shaken his head gravely; for it was an unknown
+journey through the dismal vastnesses of the Northland, and he knew it
+to be of the kind that try to the uttermost the souls of men.
+
+But when he learned that the captain's wife was to accompany them, he
+had refused flatly to have anything further to do with it. Had it been
+a woman of his own race he would have harbored no objections; but these
+women of the Southland--no, no, they were too soft, too tender, for
+such enterprises.
+
+Sitka Charley did not know this kind of woman. Five minutes before, he
+did not even dream of taking charge of the expedition; but when she
+came to him with her wonderful smile and her straight clean English,
+and talked to the point, without pleading or persuading, he had
+incontinently yielded. Had there been a softness and appeal to mercy in
+the eyes, a tremble to the voice, a taking advantage of sex, he would
+have stiffened to steel; instead her clear-searching eyes and
+clear-ringing voice, her utter frankness and tacit assumption of
+equality, had robbed him of his reason. He felt, then, that this was a
+new breed of woman; and ere they had been trail mates for many days he
+knew why the sons of such women mastered the land and the sea, and why
+the sons of his own womankind could not prevail against them. Tender
+and soft! Day after day he watched her, muscle-weary, exhausted,
+indomitable, and the words beat in upon him in a perennial refrain.
+Tender and soft! He knew her feet had been born to easy paths and sunny
+lands, strangers to the moccasined pain of the North, unkissed by the
+chill lips of the frost, and he watched and marveled at them twinkling
+ever through the weary day.
+
+She had always a smile and a word of cheer, from which not even the
+meanest packer was excluded. As the way grew darker she seemed to
+stiffen and gather greater strength, and when Kah-Chucte and Gowhee,
+who had bragged that they knew every landmark of the way as a child did
+the skin bails of the tepee, acknowledged that they knew not where they
+were, it was she who raised a forgiving voice amid the curses of the
+men. She had sung to them that night till they felt the weariness fall
+from them and were ready to face the future with fresh hope. And when
+the food failed and each scant stint was measured jealously, she it was
+who rebelled against the machinations of her husband and Sitka Charley,
+and demanded and received a share neither greater nor less than that of
+the others.
+
+Sitka Charley was proud to know this woman. A new richness, a greater
+breadth, had come into his life with her presence. Hitherto he had been
+his own mentor, had turned to right or left at no man's beck; he had
+moulded himself according to his own dictates, nourished his manhood
+regardless of all save his own opinion. For the first time he had felt
+a call from without for the best that was in him, just a glance of
+appreciation from the clear-searching eyes, a word of thanks from the
+clear-ringing voice, just a slight wreathing of the lips in the
+wonderful smile, and he walked with the gods for hours to come. It was
+a new stimulant to his manhood; for the first time he thrilled with a
+conscious pride in his wisdom of the trail; and between the twain they
+ever lifted the sinking hearts of their comrades. The faces of the two
+men and the woman brightened as they saw him, for after all he was the
+staff they leaned upon. But Sitka Charley, rigid as was his wont,
+concealing pain and pleasure impartially beneath an iron exterior,
+asked them the welfare of the rest, told the distance to the fire, and
+continued on the back-trip.
+
+Next he met a single Indian, unburdened, limping, lips compressed, and
+eyes set with the pain of a foot in which the quick fought a losing
+battle with the dead. All possible care had been taken of him, but in
+the last extremity the weak and unfortunate must perish, and Sitka
+Charley deemed his days to be few. The man could not keep up for long,
+so he gave him rough cheering words. After that came two more Indians,
+to whom he had allotted the task of helping along Joe, the third white
+man of the party. They had deserted him. Sitka Charley saw at a glance
+the lurking spring in their bodies, and knew they had at last cast off
+his mastery. So he was not taken unawares when he ordered them back in
+quest of their abandoned charge, and saw the gleam of the hunting
+knives that they drew from the sheaths. A pitiful spectacle, three weak
+men lifting their puny strength in the face of the mighty vastness; but
+the two recoiled under the fierce rifle blows of the one and returned
+like beaten dogs to the leash. Two hours later, with Joe reeling
+between them and Sitka Charley bringing up the rear, they came to the
+fire, where the remainder of the expedition crouched in the shelter of
+the fly.
+
+'A few words, my comrades, before we sleep,' Sitka Charley said after
+they had devoured their slim rations of unleavened bread. He was
+speaking to the Indians in their own tongue, having already given the
+import to the whites. 'A few words, my comrades, for your own good,
+that ye may yet perchance live. I shall give you the law; on his own
+head by the death of him that breaks it. We have passed the Hills of
+Silence, and we now travel the head reaches of the Stuart. It may be
+one sleep, it may be several, it may be many sleeps, but in time we
+shall come among the men of the Yukon, who have much grub. It were well
+that we look to the law. Today Kah-Chucte and Gowhee, whom I commanded
+to break trail, forgot they were men, and like frightened children ran
+away.
+
+'True, they forgot; so let us forget. But hereafter, let them remember.
+If it should happen they do not...' He touched his rifle carelessly,
+grimly. 'Tomorrow they shall carry the flour and see that the white man
+Joe lies not down by the trail. The cups of flour are counted; should
+so much as an ounce be wanting at nightfall... Do ye understand? Today
+there were others that forgot. Moose Head and Three Salmon left the
+white man Joe to lie in the snow. Let them forget no more. With the
+light of day shall they go forth and break trail. Ye have heard the
+law. Look well, lest ye break it.' Sitka Charley found it beyond him to
+keep the line close up. From Moose Head and Three Salmon, who broke
+trail in advance, to Kah-Chucte, Gowhee, and Joe, it straggled out over
+a mile. Each staggered, fell or rested as he saw fit.
+
+The line of march was a progression through a chain of irregular halts.
+Each drew upon the last remnant of his strength and stumbled onward
+till it was expended, but in some miraculous way there was always
+another last remnant. Each time a man fell it was with the firm belief
+that he would rise no more; yet he did rise, and again and again. The
+flesh yielded, the will conquered; but each triumph was a tragedy. The
+Indian with the frozen foot, no longer erect, crawled forward on hand
+and knee. He rarely rested, for he knew the penalty exacted by the
+frost.
+
+Even Mrs. Eppingwell's lips were at last set in a stony smile, and her
+eyes, seeing, saw not. Often she stopped, pressing a mittened hand to
+her heart, gasping and dizzy.
+
+Joe, the white man, had passed beyond the stage of suffering. He no
+longer begged to be let alone, prayed to die; but was soothed and
+content under the anodyne of delirium. Kah-Chucte and Gowhee dragged
+him on roughly, venting upon him many a savage glance or blow. To them
+it was the acme of injustice.
+
+Their hearts were bitter with hate, heavy with fear. Why should they
+cumber their strength with his weakness? To do so meant death; not to
+do so--and they remembered the law of Sitka Charley, and the rifle.
+
+Joe fell with greater frequency as the daylight waned, and so hard was
+he to raise that they dropped farther and farther behind. Sometimes all
+three pitched into the snow, so weak had the Indians become. Yet on
+their backs was life, and strength, and warmth.
+
+Within the flour sacks were all the potentialities of existence. They
+could not but think of this, and it was not strange, that which came to
+pass. They had fallen by the side of a great timber jam where a
+thousand cords of firewood waited the match. Near by was an air hole
+through the ice. Kah-Chucte looked on the wood and the water, as did
+Gowhee; then they looked at each other.
+
+Never a word was spoken. Gowhee struck a fire; Kah-Chucte filled a tin
+cup with water and heated it; Joe babbled of things in another land, in
+a tongue they did not understand.
+
+They mixed flour with the warm water till it was a thin paste, and of
+this they drank many cups. They did not offer any to Joe; but he did
+not mind. He did not mind anything, not even his moccasins, which
+scorched and smoked among the coals.
+
+A crystal mist of snow fell about them, softly, caressingly, wrapping
+them in clinging robes of white. And their feet would have yet trod
+many trails had not destiny brushed the clouds aside and cleared the
+air. Nay, ten minutes' delay would have been salvation.
+
+Sitka Charley, looking back, saw the pillared smoke of their fire, and
+guessed. And he looked ahead at those who were faithful, and at Mrs.
+Eppingwell. 'So, my good comrades, ye have again forgotten that you
+were men? Good! Very good. There will be fewer bellies to feed.' Sitka
+Charley retied the flour as he spoke, strapping the pack to the one on
+his own back. He kicked Joe till the pain broke through the poor
+devil's bliss and brought him doddering to his feet. Then he shoved him
+out upon the trail and started him on his way. The two Indians
+attempted to slip off.
+
+'Hold, Gowhee! And thou, too, Kah-Chucte! Hath the flour given such
+strength to thy legs that they may outrun the swift-winged lead? Think
+not to cheat the law. Be men for the last time, and be content that ye
+die full-stomached.
+
+Come, step up, back to the timber, shoulder to shoulder. Come!' The two
+men obeyed, quietly, without fear; for it is the future which pressed
+upon the man, not the present.
+
+'Thou, Gowhee, hast a wife and children and a deerskin lodge in the
+Chipewyan. What is thy will in the matter?' 'Give thou her of the goods
+which are mine by the word of the captain--the blankets, the beads, the
+tobacco, the box which makes strange sounds after the manner of the
+white men. Say that I did die on the trail, but say not how.' 'And
+thou, Kah-Chucte, who hast nor wife nor child?' 'Mine is a sister, the
+wife of the factor at Koshim. He beats her, and she is not happy. Give
+thou her the goods which are mine by the contract, and tell her it were
+well she go back to her own people. Shouldst thou meet the man, and be
+so minded, it were a good deed that he should die. He beats her, and
+she is afraid.' 'Are ye content to die by the law?' 'We are.' 'Then
+good-bye, my good comrades. May ye sit by the well-filled pot, in warm
+lodges, ere the day is done.' As he spoke he raised his rifle, and many
+echoes broke the silence. Hardly had they died away when other rifles
+spoke in the distance. Sitka Charley started.
+
+There had been more than one shot, yet there was but one other rifle in
+the party.
+
+He gave a fleeting glance at the men who lay so quietly, smiled
+viciously at the wisdom of the trail, and hurried on to meet the men of
+the Yukon.
+
+
+
+The Wife of a King
+
+Once when the northland was very young, the social and civic virtues
+were remarkably alike for their paucity and their simplicity. When the
+burden of domestic duties grew grievous, and the fireside mood expanded
+to a constant protest against its bleak loneliness, the adventurers
+from the Southland, in lieu of better, paid the stipulated prices and
+took unto themselves native wives. It was a foretaste of Paradise to
+the women, for it must be confessed that the white rovers gave far
+better care and treatment of them than did their Indian copartners. Of
+course, the white men themselves were satisfied with such deals, as
+were also the Indian men for that matter. Having sold their daughters
+and sisters for cotton blankets and obsolete rifles and traded their
+warm furs for flimsy calico and bad whisky, the sons of the soil
+promptly and cheerfully succumbed to quick consumption and other swift
+diseases correlated with the blessings of a superior civilization.
+
+It was in these days of Arcadian simplicity that Cal Galbraith
+journeyed through the land and fell sick on the Lower River. It was a
+refreshing advent in the lives of the good Sisters of the Holy Cross,
+who gave him shelter and medicine; though they little dreamed of the
+hot elixir infused into his veins by the touch of their soft hands and
+their gentle ministrations. Cal Galbraith, became troubled with strange
+thoughts which clamored for attention till he laid eyes on the Mission
+girl, Madeline. Yet he gave no sign, biding his time patiently. He
+strengthened with the coming spring, and when the sun rode the heavens
+in a golden circle, and the joy and throb of life was in all the land,
+he gathered his still weak body together and departed.
+
+Now, Madeline, the Mission girl, was an orphan. Her white father had
+failed to give a bald-faced grizzly the trail one day, and had died
+quickly. Then her Indian mother, having no man to fill the winter
+cache, had tried the hazardous experiment of waiting till the
+salmon-run on fifty pounds of flour and half as many of bacon. After
+that, the baby, Chook-ra, went to live with the good Sisters, and to be
+thenceforth known by another name.
+
+But Madeline still had kinsfolk, the nearest being a dissolute uncle
+who outraged his vitals with inordinate quantities of the white man's
+whisky. He strove daily to walk with the gods, and incidentally, his
+feet sought shorter trails to the grave. When sober he suffered
+exquisite torture. He had no conscience. To this ancient vagabond Cal
+Galbraith duly presented himself, and they consumed many words and much
+tobacco in the conversation that followed. Promises were also made; and
+in the end the old heathen took a few pounds of dried salmon and his
+birch-bark canoe, and paddled away to the Mission of the Holy Cross.
+
+It is not given the world to know what promises he made and what lies
+he told--the Sisters never gossip; but when he returned, upon his
+swarthy chest there was a brass crucifix, and in his canoe his niece
+Madeline. That night there was a grand wedding and a potlach; so that
+for two days to follow there was no fishing done by the village. But in
+the morning Madeline shook the dust of the Lower River from her
+moccasins, and with her husband, in a poling-boat, went to live on the
+Upper River in a place known as the Lower Country. And in the years
+which followed she was a good wife, sharing her husband's hardships and
+cooking his food. And she kept him in straight trails, till he learned
+to save his dust and to work mightily. In the end, he struck it rich
+and built a cabin in Circle City; and his happiness was such that men
+who came to visit him in his home-circle became restless at the sight
+of it and envied him greatly.
+
+But the Northland began to mature and social amenities to make their
+appearance.
+
+Hitherto, the Southland had sent forth its sons; but it now belched
+forth a new exodus--this time of its daughters. Sisters and wives they
+were not; but they did not fail to put new ideas in the heads of the
+men, and to elevate the tone of things in ways peculiarly their own. No
+more did the squaws gather at the dances, go roaring down the center in
+the good, old Virginia reels, or make merry with jolly 'Dan Tucker.'
+They fell back on their natural stoicism and uncomplainingly watched
+the rule of their white sisters from their cabins.
+
+Then another exodus came over the mountains from the prolific Southland.
+
+This time it was of women that became mighty in the land. Their word
+was law; their law was steel. They frowned upon the Indian wives, while
+the other women became mild and walked humbly. There were cowards who
+became ashamed of their ancient covenants with the daughters of the
+soil, who looked with a new distaste upon their dark-skinned children;
+but there were also others--men--who remained true and proud of their
+aboriginal vows. When it became the fashion to divorce the native
+wives. Cal Galbraith retained his manhood, and in so doing felt the
+heavy hand of the women who had come last, knew least, but who ruled
+the land.
+
+One day, the Upper Country, which lies far above Circle City, was
+pronounced rich. Dog-teams carried the news to Salt Water; golden
+argosies freighted the lure across the North Pacific; wires and cables
+sang with the tidings; and the world heard for the first time of the
+Klondike River and the Yukon Country. Cal Galbraith had lived the years
+quietly. He had been a good husband to Madeline, and she had blessed
+him. But somehow discontent fell upon him; he felt vague yearnings for
+his own kind, for the life he had been shut out from--a general sort of
+desire, which men sometimes feel, to break out and taste the prime of
+living. Besides, there drifted down the river wild rumors of the
+wonderful El Dorado, glowing descriptions of the city of logs and
+tents, and ludicrous accounts of the che-cha-quas who had rushed in and
+were stampeding the whole country.
+
+Circle City was dead. The world had moved on up river and become a new
+and most marvelous world.
+
+Cal Galbraith grew restless on the edge of things, and wished to see
+with his own eyes.
+
+So, after the wash-up, he weighed in a couple of hundred pounds of dust
+on the Company's big scales, and took a draft for the same on Dawson.
+Then he put Tom Dixon in charge of his mines, kissed Madeline good-by,
+promised to be back before the first mush-ice ran, and took passage on
+an up-river steamer.
+
+Madeline waited, waited through all the three months of daylight. She
+fed the dogs, gave much of her time to Young Cal, watched the short
+summer fade away and the sun begin its long journey to the south. And
+she prayed much in the manner of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. The
+fall came, and with it there was mush-ice on the Yukon, and Circle City
+kings returning to the winter's work at their mines, but no Cal
+Galbraith. Tom Dixon received a letter, however, for his men sledded up
+her winter's supply of dry pine. The Company received a letter for its
+dogteams filled her cache with their best provisions, and she was told
+that her credit was limitless.
+
+Through all the ages man has been held the chief instigator of the woes
+of woman; but in this case the men held their tongues and swore harshly
+at one of their number who was away, while the women failed utterly to
+emulate them. So, without needless delay, Madeline heard strange tales
+of Cal Galbraith's doings; also, of a certain Greek dancer who played
+with men as children did with bubbles. Now Madeline was an Indian
+woman, and further, she had no woman friend to whom to go for wise
+counsel. She prayed and planned by turns, and that night, being quick
+of resolve and action, she harnessed the dogs, and with Young Cal
+securely lashed to the sled, stole away.
+
+Though the Yukon still ran free, the eddy-ice was growing, and each day
+saw the river dwindling to a slushy thread. Save him who has done the
+like, no man may know what she endured in traveling a hundred miles on
+the rim-ice; nor may they understand the toil and hardship of breaking
+the two hundred miles of packed ice which remained after the river
+froze for good. But Madeline was an Indian woman, so she did these
+things, and one night there came a knock at Malemute Kid's door.
+Thereat he fed a team of starving dogs, put a healthy youngster to bed,
+and turned his attention to an exhausted woman. He removed her icebound
+moccasins while he listened to her tale, and stuck the point of his
+knife into her feet that he might see how far they were frozen.
+
+Despite his tremendous virility, Malemute Kid was possessed of a
+softer, womanly element, which could win the confidence of a snarling
+wolf-dog or draw confessions from the most wintry heart. Nor did he
+seek them. Hearts opened to him as spontaneously as flowers to the sun.
+Even the priest, Father Roubeau, had been known to confess to him,
+while the men and women of the Northland were ever knocking at his
+door--a door from which the latch-string hung always out. To Madeline,
+he could do no wrong, make no mistake. She had known him from the time
+she first cast her lot among the people of her father's race; and to
+her half-barbaric mind it seemed that in him was centered the wisdom of
+the ages, that between his vision and the future there could be no
+intervening veil.
+
+There were false ideals in the land. The social strictures of Dawson
+were not synonymous with those of the previous era, and the swift
+maturity of the Northland involved much wrong. Malemute Kid was aware
+of this, and he had Cal Galbraith's measure accurately.
+
+He knew a hasty word was the father of much evil; besides, he was
+minded to teach a great lesson and bring shame upon the man. So Stanley
+Prince, the young mining expert, was called into the conference the
+following night as was also Lucky Jack Harrington and his violin. That
+same night, Bettles, who owed a great debt to Malemute Kid, harnessed
+up Cal Galbraith's dogs, lashed Cal Galbraith, Junior, to the sled, and
+slipped away in the dark for Stuart River.
+
+
+II
+
+'So; one--two--three, one--two--three. Now reverse! No, no! Start up
+again, Jack. See--this way.' Prince executed the movement as one should
+who has led the cotillion.
+
+'Now; one--two--three, one--two--three. Reverse! Ah! that's better. Try
+it again. I say, you know, you mustn't look at your feet.
+One--two--three, one--two--three. Shorter steps! You are not hanging to
+the gee-pole just now. Try it over.
+
+'There! that's the way. One--two--three, one--two--three.' Round and
+round went Prince and Madeline in an interminable waltz. The table and
+stools had been shoved over against the wall to increase the room.
+Malemute Kid sat on the bunk, chin to knees, greatly interested. Jack
+Harrington sat beside him, scraping away on his violin and following
+the dancers.
+
+It was a unique situation, the undertaking of these three men with the
+woman.
+
+The most pathetic part, perhaps, was the businesslike way in which they
+went about it.
+
+No athlete was ever trained more rigidly for a coming contest, nor
+wolf-dog for the harness, than was she. But they had good material, for
+Madeline, unlike most women of her race, in her childhood had escaped
+the carrying of heavy burdens and the toil of the trail. Besides, she
+was a clean-limbed, willowy creature, possessed of much grace which had
+not hitherto been realized. It was this grace which the men strove to
+bring out and knock into shape.
+
+'Trouble with her she learned to dance all wrong,' Prince remarked to
+the bunk after having deposited his breathless pupil on the table.
+'She's quick at picking up; yet I could do better had she never danced
+a step. But say, Kid, I can't understand this.' Prince imitated a
+peculiar movement of the shoulders and head--a weakness Madeline
+suffered from in walking.
+
+'Lucky for her she was raised in the Mission,' Malemute Kid answered.
+'Packing, you know,--the head-strap. Other Indian women have it bad,
+but she didn't do any packing till after she married, and then only at
+first. Saw hard lines with that husband of hers. They went through the
+Forty-Mile famine together.' 'But can we break it?' 'Don't know.
+
+'Perhaps long walks with her trainers will make the riffle. Anyway,
+they'll take it out some, won't they, Madeline?' The girl nodded
+assent. If Malemute Kid, who knew all things, said so, why it was so.
+That was all there was about it.
+
+She had come over to them, anxious to begin again. Harrington surveyed
+her in quest of her points much in the same manner men usually do
+horses. It certainly was not disappointing, for he asked with sudden
+interest, 'What did that beggarly uncle of yours get anyway?' 'One
+rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of hooch. Rifle broke.' She said
+this last scornfully, as though disgusted at how low her maiden-value
+had been rated.
+
+She spoke fair English, with many peculiarities of her husband's
+speech, but there was still perceptible the Indian accent, the
+traditional groping after strange gutturals. Even this her instructors
+had taken in hand, and with no small success, too.
+
+At the next intermission, Prince discovered a new predicament.
+
+'I say, Kid,' he said, 'we're wrong, all wrong. She can't learn in
+moccasins.
+
+'Put her feet into slippers, and then onto that waxed floor--phew!'
+Madeline raised a foot and regarded her shapeless house-moccasins
+dubiously. In previous winters, both at Circle City and Forty-Mile, she
+had danced many a night away with similar footgear, and there had been
+nothing the matter.
+
+But now--well, if there was anything wrong it was for Malemute Kid to
+know, not her.
+
+But Malemute Kid did know, and he had a good eye for measures; so he
+put on his cap and mittens and went down the hill to pay Mrs.
+Eppingwell a call. Her husband, Clove Eppingwell, was prominent in the
+community as one of the great Government officials.
+
+The Kid had noted her slender little foot one night, at the Governor's
+Ball. And as he also knew her to be as sensible as she was pretty, it
+was no task to ask of her a certain small favor.
+
+On his return, Madeline withdrew for a moment to the inner room. When
+she reappeared Prince was startled.
+
+'By Jove!' he gasped. 'Who'd a' thought it! The little witch! Why my
+sister--' 'Is an English girl,' interrupted Malemute Kid, 'with an
+English foot. This girl comes of a small-footed race. Moccasins just
+broadened her feet healthily, while she did not misshape them by
+running with the dogs in her childhood.' But this explanation failed
+utterly to allay Prince's admiration. Harrington's commercial instinct
+was touched, and as he looked upon the exquisitely turned foot and
+ankle, there ran through his mind the sordid list--'One rifle, one
+blanket, twenty bottles of hooch.' Madeline was the wife of a king, a
+king whose yellow treasure could buy outright a score of fashion's
+puppets; yet in all her life her feet had known no gear save red-tanned
+moosehide. At first she had looked in awe at the tiny white-satin
+slippers; but she had quickly understood the admiration which shone,
+manlike, in the eyes of the men. Her face flushed with pride. For the
+moment she was drunken with her woman's loveliness; then she murmured,
+with increased scorn, 'And one rifle, broke!' So the training went on.
+Every day Malemute Kid led the girl out on long walks devoted to the
+correction of her carriage and the shortening of her stride.
+
+There was little likelihood of her identity being discovered, for Cal
+Galbraith and the rest of the Old-Timers were like lost children among
+the many strangers who had rushed into the land. Besides, the frost of
+the North has a bitter tongue, and the tender women of the South, to
+shield their cheeks from its biting caresses, were prone to the use of
+canvas masks. With faces obscured and bodies lost in squirrel-skin
+parkas, a mother and daughter, meeting on trail, would pass as
+strangers.
+
+The coaching progressed rapidly. At first it had been slow, but later a
+sudden acceleration had manifested itself. This began from the moment
+Madeline tried on the white-satin slippers, and in so doing found
+herself. The pride of her renegade father, apart from any natural
+self-esteem she might possess, at that instant received its birth.
+Hitherto, she had deemed herself a woman of an alien breed, of inferior
+stock, purchased by her lord's favor. Her husband had seemed to her a
+god, who had lifted her, through no essential virtues on her part, to
+his own godlike level. But she had never forgotten, even when Young Cal
+was born, that she was not of his people. As he had been a god, so had
+his womenkind been goddesses. She might have contrasted herself with
+them, but she had never compared.
+
+It might have been that familiarity bred contempt; however, be that as
+it may, she had ultimately come to understand these roving white men,
+and to weigh them.
+
+True, her mind was dark to deliberate analysis, but she yet possessed
+her woman's clarity of vision in such matters. On the night of the
+slippers she had measured the bold, open admiration of her three
+man-friends; and for the first time comparison had suggested itself. It
+was only a foot and an ankle, but--but comparison could not, in the
+nature of things, cease at that point. She judged herself by their
+standards till the divinity of her white sisters was shattered. After
+all, they were only women, and why should she not exalt herself to
+their midst? In doing these things she learned where she lacked and
+with the knowledge of her weakness came her strength. And so mightily
+did she strive that her three trainers often marveled late into the
+night over the eternal mystery of woman.
+
+In this way Thanksgiving Night drew near. At irregular intervals
+Bettles sent word down from Stuart River regarding the welfare of Young
+Cal. The time of their return was approaching. More than once a casual
+caller, hearing dance-music and the rhythmic pulse of feet, entered,
+only to find Harrington scraping away and the other two beating time or
+arguing noisily over a mooted step. Madeline was never in evidence,
+having precipitately fled to the inner room.
+
+On one of these nights Cal Galbraith dropped in. Encouraging news had
+just come down from Stuart River, and Madeline had surpassed
+herself--not in walk alone, and carriage and grace, but in womanly
+roguishness. They had indulged in sharp repartee and she had defended
+herself brilliantly; and then, yielding to the intoxication of the
+moment, and of her own power, she had bullied, and mastered, and
+wheedled, and patronized them with most astonishing success. And
+instinctively, involuntarily, they had bowed, not to her beauty, her
+wisdom, her wit, but to that indefinable something in woman to which
+man yields yet cannot name.
+
+The room was dizzy with sheer delight as she and Prince whirled through
+the last dance of the evening. Harrington was throwing in inconceivable
+flourishes, while Malemute Kid, utterly abandoned, had seized the broom
+and was executing mad gyrations on his own account.
+
+At this instant the door shook with a heavy rap-rap, and their quick
+glances noted the lifting of the latch. But they had survived similar
+situations before. Harrington never broke a note. Madeline shot through
+the waiting door to the inner room. The broom went hurtling under the
+bunk, and by the time Cal Galbraith and Louis Savoy got their heads in,
+Malemute Kid and Prince were in each other's arms, wildly schottisching
+down the room.
+
+As a rule, Indian women do not make a practice of fainting on
+provocation, but Madeline came as near to it as she ever had in her
+life. For an hour she crouched on the floor, listening to the heavy
+voices of the men rumbling up and down in mimic thunder. Like familiar
+chords of childhood melodies, every intonation, every trick of her
+husband's voice swept in upon her, fluttering her heart and weakening
+her knees till she lay half-fainting against the door. It was well she
+could neither see nor hear when he took his departure.
+
+'When do you expect to go back to Circle City?' Malemute Kid asked
+simply.
+
+'Haven't thought much about it,' he replied. 'Don't think till after
+the ice breaks.' 'And Madeline?'
+
+He flushed at the question, and there was a quick droop to his eyes.
+Malemute Kid could have despised him for that, had he known men less.
+As it was, his gorge rose against the wives and daughters who had come
+into the land, and not satisfied with usurping the place of the native
+women, had put unclean thoughts in the heads of the men and made them
+ashamed.
+
+'I guess she's all right,' the Circle City King answered hastily, and
+in an apologetic manner. 'Tom Dixon's got charge of my interests, you
+know, and he sees to it that she has everything she wants.' Malemute
+Kid laid hand upon his arm and hushed him suddenly. They had stepped
+without. Overhead, the aurora, a gorgeous wanton, flaunted miracles of
+color; beneath lay the sleeping town. Far below, a solitary dog gave
+tongue.
+
+The King again began to speak, but the Kid pressed his hand for
+silence. The sound multiplied. Dog after dog took up the strain till
+the full-throated chorus swayed the night.
+
+To him who hears for the first time this weird song, is told the first
+and greatest secret of the Northland; to him who has heard it often, it
+is the solemn knell of lost endeavor. It is the plaint of tortured
+souls, for in it is invested the heritage of the North, the suffering
+of countless generations--the warning and the requiem to the world's
+estrays.
+
+Cal Galbraith shivered slightly as it died away in half-caught sobs.
+The Kid read his thoughts openly, and wandered back with him through
+all the weary days of famine and disease; and with him was also the
+patient Madeline, sharing his pains and perils, never doubting, never
+complaining. His mind's retina vibrated to a score of pictures, stern,
+clear-cut, and the hand of the past drew back with heavy fingers on his
+heart. It was the psychological moment. Malemute Kid was half-tempted
+to play his reserve card and win the game; but the lesson was too mild
+as yet, and he let it pass. The next instant they had gripped hands,
+and the King's beaded moccasins were drawing protests from the outraged
+snow as he crunched down the hill.
+
+Madeline in collapse was another woman to the mischievous creature of
+an hour before, whose laughter had been so infectious and whose
+heightened color and flashing eyes had made her teachers for the while
+forget. Weak and nerveless, she sat in the chair just as she had been
+dropped there by Prince and Harrington.
+
+Malemute Kid frowned. This would never do. When the time of meeting her
+husband came to hand, she must carry things off with high-handed
+imperiousness. It was very necessary she should do it after the manner
+of white women, else the victory would be no victory at all. So he
+talked to her, sternly, without mincing of words, and initiated her
+into the weaknesses of his own sex, till she came to understand what
+simpletons men were after all, and why the word of their women was law.
+
+A few days before Thanksgiving Night, Malemute Kid made another call on
+Mrs. Eppingwell. She promptly overhauled her feminine fripperies, paid
+a protracted visit to the dry-goods department of the P. C. Company,
+and returned with the Kid to make Madeline's acquaintance. After that
+came a period such as the cabin had never seen before, and what with
+cutting, and fitting, and basting, and stitching, and numerous other
+wonderful and unknowable things, the male conspirators were more often
+banished the premises than not. At such times the Opera House opened
+its double storm-doors to them.
+
+So often did they put their heads together, and so deeply did they
+drink to curious toasts, that the loungers scented unknown creeks of
+incalculable richness, and it is known that several checha-quas and at
+least one Old-Timer kept their stampeding packs stored behind the bar,
+ready to hit the trail at a moment's notice.
+
+Mrs. Eppingwell was a woman of capacity; so, when she turned Madeline
+over to her trainers on Thanksgiving Night she was so transformed that
+they were almost afraid of her. Prince wrapped a Hudson Bay blanket
+about her with a mock reverence more real than feigned, while Malemute
+Kid, whose arm she had taken, found it a severe trial to resume his
+wonted mentorship. Harrington, with the list of purchases still running
+through his head, dragged along in the rear, nor opened his mouth once
+all the way down into the town. When they came to the back door of the
+Opera House they took the blanket from Madeline's shoulders and spread
+it on the snow. Slipping out of Prince's moccasins, she stepped upon it
+in new satin slippers. The masquerade was at its height. She hesitated,
+but they jerked open the door and shoved her in. Then they ran around
+to come in by the front entrance.
+
+
+III
+
+'Where is Freda?' the Old-Timers questioned, while the che-cha-quas
+were equally energetic in asking who Freda was. The ballroom buzzed
+with her name.
+
+It was on everybody's lips. Grizzled 'sour-dough boys,' day-laborers at
+the mines but proud of their degree, either patronized the
+spruce-looking tenderfeet and lied eloquently--the 'sour-dough boys'
+being specially created to toy with truth--or gave them savage looks of
+indignation because of their ignorance. Perhaps forty kings of the
+Upper and Lower Countries were on the floor, each deeming himself hot
+on the trail and sturdily backing his judgment with the yellow dust of
+the realm. An assistant was sent to the man at the scales, upon whom
+had fallen the burden of weighing up the sacks, while several of the
+gamblers, with the rules of chance at their finger-ends, made up
+alluring books on the field and favorites.
+
+Which was Freda? Time and again the 'Greek Dancer' was thought to have
+been discovered, but each discovery brought panic to the betting ring
+and a frantic registering of new wagers by those who wished to hedge.
+Malemute Kid took an interest in the hunt, his advent being hailed
+uproariously by the revelers, who knew him to a man. The Kid had a good
+eye for the trick of a step, and ear for the lilt of a voice, and his
+private choice was a marvelous creature who scintillated as the 'Aurora
+Borealis.' But the Greek dancer was too subtle for even his
+penetration. The majority of the gold-hunters seemed to have centered
+their verdict on the 'Russian Princess,' who was the most graceful in
+the room, and hence could be no other than Freda Moloof.
+
+During a quadrille a roar of satisfaction went up. She was discovered.
+At previous balls, in the figure, 'all hands round,' Freda had
+displayed an inimitable step and variation peculiarly her own. As the
+figure was called, the 'Russian Princess' gave the unique rhythm to
+limb and body. A chorus of I-told-you-so's shook the squared
+roof-beams, when lo! it was noticed that 'Aurora Borealis' and another
+masque, the 'Spirit of the Pole,' were performing the same trick
+equally well. And when two twin 'Sun-Dogs' and a 'Frost Queen' followed
+suit, a second assistant was dispatched to the aid of the man at the
+scales.
+
+Bettles came off trail in the midst of the excitement, descending upon
+them in a hurricane of frost. His rimed brows turned to cataracts as he
+whirled about; his mustache, still frozen, seemed gemmed with diamonds
+and turned the light in varicolored rays; while the flying feet slipped
+on the chunks of ice which rattled from his moccasins and German socks.
+A Northland dance is quite an informal affair, the men of the creeks
+and trails having lost whatever fastidiousness they might have at one
+time possessed; and only in the high official circles are conventions
+at all observed. Here, caste carried no significance. Millionaires and
+paupers, dog-drivers and mounted policemen joined hands with 'ladies in
+the center,' and swept around the circle performing most remarkable
+capers. Primitive in their pleasure, boisterous and rough, they
+displayed no rudeness, but rather a crude chivalry more genuine than
+the most polished courtesy.
+
+In his quest for the 'Greek Dancer,' Cal Galbraith managed to get into
+the same set with the 'Russian Princess,' toward whom popular suspicion
+had turned.
+
+But by the time he had guided her through one dance, he was willing not
+only to stake his millions that she was not Freda, but that he had had
+his arm about her waist before. When or where he could not tell, but
+the puzzling sense of familiarity so wrought upon him that he turned
+his attention to the discovery of her identity. Malemute Kid might have
+aided him instead of occasionally taking the Princess for a few turns
+and talking earnestly to her in low tones. But it was Jack Harrington
+who paid the 'Russian Princess' the most assiduous court. Once he drew
+Cal Galbraith aside and hazarded wild guesses as to who she was, and
+explained to him that he was going in to win. That rankled the Circle
+City King, for man is not by nature monogamic, and he forgot both
+Madeline and Freda in the new quest.
+
+It was soon noised about that the 'Russian Princess' was not Freda
+Moloof. Interest deepened. Here was a fresh enigma. They knew Freda
+though they could not find her, but here was somebody they had found
+and did not know. Even the women could not place her, and they knew
+every good dancer in the camp. Many took her for one of the official
+clique, indulging in a silly escapade. Not a few asserted she would
+disappear before the unmasking. Others were equally positive that she
+was the woman-reporter of the Kansas City Star, come to write them up
+at ninety dollars per column. And the men at the scales worked busily.
+
+At one o'clock every couple took to the floor. The unmasking began amid
+laughter and delight, like that of carefree children. There was no end
+of Oh's and Ah's as mask after mask was lifted. The scintillating
+'Aurora Borealis' became the brawny negress whose income from washing
+the community's clothes ran at about five hundred a month. The twin
+'Sun-Dogs' discovered mustaches on their upper lips, and were
+recognized as brother Fraction-Kings of El Dorado. In one of the most
+prominent sets, and the slowest in uncovering, was Cal Galbraith with
+the 'Spirit of the Pole.' Opposite him was Jack Harrington and the
+'Russian Princess.' The rest had discovered themselves, yet the 'Greek
+Dancer' was still missing. All eyes were upon the group. Cal Galbraith,
+in response to their cries, lifted his partner's mask. Freda's
+wonderful face and brilliant eyes flashed out upon them. A roar went
+up, to be squelched suddenly in the new and absorbing mystery of the
+'Russian Princess.' Her face was still hidden, and Jack Harrington was
+struggling with her. The dancers tittered on the tiptoes of expectancy.
+He crushed her dainty costume roughly, and then--and then the revelers
+exploded. The joke was on them. They had danced all night with a
+tabooed native woman.
+
+But those that knew, and they were many, ceased abruptly, and a hush
+fell upon the room.
+
+Cal Galbraith crossed over with great strides, angrily, and spoke to
+Madeline in polyglot Chinook. But she retained her composure,
+apparently oblivious to the fact that she was the cynosure of all eyes,
+and answered him in English. She showed neither fright nor anger, and
+Malemute Kid chuckled at her well-bred equanimity. The King felt
+baffled, defeated; his common Siwash wife had passed beyond him.
+
+'Come!' he said finally. 'Come on home.' 'I beg pardon,' she replied;
+'I have agreed to go to supper with Mr. Harrington. Besides, there's no
+end of dances promised.'
+
+Harrington extended his arm to lead her away. He evinced not the
+slightest disinclination toward showing his back, but Malemute Kid had
+by this time edged in closer. The Circle City King was stunned. Twice
+his hand dropped to his belt, and twice the Kid gathered himself to
+spring; but the retreating couple passed through the supper-room door
+where canned oysters were spread at five dollars the plate.
+
+The crowd sighed audibly, broke up into couples, and followed them.
+Freda pouted and went in with Cal Galbraith; but she had a good heart
+and a sure tongue, and she spoiled his oysters for him. What she said
+is of no importance, but his face went red and white at intervals, and
+he swore repeatedly and savagely at himself.
+
+The supper-room was filled with a pandemonium of voices, which ceased
+suddenly as Cal Galbraith stepped over to his wife's table. Since the
+unmasking considerable weights of dust had been placed as to the
+outcome. Everybody watched with breathless interest.
+
+Harrington's blue eyes were steady, but under the overhanging
+tablecloth a Smith & Wesson balanced on his knee. Madeline looked up,
+casually, with little interest.
+
+'May--may I have the next round dance with you?' the King stuttered.
+
+The wife of the King glanced at her card and inclined her head.
+
+
+
+An Odyssey of the North
+
+The sleds were singing their eternal lament to the creaking of the
+harness and the tinkling bells of the leaders; but the men and dogs
+were tired and made no sound. The trail was heavy with new-fallen snow,
+and they had come far, and the runners, burdened with flint-like
+quarters of frozen moose, clung tenaciously to the unpacked surface and
+held back with a stubbornness almost human.
+
+Darkness was coming on, but there was no camp to pitch that night. The
+snow fell gently through the pulseless air, not in flakes, but in tiny
+frost crystals of delicate design. It was very warm--barely ten below
+zero--and the men did not mind. Meyers and Bettles had raised their ear
+flaps, while Malemute Kid had even taken off his mittens.
+
+The dogs had been fagged out early in the after noon, but they now
+began to show new vigor. Among the more astute there was a certain
+restlessness--an impatience at the restraint of the traces, an
+indecisive quickness of movement, a sniffing of snouts and pricking of
+ears. These became incensed at their more phlegmatic brothers, urging
+them on with numerous sly nips on their hinder quarters. Those, thus
+chidden, also contracted and helped spread the contagion. At last the
+leader of the foremost sled uttered a sharp whine of satisfaction,
+crouching lower in the snow and throwing himself against the collar.
+The rest followed suit.
+
+There was an ingathering of back hands, a tightening of traces; the
+sleds leaped forward, and the men clung to the gee poles, violently
+accelerating the uplift of their feet that they might escape going
+under the runners. The weariness of the day fell from them, and they
+whooped encouragement to the dogs. The animals responded with joyous
+yelps. They were swinging through the gathering darkness at a rattling
+gallop.
+
+'Gee! Gee!' the men cried, each in turn, as their sleds abruptly left
+the main trail, heeling over on single runners like luggers on the wind.
+
+Then came a hundred yards' dash to the lighted parchment window, which
+told its own story of the home cabin, the roaring Yukon stove, and the
+steaming pots of tea. But the home cabin had been invaded. Threescore
+huskies chorused defiance, and as many furry forms precipitated
+themselves upon the dogs which drew the first sled. The door was flung
+open, and a man, clad in the scarlet tunic of the Northwest Police,
+waded knee-deep among the furious brutes, calmly and impartially
+dispensing soothing justice with the butt end of a dog whip. After that
+the men shook hands; and in this wise was Malemute Kid welcomed to his
+own cabin by a stranger.
+
+Stanley Prince, who should have welcomed him, and who was responsible
+for the Yukon stove and hot tea aforementioned, was busy with his
+guests. There were a dozen or so of them, as nondescript a crowd as
+ever served the Queen in the enforcement of her laws or the delivery of
+her mails. They were of many breeds, but their common life had formed
+of them a certain type--a lean and wiry type, with trail-hardened
+muscles, and sun-browned faces, and untroubled souls which gazed
+frankly forth, clear-eyed and steady.
+
+They drove the dogs of the Queen, wrought fear in the hearts of her
+enemies, ate of her meager fare, and were happy. They had seen life,
+and done deeds, and lived romances; but they did not know it.
+
+And they were very much at home. Two of them were sprawled upon
+Malemute Kid's bunk, singing chansons which their French forebears sang
+in the days when first they entered the Northwest land and mated with
+its Indian women. Bettles' bunk had suffered a similar invasion, and
+three or four lusty voyageurs worked their toes among its blankets as
+they listened to the tale of one who had served on the boat brigade
+with Wolseley when he fought his way to Khartoum.
+
+And when he tired, a cowboy told of courts and kings and lords and
+ladies he had seen when Buffalo Bill toured the capitals of Europe. In
+a corner two half-breeds, ancient comrades in a lost campaign, mended
+harnesses and talked of the days when the Northwest flamed with
+insurrection and Louis Riel was king.
+
+Rough jests and rougher jokes went up and down, and great hazards by
+trail and river were spoken of in the light of commonplaces, only to be
+recalled by virtue of some grain of humor or ludicrous happening.
+Prince was led away by these uncrowned heroes who had seen history
+made, who regarded the great and the romantic as but the ordinary and
+the incidental in the routine of life. He passed his precious tobacco
+among them with lavish disregard, and rusty chains of reminiscence were
+loosened, and forgotten odysseys resurrected for his especial benefit.
+
+When conversation dropped and the travelers filled the last pipes and
+lashed their tight-rolled sleeping furs. Prince fell back upon his
+comrade for further information.
+
+'Well, you know what the cowboy is,' Malemute Kid answered, beginning
+to unlace his moccasins; 'and it's not hard to guess the British blood
+in his bed partner. As for the rest, they're all children of the
+coureurs du bois, mingled with God knows how many other bloods. The two
+turning in by the door are the regulation 'breeds' or Boisbrules. That
+lad with the worsted breech scarf--notice his eyebrows and the turn of
+his jaw--shows a Scotchman wept in his mother's smoky tepee. And that
+handsome looking fellow putting the capote under his head is a French
+half-breed--you heard him talking; he doesn't like the two Indians
+turning in next to him. You see, when the 'breeds' rose under the Riel
+the full-bloods kept the peace, and they've not lost much love for one
+another since.' 'But I say, what's that glum-looking fellow by the
+stove? I'll swear he can't talk English. He hasn't opened his mouth all
+night.' 'You're wrong. He knows English well enough. Did you follow his
+eyes when he listened? I did. But he's neither kith nor kin to the
+others. When they talked their own patois you could see he didn't
+understand. I've been wondering myself what he is. Let's find out.'
+'Fire a couple of sticks into the stove!'
+
+Malemute Kid commanded, raising his voice and looking squarely at the
+man in question.
+
+He obeyed at once.
+
+'Had discipline knocked into him somewhere.' Prince commented in a low
+tone.
+
+Malemute Kid nodded, took off his socks, and picked his way among
+recumbent men to the stove. There he hung his damp footgear among a
+score or so of mates.
+
+'When do you expect to get to Dawson?' he asked tentatively.
+
+The man studied him a moment before replying. 'They say seventy-five
+mile. So? Maybe two days.' The very slightest accent was perceptible,
+while there was no awkward hesitancy or groping for words.
+
+'Been in the country before?' 'No.' 'Northwest Territory?' 'Yes.' 'Born
+there?' 'No.'
+
+'Well, where the devil were you born? You're none of these.' Malemute
+Kid swept his hand over the dog drivers, even including the two
+policemen who had turned into Prince's bunk. 'Where did you come from?
+I've seen faces like yours before, though I can't remember just where.'
+'I know you,' he irrelevantly replied, at once turning the drift of
+Malemute Kid's questions.
+
+'Where? Ever see me?' 'No; your partner, him priest, Pastilik, long
+time ago. Him ask me if I see you, Malemute Kid. Him give me grub. I no
+stop long. You hear him speak 'bout me?' 'Oh! you're the fellow that
+traded the otter skins for the dogs?' The man nodded, knocked out his
+pipe, and signified his disinclination for conversation by rolling up
+in his furs. Malemute Kid blew out the slush lamp and crawled under the
+blankets with Prince.
+
+'Well, what is he?' 'Don't know--turned me off, somehow, and then shut
+up like a clam.
+
+'But he's a fellow to whet your curiosity. I've heard of him. All the
+coast wondered about him eight years ago. Sort of mysterious, you know.
+He came down out of the North in the dead of winter, many a thousand
+miles from here, skirting Bering Sea and traveling as though the devil
+were after him. No one ever learned where he came from, but he must
+have come far. He was badly travel-worn when he got food from the
+Swedish missionary on Golovin Bay and asked the way south. We heard of
+all this afterward. Then he abandoned the shore line, heading right
+across Norton Sound. Terrible weather, snowstorms and high winds, but
+he pulled through where a thousand other men would have died, missing
+St. Michaels and making the land at Pastilik. He'd lost all but two
+dogs, and was nearly gone with starvation.
+
+'He was so anxious to go on that Father Roubeau fitted him out with
+grub; but he couldn't let him have any dogs, for he was only waiting my
+arrival, to go on a trip himself. Mr. Ulysses knew too much to start on
+without animals, and fretted around for several days. He had on his
+sled a bunch of beautifully cured otter skins, sea otters, you know,
+worth their weight in gold. There was also at Pastilik an old Shylock
+of a Russian trader, who had dogs to kill. Well, they didn't dicker
+very long, but when the Strange One headed south again, it was in the
+rear of a spanking dog team. Mr. Shylock, by the way, had the otter
+skins. I saw them, and they were magnificent. We figured it up and
+found the dogs brought him at least five hundred apiece. And it wasn't
+as if the Strange One didn't know the value of sea otter; he was an
+Indian of some sort, and what little he talked showed he'd been among
+white men.
+
+'After the ice passed out of the sea, word came up from Nunivak Island
+that he'd gone in there for grub. Then he dropped from sight, and this
+is the first heard of him in eight years. Now where did he come from?
+and what was he doing there? and why did he come from there? He's
+Indian, he's been nobody knows where, and he's had discipline, which is
+unusual for an Indian. Another mystery of the North for you to solve,
+Prince.' 'Thanks awfully, but I've got too many on hand as it is,' he
+replied.
+
+Malemute Kid was already breathing heavily; but the young mining
+engineer gazed straight up through the thick darkness, waiting for the
+strange orgasm which stirred his blood to die away. And when he did
+sleep, his brain worked on, and for the nonce he, too, wandered through
+the white unknown, struggled with the dogs on endless trails, and saw
+men live, and toil, and die like men. The next morning, hours before
+daylight, the dog drivers and policemen pulled out for Dawson. But the
+powers that saw to Her Majesty's interests and ruled the destinies of
+her lesser creatures gave the mailmen little rest, for a week later
+they appeared at Stuart River, heavily burdened with letters for Salt
+Water.
+
+However, their dogs had been replaced by fresh ones; but, then, they
+were dogs.
+
+The men had expected some sort of a layover in which to rest up;
+besides, this Klondike was a new section of the Northland, and they had
+wished to see a little something of the Golden City where dust flowed
+like water and dance halls rang with never-ending revelry. But they
+dried their socks and smoked their evening pipes with much the same
+gusto as on their former visit, though one or two bold spirits
+speculated on desertion and the possibility of crossing the unexplored
+Rockies to the east, and thence, by the Mackenzie Valley, of gaining
+their old stamping grounds in the Chippewyan country.
+
+Two or three even decided to return to their homes by that route when
+their terms of service had expired, and they began to lay plans
+forthwith, looking forward to the hazardous undertaking in much the
+same way a city-bred man would to a day's holiday in the woods.
+
+He of the Otter Skins seemed very restless, though he took little
+interest in the discussion, and at last he drew Malemute Kid to one
+side and talked for some time in low tones.
+
+Prince cast curious eyes in their direction, and the mystery deepened
+when they put on caps and mittens and went outside. When they returned,
+Malemute Kid placed his gold scales on the table, weighed out the
+matter of sixty ounces, and transferred them to the Strange One's sack.
+Then the chief of the dog drivers joined the conclave, and certain
+business was transacted with him.
+
+The next day the gang went on upriver, but He of the Otter Skins took
+several pounds of grub and turned his steps back toward Dawson.
+
+'Didn't know what to make of it,' said Malemute Kid in response to
+Prince's queries; 'but the poor beggar wanted to be quit of the service
+for some reason or other--at least it seemed a most important one to
+him, though he wouldn't let on what. You see, it's just like the army:
+he signed for two years, and the only way to get free was to buy
+himself out. He couldn't desert and then stay here, and he was just
+wild to remain in the country.
+
+'Made up his mind when he got to Dawson, he said; but no one knew him,
+hadn't a cent, and I was the only one he'd spoken two words with. So he
+talked it over with the lieutenant-governor, and made arrangements in
+case he could get the money from me--loan, you know. Said he'd pay back
+in the year, and, if I wanted, would put me onto something rich.
+Never'd seen it, but he knew it was rich.
+
+'And talk! why, when he got me outside he was ready to weep. Begged and
+pleaded; got down in the snow to me till I hauled him out of it.
+Palavered around like a crazy man.
+
+'Swore he's worked to this very end for years and years, and couldn't
+bear to be disappointed now. Asked him what end, but he wouldn't say.
+
+'Said they might keep him on the other half of the trail and he
+wouldn't get to Dawson in two years, and then it would be too late.
+Never saw a man take on so in my life. And when I said I'd let him have
+it, had to yank him out of the snow again. Told him to consider it in
+the light of a grubstake. Think he'd have it? No sir! Swore he'd give
+me all he found, make me rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and all
+such stuff. Now a man who puts his life and time against a grubstake
+ordinarily finds it hard enough to turn over half of what he finds.
+Something behind all this, Prince; just you make a note of it. We'll
+hear of him if he stays in the country--' 'And if he doesn't?' 'Then my
+good nature gets a shock, and I'm sixty some odd ounces out.' The cold
+weather had come on with the long nights, and the sun had begun to play
+his ancient game of peekaboo along the southern snow line ere aught was
+heard of Malemute Kid's grubstake. And then, one bleak morning in early
+January, a heavily laden dog train pulled into his cabin below Stuart
+River. He of the Otter Skins was there, and with him walked a man such
+as the gods have almost forgotten how to fashion. Men never talked of
+luck and pluck and five-hundred-dollar dirt without bringing in the
+name of Axel Gunderson; nor could tales of nerve or strength or daring
+pass up and down the campfire without the summoning of his presence.
+And when the conversation flagged, it blazed anew at mention of the
+woman who shared his fortunes.
+
+As has been noted, in the making of Axel Gunderson the gods had
+remembered their old-time cunning and cast him after the manner of men
+who were born when the world was young. Full seven feet he towered in
+his picturesque costume which marked a king of Eldorado. His chest,
+neck, and limbs were those of a giant. To bear his three hundred pounds
+of bone and muscle, his snowshoes were greater by a generous yard than
+those of other men. Rough-hewn, with rugged brow and massive jaw and
+unflinching eyes of palest blue, his face told the tale of one who knew
+but the law of might. Of the yellow of ripe corn silk, his
+frost-incrusted hair swept like day across the night and fell far down
+his coat of bearskin.
+
+A vague tradition of the sea seemed to cling about him as he swung down
+the narrow trail in advance of the dogs; and he brought the butt of his
+dog whip against Malemute Kid's door as a Norse sea rover, on southern
+foray, might thunder for admittance at the castle gate.
+
+Prince bared his womanly arms and kneaded sour-dough bread, casting, as
+he did so, many a glance at the three guests--three guests the like of
+which might never come under a man's roof in a lifetime. The Strange
+One, whom Malemute Kid had surnamed Ulysses, still fascinated him; but
+his interest chiefly gravitated between Axel Gunderson and Axel
+Gunderson's wife. She felt the day's journey, for she had softened in
+comfortable cabins during the many days since her husband mastered the
+wealth of frozen pay streaks, and she was tired. She rested against his
+great breast like a slender flower against a wall, replying lazily to
+Malemute Kid's good-natured banter, and stirring Prince's blood
+strangely with an occasional sweep of her deep, dark eyes. For Prince
+was a man, and healthy, and had seen few women in many months. And she
+was older than he, and an Indian besides. But she was different from
+all native wives he had met: she had traveled--had been in his country
+among others, he gathered from the conversation; and she knew most of
+the things the women of his own race knew, and much more that it was
+not in the nature of things for them to know. She could make a meal of
+sun-dried fish or a bed in the snow; yet she teased them with
+tantalizing details of many-course dinners, and caused strange internal
+dissensions to arise at the mention of various quondam dishes which
+they had well-nigh forgotten. She knew the ways of the moose, the bear,
+and the little blue fox, and of the wild amphibians of the Northern
+seas; she was skilled in the lore of the woods, and the streams, and
+the tale writ by man and bird and beast upon the delicate snow crust
+was to her an open book; yet Prince caught the appreciative twinkle in
+her eye as she read the Rules of the Camp. These rules had been
+fathered by the Unquenchable Bettles at a time when his blood ran high,
+and were remarkable for the terse simplicity of their humor.
+
+Prince always turned them to the wall before the arrival of ladies; but
+who could suspect that this native wife--Well, it was too late now.
+
+This, then, was the wife of Axel Gunderson, a woman whose name and fame
+had traveled with her husband's, hand in hand, through all the
+Northland. At table, Malemute Kid baited her with the assurance of an
+old friend, and Prince shook off the shyness of first acquaintance and
+joined in. But she held her own in the unequal contest, while her
+husband, slower in wit, ventured naught but applause. And he was very
+proud of her; his every look and action revealed the magnitude of the
+place she occupied in his life. He of the Otter Skins ate in silence,
+forgotten in the merry battle; and long ere the others were done he
+pushed back from the table and went out among the dogs. Yet all too
+soon his fellow travelers drew on their mittens and parkas and followed
+him.
+
+There had been no snow for many days, and the sleds slipped along the
+hardpacked Yukon trail as easily as if it had been glare ice. Ulysses
+led the first sled; with the second came Prince and Axel Gunderson's
+wife; while Malemute Kid and the yellow-haired giant brought up the
+third.
+
+'It's only a hunch, Kid,' he said, 'but I think it's straight. He's
+never been there, but he tells a good story, and shows a map I heard of
+when I was in the Kootenay country years ago. I'd like to have you go
+along; but he's a strange one, and swore point-blank to throw it up if
+anyone was brought in. But when I come back you'll get first tip, and
+I'll stake you next to me, and give you a half share in the town site
+besides.' 'No! no!' he cried, as the other strove to interrupt. 'I'm
+running this, and before I'm done it'll need two heads.
+
+'If it's all right, why, it'll be a second Cripple Creek, man; do you
+hear?--a second Cripple Creek! It's quartz, you know, not placer; and
+if we work it right we'll corral the whole thing--millions upon
+millions. I've heard of the place before, and so have you. We'll build
+a town--thousands of workmen--good waterways--steamship lines--big
+carrying trade--light-draught steamers for head reaches--survey a
+railroad, perhaps--sawmills--electric-light plant--do our own
+banking--commercial company--syndicate--Say! Just you hold your hush
+till I get back!' The sleds came to a halt where the trail crossed the
+mouth of Stuart River. An unbroken sea of frost, its wide expanse
+stretched away into the unknown east.
+
+The snowshoes were withdrawn from the lashings of the sleds. Axel
+Gunderson shook hands and stepped to the fore, his great webbed shoes
+sinking a fair half yard into the feathery surface and packing the snow
+so the dogs should not wallow. His wife fell in behind the last sled,
+betraying long practice in the art of handling the awkward footgear.
+The stillness was broken with cheery farewells; the dogs whined; and He
+of the Otter Skins talked with his whip to a recalcitrant wheeler.
+
+An hour later the train had taken on the likeness of a black pencil
+crawling in a long, straight line across a mighty sheet of foolscap.
+
+
+II
+
+One night, many weeks later, Malemute Kid and Prince fell to solving
+chess problems from the torn page of an ancient magazine. The Kid had
+just returned from his Bonanza properties and was resting up
+preparatory to a long moose hunt.
+
+Prince, too, had been on creek and trail nearly all winter, and had
+grown hungry for a blissful week of cabin life.
+
+'Interpose the black knight, and force the king. No, that won't do.
+See, the next move-'
+
+'Why advance the pawn two squares? Bound to take it in transit, and
+with the bishop out of the way-' 'But hold on! That leaves a hole,
+and-' 'No; it's protected. Go ahead! You'll see it works.' It was very
+interesting. Somebody knocked at the door a second time before Malemute
+Kid said, 'Come in.' The door swung open. Something staggered in.
+
+Prince caught one square look and sprang to his feet. The horror in his
+eyes caused Malemute Kid to whirl about; and he, too, was startled,
+though he had seen bad things before. The thing tottered blindly toward
+them. Prince edged away till he reached the nail from which hung his
+Smith & Wesson.
+
+'My God! what is it?' he whispered to Malemute Kid.
+
+'Don't know. Looks like a case of freezing and no grub,' replied the
+Kid, sliding away in the opposite direction. 'Watch out! It may be
+mad,' he warned, coming back from closing the door.
+
+The thing advanced to the table. The bright flame of the slush lamp
+caught its eye. It was amused, and gave voice to eldritch cackles which
+betokened mirth.
+
+Then, suddenly, he--for it was a man--swayed back, with a hitch to his
+skin trousers, and began to sing a chantey, such as men lift when they
+swing around the capstan circle and the sea snorts in their ears:
+Yan-kee ship come down de ri-ib-er, Pull! my bully boys! Pull! D'yeh
+want--to know de captain ru-uns her? Pull! my bully boys! Pull!
+Jon-a-than Jones ob South Caho-li-in-a, Pull! my bully. He broke off
+abruptly, tottered with a wolfish snarl to the meat shelf, and before
+they could intercept was tearing with his teeth at a chunk of raw
+bacon. The struggle was fierce between him and Malemute Kid; but his
+mad strength left him as suddenly as it had come, and he weakly
+surrendered the spoil. Between them they got him upon a stool, where he
+sprawled with half his body across the table.
+
+A small dose of whiskey strengthened him, so that he could dip a spoon
+into the sugar caddy which Malemute Kid placed before him. After his
+appetite had been somewhat cloyed, Prince, shuddering as he did so,
+passed him a mug of weak beef tea.
+
+The creature's eyes were alight with a somber frenzy, which blazed and
+waned with every mouthful. There was very little skin to the face. The
+face, for that matter, sunken and emaciated, bore little likeness to
+human countenance.
+
+Frost after frost had bitten deeply, each depositing its stratum of
+scab upon the half-healed scar that went before. This dry, hard surface
+was of a bloody-black color, serrated by grievous cracks wherein the
+raw red flesh peeped forth. His skin garments were dirty and in
+tatters, and the fur of one side was singed and burned away, showing
+where he had lain upon his fire.
+
+Malemute Kid pointed to where the sun-tanned hide had been cut away,
+strip by strip--the grim signature of famine.
+
+'Who--are--you?' slowly and distinctly enunciated the Kid.
+
+The man paid no heed.
+
+'Where do you come from?' 'Yan-kee ship come down de ri-ib-er,' was the
+quavering response.
+
+'Don't doubt the beggar came down the river,' the Kid said, shaking him
+in an endeavor to start a more lucid flow of talk.
+
+But the man shrieked at the contact, clapping a hand to his side in
+evident pain. He rose slowly to his feet, half leaning on the table.
+
+'She laughed at me--so--with the hate in her eye; and
+she--would--not--come.' His voice died away, and he was sinking back
+when Malemute Kid gripped him by the wrist and shouted, 'Who? Who would
+not come?' 'She, Unga. She laughed, and struck at me, so, and so. And
+then-' 'Yes?'
+
+'And then--' 'And then what?' 'And then he lay very still in the snow a
+long time. He is-still in--the--snow.' The two men looked at each other
+helplessly.
+
+'Who is in the snow?' 'She, Unga. She looked at me with the hate in her
+eye, and then--'
+
+'Yes, yes.' 'And then she took the knife, so; and once, twice--she was
+weak. I traveled very slow. And there is much gold in that place, very
+much gold.' 'Where is Unga?' For all Malemute Kid knew, she might be
+dying a mile away. He shook the man savagely, repeating again and
+again, 'Where is Unga? Who is Unga?' 'She--is--in--the--snow.' 'Go on!'
+The Kid was pressing his wrist cruelly.
+
+'So--I--would--be--in--the snow--but--I--had--a--debt--to--pay.
+It--was--heavy--I--had--a-debt--to--pay--a--debt--to--pay I--had-' The
+faltering monosyllables ceased as he fumbled in his pouch and drew
+forth a buckskin sack. 'A--debt--to--pay--five--pounds--of--gold-grub--
+stake--Mal--e--mute--Kid--I--y--' The exhausted head dropped upon the
+table; nor could Malemute Kid rouse it again.
+
+'It's Ulysses,' he said quietly, tossing the bag of dust on the table.
+'Guess it's all day with Axel Gunderson and the woman. Come on, let's
+get him between the blankets. He's Indian; he'll pull through and tell
+a tale besides.' As they cut his garments from him, near his right
+breast could be seen two unhealed, hard-lipped knife thrusts.
+
+
+III
+
+'I will talk of the things which were in my own way; but you will
+understand. I will begin at the beginning, and tell of myself and the
+woman, and, after that, of the man.' He of the Otter Skins drew over to
+the stove as do men who have been deprived of fire and are afraid the
+Promethean gift may vanish at any moment. Malemute Kid picked up the
+slush lamp and placed it so its light might fall upon the face of the
+narrator. Prince slid his body over the edge of the bunk and joined
+them.
+
+'I am Naass, a chief, and the son of a chief, born between a sunset and
+a rising, on the dark seas, in my father's oomiak. All of a night the
+men toiled at the paddles, and the women cast out the waves which threw
+in upon us, and we fought with the storm. The salt spray froze upon my
+mother's breast till her breath passed with the passing of the tide.
+But I--I raised my voice with the wind and the storm, and lived.
+
+'We dwelt in Akatan--' 'Where?' asked Malemute Kid.
+
+'Akatan, which is in the Aleutians; Akatan, beyond Chignik, beyond
+Kardalak, beyond Unimak. As I say, we dwelt in Akatan, which lies in
+the midst of the sea on the edge of the world. We farmed the salt seas
+for the fish, the seal, and the otter; and our homes shouldered about
+one another on the rocky strip between the rim of the forest and the
+yellow beach where our kayaks lay. We were not many, and the world was
+very small. There were strange lands to the east--islands like Akatan;
+so we thought all the world was islands and did not mind.
+
+'I was different from my people. In the sands of the beach were the
+crooked timbers and wave-warped planks of a boat such as my people
+never built; and I remember on the point of the island which overlooked
+the ocean three ways there stood a pine tree which never grew there,
+smooth and straight and tall. It is said the two men came to that spot,
+turn about, through many days, and watched with the passing of the
+light. These two men came from out of the sea in the boat which lay in
+pieces on the beach. And they were white like you, and weak as the
+little children when the seal have gone away and the hunters come home
+empty. I know of these things from the old men and the old women, who
+got them from their fathers and mothers before them. These strange
+white men did not take kindly to our ways at first, but they grew
+strong, what of the fish and the oil, and fierce. And they built them
+each his own house, and took the pick of our women, and in time
+children came. Thus he was born who was to become the father of my
+father's father.
+
+'As I said, I was different from my people, for I carried the strong,
+strange blood of this white man who came out of the sea. It is said we
+had other laws in the days before these men; but they were fierce and
+quarrelsome, and fought with our men till there were no more left who
+dared to fight. Then they made themselves chiefs, and took away our old
+laws, and gave us new ones, insomuch that the man was the son of his
+father, and not his mother, as our way had been. They also ruled that
+the son, first-born, should have all things which were his father's
+before him, and that the brothers and sisters should shift for
+themselves. And they gave us other laws. They showed us new ways in the
+catching of fish and the killing of bear which were thick in the woods;
+and they taught us to lay by bigger stores for the time of famine. And
+these things were good.
+
+'But when they had become chiefs, and there were no more men to face
+their anger, they fought, these strange white men, each with the other.
+And the one whose blood I carry drove his seal spear the length of an
+arm through the other's body. Their children took up the fight, and
+their children's children; and there was great hatred between them, and
+black doings, even to my time, so that in each family but one lived to
+pass down the blood of them that went before. Of my blood I was alone;
+of the other man's there was but a girl. Unga, who lived with her
+mother. Her father and my father did not come back from the fishing one
+night; but afterward they washed up to the beach on the big tides, and
+they held very close to each other.
+
+'The people wondered, because of the hatred between the houses, and the
+old men shook their heads and said the fight would go on when children
+were born to her and children to me. They told me this as a boy, till I
+came to believe, and to look upon Unga as a foe, who was to be the
+mother of children which were to fight with mine. I thought of these
+things day by day, and when I grew to a stripling I came to ask why
+this should be so.
+
+'And they answered, "We do not know, but that in such way your fathers
+did." And I marveled that those which were to come should fight the
+battles of those that were gone, and in it I could see no right. But
+the people said it must be, and I was only a stripling.
+
+'And they said I must hurry, that my blood might be the older and grow
+strong before hers. This was easy, for I was head man, and the people
+looked up to me because of the deeds and the laws of my fathers, and
+the wealth which was mine. Any maiden would come to me, but I found
+none to my liking. And the old men and the mothers of maidens told me
+to hurry, for even then were the hunters bidding high to the mother of
+Unga; and should her children grow strong before mine, mine would
+surely die.
+
+'Nor did I find a maiden till one night coming back from the fishing.
+The sunlight was lying, so, low and full in the eyes, the wind free,
+and the kayacks racing with the white seas. Of a sudden the kayak of
+Unga came driving past me, and she looked upon me, so, with her black
+hair flying like a cloud of night and the spray wet on her cheek. As I
+say, the sunlight was full in the eyes, and I was a stripling; but
+somehow it was all clear, and I knew it to be the call of kind to kind.
+
+'As she whipped ahead she looked back within the space of two
+strokes--looked as only the woman Unga could look--and again I knew it
+as the call of kind. The people shouted as we ripped past the lazy
+oomiaks and left them far behind. But she was quick at the paddle, and
+my heart was like the belly of a sail, and I did not gain. The wind
+freshened, the sea whitened, and, leaping like the seals on the
+windward breech, we roared down the golden pathway of the sun.' Naass
+was crouched half out of his stool, in the attitude of one driving a
+paddle, as he ran the race anew. Somewhere across the stove he beheld
+the tossing kayak and the flying hair of Unga. The voice of the wind
+was in his ears, and its salt beat fresh upon his nostrils.
+
+'But she made the shore, and ran up the sand, laughing, to the house of
+her mother. And a great thought came to me that night--a thought worthy
+of him that was chief over all the people of Akatan. So, when the moon
+was up, I went down to the house of her mother, and looked upon the
+goods of Yash-Noosh, which were piled by the door--the goods of
+Yash-Noosh, a strong hunter who had it in mind to be the father of the
+children of Unga. Other young men had piled their goods there and taken
+them away again; and each young man had made a pile greater than the
+one before.
+
+'And I laughed to the moon and the stars, and went to my own house
+where my wealth was stored. And many trips I made, till my pile was
+greater by the fingers of one hand than the pile of Yash-Noosh. There
+were fish, dried in the sun and smoked; and forty hides of the hair
+seal, and half as many of the fur, and each hide was tied at the mouth
+and big bellied with oil; and ten skins of bear which I killed in the
+woods when they came out in the spring. And there were beads and
+blankets and scarlet cloths, such as I got in trade from the people who
+lived to the east, and who got them in trade from the people who lived
+still beyond in the east.
+
+'And I looked upon the pile of Yash-Noosh and laughed, for I was head
+man in Akatan, and my wealth was greater than the wealth of all my
+young men, and my fathers had done deeds, and given laws, and put their
+names for all time in the mouths of the people.
+
+'So, when the morning came, I went down to the beach, casting out of
+the corner of my eye at the house of the mother of Unga. My offer yet
+stood untouched.
+
+'And the women smiled, and said sly things one to the other. I
+wondered, for never had such a price been offered; and that night I
+added more to the pile, and put beside it a kayak of well-tanned skins
+which never yet had swam in the sea. But in the day it was yet there,
+open to the laughter of all men. The mother of Unga was crafty, and I
+grew angry at the shame in which I stood before my people. So that
+night I added till it became a great pile, and I hauled up my oomiak,
+which was of the value of twenty kayaks. And in the morning there was
+no pile.
+
+'Then made I preparation for the wedding, and the people that lived
+even to the east came for the food of the feast and the potlatch token.
+Unga was older than I by the age of four suns in the way we reckoned
+the years. I was only a stripling; but then I was a chief, and the son
+of a chief, and it did not matter.
+
+'But a ship shoved her sails above the floor of the ocean, and grew
+larger with the breath of the wind. From her scuppers she ran clear
+water, and the men were in haste and worked hard at the pumps. On the
+bow stood a mighty man, watching the depth of the water and giving
+commands with a voice of thunder. His eyes were of the pale blue of the
+deep waters, and his head was maned like that of a sea lion. And his
+hair was yellow, like the straw of a southern harvest or the manila
+rope yarns which sailormen plait.
+
+'Of late years we had seen ships from afar, but this was the first to
+come to the beach of Akatan. The feast was broken, and the women and
+children fled to the houses, while we men strung our bows and waited
+with spears in hand. But when the ship's forefoot smelled the beach the
+strange men took no notice of us, being busy with their own work. With
+the falling of the tide they careened the schooner and patched a great
+hole in her bottom. So the women crept back, and the feast went on.
+
+'When the tide rose, the sea wanderers kedged the schooner to deep
+water and then came among us. They bore presents and were friendly; so
+I made room for them, and out of the largeness of my heart gave them
+tokens such as I gave all the guests, for it was my wedding day, and I
+was head man in Akatan. And he with the mane of the sea lion was there,
+so tall and strong that one looked to see the earth shake with the fall
+of his feet. He looked much and straight at Unga, with his arms folded,
+so, and stayed till the sun went away and the stars came out. Then he
+went down to his ship. After that I took Unga by the hand and led her
+to my own house. And there was singing and great laughter, and the
+women said sly things, after the manner of women at such times. But we
+did not care. Then the people left us alone and went home.
+
+'The last noise had not died away when the chief of the sea wanderers
+came in by the door. And he had with him black bottles, from which we
+drank and made merry. You see, I was only a stripling, and had lived
+all my days on the edge of the world. So my blood became as fire, and
+my heart as light as the froth that flies from the surf to the cliff.
+Unga sat silent among the skins in the corner, her eyes wide, for she
+seemed to fear. And he with the mane of the sea lion looked upon her
+straight and long. Then his men came in with bundles of goods, and he
+piled before me wealth such as was not in all Akatan. There were guns,
+both large and small, and powder and shot and shell, and bright axes
+and knives of steel, and cunning tools, and strange things the like of
+which I had never seen. When he showed me by sign that it was all mine,
+I thought him a great man to be so free; but he showed me also that
+Unga was to go away with him in his ship.
+
+'Do you understand?--that Unga was to go away with him in his ship. The
+blood of my fathers flamed hot on the sudden, and I made to drive him
+through with my spear. But the spirit of the bottles had stolen the
+life from my arm, and he took me by the neck, so, and knocked my head
+against the wall of the house. And I was made weak like a newborn
+child, and my legs would no more stand under me.
+
+'Unga screamed, and she laid hold of the things of the house with her
+hands, till they fell all about us as he dragged her to the door. Then
+he took her in his great arms, and when she tore at his yellow hair
+laughed with a sound like that of the big bull seal in the rut.
+
+'I crawled to the beach and called upon my people, but they were
+afraid. Only Yash-Noosh was a man, and they struck him on the head with
+an oar, till he lay with his face in the sand and did not move. And
+they raised the sails to the sound of their songs, and the ship went
+away on the wind.
+
+'The people said it was good, for there would be no more war of the
+bloods in Akatan; but I said never a word, waiting till the time of the
+full moon, when I put fish and oil in my kayak and went away to the
+east. I saw many islands and many people, and I, who had lived on the
+edge, saw that the world was very large. I talked by signs; but they
+had not seen a schooner nor a man with the mane of a sea lion, and they
+pointed always to the east. And I slept in queer places, and ate odd
+things, and met strange faces. Many laughed, for they thought me light
+of head; but sometimes old men turned my face to the light and blessed
+me, and the eyes of the young women grew soft as they asked me of the
+strange ship, and Unga, and the men of the sea.
+
+'And in this manner, through rough seas and great storms, I came to
+Unalaska. There were two schooners there, but neither was the one I
+sought. So I passed on to the east, with the world growing ever larger,
+and in the island of Unamok there was no word of the ship, nor in
+Kadiak, nor in Atognak. And so I came one day to a rocky land, where
+men dug great holes in the mountain. And there was a schooner, but not
+my schooner, and men loaded upon it the rocks which they dug. This I
+thought childish, for all the world was made of rocks; but they gave me
+food and set me to work. When the schooner was deep in the water, the
+captain gave me money and told me to go; but I asked which way he went,
+and he pointed south. I made signs that I would go with him, and he
+laughed at first, but then, being short of men, took me to help work
+the ship. So I came to talk after their manner, and to heave on ropes,
+and to reef the stiff sails in sudden squalls, and to take my turn at
+the wheel. But it was not strange, for the blood of my fathers was the
+blood of the men of the sea.
+
+'I had thought it an easy task to find him I sought, once I got among
+his own people; and when we raised the land one day, and passed between
+a gateway of the sea to a port, I looked for perhaps as many schooners
+as there were fingers to my hands. But the ships lay against the
+wharves for miles, packed like so many little fish; and when I went
+among them to ask for a man with the mane of a sea lion, they laughed,
+and answered me in the tongues of many peoples. And I found that they
+hailed from the uttermost parts of the earth.
+
+'And I went into the city to look upon the face of every man. But they
+were like the cod when they run thick on the banks, and I could not
+count them. And the noise smote upon me till I could not hear, and my
+head was dizzy with much movement. So I went on and on, through the
+lands which sang in the warm sunshine; where the harvests lay rich on
+the plains; and where great cities were fat with men that lived like
+women, with false words in their mouths and their hearts black with the
+lust of gold. And all the while my people of Akatan hunted and fished,
+and were happy in the thought that the world was small.
+
+'But the look in the eyes of Unga coming home from the fishing was with
+me always, and I knew I would find her when the time was met. She
+walked down quiet lanes in the dusk of the evening, or led me chases
+across the thick fields wet with the morning dew, and there was a
+promise in her eyes such as only the woman Unga could give.
+
+'So I wandered through a thousand cities. Some were gentle and gave me
+food, and others laughed, and still others cursed; but I kept my tongue
+between my teeth, and went strange ways and saw strange sights.
+Sometimes I, who was a chief and the son of a chief, toiled for
+men--men rough of speech and hard as iron, who wrung gold from the
+sweat and sorrow of their fellow men. Yet no word did I get of my quest
+till I came back to the sea like a homing seal to the rookeries.
+
+'But this was at another port, in another country which lay to the
+north. And there I heard dim tales of the yellow-haired sea wanderer,
+and I learned that he was a hunter of seals, and that even then he was
+abroad on the ocean.
+
+'So I shipped on a seal schooner with the lazy Siwashes, and followed
+his trackless trail to the north where the hunt was then warm. And we
+were away weary months, and spoke many of the fleet, and heard much of
+the wild doings of him I sought; but never once did we raise him above
+the sea. We went north, even to the Pribilofs, and killed the seals in
+herds on the beach, and brought their warm bodies aboard till our
+scuppers ran grease and blood and no man could stand upon the deck.
+Then were we chased by a ship of slow steam, which fired upon us with
+great guns. But we put sail till the sea was over our decks and washed
+them clean, and lost ourselves in a fog.
+
+'It is said, at this time, while we fled with fear at our hearts, that
+the yellow-haired sea wanderer put in to the Pribilofs, right to the
+factory, and while the part of his men held the servants of the
+company, the rest loaded ten thousand green skins from the salt houses.
+I say it is said, but I believe; for in the voyages I made on the coast
+with never a meeting the northern seas rang with his wildness and
+daring, till the three nations which have lands there sought him with
+their ships.
+
+'And I heard of Unga, for the captains sang loud in her praise, and she
+was always with him. She had learned the ways of his people, they said,
+and was happy. But I knew better--knew that her heart harked back to
+her own people by the yellow beach of Akatan.
+
+'So, after a long time, I went back to the port which is by a gateway
+of the sea, and there I learned that he had gone across the girth of
+the great ocean to hunt for the seal to the east of the warm land which
+runs south from the Russian seas.
+
+'And I, who was become a sailorman, shipped with men of his own race,
+and went after him in the hunt of the seal. And there were few ships
+off that new land; but we hung on the flank of the seal pack and
+harried it north through all the spring of the year. And when the cows
+were heavy with pup and crossed the Russian line, our men grumbled and
+were afraid. For there was much fog, and every day men were lost in the
+boats. They would not work, so the captain turned the ship back toward
+the way it came. But I knew the yellow-haired sea wanderer was
+unafraid, and would hang by the pack, even to the Russian Isles, where
+few men go. So I took a boat, in the black of night, when the lookout
+dozed on the fo'c'slehead, and went alone to the warm, long land. And I
+journeyed south to meet the men by Yeddo Bay, who are wild and
+unafraid. And the Yoshiwara girls were small, and bright like steel,
+and good to look upon; but I could not stop, for I knew that Unga
+rolled on the tossing floor by the rookeries of the north.
+
+'The men by Yeddo Bay had met from the ends of the earth, and had
+neither gods nor homes, sailing under the flag of the Japanese. And
+with them I went to the rich beaches of Copper Island, where our salt
+piles became high with skins.
+
+'And in that silent sea we saw no man till we were ready to come away.
+Then one day the fog lifted on the edge of a heavy wind, and there
+jammed down upon us a schooner, with close in her wake the cloudy
+funnels of a Russian man-of-war. We fled away on the beam of the wind,
+with the schooner jamming still closer and plunging ahead three feet to
+our two. And upon her poop was the man with the mane of the sea lion,
+pressing the rails under with the canvas and laughing in his strength
+of life. And Unga was there--I knew her on the moment--but he sent her
+below when the cannons began to talk across the sea.
+
+As I say, with three feet to our two, till we saw the rudder lift green
+at every jump--and I swinging on to the wheel and cursing, with my back
+to the Russian shot. For we knew he had it in mind to run before us,
+that he might get away while we were caught. And they knocked our masts
+out of us till we dragged into the wind like a wounded gull; but he
+went on over the edge of the sky line--he and Unga.
+
+'What could we? The fresh hides spoke for themselves. So they took us
+to a Russian port, and after that to a lone country, where they set us
+to work in the mines to dig salt. And some died, and--and some did not
+die.' Naass swept the blanket from his shoulders, disclosing the
+gnarled and twisted flesh, marked with the unmistakable striations of
+the knout. Prince hastily covered him, for it was not nice to look upon.
+
+'We were there a weary time and sometimes men got away to the south,
+but they always came back. So, when we who hailed from Yeddo Bay rose
+in the night and took the guns from the guards, we went to the north.
+And the land was very large, with plains, soggy with water, and great
+forests. And the cold came, with much snow on the ground, and no man
+knew the way. Weary months we journeyed through the endless forest--I
+do not remember, now, for there was little food and often we lay down
+to die. But at last we came to the cold sea, and but three were left to
+look upon it. One had shipped from Yeddo as captain, and he knew in his
+head the lay of the great lands, and of the place where men may cross
+from one to the other on the ice. And he led us--I do not know, it was
+so long--till there were but two. When we came to that place we found
+five of the strange people which live in that country, and they had
+dogs and skins, and we were very poor. We fought in the snow till they
+died, and the captain died, and the dogs and skins were mine. Then I
+crossed on the ice, which was broken, and once I drifted till a gale
+from the west put me upon the shore. And after that, Golovin Bay,
+Pastilik, and the priest. Then south, south, to the warm sunlands where
+first I wandered.
+
+'But the sea was no longer fruitful, and those who went upon it after
+the seal went to little profit and great risk. The fleets scattered,
+and the captains and the men had no word of those I sought. So I turned
+away from the ocean which never rests, and went among the lands, where
+the trees, the houses, and the mountains sit always in one place and do
+not move. I journeyed far, and came to learn many things, even to the
+way of reading and writing from books. It was well I should do this,
+for it came upon me that Unga must know these things, and that someday,
+when the time was met--we--you understand, when the time was met.
+
+'So I drifted, like those little fish which raise a sail to the wind
+but cannot steer. But my eyes and my ears were open always, and I went
+among men who traveled much, for I knew they had but to see those I
+sought to remember. At last there came a man, fresh from the mountains,
+with pieces of rock in which the free gold stood to the size of peas,
+and he had heard, he had met, he knew them. They were rich, he said,
+and lived in the place where they drew the gold from the ground.
+
+'It was in a wild country, and very far away; but in time I came to the
+camp, hidden between the mountains, where men worked night and day, out
+of the sight of the sun. Yet the time was not come. I listened to the
+talk of the people. He had gone away--they had gone away--to England,
+it was said, in the matter of bringing men with much money together to
+form companies. I saw the house they had lived in; more like a palace,
+such as one sees in the old countries. In the nighttime I crept in
+through a window that I might see in what manner he treated her. I went
+from room to room, and in such way thought kings and queens must live,
+it was all so very good. And they all said he treated her like a queen,
+and many marveled as to what breed of woman she was for there was other
+blood in her veins, and she was different from the women of Akatan, and
+no one knew her for what she was. Aye, she was a queen; but I was a
+chief, and the son of a chief, and I had paid for her an untold price
+of skin and boat and bead.
+
+'But why so many words? I was a sailorman, and knew the way of the
+ships on the seas. I followed to England, and then to other countries.
+Sometimes I heard of them by word of mouth, sometimes I read of them in
+the papers; yet never once could I come by them, for they had much
+money, and traveled fast, while I was a poor man. Then came trouble
+upon them, and their wealth slipped away one day like a curl of smoke.
+The papers were full of it at the time; but after that nothing was
+said, and I knew they had gone back where more gold could be got from
+the ground.
+
+'They had dropped out of the world, being now poor, and so I wandered
+from camp to camp, even north to the Kootenay country, where I picked
+up the cold scent. They had come and gone, some said this way, and some
+that, and still others that they had gone to the country of the Yukon.
+And I went this way, and I went that, ever journeying from place to
+place, till it seemed I must grow weary of the world which was so
+large. But in the Kootenay I traveled a bad trail, and a long trail,
+with a breed of the Northwest, who saw fit to die when the famine
+pinched. He had been to the Yukon by an unknown way over the mountains,
+and when he knew his time was near gave me the map and the secret of a
+place where he swore by his gods there was much gold.
+
+'After that all the world began to flock into the north. I was a poor
+man; I sold myself to be a driver of dogs. The rest you know. I met him
+and her in Dawson.
+
+'She did not know me, for I was only a stripling, and her life had been
+large, so she had no time to remember the one who had paid for her an
+untold price.
+
+'So? You bought me from my term of service. I went back to bring things
+about in my own way, for I had waited long, and now that I had my hand
+upon him was in no hurry.
+
+'As I say, I had it in mind to do my own way, for I read back in my
+life, through all I had seen and suffered, and remembered the cold and
+hunger of the endless forest by the Russian seas. As you know, I led
+him into the east--him and Unga--into the east where many have gone and
+few returned. I led them to the spot where the bones and the curses of
+men lie with the gold which they may not have.
+
+'The way was long and the trail unpacked. Our dogs were many and ate
+much; nor could our sleds carry till the break of spring. We must come
+back before the river ran free. So here and there we cached grub, that
+our sleds might be lightened and there be no chance of famine on the
+back trip. At the McQuestion there were three men, and near them we
+built a cache, as also did we at the Mayo, where was a hunting camp of
+a dozen Pellys which had crossed the divide from the south.
+
+'After that, as we went on into the east, we saw no men; only the
+sleeping river, the moveless forest, and the White Silence of the
+North. As I say, the way was long and the trail unpacked. Sometimes, in
+a day's toil, we made no more than eight miles, or ten, and at night we
+slept like dead men. And never once did they dream that I was Naass,
+head man of Akatan, the righter of wrongs.
+
+'We now made smaller caches, and in the nighttime it was a small matter
+to go back on the trail we had broken and change them in such way that
+one might deem the wolverines the thieves. Again there be places where
+there is a fall to the river, and the water is unruly, and the ice
+makes above and is eaten away beneath.
+
+'In such a spot the sled I drove broke through, and the dogs; and to
+him and Unga it was ill luck, but no more. And there was much grub on
+that sled, and the dogs the strongest.
+
+'But he laughed, for he was strong of life, and gave the dogs that were
+left little grub till we cut them from the harnesses one by one and fed
+them to their mates. We would go home light, he said, traveling and
+eating from cache to cache, with neither dogs nor sleds; which was
+true, for our grub was very short, and the last dog died in the traces
+the night we came to the gold and the bones and the curses of men.
+
+'To reach that place--and the map spoke true--in the heart of the great
+mountains, we cut ice steps against the wall of a divide. One looked
+for a valley beyond, but there was no valley; the snow spread away,
+level as the great harvest plains, and here and there about us mighty
+mountains shoved their white heads among the stars. And midway on that
+strange plain which should have been a valley the earth and the snow
+fell away, straight down toward the heart of the world.
+
+'Had we not been sailormen our heads would have swung round with the
+sight, but we stood on the dizzy edge that we might see a way to get
+down. And on one side, and one side only, the wall had fallen away till
+it was like the slope of the decks in a topsail breeze. I do not know
+why this thing should be so, but it was so. "It is the mouth of hell,"
+he said; "let us go down." And we went down.
+
+'And on the bottom there was a cabin, built by some man, of logs which
+he had cast down from above. It was a very old cabin, for men had died
+there alone at different times, and on pieces of birch bark which were
+there we read their last words and their curses.
+
+'One had died of scurvy; another's partner had robbed him of his last
+grub and powder and stolen away; a third had been mauled by a baldface
+grizzly; a fourth had hunted for game and starved--and so it went, and
+they had been loath to leave the gold, and had died by the side of it
+in one way or another. And the worthless gold they had gathered
+yellowed the floor of the cabin like in a dream.
+
+'But his soul was steady, and his head clear, this man I had led thus
+far. "We have nothing to eat," he said, "and we will only look upon
+this gold, and see whence it comes and how much there be. Then we will
+go away quick, before it gets into our eyes and steals away our
+judgment. And in this way we may return in the end, with more grub, and
+possess it all." So we looked upon the great vein, which cut the wall
+of the pit as a true vein should, and we measured it, and traced it
+from above and below, and drove the stakes of the claims and blazed the
+trees in token of our rights. Then, our knees shaking with lack of
+food, and a sickness in our bellies, and our hearts chugging close to
+our mouths, we climbed the mighty wall for the last time and turned our
+faces to the back trip.
+
+'The last stretch we dragged Unga between us, and we fell often, but in
+the end we made the cache. And lo, there was no grub. It was well done,
+for he thought it the wolverines, and damned them and his gods in one
+breath. But Unga was brave, and smiled, and put her hand in his, till I
+turned away that I might hold myself. "We will rest by the fire," she
+said, "till morning, and we will gather strength from our moccasins."
+So we cut the tops of our moccasins in strips, and boiled them half of
+the night, that we might chew them and swallow them. And in the morning
+we talked of our chance. The next cache was five days' journey; we
+could not make it. We must find game.
+
+'"We will go forth and hunt," he said.
+
+'"Yes," said I, "we will go forth and hunt." 'And he ruled that Unga
+stay by the fire and save her strength. And we went forth, he in quest
+of the moose and I to the cache I had changed. But I ate little, so
+they might not see in me much strength. And in the night he fell many
+times as he drew into camp. And I, too, made to suffer great weakness,
+stumbling over my snowshoes as though each step might be my last. And
+we gathered strength from our moccasins.
+
+'He was a great man. His soul lifted his body to the last; nor did he
+cry aloud, save for the sake of Unga. On the second day I followed him,
+that I might not miss the end. And he lay down to rest often. That
+night he was near gone; but in the morning he swore weakly and went
+forth again. He was like a drunken man, and I looked many times for him
+to give up, but his was the strength of the strong, and his soul the
+soul of a giant, for he lifted his body through all the weary day. And
+he shot two ptarmigan, but would not eat them. He needed no fire; they
+meant life; but his thought was for Unga, and he turned toward camp.
+
+'He no longer walked, but crawled on hand and knee through the snow. I
+came to him, and read death in his eyes. Even then it was not too late
+to eat of the ptarmigan. He cast away his rifle and carried the birds
+in his mouth like a dog. I walked by his side, upright. And he looked
+at me during the moments he rested, and wondered that I was so strong.
+I could see it, though he no longer spoke; and when his lips moved,
+they moved without sound.
+
+'As I say, he was a great man, and my heart spoke for softness; but I
+read back in my life, and remembered the cold and hunger of the endless
+forest by the Russian seas. Besides, Unga was mine, and I had paid for
+her an untold price of skin and boat and bead.
+
+'And in this manner we came through the white forest, with the silence
+heavy upon us like a damp sea mist. And the ghosts of the past were in
+the air and all about us; and I saw the yellow beach of Akatan, and the
+kayaks racing home from the fishing, and the houses on the rim of the
+forest. And the men who had made themselves chiefs were there, the
+lawgivers whose blood I bore and whose blood I had wedded in Unga. Aye,
+and Yash-Noosh walked with me, the wet sand in his hair, and his war
+spear, broken as he fell upon it, still in his hand. And I knew the
+time was meet, and saw in the eyes of Unga the promise.
+
+'As I say, we came thus through the forest, till the smell of the camp
+smoke was in our nostrils. And I bent above him, and tore the ptarmigan
+from his teeth.
+
+'He turned on his side and rested, the wonder mounting in his eyes, and
+the hand which was under slipping slow toward the knife at his hip. But
+I took it from him, smiling close in his face. Even then he did not
+understand. So I made to drink from black bottles, and to build high
+upon the snow a pile--of goods, and to live again the things which had
+happened on the night of my marriage. I spoke no word, but he
+understood. Yet was he unafraid. There was a sneer to his lips, and
+cold anger, and he gathered new strength with the knowledge. It was not
+far, but the snow was deep, and he dragged himself very slow.
+
+'Once he lay so long I turned him over and gazed into his eyes. And
+sometimes he looked forth, and sometimes death. And when I loosed him
+he struggled on again. In this way we came to the fire. Unga was at his
+side on the instant. His lips moved without sound; then he pointed at
+me, that Unga might understand. And after that he lay in the snow, very
+still, for a long while. Even now is he there in the snow.
+
+'I said no word till I had cooked the ptarmigan. Then I spoke to her,
+in her own tongue, which she had not heard in many years. She
+straightened herself, so, and her eyes were wonder-wide, and she asked
+who I was, and where I had learned that speech.
+
+'"I am Naass," I said.
+
+'"You?" she said. "You?" And she crept close that she might look upon
+me.
+
+'"Yes," I answered; "I am Naass, head man of Akatan, the last of the
+blood, as you are the last of the blood." 'And she laughed. By all the
+things I have seen and the deeds I have done may I never hear such a
+laugh again. It put the chill to my soul, sitting there in the White
+Silence, alone with death and this woman who laughed.
+
+'"Come!" I said, for I thought she wandered. "Eat of the food and let
+us be gone. It is a far fetch from here to Akatan." 'But she shoved her
+face in his yellow mane, and laughed till it seemed the heavens must
+fall about our ears. I had thought she would be overjoyed at the sight
+of me, and eager to go back to the memory of old times, but this seemed
+a strange form to take.
+
+'"Come!" I cried, taking her strong by the hand. "The way is long and
+dark. Let us hurry!" "Where?" she asked, sitting up, and ceasing from
+her strange mirth.
+
+'"To Akatan," I answered, intent on the light to grow on her face at
+the thought. But it became like his, with a sneer to the lips, and cold
+anger.
+
+'"Yes," she said; "we will go, hand in hand, to Akatan, you and I. And
+we will live in the dirty huts, and eat of the fish and oil, and bring
+forth a spawn--a spawn to be proud of all the days of our life. We will
+forget the world and be happy, very happy. It is good, most good. Come!
+Let us hurry. Let us go back to Akatan." And she ran her hand through
+his yellow hair, and smiled in a way which was not good. And there was
+no promise in her eyes.
+
+'I sat silent, and marveled at the strangeness of woman. I went back to
+the night when he dragged her from me and she screamed and tore at his
+hair--at his hair which now she played with and would not leave. Then I
+remembered the price and the long years of waiting; and I gripped her
+close, and dragged her away as he had done. And she held back, even as
+on that night, and fought like a she-cat for its whelp. And when the
+fire was between us and the man. I loosed her, and she sat and
+listened. And I told her of all that lay between, of all that had
+happened to me on strange seas, of all that I had done in strange
+lands; of my weary quest, and the hungry years, and the promise which
+had been mine from the first. Aye, I told all, even to what had passed
+that day between the man and me, and in the days yet young. And as I
+spoke I saw the promise grow in her eyes, full and large like the break
+of dawn. And I read pity there, the tenderness of woman, the love, the
+heart and the soul of Unga. And I was a stripling again, for the look
+was the look of Unga as she ran up the beach, laughing, to the home of
+her mother. The stern unrest was gone, and the hunger, and the weary
+waiting.
+
+'The time was met. I felt the call of her breast, and it seemed there I
+must pillow my head and forget. She opened her arms to me, and I came
+against her. Then, sudden, the hate flamed in her eye, her hand was at
+my hip. And once, twice, she passed the knife.
+
+'"Dog!" she sneered, as she flung me into the snow. "Swine!" And then
+she laughed till the silence cracked, and went back to her dead.
+
+'As I say, once she passed the knife, and twice; but she was weak with
+hunger, and it was not meant that I should die. Yet was I minded to
+stay in that place, and to close my eyes in the last long sleep with
+those whose lives had crossed with mine and led my feet on unknown
+trails. But there lay a debt upon me which would not let me rest.
+
+'And the way was long, the cold bitter, and there was little grub. The
+Pellys had found no moose, and had robbed my cache. And so had the
+three white men, but they lay thin and dead in their cabins as I
+passed. After that I do not remember, till I came here, and found food
+and fire--much fire.' As he finished, he crouched closely, even
+jealously, over the stove. For a long while the slush-lamp shadows
+played tragedies upon the wall.
+
+'But Unga!' cried Prince, the vision still strong upon him.
+
+'Unga? She would not eat of the ptarmigan. She lay with her arms about
+his neck, her face deep in his yellow hair. I drew the fire close, that
+she might not feel the frost, but she crept to the other side. And I
+built a fire there; yet it was little good, for she would not eat. And
+in this manner they still lie up there in the snow.'
+
+'And you?' asked Malemute Kid.
+
+'I do not know; but Akatan is small, and I have little wish to go back
+and live on the edge of the world. Yet is there small use in life. I
+can go to Constantine, and he will put irons upon me, and one day they
+will tie a piece of rope, so, and I will sleep good. Yet--no; I do not
+know.' 'But, Kid,' protested Prince, 'this is murder!' 'Hush!'
+commanded Malemute Kid. 'There be things greater than our wisdom,
+beyond our justice. The right and the wrong of this we cannot say, and
+it is not for us to judge.' Naass drew yet closer to the fire. There
+was a great silence, and in each man's eyes many pictures came and went.
+
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Son of the Wolf, by Jack London
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