LOVE OF LIFEAND OTHER STORIES

BYJACK LONDONAUTHOR OF "THE CALL OF THE WILD, " "PEOPLEOF THE ABYSS, " ETC. , ETC. 

New YorkPUBLISHED FORTHE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANYBY THE MACMILLAN COMPANYLONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. , LTD. 1913_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1906, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

{He watched the play of life before him: p0. Jpg}

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1907. Reprinted December, 1907; December, 1911. October, 1913. 

LOVE OF LIFE

 "This out of all will remain-- They have lived and have tossed: So much of the game will be gain, Though the gold of the dice has been lost. "

They limped painfully down the bank, and once the foremost of the two menstaggered among the rough-strewn rocks. They were tired and weak, andtheir faces had the drawn expression of patience which comes of hardshiplong endured. They were heavily burdened with blanket packs which werestrapped to their shoulders. Head-straps, passing across the forehead, helped support these packs. Each man carried a rifle. They walked in astooped posture, the shoulders well forward, the head still fartherforward, the eyes bent upon the ground. 

"I wish we had just about two of them cartridges that's layin' in thatcache of ourn, " said the second man. 

His voice was utterly and drearily expressionless. He spoke withoutenthusiasm; and the first man, limping into the milky stream that foamedover the rocks, vouchsafed no reply. 

The other man followed at his heels. They did not remove theirfoot-gear, though the water was icy cold--so cold that their ankles achedand their feet went numb. In places the water dashed against theirknees, and both men staggered for footing. 

The man who followed slipped on a smooth boulder, nearly fell, butrecovered himself with a violent effort, at the same time uttering asharp exclamation of pain. He seemed faint and dizzy and put out hisfree hand while he reeled, as though seeking support against the air. When he had steadied himself he stepped forward, but reeled again andnearly fell. Then he stood still and looked at the other man, who hadnever turned his head. 

The man stood still for fully a minute, as though debating with himself. Then he called out:

"I say, Bill, I've sprained my ankle. "

Bill staggered on through the milky water. He did not look around. Theman watched him go, and though his face was expressionless as ever, hiseyes were like the eyes of a wounded deer. 

The other man limped up the farther bank and continued straight onwithout looking back. The man in the stream watched him. His lipstrembled a little, so that the rough thatch of brown hair which coveredthem was visibly agitated. His tongue even strayed out to moisten them. 

"Bill!" he cried out. 

It was the pleading cry of a strong man in distress, but Bill's head didnot turn. The man watched him go, limping grotesquely and lurchingforward with stammering gait up the slow slope toward the soft sky-lineof the low-lying hill. He watched him go till he passed over the crestand disappeared. Then he turned his gaze and slowly took in the circleof the world that remained to him now that Bill was gone. 

Near the horizon the sun was smouldering dimly, almost obscured byformless mists and vapors, which gave an impression of mass and densitywithout outline or tangibility. The man pulled out his watch, the whileresting his weight on one leg. It was four o'clock, and as the seasonwas near the last of July or first of August, --he did not know theprecise date within a week or two, --he knew that the sun roughly markedthe northwest. He looked to the south and knew that somewhere beyondthose bleak hills lay the Great Bear Lake; also, he knew that in thatdirection the Arctic Circle cut its forbidding way across the CanadianBarrens. This stream in which he stood was a feeder to the CoppermineRiver, which in turn flowed north and emptied into Coronation Gulf andthe Arctic Ocean. He had never been there, but he had seen it, once, ona Hudson Bay Company chart. 

Again his gaze completed the circle of the world about him. It was not aheartening spectacle. Everywhere was soft sky-line. The hills were alllow-lying. There were no trees, no shrubs, no grasses--naught but atremendous and terrible desolation that sent fear swiftly dawning intohis eyes. 

"Bill!" he whispered, once and twice; "Bill!"

He cowered in the midst of the milky water, as though the vastness werepressing in upon him with overwhelming force, brutally crushing him withits complacent awfulness. He began to shake as with an ague-fit, tillthe gun fell from his hand with a splash. This served to rouse him. Hefought with his fear and pulled himself together, groping in the waterand recovering the weapon. He hitched his pack farther over on his leftshoulder, so as to take a portion of its weight from off the injuredankle. Then he proceeded, slowly and carefully, wincing with pain, tothe bank. 

He did not stop. With a desperation that was madness, unmindful of thepain, he hurried up the slope to the crest of the hill over which hiscomrade had disappeared--more grotesque and comical by far than thatlimping, jerking comrade. But at the crest he saw a shallow valley, empty of life. He fought with his fear again, overcame it, hitched thepack still farther over on his left shoulder, and lurched on down theslope. 

The bottom of the valley was soggy with water, which the thick moss held, spongelike, close to the surface. This water squirted out from under hisfeet at every step, and each time he lifted a foot the action culminatedin a sucking sound as the wet moss reluctantly released its grip. Hepicked his way from muskeg to muskeg, and followed the other man'sfootsteps along and across the rocky ledges which thrust like isletsthrough the sea of moss. 

Though alone, he was not lost. Farther on he knew he would come to wheredead spruce and fir, very small and weazened, bordered the shore of alittle lake, the _titchin-nichilie_, in the tongue of the country, the"land of little sticks. " And into that lake flowed a small stream, thewater of which was not milky. There was rush-grass on that stream--thishe remembered well--but no timber, and he would follow it till its firsttrickle ceased at a divide. He would cross this divide to the firsttrickle of another stream, flowing to the west, which he would followuntil it emptied into the river Dease, and here he would find a cacheunder an upturned canoe and piled over with many rocks. And in thiscache would be ammunition for his empty gun, fish-hooks and lines, asmall net--all the utilities for the killing and snaring of food. Also, he would find flour, --not much, --a piece of bacon, and some beans. 

Bill would be waiting for him there, and they would paddle away southdown the Dease to the Great Bear Lake. And south across the lake theywould go, ever south, till they gained the Mackenzie. And south, stillsouth, they would go, while the winter raced vainly after them, and theice formed in the eddies, and the days grew chill and crisp, south tosome warm Hudson Bay Company post, where timber grew tall and generousand there was grub without end. 

These were the thoughts of the man as he strove onward. But hard as hestrove with his body, he strove equally hard with his mind, trying tothink that Bill had not deserted him, that Bill would surely wait for himat the cache. He was compelled to think this thought, or else therewould not be any use to strive, and he would have lain down and died. Andas the dim ball of the sun sank slowly into the northwest he coveredevery inch--and many times--of his and Bill's flight south before thedowncoming winter. And he conned the grub of the cache and the grub ofthe Hudson Bay Company post over and over again. He had not eaten fortwo days; for a far longer time he had not had all he wanted to eat. Often he stooped and picked pale muskeg berries, put them into his mouth, and chewed and swallowed them. A muskeg berry is a bit of seed enclosedin a bit of water. In the mouth the water melts away and the seed chewssharp and bitter. The man knew there was no nourishment in the berries, but he chewed them patiently with a hope greater than knowledge anddefying experience. 

At nine o'clock he stubbed his toe on a rocky ledge, and from sheerweariness and weakness staggered and fell. He lay for some time, withoutmovement, on his side. Then he slipped out of the pack-straps andclumsily dragged himself into a sitting posture. It was not yet dark, and in the lingering twilight he groped about among the rocks for shredsof dry moss. When he had gathered a heap he built a fire, --asmouldering, smudgy fire, --and put a tin pot of water on to boil. 

He unwrapped his pack and the first thing he did was to count hismatches. There were sixty-seven. He counted them three times to makesure. He divided them into several portions, wrapping them in oil paper, disposing of one bunch in his empty tobacco pouch, of another bunch inthe inside band of his battered hat, of a third bunch under his shirt onthe chest. This accomplished, a panic came upon him, and he unwrappedthem all and counted them again. There were still sixty-seven. 

He dried his wet foot-gear by the fire. The moccasins were in soggyshreds. The blanket socks were worn through in places, and his feet wereraw and bleeding. His ankle was throbbing, and he gave it anexamination. It had swollen to the size of his knee. He tore a longstrip from one of his two blankets and bound the ankle tightly. He toreother strips and bound them about his feet to serve for both moccasinsand socks. Then he drank the pot of water, steaming hot, wound hiswatch, and crawled between his blankets. 

He slept like a dead man. The brief darkness around midnight came andwent. The sun arose in the northeast--at least the day dawned in thatquarter, for the sun was hidden by gray clouds. 

At six o'clock he awoke, quietly lying on his back. He gazed straight upinto the gray sky and knew that he was hungry. As he rolled over on hiselbow he was startled by a loud snort, and saw a bull caribou regardinghim with alert curiosity. The animal was not mere than fifty feet away, and instantly into the man's mind leaped the vision and the savor of acaribou steak sizzling and frying over a fire. Mechanically he reachedfor the empty gun, drew a bead, and pulled the trigger. The bull snortedand leaped away, his hoofs rattling and clattering as he fled across theledges. 

The man cursed and flung the empty gun from him. He groaned aloud as hestarted to drag himself to his feet. It was a slow and arduous task. 

His joints were like rusty hinges. They worked harshly in their sockets, with much friction, and each bending or unbending was accomplished onlythrough a sheer exertion of will. When he finally gained his feet, another minute or so was consumed in straightening up, so that he couldstand erect as a man should stand. 

He crawled up a small knoll and surveyed the prospect. There were notrees, no bushes, nothing but a gray sea of moss scarcely diversified bygray rocks, gray lakelets, and gray streamlets. The sky was gray. Therewas no sun nor hint of sun. He had no idea of north, and he hadforgotten the way he had come to this spot the night before. But he wasnot lost. He knew that. Soon he would come to the land of the littlesticks. He felt that it lay off to the left somewhere, not far--possiblyjust over the next low hill. 

He went back to put his pack into shape for travelling. He assuredhimself of the existence of his three separate parcels of matches, thoughhe did not stop to count them. But he did linger, debating, over a squatmoose-hide sack. It was not large. He could hide it under his twohands. He knew that it weighed fifteen pounds, --as much as all the restof the pack, --and it worried him. He finally set it to one side andproceeded to roll the pack. He paused to gaze at the squat moose-hidesack. He picked it up hastily with a defiant glance about him, as thoughthe desolation were trying to rob him of it; and when he rose to his feetto stagger on into the day, it was included in the pack on his back. 

He bore away to the left, stopping now and again to eat muskeg berries. His ankle had stiffened, his limp was more pronounced, but the pain of itwas as nothing compared with the pain of his stomach. The hunger pangswere sharp. They gnawed and gnawed until he could not keep his mindsteady on the course he must pursue to gain the land of little sticks. The muskeg berries did not allay this gnawing, while they made his tongueand the roof of his mouth sore with their irritating bite. 

He came upon a valley where rock ptarmigan rose on whirring wings fromthe ledges and muskegs. Ker--ker--ker was the cry they made. He threwstones at them, but could not hit them. He placed his pack on the groundand stalked them as a cat stalks a sparrow. The sharp rocks cut throughhis pants' legs till his knees left a trail of blood; but the hurt waslost in the hurt of his hunger. He squirmed over the wet moss, saturating his clothes and chilling his body; but he was not aware of it, so great was his fever for food. And always the ptarmigan rose, whirring, before him, till their ker--ker--ker became a mock to him, andhe cursed them and cried aloud at them with their own cry. 

Once he crawled upon one that must have been asleep. He did not see ittill it shot up in his face from its rocky nook. He made a clutch asstartled as was the rise of the ptarmigan, and there remained in his handthree tail-feathers. As he watched its flight he hated it, as though ithad done him some terrible wrong. Then he returned and shouldered hispack. 

As the day wore along he came into valleys or swales where game was moreplentiful. A band of caribou passed by, twenty and odd animals, tantalizingly within rifle range. He felt a wild desire to run afterthem, a certitude that he could run them down. A black fox came towardhim, carrying a ptarmigan in his mouth. The man shouted. It was afearful cry, but the fox, leaping away in fright, did not drop theptarmigan. 

Late in the afternoon he followed a stream, milky with lime, which ranthrough sparse patches of rush-grass. Grasping these rushes firmly nearthe root, he pulled up what resembled a young onion-sprout no larger thana shingle-nail. It was tender, and his teeth sank into it with a crunchthat promised deliciously of food. But its fibers were tough. It wascomposed of stringy filaments saturated with water, like the berries, anddevoid of nourishment. He threw off his pack and went into therush-grass on hands and knees, crunching and munching, like some bovinecreature. 

He was very weary and often wished to rest--to lie down and sleep; but hewas continually driven on--not so much by his desire to gain the land oflittle sticks as by his hunger. He searched little ponds for frogs anddug up the earth with his nails for worms, though he knew in spite thatneither frogs nor worms existed so far north. 

He looked into every pool of water vainly, until, as the long twilightcame on, he discovered a solitary fish, the size of a minnow, in such apool. He plunged his arm in up to the shoulder, but it eluded him. Hereached for it with both hands and stirred up the milky mud at thebottom. In his excitement he fell in, wetting himself to the waist. Thenthe water was too muddy to admit of his seeing the fish, and he wascompelled to wait until the sediment had settled. 

The pursuit was renewed, till the water was again muddied. But he couldnot wait. He unstrapped the tin bucket and began to bale the pool. Hebaled wildly at first, splashing himself and flinging the water so shorta distance that it ran back into the pool. He worked more carefully, striving to be cool, though his heart was pounding against his chest andhis hands were trembling. At the end of half an hour the pool was nearlydry. Not a cupful of water remained. And there was no fish. He found ahidden crevice among the stones through which it had escaped to theadjoining and larger pool--a pool which he could not empty in a night anda day. Had he known of the crevice, he could have closed it with a rockat the beginning and the fish would have been his. 

Thus he thought, and crumpled up and sank down upon the wet earth. Atfirst he cried softly to himself, then he cried loudly to the pitilessdesolation that ringed him around; and for a long time after he wasshaken by great dry sobs. 

He built a fire and warmed himself by drinking quarts of hot water, andmade camp on a rocky ledge in the same fashion he had the night before. The last thing he did was to see that his matches were dry and to windhis watch. The blankets were wet and clammy. His ankle pulsed withpain. But he knew only that he was hungry, and through his restlesssleep he dreamed of feasts and banquets and of food served and spread inall imaginable ways. 

He awoke chilled and sick. There was no sun. The gray of earth and skyhad become deeper, more profound. A raw wind was blowing, and the firstflurries of snow were whitening the hilltops. The air about himthickened and grew white while he made a fire and boiled more water. Itwas wet snow, half rain, and the flakes were large and soggy. At firstthey melted as soon as they came in contact with the earth, but ever morefell, covering the ground, putting out the fire, spoiling his supply ofmoss-fuel. 

This was a signal for him to strap on his pack and stumble onward, heknew not where. He was not concerned with the land of little sticks, norwith Bill and the cache under the upturned canoe by the river Dease. Hewas mastered by the verb "to eat. " He was hunger-mad. He took no heedof the course he pursued, so long as that course led him through theswale bottoms. He felt his way through the wet snow to the watery muskegberries, and went by feel as he pulled up the rush-grass by the roots. But it was tasteless stuff and did not satisfy. He found a weed thattasted sour and he ate all he could find of it, which was not much, forit was a creeping growth, easily hidden under the several inches of snow. 

He had no fire that night, nor hot water, and crawled under his blanketto sleep the broken hunger-sleep. The snow turned into a cold rain. Heawakened many times to feel it falling on his upturned face. Day came--agray day and no sun. It had ceased raining. The keenness of his hungerhad departed. Sensibility, as far as concerned the yearning for food, had been exhausted. There was a dull, heavy ache in his stomach, but itdid not bother him so much. He was more rational, and once more he waschiefly interested in the land of little sticks and the cache by theriver Dease. 

He ripped the remnant of one of his blankets into strips and bound hisbleeding feet. Also, he recinched the injured ankle and prepared himselffor a day of travel. When he came to his pack, he paused long over thesquat moose-hide sack, but in the end it went with him. 

The snow had melted under the rain, and only the hilltops showed white. The sun came out, and he succeeded in locating the points of the compass, though he knew now that he was lost. Perhaps, in his previous days'wanderings, he had edged away too far to the left. He now bore off tothe right to counteract the possible deviation from his true course. 

Though the hunger pangs were no longer so exquisite, he realized that hewas weak. He was compelled to pause for frequent rests, when he attackedthe muskeg berries and rush-grass patches. His tongue felt dry andlarge, as though covered with a fine hairy growth, and it tasted bitterin his mouth. His heart gave him a great deal of trouble. When he hadtravelled a few minutes it would begin a remorseless thump, thump, thump, and then leap up and away in a painful flutter of beats that choked himand made him go faint and dizzy. 

In the middle of the day he found two minnows in a large pool. It wasimpossible to bale it, but he was calmer now and managed to catch them inhis tin bucket. They were no longer than his little finger, but he wasnot particularly hungry. The dull ache in his stomach had been growingduller and fainter. It seemed almost that his stomach was dozing. Heate the fish raw, masticating with painstaking care, for the eating wasan act of pure reason. While he had no desire to eat, he knew that hemust eat to live. 

In the evening he caught three more minnows, eating two and saving thethird for breakfast. The sun had dried stray shreds of moss, and he wasable to warm himself with hot water. He had not covered more than tenmiles that day; and the next day, travelling whenever his heart permittedhim, he covered no more than five miles. But his stomach did not givehim the slightest uneasiness. It had gone to sleep. He was in a strangecountry, too, and the caribou were growing more plentiful, also thewolves. Often their yelps drifted across the desolation, and once he sawthree of them slinking away before his path. 

Another night; and in the morning, being more rational, he untied theleather string that fastened the squat moose-hide sack. From its openmouth poured a yellow stream of coarse gold-dust and nuggets. He roughlydivided the gold in halves, caching one half on a prominent ledge, wrapped in a piece of blanket, and returning the other half to the sack. He also began to use strips of the one remaining blanket for his feet. Hestill clung to his gun, for there were cartridges in that cache by theriver Dease. 

This was a day of fog, and this day hunger awoke in him again. He wasvery weak and was afflicted with a giddiness which at times blinded him. It was no uncommon thing now for him to stumble and fall; and stumblingonce, he fell squarely into a ptarmigan nest. There were four newlyhatched chicks, a day old--little specks of pulsating life no more than amouthful; and he ate them ravenously, thrusting them alive into his mouthand crunching them like egg-shells between his teeth. The motherptarmigan beat about him with great outcry. He used his gun as a clubwith which to knock her over, but she dodged out of reach. He threwstones at her and with one chance shot broke a wing. Then she flutteredaway, running, trailing the broken wing, with him in pursuit. 

The little chicks had no more than whetted his appetite. He hopped andbobbed clumsily along on his injured ankle, throwing stones and screaminghoarsely at times; at other times hopping and bobbing silently along, picking himself up grimly and patiently when he fell, or rubbing his eyeswith his hand when the giddiness threatened to overpower him. 

The chase led him across swampy ground in the bottom of the valley, andhe came upon footprints in the soggy moss. They were not his own--hecould see that. They must be Bill's. But he could not stop, for themother ptarmigan was running on. He would catch her first, then he wouldreturn and investigate. 

He exhausted the mother ptarmigan; but he exhausted himself. She laypanting on her side. He lay panting on his side, a dozen feet away, unable to crawl to her. And as he recovered she recovered, flutteringout of reach as his hungry hand went out to her. The chase was resumed. Night settled down and she escaped. He stumbled from weakness andpitched head foremost on his face, cutting his cheek, his pack upon hisback. He did not move for a long while; then he rolled over on his side, wound his watch, and lay there until morning. 

Another day of fog. Half of his last blanket had gone intofoot-wrappings. He failed to pick up Bill's trail. It did not matter. His hunger was driving him too compellingly--only--only he wondered ifBill, too, were lost. By midday the irk of his pack became toooppressive. Again he divided the gold, this time merely spilling half ofit on the ground. In the afternoon he threw the rest of it away, thereremaining to him only the half-blanket, the tin bucket, and the rifle. 

An hallucination began to trouble him. He felt confident that onecartridge remained to him. It was in the chamber of the rifle and he hadoverlooked it. On the other hand, he knew all the time that the chamberwas empty. But the hallucination persisted. He fought it off for hours, then threw his rifle open and was confronted with emptiness. Thedisappointment was as bitter as though he had really expected to find thecartridge. 

He plodded on for half an hour, when the hallucination arose again. Againhe fought it, and still it persisted, till for very relief he opened hisrifle to unconvince himself. At times his mind wandered farther afield, and he plodded on, a mere automaton, strange conceits and whimsicalitiesgnawing at his brain like worms. But these excursions out of the realwere of brief duration, for ever the pangs of the hunger-bite called himback. He was jerked back abruptly once from such an excursion by a sightthat caused him nearly to faint. He reeled and swayed, doddering like adrunken man to keep from falling. Before him stood a horse. A horse! Hecould not believe his eyes. A thick mist was in them, intershot withsparkling points of light. He rubbed his eyes savagely to clear hisvision, and beheld, not a horse, but a great brown bear. The animal wasstudying him with bellicose curiosity. 

The man had brought his gun halfway to his shoulder before he realized. He lowered it and drew his hunting-knife from its beaded sheath at hiship. Before him was meat and life. He ran his thumb along the edge ofhis knife. It was sharp. The point was sharp. He would fling himselfupon the bear and kill it. But his heart began its warning thump, thump, thump. Then followed the wild upward leap and tattoo of flutters, thepressing as of an iron band about his forehead, the creeping of thedizziness into his brain. 

His desperate courage was evicted by a great surge of fear. In hisweakness, what if the animal attacked him? He drew himself up to hismost imposing stature, gripping the knife and staring hard at the bear. The bear advanced clumsily a couple of steps, reared up, and gave vent toa tentative growl. If the man ran, he would run after him; but the mandid not run. He was animated now with the courage of fear. He, too, growled, savagely, terribly, voicing the fear that is to life germane andthat lies twisted about life's deepest roots. 

The bear edged away to one side, growling menacingly, himself appalled bythis mysterious creature that appeared upright and unafraid. But the mandid not move. He stood like a statue till the danger was past, when heyielded to a fit of trembling and sank down into the wet moss. 

He pulled himself together and went on, afraid now in a new way. It wasnot the fear that he should die passively from lack of food, but that heshould be destroyed violently before starvation had exhausted the lastparticle of the endeavor in him that made toward surviving. There werethe wolves. Back and forth across the desolation drifted their howls, weaving the very air into a fabric of menace that was so tangible that hefound himself, arms in the air, pressing it back from him as it might bethe walls of a wind-blown tent. 

Now and again the wolves, in packs of two and three, crossed his path. But they sheered clear of him. They were not in sufficient numbers, andbesides they were hunting the caribou, which did not battle, while thisstrange creature that walked erect might scratch and bite. 

In the late afternoon he came upon scattered bones where the wolves hadmade a kill. The debris had been a caribou calf an hour before, squawking and running and very much alive. He contemplated the bones, clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in them which had notyet died. Could it possibly be that he might be that ere the day wasdone! Such was life, eh? A vain and fleeting thing. It was only lifethat pained. There was no hurt in death. To die was to sleep. It meantcessation, rest. Then why was he not content to die?

But he did not moralize long. He was squatting in the moss, a bone inhis mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it faintly pink. The sweet meaty taste, thin and elusive almost as a memory, maddened him. He closed his jaws on the bones and crunched. Sometimes it was the bonethat broke, sometimes his teeth. Then he crushed the bones betweenrocks, pounded them to a pulp, and swallowed them. He pounded hisfingers, too, in his haste, and yet found a moment in which to feelsurprise at the fact that his fingers did not hurt much when caught underthe descending rock. 

Came frightful days of snow and rain. He did not know when he made camp, when he broke camp. He travelled in the night as much as in the day. Herested wherever he fell, crawled on whenever the dying life in himflickered up and burned less dimly. He, as a man, no longer strove. Itwas the life in him, unwilling to die, that drove him on. He did notsuffer. His nerves had become blunted, numb, while his mind was filledwith weird visions and delicious dreams. 

But ever he sucked and chewed on the crushed bones of the caribou calf, the least remnants of which he had gathered up and carried with him. Hecrossed no more hills or divides, but automatically followed a largestream which flowed through a wide and shallow valley. He did not seethis stream nor this valley. He saw nothing save visions. Soul and bodywalked or crawled side by side, yet apart, so slender was the thread thatbound them. 

He awoke in his right mind, lying on his back on a rocky ledge. The sunwas shining bright and warm. Afar off he heard the squawking of cariboucalves. He was aware of vague memories of rain and wind and snow, butwhether he had been beaten by the storm for two days or two weeks he didnot know. 

For some time he lay without movement, the genial sunshine pouring uponhim and saturating his miserable body with its warmth. A fine day, hethought. Perhaps he could manage to locate himself. By a painful efforthe rolled over on his side. Below him flowed a wide and sluggish river. Its unfamiliarity puzzled him. Slowly he followed it with his eyes, winding in wide sweeps among the bleak, bare hills, bleaker and barer andlower-lying than any hills he had yet encountered. Slowly, deliberately, without excitement or more than the most casual interest, he followed thecourse of the strange stream toward the sky-line and saw it emptying intoa bright and shining sea. He was still unexcited. Most unusual, hethought, a vision or a mirage--more likely a vision, a trick of hisdisordered mind. He was confirmed in this by sight of a ship lying atanchor in the midst of the shining sea. He closed his eyes for a while, then opened them. Strange how the vision persisted! Yet not strange. Heknew there were no seas or ships in the heart of the barren lands, justas he had known there was no cartridge in the empty rifle. 

He heard a snuffle behind him--a half-choking gasp or cough. Veryslowly, because of his exceeding weakness and stiffness, he rolled overon his other side. He could see nothing near at hand, but he waitedpatiently. Again came the snuffle and cough, and outlined between twojagged rocks not a score of feet away he made out the gray head of awolf. The sharp ears were not pricked so sharply as he had seen them onother wolves; the eyes were bleared and bloodshot, the head seemed todroop limply and forlornly. The animal blinked continually in thesunshine. It seemed sick. As he looked it snuffled and coughed again. 

This, at least, was real, he thought, and turned on the other side sothat he might see the reality of the world which had been veiled from himbefore by the vision. But the sea still shone in the distance and theship was plainly discernible. Was it reality, after all? He closed hiseyes for a long while and thought, and then it came to him. He had beenmaking north by east, away from the Dease Divide and into the CoppermineValley. This wide and sluggish river was the Coppermine. That shiningsea was the Arctic Ocean. That ship was a whaler, strayed east, fareast, from the mouth of the Mackenzie, and it was lying at anchor inCoronation Gulf. He remembered the Hudson Bay Company chart he had seenlong ago, and it was all clear and reasonable to him. 

He sat up and turned his attention to immediate affairs. He had wornthrough the blanket-wrappings, and his feet were shapeless lumps of rawmeat. His last blanket was gone. Rifle and knife were both missing. Hehad lost his hat somewhere, with the bunch of matches in the band, butthe matches against his chest were safe and dry inside the tobacco pouchand oil paper. He looked at his watch. It marked eleven o'clock and wasstill running. Evidently he had kept it wound. 

He was calm and collected. Though extremely weak, he had no sensation ofpain. He was not hungry. The thought of food was not even pleasant tohim, and whatever he did was done by his reason alone. He ripped off hispants' legs to the knees and bound them about his feet. Somehow he hadsucceeded in retaining the tin bucket. He would have some hot waterbefore he began what he foresaw was to be a terrible journey to the ship. 

His movements were slow. He shook as with a palsy. When he started tocollect dry moss, he found he could not rise to his feet. He tried againand again, then contented himself with crawling about on hands and knees. Once he crawled near to the sick wolf. The animal dragged itselfreluctantly out of his way, licking its chops with a tongue which seemedhardly to have the strength to curl. The man noticed that the tongue wasnot the customary healthy red. It was a yellowish brown and seemedcoated with a rough and half-dry mucus. 

After he had drunk a quart of hot water the man found he was able tostand, and even to walk as well as a dying man might be supposed to walk. Every minute or so he was compelled to rest. His steps were feeble anduncertain, just as the wolf's that trailed him were feeble and uncertain;and that night, when the shining sea was blotted out by blackness, heknew he was nearer to it by no more than four miles. 

Throughout the night he heard the cough of the sick wolf, and now andthen the squawking of the caribou calves. There was life all around him, but it was strong life, very much alive and well, and he knew the sickwolf clung to the sick man's trail in the hope that the man would diefirst. In the morning, on opening his eyes, he beheld it regarding himwith a wistful and hungry stare. It stood crouched, with tail betweenits legs, like a miserable and woe-begone dog. It shivered in the chillmorning wind, and grinned dispiritedly when the man spoke to it in avoice that achieved no more than a hoarse whisper. 

The sun rose brightly, and all morning the man tottered and fell towardthe ship on the shining sea. The weather was perfect. It was the briefIndian Summer of the high latitudes. It might last a week. To-morrow ornext day it might he gone. 

In the afternoon the man came upon a trail. It was of another man, whodid not walk, but who dragged himself on all fours. The man thought itmight be Bill, but he thought in a dull, uninterested way. He had nocuriosity. In fact, sensation and emotion had left him. He was nolonger susceptible to pain. Stomach and nerves had gone to sleep. Yetthe life that was in him drove him on. He was very weary, but it refusedto die. It was because it refused to die that he still ate muskegberries and minnows, drank his hot water, and kept a wary eye on the sickwolf. 

He followed the trail of the other man who dragged himself along, andsoon came to the end of it--a few fresh-picked bones where the soggy mosswas marked by the foot-pads of many wolves. He saw a squat moose-hidesack, mate to his own, which had been torn by sharp teeth. He picked itup, though its weight was almost too much for his feeble fingers. Billhad carried it to the last. Ha! ha! He would have the laugh on Bill. Hewould survive and carry it to the ship in the shining sea. His mirth washoarse and ghastly, like a raven's croak, and the sick wolf joined him, howling lugubriously. The man ceased suddenly. How could he have thelaugh on Bill if that were Bill; if those bones, so pinky-white andclean, were Bill?

He turned away. Well, Bill had deserted him; but he would not take thegold, nor would he suck Bill's bones. Bill would have, though, had itbeen the other way around, he mused as he staggered on. 

He came to a pool of water. Stooping over in quest of minnows, he jerkedhis head back as though he had been stung. He had caught sight of hisreflected face. So horrible was it that sensibility awoke long enough tobe shocked. There were three minnows in the pool, which was too large todrain; and after several ineffectual attempts to catch them in the tinbucket he forbore. He was afraid, because of his great weakness, that hemight fall in and drown. It was for this reason that he did not trusthimself to the river astride one of the many drift-logs which lined itssand-spits. 

That day he decreased the distance between him and the ship by threemiles; the next day by two--for he was crawling now as Bill had crawled;and the end of the fifth day found the ship still seven miles away andhim unable to make even a mile a day. Still the Indian Summer held on, and he continued to crawl and faint, turn and turn about; and ever thesick wolf coughed and wheezed at his heels. His knees had become rawmeat like his feet, and though he padded them with the shirt from hisback it was a red track he left behind him on the moss and stones. Once, glancing back, he saw the wolf licking hungrily his bleeding trail, andhe saw sharply what his own end might be--unless--unless he could get thewolf. Then began as grim a tragedy of existence as was ever played--asick man that crawled, a sick wolf that limped, two creatures draggingtheir dying carcasses across the desolation and hunting each other'slives. 

Had it been a well wolf, it would not have mattered so much to the man;but the thought of going to feed the maw of that loathsome and all butdead thing was repugnant to him. He was finicky. His mind had begun towander again, and to be perplexed by hallucinations, while his lucidintervals grew rarer and shorter. 

He was awakened once from a faint by a wheeze close in his ear. The wolfleaped lamely back, losing its footing and falling in its weakness. Itwas ludicrous, but he was not amused. Nor was he even afraid. He wastoo far gone for that. But his mind was for the moment clear, and he layand considered. The ship was no more than four miles away. He could seeit quite distinctly when he rubbed the mists out of his eyes, and hecould see the white sail of a small boat cutting the water of the shiningsea. But he could never crawl those four miles. He knew that, and wasvery calm in the knowledge. He knew that he could not crawl half a mile. And yet he wanted to live. It was unreasonable that he should die afterall he had undergone. Fate asked too much of him. And, dying, hedeclined to die. It was stark madness, perhaps, but in the very grip ofDeath he defied Death and refused to die. 

He closed his eyes and composed himself with infinite precaution. Hesteeled himself to keep above the suffocating languor that lapped like arising tide through all the wells of his being. It was very like a sea, this deadly languor, that rose and rose and drowned his consciousness bitby bit. Sometimes he was all but submerged, swimming through oblivionwith a faltering stroke; and again, by some strange alchemy of soul, hewould find another shred of will and strike out more strongly. 

Without movement he lay on his back, and he could hear, slowly drawingnear and nearer, the wheezing intake and output of the sick wolf'sbreath. It drew closer, ever closer, through an infinitude of time, andhe did not move. It was at his ear. The harsh dry tongue grated likesandpaper against his cheek. His hands shot out--or at least he willedthem to shoot out. The fingers were curved like talons, but they closedon empty air. Swiftness and certitude require strength, and the man hadnot this strength. 

The patience of the wolf was terrible. The man's patience was no lessterrible. For half a day he lay motionless, fighting off unconsciousnessand waiting for the thing that was to feed upon him and upon which hewished to feed. Sometimes the languid sea rose over him and he dreamedlong dreams; but ever through it all, waking and dreaming, he waited forthe wheezing breath and the harsh caress of the tongue. 

He did not hear the breath, and he slipped slowly from some dream to thefeel of the tongue along his hand. He waited. The fangs pressed softly;the pressure increased; the wolf was exerting its last strength in aneffort to sink teeth in the food for which it had waited so long. Butthe man had waited long, and the lacerated hand closed on the jaw. Slowly, while the wolf struggled feebly and the hand clutched feebly, theother hand crept across to a grip. Five minutes later the whole weightof the man's body was on top of the wolf. The hands had not sufficientstrength to choke the wolf, but the face of the man was pressed close tothe throat of the wolf and the mouth of the man was full of hair. At theend of half an hour the man was aware of a warm trickle in his throat. Itwas not pleasant. It was like molten lead being forced into his stomach, and it was forced by his will alone. Later the man rolled over on hisback and slept. 

* * * * *

There were some members of a scientific expedition on the whale-ship_Bedford_. From the deck they remarked a strange object on the shore. Itwas moving down the beach toward the water. They were unable to classifyit, and, being scientific men, they climbed into the whale-boat alongsideand went ashore to see. And they saw something that was alive but whichcould hardly be called a man. It was blind, unconscious. It squirmedalong the ground like some monstrous worm. Most of its efforts wereineffectual, but it was persistent, and it writhed and twisted and wentahead perhaps a score of feet an hour. 

* * * * *

Three weeks afterward the man lay in a bunk on the whale-ship _Bedford_, and with tears streaming down his wasted cheeks told who he was and whathe had undergone. He also babbled incoherently of his mother, of sunnySouthern California, and a home among the orange groves and flowers. 

The days were not many after that when he sat at table with thescientific men and ship's officers. He gloated over the spectacle of somuch food, watching it anxiously as it went into the mouths of others. With the disappearance of each mouthful an expression of deep regret cameinto his eyes. He was quite sane, yet he hated those men at mealtime. Hewas haunted by a fear that the food would not last. He inquired of thecook, the cabin-boy, the captain, concerning the food stores. Theyreassured him countless times; but he could not believe them, and priedcunningly about the lazarette to see with his own eyes. 

It was noticed that the man was getting fat. He grew stouter with eachday. The scientific men shook their heads and theorized. They limitedthe man at his meals, but still his girth increased and he swelledprodigiously under his shirt. 

The sailors grinned. They knew. And when the scientific men set a watchon the man, they knew too. They saw him slouch for'ard after breakfast, and, like a mendicant, with outstretched palm, accost a sailor. Thesailor grinned and passed him a fragment of sea biscuit. He clutched itavariciously, looked at it as a miser looks at gold, and thrust it intohis shirt bosom. Similar were the donations from other grinning sailors. 

The scientific men were discreet. They let him alone. But they privilyexamined his bunk. It was lined with hardtack; the mattress was stuffedwith hardtack; every nook and cranny was filled with hardtack. Yet hewas sane. He was taking precautions against another possible famine--thatwas all. He would recover from it, the scientific men said; and he did, ere the _Bedford's_ anchor rumbled down in San Francisco Bay. 

A DAY'S LODGING

 It was the gosh-dangdest stampede I ever seen. A thousand dog-teams hittin' the ice. You couldn't see 'm fer smoke. Two white men an' a Swede froze to death that night, an' there was a dozen busted their lungs. But didn't I see with my own eyes the bottom of the water-hole? It was yellow with gold like a mustard-plaster. That's why I staked the Yukon for a minin' claim. That's what made the stampede. An' then there was nothin' to it. That's what I said--NOTHIN' to it. An' I ain't got over guessin' yet. --NARRATIVE OF SHORTY. 

John Messner clung with mittened hand to the bucking gee-pole and heldthe sled in the trail. With the other mittened hand he rubbed his cheeksand nose. He rubbed his cheeks and nose every little while. In point offact, he rarely ceased from rubbing them, and sometimes, as theirnumbness increased, he rubbed fiercely. His forehead was covered by thevisor of his fur cap, the flaps of which went over his ears. The rest ofhis face was protected by a thick beard, golden-brown under its coatingof frost. 

Behind him churned a heavily loaded Yukon sled, and before him toiled astring of five dogs. The rope by which they dragged the sled rubbedagainst the side of Messner's leg. When the dogs swung on a bend in thetrail, he stepped over the rope. There were many bends, and he wascompelled to step over it often. Sometimes he tripped on the rope, orstumbled, and at all times he was awkward, betraying a weariness so greatthat the sled now and again ran upon his heels. 

When he came to a straight piece of trail, where the sled could get alongfor a moment without guidance, he let go the gee-pole and batted hisright hand sharply upon the hard wood. He found it difficult to keep upthe circulation in that hand. But while he pounded the one hand, henever ceased from rubbing his nose and cheeks with the other. 

"It's too cold to travel, anyway, " he said. He spoke aloud, after themanner of men who are much by themselves. "Only a fool would travel atsuch a temperature. If it isn't eighty below, it's because it's seventy-nine. "

He pulled out his watch, and after some fumbling got it back into thebreast pocket of his thick woollen jacket. Then he surveyed the heavensand ran his eye along the white sky-line to the south. 

"Twelve o'clock, " he mumbled, "A clear sky, and no sun. "

He plodded on silently for ten minutes, and then, as though there hadbeen no lapse in his speech, he added:

"And no ground covered, and it's too cold to travel. "

Suddenly he yelled "Whoa!" at the dogs, and stopped. He seemed in a wildpanic over his right hand, and proceeded to hammer it furiously againstthe gee-pole. 

"You--poor--devils!" he addressed the dogs, which had dropped downheavily on the ice to rest. His was a broken, jerky utterance, caused bythe violence with which he hammered his numb hand upon the wood. "Whathave you done anyway that a two-legged other animal should come along, break you to harness, curb all your natural proclivities, and make slave-beasts out of you?"

He rubbed his nose, not reflectively, but savagely, in order to drive theblood into it, and urged the dogs to their work again. He travelled onthe frozen surface of a great river. Behind him it stretched away in amighty curve of many miles, losing itself in a fantastic jumble ofmountains, snow-covered and silent. Ahead of him the river split intomany channels to accommodate the freight of islands it carried on itsbreast. These islands were silent and white. No animals nor humminginsects broke the silence. No birds flew in the chill air. There was nosound of man, no mark of the handiwork of man. The world slept, and itwas like the sleep of death. 

John Messner seemed succumbing to the apathy of it all. The frost wasbenumbing his spirit. He plodded on with bowed head, unobservant, mechanically rubbing nose and cheeks, and batting his steering handagainst the gee-pole in the straight trail-stretches. 

But the dogs were observant, and suddenly they stopped, turning theirheads and looking back at their master out of eyes that were wistful andquestioning. Their eyelashes were frosted white, as were their muzzles, and they had all the seeming of decrepit old age, what of the frost-rimeand exhaustion. 

The man was about to urge them on, when he checked himself, roused upwith an effort, and looked around. The dogs had stopped beside a water-hole, not a fissure, but a hole man-made, chopped laboriously with an axethrough three and a half feet of ice. A thick skin of new ice showedthat it had not been used for some time. Messner glanced about him. Thedogs were already pointing the way, each wistful and hoary muzzle turnedtoward the dim snow-path that left the main river trail and climbed thebank of the island. 

"All right, you sore-footed brutes, " he said. "I'll investigate. You'renot a bit more anxious to quit than I am. "

He climbed the bank and disappeared. The dogs did not lie down, but ontheir feet eagerly waited his return. He came back to them, took ahauling-rope from the front of the sled, and put it around his shoulders. Then he _gee'd_ the dogs to the right and put them at the bank on therun. It was a stiff pull, but their weariness fell from them as theycrouched low to the snow, whining with eagerness and gladness as theystruggled upward to the last ounce of effort in their bodies. When a dogslipped or faltered, the one behind nipped his hind quarters. The manshouted encouragement and threats, and threw all his weight on thehauling-rope. 

They cleared the bank with a rush, swung to the left, and dashed up to asmall log cabin. It was a deserted cabin of a single room, eight feet byten on the inside. Messner unharnessed the animals, unloaded his sledand took possession. The last chance wayfarer had left a supply offirewood. Messner set up his light sheet-iron stove and starred a fire. He put five sun-cured salmon into the oven to thaw out for the dogs, andfrom the water-hole filled his coffee-pot and cooking-pail. 

While waiting for the water to boil, he held his face over the stove. Themoisture from his breath had collected on his beard and frozen into agreat mass of ice, and this he proceeded to thaw out. As it melted anddropped upon the stove it sizzled and rose about him in steam. He helpedthe process with his fingers, working loose small ice-chunks that fellrattling to the floor. 

A wild outcry from the dogs without did not take him from his task. Heheard the wolfish snarling and yelping of strange dogs and the sound ofvoices. A knock came on the door. 

"Come in, " Messner called, in a voice muffled because at the moment hewas sucking loose a fragment of ice from its anchorage on his upper lip. 

The door opened, and, gazing out of his cloud of steam, he saw a man anda woman pausing on the threshold. 

"Come in, " he said peremptorily, "and shut the door!"

Peering through the steam, he could make out but little of their personalappearance. The nose and cheek strap worn by the woman and the trail-wrappings about her head allowed only a pair of black eyes to be seen. The man was dark-eyed and smooth-shaven all except his mustache, whichwas so iced up as to hide his mouth. 

"We just wanted to know if there is any other cabin around here, " hesaid, at the same time glancing over the unfurnished state of the room. "We thought this cabin was empty. "

"It isn't my cabin, " Messner answered. "I just found it a few minutesago. Come right in and camp. Plenty of room, and you won't need yourstove. There's room for all. "

At the sound of his voice the woman peered at him with quick curiousness. 

"Get your things off, " her companion said to her. "I'll unhitch and getthe water so we can start cooking. "

Messner took the thawed salmon outside and fed his dogs. He had to guardthem against the second team of dogs, and when he had reentered the cabinthe other man had unpacked the sled and fetched water. Messner's pot wasboiling. He threw in the coffee, settled it with half a cup of coldwater, and took the pot from the stove. He thawed some sour-doughbiscuits in the oven, at the same time heating a pot of beans he hadboiled the night before and that had ridden frozen on the sled allmorning. 

Removing his utensils from the stove, so as to give the newcomers achance to cook, he proceeded to take his meal from the top of his grub-box, himself sitting on his bed-roll. Between mouthfuls he talked trailand dogs with the man, who, with head over the stove, was thawing the icefrom his mustache. There were two bunks in the cabin, and into one ofthem, when he had cleared his lip, the stranger tossed his bed-roll. 

"We'll sleep here, " he said, "unless you prefer this bunk. You're thefirst comer and you have first choice, you know. "

"That's all right, " Messner answered. "One bunk's just as good as theother. "

He spread his own bedding in the second bunk, and sat down on the edge. The stranger thrust a physician's small travelling case under hisblankets at one end to serve for a pillow. 

"Doctor?" Messner asked. 

"Yes, " came the answer, "but I assure you I didn't come into the Klondiketo practise. "

The woman busied herself with cooking, while the man sliced bacon andfired the stove. The light in the cabin was dim, filtering through in asmall window made of onion-skin writing paper and oiled with bacongrease, so that John Messner could not make out very well what the womanlooked like. Not that he tried. He seemed to have no interest in her. But she glanced curiously from time to time into the dark corner where hesat. 

"Oh, it's a great life, " the doctor proclaimed enthusiastically, pausingfrom sharpening his knife on the stovepipe. "What I like about it is thestruggle, the endeavor with one's own hands, the primitiveness of it, therealness. "

"The temperature is real enough, " Messner laughed. 

"Do you know how cold it actually is?" the doctor demanded. 

The other shook his head. 

"Well, I'll tell you. Seventy-four below zero by spirit thermometer onthe sled. "

"That's one hundred and six below freezing point--too cold fortravelling, eh?"

"Practically suicide, " was the doctor's verdict. "One exerts himself. Hebreathes heavily, taking into his lungs the frost itself. It chills hislungs, freezes the edges of the tissues. He gets a dry, hacking cough asthe dead tissue sloughs away, and dies the following summer of pneumonia, wondering what it's all about. I'll stay in this cabin for a week, unless the thermometer rises at least to fifty below. "

"I say, Tess, " he said, the next moment, "don't you think that coffee'sboiled long enough!"

At the sound of the woman's name, John Messner became suddenly alert. Helooked at her quickly, while across his face shot a haunting expression, the ghost of some buried misery achieving swift resurrection. But thenext moment, and by an effort of will, the ghost was laid again. Hisface was as placid as before, though he was still alert, dissatisfiedwith what the feeble light had shown him of the woman's face. 

Automatically, her first act had been to set the coffee-pot back. It wasnot until she had done this that she glanced at Messner. But already hehad composed himself. She saw only a man sitting on the edge of the bunkand incuriously studying the toes of his moccasins. But, as she turnedcasually to go about her cooking, he shot another swift look at her, andshe, glancing as swiftly back, caught his look. He shifted on past herto the doctor, though the slightest smile curled his lip in appreciationof the way she had trapped him. 

She drew a candle from the grub-box and lighted it. One look at herilluminated face was enough for Messner. In the small cabin the widestlimit was only a matter of several steps, and the next moment she wasalongside of him. She deliberately held the candle close to his face andstared at him out of eyes wide with fear and recognition. He smiledquietly back at her. 

"What are you looking for, Tess?" the doctor called. 

"Hairpins, " she replied, passing on and rummaging in a clothes-bag on thebunk. 

They served their meal on their grub-box, sitting on Messner's grub-boxand facing him. He had stretched out on his bunk to rest, lying on hisside, his head on his arm. In the close quarters it was as though thethree were together at table. 

"What part of the States do you come from?" Messner asked. 

"San Francisco, " answered the doctor. "I've been in here two years, though. "

"I hail from California myself, " was Messner's announcement. 

The woman looked at him appealingly, but he smiled and went on:

"Berkeley, you know. "

The other man was becoming interested. 

"U. C. ?" he asked. 

"Yes, Class of '86. "

"I meant faculty, " the doctor explained. "You remind me of the type. "

"Sorry to hear you say so, " Messner smiled back. "I'd prefer being takenfor a prospector or a dog-musher. "

"I don't think he looks any more like a professor than you do a doctor, "the woman broke in. 

"Thank you, " said Messner. Then, turning to her companion, "By the way, Doctor, what is your name, if I may ask?"

"Haythorne, if you'll take my word for it. I gave up cards withcivilization. "

"And Mrs. Haythorne, " Messner smiled and bowed. 

She flashed a look at him that was more anger than appeal. 

Haythorne was about to ask the other's name. His mouth had opened toform the question when Messner cut him off. 

"Come to think of it, Doctor, you may possibly be able to satisfy mycuriosity. There was a sort of scandal in faculty circles some two orthree years ago. The wife of one of the English professors--er, if youwill pardon me, Mrs. Haythorne--disappeared with some San Franciscodoctor, I understood, though his name does not just now come to my lips. Do you remember the incident?"

Haythorne nodded his head. "Made quite a stir at the time. His name wasWomble--Graham Womble. He had a magnificent practice. I knew himsomewhat. "

"Well, what I was trying to get at was what had become of them. I waswondering if you had heard. They left no trace, hide nor hair. "

"He covered his tracks cunningly. " Haythorne cleared his throat. "Therewas rumor that they went to the South Seas--were lost on a tradingschooner in a typhoon, or something like that. "

"I never heard that, " Messner said. "You remember the case, Mrs. Haythorne?"

"Perfectly, " she answered, in a voice the control of which was in amazingcontrast to the anger that blazed in the face she turned aside so thatHaythorne might not see. 

The latter was again on the verge of asking his name, when Messnerremarked:

"This Dr. Womble, I've heard he was very handsome, and--er--quite asuccess, so to say, with the ladies. "

"Well, if he was, he finished himself off by that affair, " Haythornegrumbled. 

"And the woman was a termagant--at least so I've been told. It wasgenerally accepted in Berkeley that she made life--er--not exactlyparadise for her husband. "

"I never heard that, " Haythorne rejoined. "In San Francisco the talk wasall the other way. "

"Woman sort of a martyr, eh?--crucified on the cross of matrimony?"

The doctor nodded. Messner's gray eyes were mildly curious as he wenton:

"That was to be expected--two sides to the shield. Living in Berkeley Ionly got the one side. She was a great deal in San Francisco, it seems. "

"Some coffee, please, " Haythorne said. 

The woman refilled his mug, at the same time breaking into lightlaughter. 

"You're gossiping like a pair of beldames, " she chided them. 

"It's so interesting, " Messner smiled at her, then returned to thedoctor. "The husband seems then to have had a not very savory reputationin San Francisco?"

"On the contrary, he was a moral prig, " Haythorne blurted out, withapparently undue warmth. "He was a little scholastic shrimp without adrop of red blood in his body. "

"Did you know him?"

"Never laid eyes on him. I never knocked about in university circles. "

"One side of the shield again, " Messner said, with an air of weighing thematter judicially. "While he did not amount to much, it is true--thatis, physically--I'd hardly say he was as bad as all that. He did take anactive interest in student athletics. And he had some talent. He oncewrote a Nativity play that brought him quite a bit of local appreciation. I have heard, also, that he was slated for the head of the Englishdepartment, only the affair happened and he resigned and went away. Itquite broke his career, or so it seemed. At any rate, on our side theshield, it was considered a knock-out blow to him. It was thought hecared a great deal for his wife. "

Haythorne, finishing his mug of coffee, grunted uninterestedly andlighted his pipe. 

"It was fortunate they had no children, " Messner continued. 

But Haythorne, with a glance at the stove, pulled on his cap and mittens. 

"I'm going out to get some wood, " he said. "Then I can take off mymoccasins and he comfortable. "

The door slammed behind him. For a long minute there was silence. Theman continued in the same position on the bed. The woman sat on the grub-box, facing him. 

"What are you going to do?" she asked abruptly. 

Messner looked at her with lazy indecision. "What do you think I oughtto do? Nothing scenic, I hope. You see I am stiff and trail-sore, andthis bunk is so restful. "

She gnawed her lower lip and fumed dumbly. 

"But--" she began vehemently, then clenched her hands and stopped. 

"I hope you don't want me to kill Mr. --er--Haythorne, " he said gently, almost pleadingly. "It would be most distressing, and, I assure you, really it is unnecessary. "

"But you must do something, " she cried. 

"On the contrary, it is quite conceivable that I do not have to doanything. "

"You would stay here?"

He nodded. 

She glanced desperately around the cabin and at the bed unrolled on theother bunk. "Night is coming on. You can't stop here. You can't! Itell you, you simply can't!"

"Of course I can. I might remind you that I found this cabin first andthat you are my guests. "

Again her eyes travelled around the room, and the terror in them leapedup at sight of the other bunk. 

"Then we'll have to go, " she announced decisively. 

"Impossible. You have a dry, hacking cough--the sort Mr. --er--Haythorneso aptly described. You've already slightly chilled your lungs. Besides, he is a physician and knows. He would never permit it. "

"Then what are you going to do?" she demanded again, with a tense, quietutterance that boded an outbreak. 

Messner regarded her in a way that was almost paternal, what of theprofundity of pity and patience with which he contrived to suffuse it. 

"My dear Theresa, as I told you before, I don't know. I really haven'tthought about it. "

"Oh! You drive me mad!" She sprang to her feet, wringing her hands inimpotent wrath. "You never used to be this way. "

"I used to be all softness and gentleness, " he nodded concurrence. "Wasthat why you left me?"

"You are so different, so dreadfully calm. You frighten me. I feel youhave something terrible planned all the while. But whatever you do, don't do anything rash. Don't get excited--"

"I don't get excited any more, " he interrupted. "Not since you wentaway. "

"You have improved--remarkably, " she retorted. 

He smiled acknowledgment. "While I am thinking about what I shall do, I'll tell you what you will have to do--tell Mr. --er--Haythorne who I am. It may make our stay in this cabin more--may I say, sociable?"

"Why have you followed me into this frightful country?" she askedirrelevantly. 

"Don't think I came here looking for you, Theresa. Your vanity shall notbe tickled by any such misapprehension. Our meeting is whollyfortuitous. I broke with the life academic and I had to go somewhere. Tobe honest, I came into the Klondike because I thought it the place youwere least liable to be in. "

There was a fumbling at the latch, then the door swung in and Haythorneentered with an armful of firewood. At the first warning, Theresa begancasually to clear away the dishes. Haythorne went out again after morewood. 

"Why didn't you introduce us?" Messner queried. 

"I'll tell him, " she replied, with a toss of her head. "Don't think I'mafraid. "

"I never knew you to be afraid, very much, of anything. "

"And I'm not afraid of confession, either, " she said, with softening faceand voice. 

"In your case, I fear, confession is exploitation by indirection, profit-making by ruse, self-aggrandizement at the expense of God. "

"Don't be literary, " she pouted, with growing tenderness. "I never didlike epigrammatic discussion. Besides, I'm not afraid to ask you toforgive me. "

"There is nothing to forgive, Theresa. I really should thank you. True, at first I suffered; and then, with all the graciousness of spring, itdawned upon me that I was happy, very happy. It was a most amazingdiscovery. "

"But what if I should return to you?" she asked. 

"I should" (he looked at her whimsically), "be greatly perturbed. "

"I am your wife. You know you have never got a divorce. "

"I see, " he meditated. "I have been careless. It will be one of thefirst things I attend to. "

She came over to his side, resting her hand on his arm. "You don't wantme, John?" Her voice was soft and caressing, her hand rested like alure. "If I told you I had made a mistake? If I told you that I wasvery unhappy?--and I am. And I did make a mistake. "

Fear began to grow on Messner. He felt himself wilting under the lightlylaid hand. The situation was slipping away from him, all his beautifulcalmness was going. She looked at him with melting eyes, and he, too, seemed all dew and melting. He felt himself on the edge of an abyss, powerless to withstand the force that was drawing him over. 

"I am coming back to you, John. I am coming back to-day . . . Now. "

As in a nightmare, he strove under the hand. While she talked, he seemedto hear, rippling softly, the song of the Lorelei. It was as though, somewhere, a piano were playing and the actual notes were impinging onhis ear-drums. 

Suddenly he sprang to his feet, thrust her from him as her arms attemptedto clasp him, and retreated backward to the door. He was in a panic. 

"I'll do something desperate!" he cried. 

"I warned you not to get excited. " She laughed mockingly, and went aboutwashing the dishes. "Nobody wants you. I was just playing with you. Iam happier where I am. "

But Messner did not believe. He remembered her facility in changingfront. She had changed front now. It was exploitation by indirection. She was not happy with the other man. She had discovered her mistake. The flame of his ego flared up at the thought. She wanted to come backto him, which was the one thing he did not want. Unwittingly, his handrattled the door-latch. 

"Don't run away, " she laughed. "I won't bite you. "

"I am not running away, " he replied with child-like defiance, at the sametime pulling on his mittens. "I'm only going to get some water. "

He gathered the empty pails and cooking pots together and opened thedoor. He looked back at her. 

"Don't forget you're to tell Mr. --er--Haythorne who I am. "

Messner broke the skin that had formed on the water-hole within the hour, and filled his pails. But he did not return immediately to the cabin. Leaving the pails standing in the trail, he walked up and down, rapidly, to keep from freezing, for the frost bit into the flesh like fire. Hisbeard was white with his frozen breath when the perplexed and frowningbrows relaxed and decision came into his face. He had made up his mindto his course of action, and his frigid lips and cheeks crackled into achuckle over it. The pails were already skinned over with young ice whenhe picked them up and made for the cabin. 

When he entered he found the other man waiting, standing near the stove, a certain stiff awkwardness and indecision in his manner. Messner setdown his water-pails. 

"Glad to meet you, Graham Womble, " he said in conventional tones, asthough acknowledging an introduction. 

Messner did not offer his hand. Womble stirred uneasily, feeling for theother the hatred one is prone to feel for one he has wronged. 

"And so you're the chap, " Messner said in marvelling accents. "Well, well. You see, I really am glad to meet you. I have been--er--curiousto know what Theresa found in you--where, I may say, the attraction lay. Well, well. "

And he looked the other up and down as a man would look a horse up anddown. 

"I know how you must feel about me, " Womble began. 

"Don't mention it, " Messner broke in with exaggerated cordiality of voiceand manner. "Never mind that. What I want to know is how do you findher? Up to expectations? Has she worn well? Life been all a happydream ever since?"

"Don't be silly, " Theresa interjected. 

"I can't help being natural, " Messner complained. 

"You can be expedient at the same time, and practical, " Womble saidsharply. "What we want to know is what are you going to do?"

Messner made a well-feigned gesture of helplessness. "I really don'tknow. It is one of those impossible situations against which there canbe no provision. "

"All three of us cannot remain the night in this cabin. "

Messner nodded affirmation. 

"Then somebody must get out. "

"That also is incontrovertible, " Messner agreed. "When three bodiescannot occupy the same space at the same time, one must get out. "

"And you're that one, " Womble announced grimly. "It's a ten-mile pull tothe next camp, but you can make it all right. "

"And that's the first flaw in your reasoning, " the other objected. "Why, necessarily, should I be the one to get out? I found this cabin first. "

"But Tess can't get out, " Womble explained. "Her lungs are alreadyslightly chilled. "

"I agree with you. She can't venture ten miles of frost. By all meansshe must remain. "

"Then it is as I said, " Womble announced with finality. 

Messner cleared his throat. "Your lungs are all right, aren't they?"

"Yes, but what of it?"

Again the other cleared his throat and spoke with painstaking andjudicial slowness. "Why, I may say, nothing of it, except, ah, accordingto your own reasoning, there is nothing to prevent your getting out, hitting the frost, so to speak, for a matter of ten miles. You can makeit all right. "

Womble looked with quick suspicion at Theresa and caught in her eyes aglint of pleased surprise. 

"Well?" he demanded of her. 

She hesitated, and a surge of anger darkened his face. He turned uponMessner. 

"Enough of this. You can't stop here. "

"Yes, I can. "

"I won't let you. " Womble squared his shoulders. "I'm running things. "

"I'll stay anyway, " the other persisted. 

"I'll put you out. "

"I'll come back. "

Womble stopped a moment to steady his voice and control himself. Then hespoke slowly, in a low, tense voice. 

"Look here, Messner, if you refuse to get out, I'll thrash you. Thisisn't California. I'll beat you to a jelly with my two fists. "

Messner shrugged his shoulders. "If you do, I'll call a miners' meetingand see you strung up to the nearest tree. As you said, this is notCalifornia. They're a simple folk, these miners, and all I'll have to dowill be to show them the marks of the beating, tell them the truth aboutyou, and present my claim for my wife. "

The woman attempted to speak, but Womble turned upon her fiercely. 

"You keep out of this, " he cried. 

In marked contrast was Messner's "Please don't intrude, Theresa. "

What of her anger and pent feelings, her lungs were irritated into thedry, hacking cough, and with blood-suffused face and one hand clenchedagainst her chest, she waited for the paroxysm to pass. 

Womble looked gloomily at her, noting her cough. 

"Something must be done, " he said. "Yet her lungs can't stand theexposure. She can't travel till the temperature rises. And I'm notgoing to give her up. "

Messner hemmed, cleared his throat, and hemmed again, semi-apologetically, and said, "I need some money. "

Contempt showed instantly in Womble's face. At last, beneath him invileness, had the other sunk himself. 

"You've got a fat sack of dust, " Messner went on. "I saw you unload itfrom the sled. "

"How much do you want?" Womble demanded, with a contempt in his voiceequal to that in his face. 

"I made an estimate of the sack, and I--ah--should say it weighed abouttwenty pounds. What do you say we call it four thousand?"

"But it's all I've got, man!" Womble cried out. 

"You've got her, " the other said soothingly. "She must be worth it. Think what I'm giving up. Surely it is a reasonable price. "

"All right. " Womble rushed across the floor to the gold-sack. "Can'tput this deal through too quick for me, you--you little worm!"

"Now, there you err, " was the smiling rejoinder. "As a matter of ethicsisn't the man who gives a bribe as bad as the man who takes a bribe? Thereceiver is as bad as the thief, you know; and you needn't consoleyourself with any fictitious moral superiority concerning this littledeal. "

"To hell with your ethics!" the other burst out. "Come here and watchthe weighing of this dust. I might cheat you. "

And the woman, leaning against the bunk, raging and impotent, watchedherself weighed out in yellow dust and nuggets in the scales erected onthe grub-box. The scales were small, making necessary many weighings, and Messner with precise care verified each weighing. 

"There's too much silver in it, " he remarked as he tied up the gold-sack. "I don't think it will run quite sixteen to the ounce. You got a triflethe better of me, Womble. "

He handled the sack lovingly, and with due appreciation of itspreciousness carried it out to his sled. 

Returning, he gathered his pots and pans together, packed his grub-box, and rolled up his bed. When the sled was lashed and the complaining dogsharnessed, he returned into the cabin for his mittens. 

"Good-by, Tess, " he said, standing at the open door. 

She turned on him, struggling for speech but too frantic to word thepassion that burned in her. 

"Good-by, Tess, " he repeated gently. 

"Beast!" she managed to articulate. 

She turned and tottered to the bunk, flinging herself face down upon it, sobbing: "You beasts! You beasts!"

John Messner closed the door softly behind him, and, as he started thedogs, looked back at the cabin with a great relief in his face. At thebottom of the bank, beside the water-hole, he halted the sled. He workedthe sack of gold out between the lashings and carried it to the water-hole. Already a new skin of ice had formed. This he broke with hisfist. Untying the knotted mouth with his teeth, he emptied the contentsof the sack into the water. The river was shallow at that point, and twofeet beneath the surface he could see the bottom dull-yellow in thefading light. At the sight of it, he spat into the hole. 

He started the dogs along the Yukon trail. Whining spiritlessly, theywere reluctant to work. Clinging to the gee-pole with his right band andwith his left rubbing cheeks and nose, he stumbled over the rope as thedogs swung on a bend. 

"Mush-on, you poor, sore-footed brutes!" he cried. "That's it, mush-on!"

THE WHITE MAN'S WAY

"To cook by your fire and to sleep under your roof for the night, " I hadannounced on entering old Ebbits's cabin; and he had looked at me blear-eyed and vacuous, while Zilla had favored me with a sour face and acontemptuous grunt. Zilla was his wife, and no more bitter-tongued, implacable old squaw dwelt on the Yukon. Nor would I have stopped therehad my dogs been less tired or had the rest of the village beeninhabited. But this cabin alone had I found occupied, and in this cabin, perforce, I took my shelter. 

Old Ebbits now and again pulled his tangled wits together, and hints andsparkles of intelligence came and went in his eyes. Several times duringthe preparation of my supper he even essayed hospitable inquiries aboutmy health, the condition and number of my dogs, and the distance I hadtravelled that day. And each time Zilla had looked sourer than ever andgrunted more contemptuously. 

Yet I confess that there was no particular call for cheerfulness on theirpart. There they crouched by the fire, the pair of them, at the end oftheir days, old and withered and helpless, racked by rheumatism, bittenby hunger, and tantalized by the frying-odors of my abundance of meat. They rocked back and forth in a slow and hopeless way, and regularly, once every five minutes, Ebbits emitted a low groan. It was not so mucha groan of pain, as of pain-weariness. He was oppressed by the weightand the torment of this thing called life, and still more was heoppressed by the fear of death. His was that eternal tragedy of theaged, with whom the joy of life has departed and the instinct for deathhas not come. 

When my moose-meat spluttered rowdily in the frying-pan, I noticed oldEbbits's nostrils twitch and distend as he caught the food-scent. Heceased rocking for a space and forgot to groan, while a look ofintelligence seemed to come into his face. 

Zilla, on the other hand, rocked more rapidly, and for the first time, insharp little yelps, voiced her pain. It came to me that their behaviorwas like that of hungry dogs, and in the fitness of things I should nothave been astonished had Zilla suddenly developed a tail and thumped iton the floor in right doggish fashion. Ebbits drooled a little andstopped his rocking very frequently to lean forward and thrust histremulous nose nearer to the source of gustatory excitement. 

When I passed them each a plate of the fried meat, they ate greedily, making loud mouth-noises--champings of worn teeth and sucking intakes ofthe breath, accompanied by a continuous spluttering and mumbling. Afterthat, when I gave them each a mug of scalding tea, the noises ceased. Easement and content came into their faces. Zilla relaxed her sour mouthlong enough to sigh her satisfaction. Neither rocked any more, and theyseemed to have fallen into placid meditation. Then a dampness came intoEbbits's eyes, and I knew that the sorrow of self-pity was his. Thesearch required to find their pipes told plainly that they had beenwithout tobacco a long time, and the old man's eagerness for the narcoticrendered him helpless, so that I was compelled to light his pipe for him. 

"Why are you all alone in the village?" I asked. "Is everybody dead? Hasthere been a great sickness? Are you alone left of the living?"

Old Ebbits shook his head, saying: "Nay, there has been no greatsickness. The village has gone away to hunt meat. We be too old, ourlegs are not strong, nor can our backs carry the burdens of camp andtrail. Wherefore we remain here and wonder when the young men willreturn with meat. "

"What if the young men do return with meat?" Zilla demanded harshly. 

"They may return with much meat, " he quavered hopefully. 

"Even so, with much meat, " she continued, more harshly than before. "Butof what worth to you and me? A few bones to gnaw in our toothless oldage. But the back-fat, the kidneys, and the tongues--these shall go intoother mouths than thine and mine, old man. "

Ebbits nodded his head and wept silently. 

"There be no one to hunt meat for us, " she cried, turning fiercely uponme. 

There was accusation in her manner, and I shrugged my shoulders in tokenthat I was not guilty of the unknown crime imputed to me. 

"Know, O White Man, that it is because of thy kind, because of all whitemen, that my man and I have no meat in our old age and sit withouttobacco in the cold. "

"Nay, " Ebbits said gravely, with a stricter sense of justice. "Wrong hasbeen done us, it be true; but the white men did not mean the wrong. "

"Where be Moklan?" she demanded. "Where be thy strong son, Moklan, andthe fish he was ever willing to bring that you might eat?"

The old man shook his head. 

"And where be Bidarshik, thy strong son? Ever was he a mighty hunter, and ever did he bring thee the good back-fat and the sweet dried tonguesof the moose and the caribou. I see no back-fat and no sweet driedtongues. Your stomach is full with emptiness through the days, and it isfor a man of a very miserable and lying people to give you to eat. "

"Nay, " old Ebbits interposed in kindliness, "the white man's is not alying people. The white man speaks true. Always does the white manspeak true. " He paused, casting about him for words wherewith to temperthe severity of what he was about to say. "But the white man speaks truein different ways. To-day he speaks true one way, to-morrow he speakstrue another way, and there is no understanding him nor his way. "

"To-day speak true one way, to-morrow speak true another way, which is tolie, " was Zilla's dictum. 

"There is no understanding the white man, " Ebbits went on doggedly. 

The meat, and the tea, and the tobacco seemed to have brought him back tolife, and he gripped tighter hold of the idea behind his age-blearedeyes. He straightened up somewhat. His voice lost its querulous andwhimpering note, and became strong and positive. He turned upon me withdignity, and addressed me as equal addresses equal. 

"The white man's eyes are not shut, " he began. "The white man sees allthings, and thinks greatly, and is very wise. But the white man of oneday is not the white man of next day, and there is no understanding him. He does not do things always in the same way. And what way his next wayis to be, one cannot know. Always does the Indian do the one thing inthe one way. Always does the moose come down from the high mountainswhen the winter is here. Always does the salmon come in the spring whenthe ice has gone out of the river. Always does everything do all thingsin the same way, and the Indian knows and understands. But the white mandoes not do all things in the same way, and the Indian does not know norunderstand. 

"Tobacco be very good. It be food to the hungry man. It makes thestrong man stronger, and the angry man to forget that he is angry. Alsois tobacco of value. It is of very great value. The Indian gives onelarge salmon for one leaf of tobacco, and he chews the tobacco for a longtime. It is the juice of the tobacco that is good. When it runs downhis throat it makes him feel good inside. But the white man! When hismouth is full with the juice, what does he do? That juice, that juice ofgreat value, he spits it out in the snow and it is lost. Does the whiteman like tobacco? I do not know. But if he likes tobacco, why does hespit out its value and lose it in the snow? It is a great foolishnessand without understanding. "

He ceased, puffed at the pipe, found that it was out, and passed it overto Zilla, who took the sneer at the white man off her lips in order topucker them about the pipe-stem. Ebbits seemed sinking back into hissenility with the tale untold, and I demanded:

"What of thy sons, Moklan and Bidarshik? And why is it that you and yourold woman are without meat at the end of your years?"

He roused himself as from sleep, and straightened up with an effort. 

"It is not good to steal, " he said. "When the dog takes your meat youbeat the dog with a club. Such is the law. It is the law the man gaveto the dog, and the dog must live to the law, else will it suffer thepain of the club. When man takes your meat, or your canoe, or your wife, you kill that man. That is the law, and it is a good law. It is notgood to steal, wherefore it is the law that the man who steals must die. Whoso breaks the law must suffer hurt. It is a great hurt to die. "

"But if you kill the man, why do you not kill the dog?" I asked. 

Old Ebbits looked at me in childlike wonder, while Zilla sneered openlyat the absurdity of my question. 

"It is the way of the white man, " Ebbits mumbled with an air ofresignation. 

"It is the foolishness of the white man, " snapped Zilla. 

"Then let old Ebbits teach the white man wisdom, " I said softly. 

"The dog is not killed, because it must pull the sled of the man. No manpulls another man's sled, wherefore the man is killed. "

"Oh, " I murmured. 

"That is the law, " old Ebbits went on. "Now listen, O White Man, and Iwill tell you of a great foolishness. There is an Indian. His name isMobits. From white man he steals two pounds of flour. What does thewhite man do? Does he beat Mobits? No. Does he kill Mobits? No. Whatdoes he do to Mobits? I will tell you, O White Man. He has a house. Heputs Mobits in that house. The roof is good. The walls are thick. Hemakes a fire that Mobits may be warm. He gives Mobits plenty grub toeat. It is good grub. Never in his all days does Mobits eat so goodgrub. There is bacon, and bread, and beans without end. Mobits havevery good time. 

"There is a big lock on door so that Mobits does not run away. This alsois a great foolishness. Mobits will not run away. All the time is thereplenty grub in that place, and warm blankets, and a big fire. Veryfoolish to run away. Mobits is not foolish. Three months Mobits stop inthat place. He steal two pounds of flour. For that, white man takeplenty good care of him. Mobits eat many pounds of flour, many pounds ofsugar, of bacon, of beans without end. Also, Mobits drink much tea. After three months white man open door and tell Mobits he must go. Mobitsdoes not want to go. He is like dog that is fed long time in one place. He want to stay in that place, and the white man must drive Mobits away. So Mobits come back to this village, and he is very fat. That is thewhite man's way, and there is no understanding it. It is a foolishness, a great foolishness. "

"But thy sons?" I insisted. "Thy very strong sons and thine old-agehunger?"

"There was Moklan, " Ebbits began. 

"A strong man, " interrupted the mother. "He could dip paddle all of aday and night and never stop for the need of rest. He was wise in theway of the salmon and in the way of the water. He was very wise. "

"There was Moklan, " Ebbits repeated, ignoring the interruption. "In thespring, he went down the Yukon with the young men to trade at CambellFort. There is a post there, filled with the goods of the white man, anda trader whose name is Jones. Likewise is there a white man's medicineman, what you call missionary. Also is there bad water at Cambell Fort, where the Yukon goes slim like a maiden, and the water is fast, and thecurrents rush this way and that and come together, and there are whirlsand sucks, and always are the currents changing and the face of the waterchanging, so at any two times it is never the same. Moklan is my son, wherefore he is brave man--"

"Was not my father brave man?" Zilla demanded. 

"Thy father was brave man, " Ebbits acknowledged, with the air of one whowill keep peace in the house at any cost. "Moklan is thy son and mine, wherefore he is brave. Mayhap, because of thy very brave father, Moklanis too brave. It is like when too much water is put in the pot it spillsover. So too much bravery is put into Moklan, and the bravery spillsover. 

"The young men are much afraid of the bad water at Cambell Fort. ButMoklan is not afraid. He laughs strong, Ho! ho! and he goes forth intothe bad water. But where the currents come together the canoe is turnedover. A whirl takes Moklan by the legs, and he goes around and around, and down and down, and is seen no more. "

"Ai! ai!" wailed Zilla. "Crafty and wise was he, and my first-born!"

"I am the father of Moklan, " Ebbits said, having patiently given thewoman space for her noise. "I get into canoe and journey down to CambellFort to collect the debt!"

"Debt!" interrupted. "What debt?"

"The debt of Jones, who is chief trader, " came the answer. "Such is thelaw of travel in a strange country. "

I shook my head in token of my ignorance, and Ebbits looked compassion atme, while Zilla snorted her customary contempt. 

"Look you, O White Man, " he said. "In thy camp is a dog that bites. Whenthe dog bites a man, you give that man a present because you are sorryand because it is thy dog. You make payment. Is it not so? Also, ifyou have in thy country bad hunting, or bad water, you must make payment. It is just. It is the law. Did not my father's brother go over into theTanana Country and get killed by a bear? And did not the Tanana tribepay my father many blankets and fine furs? It was just. It was badhunting, and the Tanana people made payment for the bad hunting. 

"So I, Ebbits, journeyed down to Cambell Fort to collect the debt. Jones, who is chief trader, looked at me, and he laughed. He made greatlaughter, and would not give payment. I went to the medicine-man, whatyou call missionary, and had large talk about the bad water and thepayment that should be mine. And the missionary made talk about otherthings. He talk about where Moklan has gone, now he is dead. There belarge fires in that place, and if missionary make true talk, I know thatMoklan will be cold no more. Also the missionary talk about where Ishall go when I am dead. And he say bad things. He say that I am blind. Which is a lie. He say that I am in great darkness. Which is a lie. AndI say that the day come and the night come for everybody just the same, and that in my village it is no more dark than at Cambell Fort. Also, Isay that darkness and light and where we go when we die be differentthings from the matter of payment of just debt for bad water. Then themissionary make large anger, and call me bad names of darkness, and tellme to go away. And so I come back from Cambell Fort, and no payment hasbeen made, and Moklan is dead, and in my old age I am without fish andmeat. "

"Because of the white man, " said Zilla. 

"Because of the white man, " Ebbits concurred. "And other things becauseof the white man. There was Bidarshik. One way did the white man dealwith him; and yet another way for the same thing did the white man dealwith Yamikan. And first must I tell you of Yamikan, who was a young manof this village and who chanced to kill a white man. It is not good tokill a man of another people. Always is there great trouble. It was notthe fault of Yamikan that he killed the white man. Yamikan spoke alwayssoft words and ran away from wrath as a dog from a stick. But this whiteman drank much whiskey, and in the night-time came to Yamikan's house andmade much fight. Yamikan cannot run away, and the white man tries tokill him. Yamikan does not like to die, so he kills the white man. 

"Then is all the village in great trouble. We are much afraid that wemust make large payment to the white man's people, and we hide ourblankets, and our furs, and all our wealth, so that it will seem that weare poor people and can make only small payment. After long time whitemen come. They are soldier white men, and they take Yamikan away withthem. His mother make great noise and throw ashes in her hair, for sheknows Yamikan is dead. And all the village knows that Yamikan is dead, and is glad that no payment is asked. 

"That is in the spring when the ice has gone out of the river. One yeargo by, two years go by. It is spring-time again, and the ice has goneout of the river. And then Yamikan, who is dead, comes back to us, andhe is not dead, but very fat, and we know that he has slept warm and hadplenty grub to eat. He has much fine clothes and is all the same whiteman, and he has gathered large wisdom so that he is very quick head manin the village. 

"And he has strange things to tell of the way of the white man, for hehas seen much of the white man and done a great travel into the whiteman's country. First place, soldier white men take him down the riverlong way. All the way do they take him down the river to the end, whereit runs into a lake which is larger than all the land and large as thesky. I do not know the Yukon is so big river, but Yamikan has seen withhis own eyes. I do not think there is a lake larger than all the landand large as the sky, but Yamikan has seen. Also, he has told me thatthe waters of this lake be salt, which is a strange thing and beyondunderstanding. 

"But the White Man knows all these marvels for himself, so I shall notweary him with the telling of them. Only will I tell him what happenedto Yamikan. The white man give Yamikan much fine grub. All the timedoes Yamikan eat, and all the time is there plenty more grub. The whiteman lives under the sun, so said Yamikan, where there be much warmth, andanimals have only hair and no fur, and the green things grow large andstrong and become flour, and beans, and potatoes. And under the sunthere is never famine. Always is there plenty grub. I do not know. Yamikan has said. 

"And here is a strange thing that befell Yamikan. Never did the whiteman hurt him. Only did they give him warm bed at night and plenty finegrub. They take him across the salt lake which is big as the sky. He ison white man's fire-boat, what you call steamboat, only he is on boatmaybe twenty times bigger than steamboat on Yukon. Also, it is made ofiron, this boat, and yet does it not sink. This I do not understand, butYamikan has said, 'I have journeyed far on the iron boat; behold! I amstill alive. ' It is a white man's soldier-boat with many soldier menupon it. 

"After many sleeps of travel, a long, long time, Yamikan comes to a landwhere there is no snow. I cannot believe this. It is not in the natureof things that when winter comes there shall be no snow. But Yamikan hasseen. Also have I asked the white men, and they have said yes, there isno snow in that country. But I cannot believe, and now I ask you if snownever come in that country. Also, I would hear the name of that country. I have heard the name before, but I would hear it again, if it be thesame--thus will I know if I have heard lies or true talk. "

Old Ebbits regarded me with a wistful face. He would have the truth atany cost, though it was his desire to retain his faith in the marvel hehad never seen. 

"Yes, " I answered, "it is true talk that you have heard. There is nosnow in that country, and its name is California. "

"Cal-ee-forn-ee-yeh, " he mumbled twice and thrice, listening intently tothe sound of the syllables as they fell from his lips. He nodded hishead in confirmation. "Yes, it is the same country of which Yamikan madetalk. "

I recognized the adventure of Yamikan as one likely to occur in the earlydays when Alaska first passed into the possession of the United States. Such a murder case, occurring before the instalment of territorial lawand officials, might well have been taken down to the United States fortrial before a Federal court. 

"When Yamikan is in this country where there is no snow, " old Ebbitscontinued, "he is taken to large house where many men make much talk. Long time men talk. Also many questions do they ask Yamikan. By and bythey tell Yamikan he have no more trouble. Yamikan does not understand, for never has he had any trouble. All the time have they given him warmplace to sleep and plenty grub. 

"But after that they give him much better grub, and they give him money, and they take him many places in white man's country, and he see manystrange things which are beyond the understanding of Ebbits, who is anold man and has not journeyed far. After two years, Yamikan comes backto this village, and he is head man, and very wise until he dies. 

"But before he dies, many times does he sit by my fire and make talk ofthe strange things he has seen. And Bidarshik, who is my son, sits bythe fire and listens; and his eyes are very wide and large because of thethings he hears. One night, after Yamikan has gone home, Bidarshikstands up, so, very tall, and he strikes his chest with his fist, andsays, 'When I am a man, I shall journey in far places, even to the landwhere there is no snow, and see things for myself. '"

"Always did Bidarshik journey in far places, " Zilla interrupted proudly. 

"It be true, " Ebbits assented gravely. "And always did he return to sitby the fire and hunger for yet other and unknown far places. "

"And always did he remember the salt lake as big as the sky and thecountry under the sun where there is no snow, " quoth Zilla. 

"And always did he say, 'When I have the full strength of a man, I willgo and see for myself if the talk of Yamikan be true talk, '" said Ebbits. 

"But there was no way to go to the white man's country, " said Zilla. 

"Did he not go down to the salt lake that is big as the sky?" Ebbitsdemanded. 

"And there was no way for him across the salt lake, " said Zilla. 

"Save in the white man's fire-boat which is of iron and is bigger thantwenty steamboats on the Yukon, " said Ebbits. He scowled at Zilla, whosewithered lips were again writhing into speech, and compelled her tosilence. "But the white man would not let him cross the salt lake in thefire-boat, and he returned to sit by the fire and hunger for the countryunder the sun where there is no snow. '"

"Yet on the salt lake had he seen the fire-boat of iron that did notsink, " cried out Zilla the irrepressible. 

"Ay, " said Ebbits, "and he saw that Yamikan had made true talk of thethings he had seen. But there was no way for Bidarshik to journey to thewhite man's land under the sun, and he grew sick and weary like an oldman and moved not away from the fire. No longer did he go forth to killmeat--"

"And no longer did he eat the meat placed before him, " Zilla broke in. "He would shake his head and say, 'Only do I care to eat the grub of thewhite man and grow fat after the manner of Yamikan. '"

"And he did not eat the meat, " Ebbits went on. "And the sickness ofBidarshik grew into a great sickness until I thought he would die. Itwas not a sickness of the body, but of the head. It was a sickness ofdesire. I, Ebbits, who am his father, make a great think. I have nomore sons and I do not want Bidarshik to die. It is a head-sickness, andthere is but one way to make it well. Bidarshik must journey across thelake as large as the sky to the land where there is no snow, else will hedie. I make a very great think, and then I see the way for Bidarshik togo. 

"So, one night when he sits by the fire, very sick, his head hangingdown, I say, 'My son, I have learned the way for you to go to the whiteman's land. ' He looks at me, and his face is glad. 'Go, ' I say, 'evenas Yamikan went. ' But Bidarshik is sick and does not understand. 'Goforth, ' I say, 'and find a white man, and, even as Yamikan, do you killthat white man. Then will the soldier white men come and get you, andeven as they took Yamikan will they take you across the salt lake to thewhite man's land. And then, even as Yamikan, will you return very fat, your eyes full of the things you have seen, your head filled withwisdom. '

"And Bidarshik stands up very quick, and his hand is reaching out for hisgun. 'Where do you go?' I ask. 'To kill the white man, ' he says. And Isee that my words have been good in the ears of Bidarshik and that hewill grow well again. Also do I know that my words have been wise. 

"There is a white man come to this village. He does not seek after goldin the ground, nor after furs in the forest. All the time does he seekafter bugs and flies. He does not eat the bugs and flies, then why doeshe seek after them? I do not know. Only do I know that he is a funnywhite man. Also does he seek after the eggs of birds. He does not eatthe eggs. All that is inside he takes out, and only does he keep theshell. Eggshell is not good to eat. Nor does he eat the eggshells, butputs them away in soft boxes where they will not break. He catch manysmall birds. But he does not eat the birds. He takes only the skins andputs them away in boxes. Also does he like bones. Bones are not good toeat. And this strange white man likes best the bones of long time agowhich he digs out of the ground. 

"But he is not a fierce white man, and I know he will die very easy; so Isay to Bidarshik, 'My son, there is the white man for you to kill. ' AndBidarshik says that my words be wise. So he goes to a place he knowswhere are many bones in the ground. He digs up very many of these bonesand brings them to the strange white man's camp. The white man is madevery glad. His face shines like the sun, and he smiles with muchgladness as he looks at the bones. He bends his head over, so, to lookwell at the bones, and then Bidarshik strikes him hard on the head, withaxe, once, so, and the strange white man kicks and is dead. 

"'Now, ' I say to Bidarshik, 'will the white soldier men come and take youaway to the land under the sun, where you will eat much and grow fat. 'Bidarshik is happy. Already has his sickness gone from him, and he sitsby the fire and waits for the coming of the white soldier men. 

"How was I to know the way of the white man is never twice the same?" theold man demanded, whirling upon me fiercely. "How was I to know thatwhat the white man does yesterday he will not do to-day, and that what hedoes to-day he will not do to-morrow?" Ebbits shook his head sadly. "There is no understanding the white man. Yesterday he takes Yamikan tothe land under the sun and makes him fat with much grub. To-day he takesBidarshik and--what does he do with Bidarshik? Let me tell you what hedoes with Bidarshik. 

"I, Ebbits, his father, will tell you. He takes Bidarshik to CambellFort, and he ties a rope around his neck, so, and, when his feet are nomore on the ground, he dies. "

"Ai! ai!" wailed Zilla. "And never does he cross the lake large as thesky, nor see the land under the sun where there is no snow. "

"Wherefore, " old Ebbits said with grave dignity, "there be no one to huntmeat for me in my old age, and I sit hungry by my fire and tell my storyto the White Man who has given me grub, and strong tea, and tobacco formy pipe. "

"Because of the lying and very miserable white people, " Zilla proclaimedshrilly. 

"Nay, " answered the old man with gentle positiveness. "Because of theway of the white man, which is without understanding and never twice thesame. "

THE STORY OF KEESH

Keesh lived long ago on the rim of the polar sea, was head man of hisvillage through many and prosperous years, and died full of honors withhis name on the lips of men. So long ago did he live that only the oldmen remember his name, his name and the tale, which they got from the oldmen before them, and which the old men to come will tell to theirchildren and their children's children down to the end of time. And thewinter darkness, when the north gales make their long sweep across theice-pack, and the air is filled with flying white, and no man may ventureforth, is the chosen time for the telling of how Keesh, from the poorest_igloo_ in the village, rose to power and place over them all. 

He was a bright boy, so the tale runs, healthy and strong, and he hadseen thirteen suns, in their way of reckoning time. For each winter thesun leaves the land in darkness, and the next year a new sun returns sothat they may be warm again and look upon one another's faces. Thefather of Keesh had been a very brave man, but he had met his death in atime of famine, when he sought to save the lives of his people by takingthe life of a great polar bear. In his eagerness he came to closegrapples with the bear, and his bones were crushed; but the bear had muchmeat on him and the people were saved. Keesh was his only son, and afterthat Keesh lived alone with his mother. But the people are prone toforget, and they forgot the deed of his father; and he being but a boy, and his mother only a woman, they, too, were swiftly forgotten, and erelong came to live in the meanest of all the _igloos_. 

It was at a council, one night, in the big _igloo_ of Klosh-Kwan, thechief, that Keesh showed the blood that ran in his veins and the manhoodthat stiffened his back. With the dignity of an elder, he rose to hisfeet, and waited for silence amid the babble of voices. 

"It is true that meat be apportioned me and mine, " he said. "But it isofttimes old and tough, this meat, and, moreover, it has an unusualquantity of bones. "

The hunters, grizzled and gray, and lusty and young, were aghast. Thelike had never been known before. A child, that talked like a grown man, and said harsh things to their very faces!

But steadily and with seriousness, Keesh went on. "For that I know myfather, Bok, was a great hunter, I speak these words. It is said thatBok brought home more meat than any of the two best hunters, that withhis own hands he attended to the division of it, that with his own eyeshe saw to it that the least old woman and the last old man received fairshare. "

"Na! Na!" the men cried. "Put the child out!" "Send him off to bed!""He is no man that he should talk to men and graybeards!"

He waited calmly till the uproar died down. 

"Thou hast a wife, Ugh-Gluk, " he said, "and for her dost thou speak. Andthou, too, Massuk, a mother also, and for them dost thou speak. Mymother has no one, save me; wherefore I speak. As I say, though Bok bedead because he hunted over-keenly, it is just that I, who am his son, and that Ikeega, who is my mother and was his wife, should have meat inplenty so long as there be meat in plenty in the tribe. I, Keesh, theson of Bok, have spoken. "

He sat down, his ears keenly alert to the flood of protest andindignation his words had created. 

"That a boy should speak in council!" old Ugh-Gluk was mumbling. 

"Shall the babes in arms tell us men the things we shall do?" Massukdemanded in a loud voice. "Am I a man that I should be made a mock byevery child that cries for meat?"

The anger boiled a white heat. They ordered him to bed, threatened thathe should have no meat at all, and promised him sore beatings for hispresumption. Keesh's eyes began to flash, and the blood to pound darklyunder his skin. In the midst of the abuse he sprang to his feet. 

"Hear me, ye men!" he cried. "Never shall I speak in the council again, never again till the men come to me and say, 'It is well, Keesh, thatthou shouldst speak, it is well and it is our wish. ' Take this now, yemen, for my last word. Bok, my father, was a great hunter. I, too, hisson, shall go and hunt the meat that I eat. And be it known, now, thatthe division of that which I kill shall be fair. And no widow nor weakone shall cry in the night because there is no meat, when the strong menare groaning in great pain for that they have eaten overmuch. And in thedays to come there shall be shame upon the strong men who have eatenovermuch. I, Keesh, have said it!"

Jeers and scornful laughter followed him out of the _igloo_, but his jawwas set and he went his way, looking neither to right nor left. 

The next day he went forth along the shore-line where the ice and theland met together. Those who saw him go noted that he carried his bow, with a goodly supply of bone-barbed arrows, and that across his shoulderwas his father's big hunting-spear. And there was laughter, and muchtalk, at the event. It was an unprecedented occurrence. Never did boysof his tender age go forth to hunt, much less to hunt alone. Also werethere shaking of heads and prophetic mutterings, and the women lookedpityingly at Ikeega, and her face was grave and sad. 

"He will be back ere long, " they said cheeringly. 

"Let him go; it will teach him a lesson, " the hunters said. "And he willcome back shortly, and he will be meek and soft of speech in the days tofollow. "

But a day passed, and a second, and on the third a wild gale blew, andthere was no Keesh. Ikeega tore her hair and put soot of the seal-oil onher face in token of her grief; and the women assailed the men withbitter words in that they had mistreated the boy and sent him to hisdeath; and the men made no answer, preparing to go in search of the bodywhen the storm abated. 

Early next morning, however, Keesh strode into the village. But he camenot shamefacedly. Across his shoulders he bore a burden of fresh-killedmeat. And there was importance in his step and arrogance in his speech. 

"Go, ye men, with the dogs and sledges, and take my trail for the betterpart of a day's travel, " he said. "There is much meat on the ice--a she-bear and two half-grown cubs. "

Ikeega was overcome with joy, but he received her demonstrations inmanlike fashion, saying: "Come, Ikeega, let us eat. And after that Ishall sleep, for I am weary. "

And he passed into their _igloo_ and ate profoundly, and after that sleptfor twenty running hours. 

There was much doubt at first, much doubt and discussion. The killing ofa polar bear is very dangerous, but thrice dangerous is it, and threetimes thrice, to kill a mother bear with her cubs. The men could notbring themselves to believe that the boy Keesh, single-handed, hadaccomplished so great a marvel. But the women spoke of the fresh-killedmeat he had brought on his back, and this was an overwhelming argumentagainst their unbelief. So they finally departed, grumbling greatly thatin all probability, if the thing were so, he had neglected to cut up thecarcasses. Now in the north it is very necessary that this should bedone as soon as a kill is made. If not, the meat freezes so solidly asto turn the edge of the sharpest knife, and a three-hundred-pound bear, frozen stiff, is no easy thing to put upon a sled and haul over the roughice. But arrived at the spot, they found not only the kill, which theyhad doubted, but that Keesh had quartered the beasts in true hunterfashion, and removed the entrails. 

Thus began the mystery of Keesh, a mystery that deepened and deepenedwith the passing of the days. His very next trip he killed a young bear, nearly full-grown, and on the trip following, a large male bear and hismate. He was ordinarily gone from three to four days, though it wasnothing unusual for him to stay away a week at a time on the ice-field. Always he declined company on these expeditions, and the peoplemarvelled. "How does he do it?" they demanded of one another. "Neverdoes he take a dog with him, and dogs are of such great help, too. "

"Why dost thou hunt only bear?" Klosh-Kwan once ventured to ask him. 

And Keesh made fitting answer. "It is well known that there is more meaton the bear, " he said. 

But there was also talk of witchcraft in the village. "He hunts withevil spirits, " some of the people contended, "wherefore his hunting isrewarded. How else can it be, save that he hunts with evil spirits?"

"Mayhap they be not evil, but good, these spirits, " others said. "It isknown that his father was a mighty hunter. May not his father hunt withhim so that he may attain excellence and patience and understanding? Whoknows?"

None the less, his success continued, and the less skilful hunters wereoften kept busy hauling in his meat. And in the division of it he wasjust. As his father had done before him, he saw to it that the least oldwoman and the last old man received a fair portion, keeping no more forhimself than his needs required. And because of this, and of his meritas a hunter, he was looked upon with respect, and even awe; and there wastalk of making him chief after old Klosh-Kwan. Because of the things hehad done, they looked for him to appear again in the council, but henever came, and they were ashamed to ask. 

"I am minded to build me an _igloo_, " he said one day to Klosh-Kwan and anumber of the hunters. "It shall be a large _igloo_, wherein Ikeega andI can dwell in comfort. "

"Ay, " they nodded gravely. 

"But I have no time. My business is hunting, and it takes all my time. So it is but just that the men and women of the village who eat my meatshould build me my _igloo_. "

And the _igloo_ was built accordingly, on a generous scale which exceededeven the dwelling of Klosh-Kwan. Keesh and his mother moved into it, andit was the first prosperity she had enjoyed since the death of Bok. Norwas material prosperity alone hers, for, because of her wonderful son andthe position he had given her, she came to be looked upon as the firstwoman in all the village; and the women were given to visiting her, toasking her advice, and to quoting her wisdom when arguments arose amongthemselves or with the men. 

But it was the mystery of Keesh's marvellous hunting that took chiefplace in all their minds. And one day Ugh-Gluk taxed him with witchcraftto his face. 

"It is charged, " Ugh-Gluk said ominously, "that thou dealest with evilspirits, wherefore thy hunting is rewarded. "

"Is not the meat good?" Keesh made answer. "Has one in the village yetto fall sick from the eating of it? How dost thou know that witchcraftbe concerned? Or dost thou guess, in the dark, merely because of theenvy that consumes thee?"

And Ugh-Gluk withdrew discomfited, the women laughing at him as he walkedaway. But in the council one night, after long deliberation, it wasdetermined to put spies on his track when he went forth to hunt, so thathis methods might be learned. So, on his next trip, Bim and Bawn, twoyoung men, and of hunters the craftiest, followed after him, taking carenot to be seen. After five days they returned, their eyes bulging andtheir tongues a-tremble to tell what they had seen. The council washastily called in Klosh-Kwan's dwelling, and Bim took up the tale. 

"Brothers! As commanded, we journeyed on the trail of Keesh, andcunningly we journeyed, so that he might not know. And midway of thefirst day he picked up with a great he-bear. It was a very great bear. "

"None greater, " Bawn corroborated, and went on himself. "Yet was thebear not inclined to fight, for he turned away and made off slowly overthe ice. This we saw from the rocks of the shore, and the bear cametoward us, and after him came Keesh, very much unafraid. And he shoutedharsh words after the bear, and waved his arms about, and made muchnoise. Then did the bear grow angry, and rise up on his hind legs, andgrowl. But Keesh walked right up to the bear. "

"Ay, " Bim continued the story. "Right up to the bear Keesh walked. Andthe bear took after him, and Keesh ran away. But as he ran he dropped alittle round ball on the ice. And the bear stopped and smelled of it, then swallowed it up. And Keesh continued to run away and drop littleround balls, and the bear continued to swallow them up. "

Exclamations and cries of doubt were being made, and Ugh-Gluk expressedopen unbelief. 

"With our own eyes we saw it, " Bim affirmed. 

And Bawn--"Ay, with our own eyes. And this continued until the bearstood suddenly upright and cried aloud in pain, and thrashed his forepaws madly about. And Keesh continued to make off over the ice to a safedistance. But the bear gave him no notice, being occupied with themisfortune the little round balls had wrought within him. "

"Ay, within him, " Bim interrupted. "For he did claw at himself, and leapabout over the ice like a playful puppy, save from the way he growled andsquealed it was plain it was not play but pain. Never did I see such asight!"

"Nay, never was such a sight seen, " Bawn took up the strain. "Andfurthermore, it was such a large bear. "

"Witchcraft, " Ugh-Gluk suggested. 

"I know not, " Bawn replied. "I tell only of what my eyes beheld. Andafter a while the bear grew weak and tired, for he was very heavy and hehad jumped about with exceeding violence, and he went off along the shore-ice, shaking his head slowly from side to side and sitting down ever andagain to squeal and cry. And Keesh followed after the bear, and wefollowed after Keesh, and for that day and three days more we followed. The bear grew weak, and never ceased crying from his pain. "

"It was a charm!" Ugh-Gluk exclaimed. "Surely it was a charm!"

"It may well be. "

And Bim relieved Bawn. "The bear wandered, now this way and now that, doubling back and forth and crossing his trail in circles, so that at theend he was near where Keesh had first come upon him. By this time he wasquite sick, the bear, and could crawl no farther, so Keesh came up closeand speared him to death. "

"And then?" Klosh-Kwan demanded. 

"Then we left Keesh skinning the bear, and came running that the news ofthe killing might be told. "

And in the afternoon of that day the women hauled in the meat of the bearwhile the men sat in council assembled. When Keesh arrived a messengerwas sent to him, bidding him come to the council. But he sent reply, saying that he was hungry and tired; also that his _igloo_ was large andcomfortable and could hold many men. 

And curiosity was so strong on the men that the whole council, Klosh-Kwanto the fore, rose up and went to the _igloo_ of Keesh. He was eating, but he received them with respect and seated them according to theirrank. Ikeega was proud and embarrassed by turns, but Keesh was quitecomposed. 

Klosh-Kwan recited the information brought by Bim and Bawn, and at itsclose said in a stern voice: "So explanation is wanted, O Keesh, of thymanner of hunting. Is there witchcraft in it?"

Keesh looked up and smiled. "Nay, O Klosh-Kwan. It is not for a boy toknow aught of witches, and of witches I know nothing. I have but deviseda means whereby I may kill the ice-bear with ease, that is all. It beheadcraft, not witchcraft. "

"And may any man?"

"Any man. "

There was a long silence. The men looked in one another's faces, andKeesh went on eating. 

"And . . . And . . . And wilt thou tell us, O Keesh?" Klosh-Kwan finallyasked in a tremulous voice. 

"Yea, I will tell thee. " Keesh finished sucking a marrow-bone and roseto his feet. "It is quite simple. Behold!"

He picked up a thin strip of whalebone and showed it to them. The endswere sharp as needle-points. The strip he coiled carefully, till itdisappeared in his hand. Then, suddenly releasing it, it sprang straightagain. He picked up a piece of blubber. 

"So, " he said, "one takes a small chunk of blubber, thus, and thus makesit hollow. Then into the hollow goes the whalebone, so, tightly coiled, and another piece of blubber is fitted over the whale-bone. After thatit is put outside where it freezes into a little round ball. The bearswallows the little round ball, the blubber melts, the whalebone with itssharp ends stands out straight, the bear gets sick, and when the bear isvery sick, why, you kill him with a spear. It is quite simple. "

And Ugh-Gluk said "Oh!" and Klosh-Kwan said "Ah!" And each saidsomething after his own manner, and all understood. 

And this is the story of Keesh, who lived long ago on the rim of thepolar sea. Because he exercised headcraft and not witchcraft, he rosefrom the meanest _igloo_ to be head man of his village, and through allthe years that he lived, it is related, his tribe was prosperous, andneither widow nor weak one cried aloud in the night because there was nomeat. 

THE UNEXPECTED

It is a simple matter to see the obvious, to do the expected. Thetendency of the individual life is to be static rather than dynamic, andthis tendency is made into a propulsion by civilization, where theobvious only is seen, and the unexpected rarely happens. When theunexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently graveimport, the unfit perish. They do not see what is not obvious, areunable to do the unexpected, are incapable of adjusting theirwell-grooved lives to other and strange grooves. In short, when theycome to the end of their own groove, they die. 

On the other hand, there are those that make toward survival, the fitindividuals who escape from the rule of the obvious and the expected andadjust their lives to no matter what strange grooves they may stray into, or into which they may be forced. Such an individual was EdithWhittlesey. She was born in a rural district of England, where lifeproceeds by rule of thumb and the unexpected is so very unexpected thatwhen it happens it is looked upon as an immorality. She went intoservice early, and while yet a young woman, by rule-of-thumb progression, she became a lady's maid. 

The effect of civilization is to impose human law upon environment untilit becomes machine-like in its regularity. The objectionable iseliminated, the inevitable is foreseen. One is not even made wet by therain nor cold by the frost; while death, instead of stalking aboutgrewsome and accidental, becomes a prearranged pageant, moving along awell-oiled groove to the family vault, where the hinges are kept fromrusting and the dust from the air is swept continually away. 

Such was the environment of Edith Whittlesey. Nothing happened. Itcould scarcely be called a happening, when, at the age of twenty-five, she accompanied her mistress on a bit of travel to the United States. Thegroove merely changed its direction. It was still the same groove andwell oiled. It was a groove that bridged the Atlantic withuneventfulness, so that the ship was not a ship in the midst of the sea, but a capacious, many-corridored hotel that moved swiftly and placidly, crushing the waves into submission with its colossal bulk until the seawas a mill-pond, monotonous with quietude. And at the other side thegroove continued on over the land--a well-disposed, respectable groovethat supplied hotels at every stopping-place, and hotels on wheelsbetween the stopping-places. 

In Chicago, while her mistress saw one side of social life, EdithWhittlesey saw another side; and when she left her lady's service andbecame Edith Nelson, she betrayed, perhaps faintly, her ability tograpple with the unexpected and to master it. Hans Nelson, immigrant, Swede by birth and carpenter by occupation, had in him that Teutonicunrest that drives the race ever westward on its great adventure. He wasa large-muscled, stolid sort of a man, in whom little imagination wascoupled with immense initiative, and who possessed, withal, loyalty andaffection as sturdy as his own strength. 

"When I have worked hard and saved me some money, I will go to Colorado, "he had told Edith on the day after their wedding. A year later they werein Colorado, where Hans Nelson saw his first mining and caught the mining-fever himself. His prospecting led him through the Dakotas, Idaho, andeastern Oregon, and on into the mountains of British Columbia. In campand on trail, Edith Nelson was always with him, sharing his luck, hishardship, and his toil. The short step of the house-reared woman sheexchanged for the long stride of the mountaineer. She learned to lookupon danger clear-eyed and with understanding, losing forever that panicfear which is bred of ignorance and which afflicts the city-reared, making them as silly as silly horses, so that they await fate in frozenhorror instead of grappling with it, or stampede in blind self-destroyingterror which clutters the way with their crushed carcasses. 

Edith Nelson met the unexpected at every turn of the trail, and shetrained her vision so that she saw in the landscape, not the obvious, butthe concealed. She, who had never cooked in her life, learned to makebread without the mediation of hops, yeast, or baking-powder, and to bakebread, top and bottom, in a frying-pan before an open fire. And when thelast cup of flour was gone and the last rind of bacon, she was able torise to the occasion, and of moccasins and the softer-tanned bits ofleather in the outfit to make a grub-stake substitute that somehow held aman's soul in his body and enabled him to stagger on. She learned topack a horse as well as a man, --a task to break the heart and the prideof any city-dweller, and she knew how to throw the hitch best suited forany particular kind of pack. Also, she could build a fire of wet wood ina downpour of rain and not lose her temper. In short, in all its guisesshe mastered the unexpected. But the Great Unexpected was yet to comeinto her life and put its test upon her. 

The gold-seeking tide was flooding northward into Alaska, and it wasinevitable that Hans Nelson and his wife should he caught up by thestream and swept toward the Klondike. The fall of 1897 found them atDyea, but without the money to carry an outfit across Chilcoot Pass andfloat it down to Dawson. So Hans Nelson worked at his trade that winterand helped rear the mushroom outfitting-town of Skaguay. 

He was on the edge of things, and throughout the winter he heard allAlaska calling to him. Latuya Bay called loudest, so that the summer of1898 found him and his wife threading the mazes of the broken coast-linein seventy-foot Siwash canoes. With them were Indians, also three othermen. The Indians landed them and their supplies in a lonely bight ofland a hundred miles or so beyond Latuya Bay, and returned to Skaguay;but the three other men remained, for they were members of the organizedparty. Each had put an equal share of capital into the outfitting, andthe profits were to be divided equally. In that Edith Nelson undertookto cook for the outfit, a man's share was to be her portion. 

First, spruce trees were cut down and a three-room cabin constructed. Tokeep this cabin was Edith Nelson's task. The task of the men was tosearch for gold, which they did; and to find gold, which they likewisedid. It was not a startling find, merely a low-pay placer where longhours of severe toil earned each man between fifteen and twenty dollars aday. The brief Alaskan summer protracted itself beyond its usual length, and they took advantage of the opportunity, delaying their return toSkaguay to the last moment. And then it was too late. Arrangements hadbeen made to accompany the several dozen local Indians on their falltrading trip down the coast. The Siwashes had waited on the white peopleuntil the eleventh hour, and then departed. There was no course left theparty but to wait for chance transportation. In the meantime the claimwas cleaned up and firewood stocked in. 

The Indian summer had dreamed on and on, and then, suddenly, with thesharpness of bugles, winter came. It came in a single night, and theminers awoke to howling wind, driving snow, and freezing water. Stormfollowed storm, and between the storms there was the silence, broken onlyby the boom of the surf on the desolate shore, where the salt sprayrimmed the beach with frozen white. 

All went well in the cabin. Their gold-dust had weighed up somethinglike eight thousand dollars, and they could not but be contented. Themen made snowshoes, hunted fresh meat for the larder, and in the longevenings played endless games of whist and pedro. Now that the mininghad ceased, Edith Nelson turned over the fire-building and thedish-washing to the men, while she darned their socks and mended theirclothes. 

There was no grumbling, no bickering, nor petty quarrelling in the littlecabin, and they often congratulated one another on the general happinessof the party. Hans Nelson was stolid and easy-going, while Edith hadlong before won his unbounded admiration by her capacity for getting onwith people. Harkey, a long, lank Texan, was unusually friendly for onewith a saturnine disposition, and, as long as his theory that gold grewwas not challenged, was quite companionable. The fourth member of theparty, Michael Dennin, contributed his Irish wit to the gayety of thecabin. He was a large, powerful man, prone to sudden rushes of angerover little things, and of unfailing good-humor under the stress andstrain of big things. The fifth and last member, Dutchy, was the willingbutt of the party. He even went out of his way to raise a laugh at hisown expense in order to keep things cheerful. His deliberate aim in lifeseemed to be that of a maker of laughter. No serious quarrel had evervexed the serenity of the party; and, now that each had sixteen hundreddollars to show for a short summer's work, there reigned the well-fed, contented spirit of prosperity. 

And then the unexpected happened. They had just sat down to thebreakfast table. Though it was already eight o'clock (late breakfastshad followed naturally upon cessation of the steady work at mining) acandle in the neck of a bottle lighted the meal. Edith and Hans sat ateach end of the table. On one side, with their backs to the door, satHarkey and Dutchy. The place on the other side was vacant. Dennin hadnot yet come in. 

Hans Nelson looked at the empty chair, shook his head slowly, and, with aponderous attempt at humor, said: "Always is he first at the grub. Itis very strange. Maybe he is sick. "

"Where is Michael?" Edith asked. 

"Got up a little ahead of us and went outside, " Harkey answered. 

Dutchy's face beamed mischievously. He pretended knowledge of Dennin'sabsence, and affected a mysterious air, while they clamored forinformation. Edith, after a peep into the men's bunk-room, returned tothe table. Hans looked at her, and she shook her head. 

"He was never late at meal-time before, " she remarked. 

"I cannot understand, " said Hans. "Always has he the great appetite likethe horse. "

"It is too bad, " Dutchy said, with a sad shake of his head. 

They were beginning to make merry over their comrade's absence. 

"It is a great pity!" Dutchy volunteered. 

"What?" they demanded in chorus. 

"Poor Michael, " was the mournful reply. 

"Well, what's wrong with Michael?" Harkey asked. 

"He is not hungry no more, " wailed Dutchy. "He has lost der appetite. Hedo not like der grub. "

"Not from the way he pitches into it up to his ears, " remarked Harkey. 

"He does dot shust to be politeful to Mrs. Nelson, " was Dutchy's quickretort. "I know, I know, and it is too pad. Why is he not here? Pecausehe haf gone out. Why haf he gone out? For der defelopment of derappetite. How does he defelop der appetite? He walks barefoots in dersnow. Ach! don't I know? It is der way der rich peoples chases afterder appetite when it is no more and is running away. Michael haf sixteenhundred dollars. He is rich peoples. He haf no appetite. Derefore, pecause, he is chasing der appetite. Shust you open der door und youwill see his barefoots in der snow. No, you will not see der appetite. Dot is shust his trouble. When he sees der appetite he will catch it undcome to preak-fast. "

They burst into loud laughter at Dutchy's nonsense. The sound hadscarcely died away when the door opened and Dennin came in. All turnedto look at him. He was carrying a shot-gun. Even as they looked, helifted it to his shoulder and fired twice. At the first shot Dutchy sankupon the table, overturning his mug of coffee, his yellow mop of hairdabbling in his plate of mush. His forehead, which pressed upon the nearedge of the plate, tilted the plate up against his hair at an angle offorty-five degrees. Harkey was in the air, in his spring to his feet, atthe second shot, and he pitched face down upon the floor, his "My God!"gurgling and dying in his throat. 

It was the unexpected. Hans and Edith were stunned. They sat at thetable with bodies tense, their eyes fixed in a fascinated gaze upon themurderer. Dimly they saw him through the smoke of the powder, and in thesilence nothing was to be heard save the drip-drip of Dutchy's spilledcoffee on the floor. Dennin threw open the breech of the shot-gun, ejecting the empty shells. Holding the gun with one hand, he reachedwith the other into his pocket for fresh shells. 

He was thrusting the shells into the gun when Edith Nelson was aroused toaction. It was patent that he intended to kill Hans and her. For aspace of possibly three seconds of time she had been dazed and paralysedby the horrible and inconceivable form in which the unexpected had madeits appearance. Then she rose to it and grappled with it. She grappledwith it concretely, making a cat-like leap for the murderer and grippinghis neck-cloth with both her hands. The impact of her body sent himstumbling backward several steps. He tried to shake her loose and stillretain his hold on the gun. This was awkward, for her firm-fleshed bodyhad become a cat's. She threw herself to one side, and with her grip athis throat nearly jerked him to the floor. He straightened himself andwhirled swiftly. Still faithful to her hold, her body followed thecircle of his whirl so that her feet left the floor, and she swungthrough the air fastened to his throat by her hands. The whirlculminated in a collision with a chair, and the man and woman crashed tothe floor in a wild struggling fall that extended itself across half thelength of the room. 

Hans Nelson was half a second behind his wife in rising to theunexpected. His nerve processed and mental processes were slower thanhers. His was the grosser organism, and it had taken him half a secondlonger to perceive, and determine, and proceed to do. She had alreadyflown at Dennin and gripped his throat, when Hans sprang to his feet. Buther coolness was not his. He was in a blind fury, a Berserker rage. Atthe instant he sprang from his chair his mouth opened and there issuedforth a sound that was half roar, half bellow. The whirl of the twobodies had already started, and still roaring, or bellowing, he pursuedthis whirl down the room, overtaking it when it fell to the floor. 

Hans hurled himself upon the prostrate man, striking madly with hisfists. They were sledge-like blows, and when Edith felt Dennin's bodyrelax she loosed her grip and rolled clear. She lay on the floor, panting and watching. The fury of blows continued to rain down. Dennindid not seem to mind the blows. He did not even move. Then it dawnedupon her that he was unconscious. She cried out to Hans to stop. Shecried out again. But he paid no heed to her voice. She caught him bythe arm, but her clinging to it merely impeded his effort. 

It was no reasoned impulse that stirred her to do what she then did. Norwas it a sense of pity, nor obedience to the "Thou shalt not" ofreligion. Rather was it some sense of law, an ethic of her race andearly environment, that compelled her to interpose her body between herhusband and the helpless murderer. It was not until Hans knew he wasstriking his wife that he ceased. He allowed himself to be shoved awayby her in much the same way that a ferocious but obedient dog allowsitself to be shoved away by its master. The analogy went even farther. Deep in his throat, in an animal-like way, Hans's rage still rumbled, andseveral times he made as though to spring back upon his prey and was onlyprevented by the woman's swiftly interposed body. 

Back and farther back Edith shoved her husband. She had never seen himin such a condition, and she was more frightened of him than she had beenof Dennin in the thick of the struggle. She could not believe that thisraging beast was her Hans, and with a shock she became suddenly aware ofa shrinking, instinctive fear that he might snap her hand in his teethlike any wild animal. For some seconds, unwilling to hurt her, yetdogged in his desire to return to the attack, Hans dodged back and forth. But she resolutely dodged with him, until the first glimmerings of reasonreturned and he gave over. 

Both crawled to their feet. Hans staggered back against the wall, wherehe leaned, his face working, in his throat the deep and continuous rumblethat died away with the seconds and at last ceased. The time for thereaction had come. Edith stood in the middle of the floor, wringing herhands, panting and gasping, her whole body trembling violently. 

Hans looked at nothing, but Edith's eyes wandered wildly from detail todetail of what had taken place. Dennin lay without movement. Theoverturned chair, hurled onward in the mad whirl, lay near him. Partlyunder him lay the shot-gun, still broken open at the breech. Spillingout of his right hand were the two cartridges which he had failed to putinto the gun and which he had clutched until consciousness left him. Harkey lay on the floor, face downward, where he had fallen; while Dutchyrested forward on the table, his yellow mop of hair buried in his mush-plate, the plate itself still tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees. This tilted plate fascinated her. Why did it not fall down? It wasridiculous. It was not in the nature of things for a mush-plate to up-end itself on the table, even if a man or so had been killed. 

She glanced back at Dennin, but her eyes returned to the tilted plate. Itwas so ridiculous! She felt a hysterical impulse to laugh. Then shenoticed the silence, and forgot the plate in a desire for something tohappen. The monotonous drip of the coffee from the table to the floormerely emphasized the silence. Why did not Hans do something? saysomething? She looked at him and was about to speak, when she discoveredthat her tongue refused its wonted duty. There was a peculiar ache inher throat, and her mouth was dry and furry. She could only look atHans, who, in turn, looked at her. 

Suddenly the silence was broken by a sharp, metallic clang. Shescreamed, jerking her eyes back to the table. The plate had fallen down. Hans sighed as though awakening from sleep. The clang of the plate hadaroused them to life in a new world. The cabin epitomized the new worldin which they must thenceforth live and move. The old cabin was goneforever. The horizon of life was totally new and unfamiliar. Theunexpected had swept its wizardry over the face of things, changing theperspective, juggling values, and shuffling the real and the unreal intoperplexing confusion. 

"My God, Hans!" was Edith's first speech. 

He did not answer, but stared at her with horror. Slowly his eyeswandered over the room, for the first time taking in its details. Thenhe put on his cap and started for the door. 

"Where are you going?" Edith demanded, in an agony of apprehension. 

His hand was on the door-knob, and he half turned as he answered, "To digsome graves. "

"Don't leave me, Hans, with--" her eyes swept the room--"with this. "

"The graves must be dug sometime, " he said. 

"But you do not know how many, " she objected desperately. She noted hisindecision, and added, "Besides, I'll go with you and help. "

Hans stepped back to the table and mechanically snuffed the candle. Thenbetween them they made the examination. Both Harkey and Dutchy weredead--frightfully dead, because of the close range of the shot-gun. Hansrefused to go near Dennin, and Edith was forced to conduct this portionof the investigation by herself. 

"He isn't dead, " she called to Hans. 

He walked over and looked down at the murderer. 

"What did you say?" Edith demanded, having caught the rumble ofinarticulate speech in her husband's throat. 

"I said it was a damn shame that he isn't dead, " came the reply. 

Edith was bending over the body. 

"Leave him alone, " Hans commanded harshly, in a strange voice. 

She looked at him in sudden alarm. He had picked up the shot-gun droppedby Dennin and was thrusting in the shells. 

"What are you going to do?" she cried, rising swiftly from her bendingposition. 

Hans did not answer, but she saw the shot-gun going to his shoulder. Shegrasped the muzzle with her hand and threw it up. 

"Leave me alone!" he cried hoarsely. 

He tried to jerk the weapon away from her, but she came in closer andclung to him. 

"Hans! Hans! Wake up!" she cried. "Don't be crazy!"

"He killed Dutchy and Harkey!" was her husband's reply; "and I am goingto kill him. "

"But that is wrong, " she objected. "There is the law. "

He sneered his incredulity of the law's potency in such a region, but hemerely iterated, dispassionately, doggedly, "He killed Dutchy andHarkey. "

Long she argued it with him, but the argument was one-sided, for hecontented himself with repeating again and again, "He killed Dutchy andHarkey. " But she could not escape from her childhood training nor fromthe blood that was in her. The heritage of law was hers, and rightconduct, to her, was the fulfilment of the law. She could see no otherrighteous course to pursue. Hans's taking the law in his own hands wasno more justifiable than Dennin's deed. Two wrongs did not make a right, she contended, and there was only one way to punish Dennin, and that wasthe legal way arranged by society. At last Hans gave in to her. 

"All right, " he said. "Have it your own way. And to-morrow or next daylook to see him kill you and me. "

She shook her head and held out her hand for the shot-gun. He started tohand it to her, then hesitated. 

"Better let me shoot him, " he pleaded. 

Again she shook her head, and again he started to pass her the gun, whenthe door opened, and an Indian, without knocking, came in. A blast ofwind and flurry of snow came in with him. They turned and faced him, Hans still holding the shot-gun. The intruder took in the scene withouta quiver. His eyes embraced the dead and wounded in a sweeping glance. No surprise showed in his face, not even curiosity. Harkey lay at hisfeet, but he took no notice of him. So far as he was concerned, Harkey'sbody did not exist. 

"Much wind, " the Indian remarked by way of salutation. "All well? Verywell?"

Hans, still grasping the gun, felt sure that the Indian attributed to himthe mangled corpses. He glanced appealingly at his wife. 

"Good morning, Negook, " she said, her voice betraying her effort. "No, not very well. Much trouble. "

"Good-by, I go now, much hurry, " the Indian said, and without semblanceof haste, with great deliberation stepping clear of a red pool on thefloor, he opened the door and went out. 

The man and woman looked at each other. 

"He thinks we did it, " Hans gasped, "that I did it. "

Edith was silent for a space. Then she said, briefly, in a businesslikeway:

"Never mind what he thinks. That will come after. At present we havetwo graves to dig. But first of all, we've got to tie up Dennin so hecan't escape. "

Hans refused to touch Dennin, but Edith lashed him securely, hand andfoot. Then she and Hans went out into the snow. The ground was frozen. It was impervious to a blow of the pick. They first gathered wood, thenscraped the snow away and on the frozen surface built a fire. When thefire had burned for an hour, several inches of dirt had thawed. Thisthey shovelled out, and then built a fresh fire. Their descent into theearth progressed at the rate of two or three inches an hour. 

It was hard and bitter work. The flurrying snow did not permit the fireto burn any too well, while the wind cut through their clothes andchilled their bodies. They held but little conversation. The windinterfered with speech. Beyond wondering at what could have beenDennin's motive, they remained silent, oppressed by the horror of thetragedy. At one o'clock, looking toward the cabin, Hans announced thathe was hungry. 

"No, not now, Hans, " Edith answered. "I couldn't go back alone into thatcabin the way it is, and cook a meal. "

At two o'clock Hans volunteered to go with her; but she held him to hiswork, and four o'clock found the two graves completed. They wereshallow, not more than two feet deep, but they would serve the purpose. Night had fallen. Hans got the sled, and the two dead men were draggedthrough the darkness and storm to their frozen sepulchre. The funeralprocession was anything but a pageant. The sled sank deep into thedrifted snow and pulled hard. The man and the woman had eaten nothingsince the previous day, and were weak from hunger and exhaustion. Theyhad not the strength to resist the wind, and at times its buffets hurledthem off their feet. On several occasions the sled was overturned, andthey were compelled to reload it with its sombre freight. The lasthundred feet to the graves was up a steep slope, and this they took onall fours, like sled-dogs, making legs of their arms and thrusting theirhands into the snow. Even so, they were twice dragged backward by theweight of the sled, and slid and fell down the hill, the living and thedead, the haul-ropes and the sled, in ghastly entanglement. 

"To-morrow I will put up head-boards with their names, " Hans said, whenthe graves were filled in. 

Edith was sobbing. A few broken sentences had been all she was capableof in the way of a funeral service, and now her husband was compelled tohalf-carry her back to the cabin. 

Dennin was conscious. He had rolled over and over on the floor in vainefforts to free himself. He watched Hans and Edith with glittering eyes, but made no attempt to speak. Hans still refused to touch the murderer, and sullenly watched Edith drag him across the floor to the men's bunk-room. But try as she would, she could not lift him from the floor intohis bunk. 

"Better let me shoot him, and we'll have no more trouble, " Hans said infinal appeal. 

Edith shook her head and bent again to her task. To her surprise thebody rose easily, and she knew Hans had relented and was helping her. Then came the cleansing of the kitchen. But the floor still shrieked thetragedy, until Hans planed the surface of the stained wood away and withthe shavings made a fire in the stove. 

The days came and went. There was much of darkness and silence, brokenonly by the storms and the thunder on the beach of the freezing surf. Hans was obedient to Edith's slightest order. All his splendidinitiative had vanished. She had elected to deal with Dennin in her way, and so he left the whole matter in her hands. 

The murderer was a constant menace. At all times there was the chancethat he might free himself from his bonds, and they were compelled toguard him day and night. The man or the woman sat always beside him, holding the loaded shot-gun. At first, Edith tried eight-hour watches, but the continuous strain was too great, and afterwards she and Hansrelieved each other every four hours. As they had to sleep, and as thewatches extended through the night, their whole waking time was expendedin guarding Dennin. They had barely time left over for the preparationof meals and the getting of firewood. 

Since Negook's inopportune visit, the Indians had avoided the cabin. Edith sent Hans to their cabins to get them to take Dennin down the coastin a canoe to the nearest white settlement or trading post, but theerrand was fruitless. Then Edith went herself and interviewed Negook. Hewas head man of the little village, keenly aware of his responsibility, and he elucidated his policy thoroughly in few words. 

"It is white man's trouble, " he said, "not Siwash trouble. My peoplehelp you, then will it be Siwash trouble too. When white man's troubleand Siwash trouble come together and make a trouble, it is a greattrouble, beyond understanding and without end. Trouble no good. Mypeople do no wrong. What for they help you and have trouble?"

So Edith Nelson went back to the terrible cabin with its endlessalternating four-hour watches. Sometimes, when it was her turn and shesat by the prisoner, the loaded shot-gun in her lap, her eyes would closeand she would doze. Always she aroused with a start, snatching up thegun and swiftly looking at him. These were distinct nervous shocks, andtheir effect was not good on her. Such was her fear of the man, thateven though she were wide awake, if he moved under the bedclothes shecould not repress the start and the quick reach for the gun. 

She was preparing herself for a nervous break-down, and she knew it. First came a fluttering of the eyeballs, so that she was compelled toclose her eyes for relief. A little later the eyelids were afflicted bya nervous twitching that she could not control. To add to the strain, she could not forget the tragedy. She remained as close to the horror ason the first morning when the unexpected stalked into the cabin and tookpossession. In her daily ministrations upon the prisoner she was forcedto grit her teeth and steel herself, body and spirit. 

Hans was affected differently. He became obsessed by the idea that itwas his duty to kill Dennin; and whenever he waited upon the bound man orwatched by him, Edith was troubled by the fear that Hans would addanother red entry to the cabin's record. Always he cursed Denninsavagely and handled him roughly. Hans tried to conceal his homicidalmania, and he would say to his wife: "By and by you will want me to killhim, and then I will not kill him. It would make me sick. " But morethan once, stealing into the room, when it was her watch off, she wouldcatch the two men glaring ferociously at each other, wild animals thepair of them, in Hans's face the lust to kill, in Dennin's the fiercenessand savagery of the cornered rat. "Hans!" she would cry, "wake up!" andhe would come to a recollection of himself, startled and shamefaced andunrepentant. 

So Hans became another factor in the problem the unexpected had givenEdith Nelson to solve. At first it had been merely a question of rightconduct in dealing with Dennin, and right conduct, as she conceived it, lay in keeping him a prisoner until he could be turned over for trialbefore a proper tribunal. But now entered Hans, and she saw that hissanity and his salvation were involved. Nor was she long in discoveringthat her own strength and endurance had become part of the problem. Shewas breaking down under the strain. Her left arm had developedinvoluntary jerkings and twitchings. She spilled her food from herspoon, and could place no reliance in her afflicted arm. She judged itto be a form of St. Vitus's dance, and she feared the extent to which itsravages might go. What if she broke down? And the vision she had of thepossible future, when the cabin might contain only Dennin and Hans, wasan added horror. 

After the third day, Dennin had begun to talk. His first question hadbeen, "What are you going to do with me?" And this question he repeateddaily and many times a day. And always Edith replied that he wouldassuredly be dealt with according to law. In turn, she put a dailyquestion to him, --"Why did you do it?" To this he never replied. Also, he received the question with out-bursts of anger, raging and strainingat the rawhide that bound him and threatening her with what he would dowhen he got loose, which he said he was sure to do sooner or later. Atsuch times she cocked both triggers of the gun, prepared to meet him withleaden death if he should burst loose, herself trembling and palpitatingand dizzy from the tension and shock. 

But in time Dennin grew more tractable. It seemed to her that he wasgrowing weary of his unchanging recumbent position. He began to beg andplead to be released. He made wild promises. He would do them no harm. He would himself go down the coast and give himself up to the officers ofthe law. He would give them his share of the gold. He would go awayinto the heart of the wilderness, and never again appear in civilization. He would take his own life if she would only free him. His pleadingsusually culminated in involuntary raving, until it seemed to her that hewas passing into a fit; but always she shook her head and denied him thefreedom for which he worked himself into a passion. 

But the weeks went by, and he continued to grow more tractable. Andthrough it all the weariness was asserting itself more and more. "I amso tired, so tired, " he would murmur, rolling his head back and forth onthe pillow like a peevish child. At a little later period he began tomake impassioned pleas for death, to beg her to kill him, to beg Hans toput him our of his misery so that he might at least rest comfortably. 

The situation was fast becoming impossible. Edith's nervousness wasincreasing, and she knew her break-down might come any time. She couldnot even get her proper rest, for she was haunted by the fear that Hanswould yield to his mania and kill Dennin while she slept. Though Januaryhad already come, months would have to elapse before any trading schoonerwas even likely to put into the bay. Also, they had not expected towinter in the cabin, and the food was running low; nor could Hans add tothe supply by hunting. They were chained to the cabin by the necessityof guarding their prisoner. 

Something must be done, and she knew it. She forced herself to go backinto a reconsideration of the problem. She could not shake off thelegacy of her race, the law that was of her blood and that had beentrained into her. She knew that whatever she did she must do accordingto the law, and in the long hours of watching, the shot-gun on her knees, the murderer restless beside her and the storms thundering without, shemade original sociological researches and worked out for herself theevolution of the law. It came to her that the law was nothing more thanthe judgment and the will of any group of people. It mattered not howlarge was the group of people. There were little groups, she reasoned, like Switzerland, and there were big groups like the United States. Also, she reasoned, it did not matter how small was the group of people. Theremight be only ten thousand people in a country, yet their collectivejudgment and will would be the law of that country. Why, then, could notone thousand people constitute such a group? she asked herself. And ifone thousand, why not one hundred? Why not fifty? Why not five? Whynot--two?

She was frightened at her own conclusion, and she talked it over withHans. At first he could not comprehend, and then, when he did, he addedconvincing evidence. He spoke of miners' meetings, where all the men ofa locality came together and made the law and executed the law. Theremight be only ten or fifteen men altogether, he said, but the will of themajority became the law for the whole ten or fifteen, and whoeverviolated that will was punished. 

Edith saw her way clear at last. Dennin must hang. Hans agreed withher. Between them they constituted the majority of this particulargroup. It was the group-will that Dennin should be hanged. In theexecution of this will Edith strove earnestly to observe the customaryforms, but the group was so small that Hans and she had to serve aswitnesses, as jury, and as judges--also as executioners. She formallycharged Michael Dennin with the murder of Dutchy and Harkey, and theprisoner lay in his bunk and listened to the testimony, first of Hans, and then of Edith. He refused to plead guilty or not guilty, andremained silent when she asked him if he had anything to say in his owndefence. She and Hans, without leaving their seats, brought in thejury's verdict of guilty. Then, as judge, she imposed the sentence. Hervoice shook, her eyelids twitched, her left arm jerked, but she carriedit out. 

"Michael Dennin, in three days' time you are to be hanged by the neckuntil you are dead. "

Such was the sentence. The man breathed an unconscious sigh of relief, then laughed defiantly, and said, "Thin I'm thinkin' the damn bunk won'tbe achin' me back anny more, an' that's a consolation. "

With the passing of the sentence a feeling of relief seemed tocommunicate itself to all of them. Especially was it noticeable inDennin. All sullenness and defiance disappeared, and he talked sociablywith his captors, and even with flashes of his old-time wit. Also, hefound great satisfaction in Edith's reading to him from the Bible. Sheread from the New Testament, and he took keen interest in the prodigalson and the thief on the cross. 

On the day preceding that set for the execution, when Edith asked herusual question, "Why did you do it?" Dennin answered, "'Tis very simple. I was thinkin'--"

But she hushed him abruptly, asked him to wait, and hurried to Hans'sbedside. It was his watch off, and he came out of his sleep, rubbing hiseyes and grumbling. 

"Go, " she told him, "and bring up Negook and one other Indian. Michael'sgoing to confess. Make them come. Take the rifle along and bring themup at the point of it if you have to. "

Half an hour later Negook and his uncle, Hadikwan, were ushered into thedeath chamber. They came unwillingly, Hans with his rifle herding themalong. 

"Negook, " Edith said, "there is to be no trouble for you and your people. Only is it for you to sit and do nothing but listen and understand. "

Thus did Michael Dennin, under sentence of death, make public confessionof his crime. As he talked, Edith wrote his story down, while theIndians listened, and Hans guarded the door for fear the witnesses mightbolt. 

He had not been home to the old country for fifteen years, Denninexplained, and it had always been his intention to return with plenty ofmoney and make his old mother comfortable for the rest of her days. 

"An' how was I to be doin' it on sixteen hundred?" he demanded. "What Iwas after wantin' was all the goold, the whole eight thousan'. Thin Icud go back in style. What ud be aisier, thinks I to myself, than tokill all iv yez, report it at Skaguay for an Indian-killin', an' thinpull out for Ireland? An' so I started in to kill all iv yez, but, asHarkey was fond of sayin', I cut out too large a chunk an' fell down onthe swallowin' iv it. An' that's me confession. I did me duty to thedevil, an' now, God willin', I'll do me duty to God. "

"Negook and Hadikwan, you have heard the white man's words, " Edith saidto the Indians. "His words are here on this paper, and it is for you tomake a sign, thus, on the paper, so that white men to come after willknow that you have heard. "

The two Siwashes put crosses opposite their signatures, received asummons to appear on the morrow with all their tribe for a furtherwitnessing of things, and were allowed to go. 

Dennin's hands were released long enough for him to sign the document. Then a silence fell in the room. Hans was restless, and Edith feltuncomfortable. Dennin lay on his back, staring straight up at the moss-chinked roof. 

"An' now I'll do me duty to God, " he murmured. He turned his head towardEdith. "Read to me, " he said, "from the book;" then added, with a glintof playfulness, "Mayhap 'twill help me to forget the bunk. "

The day of the execution broke clear and cold. The thermometer was downto twenty-five below zero, and a chill wind was blowing which drove thefrost through clothes and flesh to the bones. For the first time in manyweeks Dennin stood upon his feet. His muscles had remained inactive solong, and he was so out of practice in maintaining an erect position, that he could scarcely stand. 

He reeled back and forth, staggered, and clutched hold of Edith with hisbound hands for support. 

"Sure, an' it's dizzy I am, " he laughed weakly. 

A moment later he said, "An' it's glad I am that it's over with. Thatdamn bunk would iv been the death iv me, I know. "

When Edith put his fur cap on his head and proceeded to pull the flapsdown over his ears, he laughed and said:

"What are you doin' that for?"

"It's freezing cold outside, " she answered. 

"An' in tin minutes' time what'll matter a frozen ear or so to poorMichael Dennin?" he asked. 

She had nerved herself for the last culminating ordeal, and his remarkwas like a blow to her self-possession. So far, everything had seemedphantom-like, as in a dream, but the brutal truth of what he had saidshocked her eyes wide open to the reality of what was taking place. Norwas her distress unnoticed by the Irishman. 

"I'm sorry to be troublin' you with me foolish spache, " he saidregretfully. "I mint nothin' by it. 'Tis a great day for MichaelDennin, an' he's as gay as a lark. "

He broke out in a merry whistle, which quickly became lugubrious andceased. 

"I'm wishin' there was a priest, " he said wistfully; then added swiftly, "But Michael Dennin's too old a campaigner to miss the luxuries when hehits the trail. "

He was so very weak and unused to walking that when the door opened andhe passed outside, the wind nearly carried him off his feet. Edith andHans walked on either side of him and supported him, the while he crackedjokes and tried to keep them cheerful, breaking off, once, long enough toarrange the forwarding of his share of the gold to his mother in Ireland. 

They climbed a slight hill and came out into an open space among thetrees. Here, circled solemnly about a barrel that stood on end in thesnow, were Negook and Hadikwan, and all the Siwashes down to the babiesand the dogs, come to see the way of the white man's law. Near by was anopen grave which Hans had burned into the frozen earth. 

Dennin cast a practical eye over the preparations, noting the grave, thebarrel, the thickness of the rope, and the diameter of the limb overwhich the rope was passed. 

"Sure, an' I couldn't iv done better meself, Hans, if it'd been for you. "

He laughed loudly at his own sally, but Hans's face was frozen into asullen ghastliness that nothing less than the trump of doom could havebroken. Also, Hans was feeling very sick. He had not realized theenormousness of the task of putting a fellow-man out of the world. Edith, on the other hand, had realized; but the realization did not make thetask any easier. She was filled with doubt as to whether she could holdherself together long enough to finish it. She felt incessant impulsesto scream, to shriek, to collapse into the snow, to put her hands overher eyes and turn and run blindly away, into the forest, anywhere, away. It was only by a supreme effort of soul that she was able to keep uprightand go on and do what she had to do. And in the midst of it all she wasgrateful to Dennin for the way he helped her. 

"Lind me a hand, " he said to Hans, with whose assistance he managed tomount the barrel. 

He bent over so that Edith could adjust the rope about his neck. Then hestood upright while Hans drew the rope taut across the overhead branch. 

"Michael Dennin, have you anything to say?" Edith asked in a clear voicethat shook in spite of her. 

Dennin shuffled his feet on the barrel, looked down bashfully like a manmaking his maiden speech, and cleared his throat. 

"I'm glad it's over with, " he said. "You've treated me like a Christian, an' I'm thankin' you hearty for your kindness. "

"Then may God receive you, a repentant sinner, " she said. 

"Ay, " he answered, his deep voice as a response to her thin one, "may Godreceive me, a repentant sinner. "

"Good-by, Michael, " she cried, and her voice sounded desperate. 

She threw her weight against the barrel, but it did not overturn. 

"Hans! Quick! Help me!" she cried faintly. 

She could feel her last strength going, and the barrel resisted her. Hanshurried to her, and the barrel went out from under Michael Dennin. 

She turned her back, thrusting her fingers into her ears. Then she beganto laugh, harshly, sharply, metallically; and Hans was shocked as he hadnot been shocked through the whole tragedy. Edith Nelson's break-downhad come. Even in her hysteria she knew it, and she was glad that shehad been able to hold up under the strain until everything had beenaccomplished. She reeled toward Hans. 

"Take me to the cabin, Hans, " she managed to articulate. 

"And let me rest, " she added. "Just let me rest, and rest, and rest. "

With Hans's arm around her, supporting her weight and directing herhelpless steps, she went off across the snow. But the Indians remainedsolemnly to watch the working of the white man's law that compelled a manto dance upon the air. 

BROWN WOLF

She had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on herovershoes, and when she emerged from the house found her waiting husbandabsorbed in the wonder of a bursting almond-bud. She sent a questingglance across the tall grass and in and out among the orchard trees. 

"Where's Wolf?" she asked. 

"He was here a moment ago. " Walt Irvine drew himself away with a jerkfrom the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of blossom, andsurveyed the landscape. "He was running a rabbit the last I saw of him. "

"Wolf! Wolf! Here Wolf!" she called, as they left the clearing and tookthe trail that led down through the waxen-belled manzanita jungle to thecounty road. 

Irvine thrust between his lips the little finger of each hand and lent toher efforts a shrill whistling. 

She covered her ears hastily and made a wry grimace. 

"My! for a poet, delicately attuned and all the rest of it, you can makeunlovely noises. My ear-drums are pierced. You outwhistle--"

"Orpheus. "

"I was about to say a street-arab, " she concluded severely. 

"Poesy does not prevent one from being practical--at least it doesn'tprevent _me_. Mine is no futility of genius that can't sell gems to themagazines. "

He assumed a mock extravagance, and went on:

"I am no attic singer, no ballroom warbler. And why? Because I ampractical. Mine is no squalor of song that cannot transmute itself, withproper exchange value, into a flower-crowned cottage, a sweet mountain-meadow, a grove of redwoods, an orchard of thirty-seven trees, one longrow of blackberries and two short rows of strawberries, to say nothing ofa quarter of a mile of gurgling brook. I am a beauty-merchant, a traderin song, and I pursue utility, dear Madge. I sing a song, and thanks tothe magazine editors I transmute my song into a waft of the west windsighing through our redwoods, into a murmur of waters over mossy stonesthat sings back to me another song than the one I sang and yet the samesong wonderfully--er--transmuted. "

"O that all your song-transmutations were as successful!" she laughed. 

"Name one that wasn't. "

"Those two beautiful sonnets that you transmuted into the cow that wasaccounted the worst milker in the township. "

"She was beautiful--" he began, "But she didn't give milk, " Madge interrupted. 

"But she _was_ beautiful, now, wasn't she?" he insisted. 

"And here's where beauty and utility fall out, " was her reply. "Andthere's the Wolf!"

From the thicket-covered hillside came a crashing of underbrush, andthen, forty feet above them, on the edge of the sheer wall of rock, appeared a wolf's head and shoulders. His braced fore paws dislodged apebble, and with sharp-pricked ears and peering eyes he watched the fallof the pebble till it struck at their feet. Then he transferred his gazeand with open mouth laughed down at them. 

"You Wolf, you!" and "You blessed Wolf!" the man and woman called out tohim. 

The ears flattened back and down at the sound, and the head seemed tosnuggle under the caress of an invisible hand. 

They watched him scramble backward into the thicket, then proceeded ontheir way. Several minutes later, rounding a turn in the trail where thedescent was less precipitous, he joined them in the midst of a miniatureavalanche of pebbles and loose soil. He was not demonstrative. A patand a rub around the ears from the man, and a more prolonged caressingfrom the woman, and he was away down the trail in front of them, glidingeffortlessly over the ground in true wolf fashion. 

In build and coat and brush he was a huge timber-wolf; but the lie wasgiven to his wolfhood by his color and marking. There the dogunmistakably advertised itself. No wolf was ever colored like him. Hewas brown, deep brown, red-brown, an orgy of browns. Back and shoulderswere a warm brown that paled on the sides and underneath to a yellow thatwas dingy because of the brown that lingered in it. The white of thethroat and paws and the spots over the eyes was dirty because of thepersistent and ineradicable brown, while the eyes themselves were twintopazes, golden and brown. 

The man and woman loved the dog very much; perhaps this was because ithad been such a task to win his love. It had been no easy matter when hefirst drifted in mysteriously out of nowhere to their little mountaincottage. Footsore and famished, he had killed a rabbit under their verynoses and under their very windows, and then crawled away and slept bythe spring at the foot of the blackberry bushes. When Walt Irvine wentdown to inspect the intruder, he was snarled at for his pains, and Madgelikewise was snarled at when she went down to present, as apeace-offering, a large pan of bread and milk. 

A most unsociable dog he proved to be, resenting all their advances, refusing to let them lay hands on him, menacing them with bared fangs andbristling hair. Nevertheless he remained, sleeping and resting by thespring, and eating the food they gave him after they set it down at asafe distance and retreated. His wretched physical condition explainedwhy he lingered; and when he had recuperated, after several days'sojourn, he disappeared. 

And this would have been the end of him, so far as Irvine and his wifewere concerned, had not Irvine at that particular time been called awayinto the northern part of the state. Riding along on the train, near tothe line between California and Oregon, he chanced to look out of thewindow and saw his unsociable guest sliding along the wagon road, brownand wolfish, tired yet tireless, dust-covered and soiled with two hundredmiles of travel. 

Now Irvine was a man of impulse, a poet. He got off the train at thenext station, bought a piece of meat at a butcher shop, and captured thevagrant on the outskirts of the town. The return trip was made in thebaggage car, and so Wolf came a second time to the mountain cottage. Herehe was tied up for a week and made love to by the man and woman. But itwas very circumspect love-making. Remote and alien as a traveller fromanother planet, he snarled down their soft-spoken love-words. He neverbarked. In all the time they had him he was never known to bark. 

To win him became a problem. Irvine liked problems. He had a metalplate made, on which was stamped: RETURN TO WALT IRVINE, GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. This was riveted to a collar and strappedabout the dog's neck. Then he was turned loose, and promptly hedisappeared. A day later came a telegram from Mendocino County. Intwenty hours he had made over a hundred miles to the north, and was stillgoing when captured. 

He came back by Wells Fargo Express, was tied up three days, and wasloosed on the fourth and lost. This time he gained southern Oregonbefore he was caught and returned. Always, as soon as he received hisliberty, he fled away, and always he fled north. He was possessed of anobsession that drove him north. The homing instinct, Irvine called it, after he had expended the selling price of a sonnet in getting the animalback from northern Oregon. 

Another time the brown wanderer succeeded in traversing half the lengthof California, all of Oregon, and most of Washington, before he waspicked up and returned "Collect. " A remarkable thing was the speed withwhich he travelled. Fed up and rested, as soon as he was loosed hedevoted all his energy to getting over the ground. On the first day'srun he was known to cover as high as a hundred and fifty miles, and afterthat he would average a hundred miles a day until caught. He alwaysarrived back lean and hungry and savage, and always departed fresh andvigorous, cleaving his way northward in response to some prompting of hisbeing that no one could understand. 

But at last, after a futile year of flight, he accepted the inevitableand elected to remain at the cottage where first he had killed the rabbitand slept by the spring. Even after that, a long time elapsed before theman and woman succeeded in patting him. It was a great victory, for theyalone were allowed to put hands on him. He was fastidiously exclusive, and no guest at the cottage ever succeeded in making up to him. A lowgrowl greeted such approach; if any one had the hardihood to come nearer, the lips lifted, the naked fangs appeared, and the growl became a snarl--asnarl so terrible and malignant that it awed the stoutest of them, as itlikewise awed the farmers' dogs that knew ordinary dog-snarling, but hadnever seen wolf-snarling before. 

He was without antecedents. His history began with Walt and Madge. Hehad come up from the south, but never a clew did they get of the ownerfrom whom he had evidently fled. Mrs. Johnson, their nearest neighborand the one who supplied them with milk, proclaimed him a Klondike dog. Her brother was burrowing for frozen pay-streaks in that far country, andso she constituted herself an authority on the subject. 

But they did not dispute her. There were the tips of Wolf's ears, obviously so severely frozen at some time that they would never quiteheal again. Besides, he looked like the photographs of the Alaskan dogsthey saw published in magazines and newspapers. They often speculatedover his past, and tried to conjure up (from what they had read andheard) what his northland life had been. That the northland still drewhim, they knew; for at night they sometimes heard him crying softly; andwhen the north wind blew and the bite of frost was in the air, a greatrestlessness would come upon him and he would lift a mournful lamentwhich they knew to be the long wolf-howl. Yet he never barked. Noprovocation was great enough to draw from him that canine cry. 

Long discussion they had, during the time of winning him, as to whose doghe was. Each claimed him, and each proclaimed loudly any expression ofaffection made by him. But the man had the better of it at first, chiefly because he was a man. It was patent that Wolf had had noexperience with women. He did not understand women. Madge's skirts weresomething he never quite accepted. The swish of them was enough to sethim a-bristle with suspicion, and on a windy day she could not approachhim at all. 

On the other hand, it was Madge who fed him; also it was she who ruledthe kitchen, and it was by her favor, and her favor alone, that he waspermitted to come within that sacred precinct. It was because of thesethings that she bade fair to overcome the handicap of her garments. Thenit was that Walt put forth special effort, making it a practice to haveWolf lie at his feet while he wrote, and, between petting and talking, losing much time from his work. Walt won in the end, and his victory wasmost probably due to the fact that he was a man, though Madge averredthat they would have had another quarter of a mile of gurgling brook, andat least two west winds sighing through their redwoods, had Wait properlydevoted his energies to song-transmutation and left Wolf alone toexercise a natural taste and an unbiassed judgment. 

"It's about time I heard from those triolets, " Walt said, after a silenceof five minutes, during which they had swung steadily down the trail. "There'll be a check at the post-office, I know, and we'll transmute itinto beautiful buckwheat flour, a gallon of maple syrup, and a new pairof overshoes for you. "

"And into beautiful milk from Mrs. Johnson's beautiful cow, " Madge added. "To-morrow's the first of the month, you know. "

Walt scowled unconsciously; then his face brightened, and he clapped hishand to his breast pocket. 

"Never mind. I have here a nice beautiful new cow, the best milker inCalifornia. "

"When did you write it?" she demanded eagerly. Then, reproachfully, "Andyou never showed it to me. "

"I saved it to read to you on the way to the post-office, in a spotremarkably like this one, " he answered, indicating, with a wave of hishand, a dry log on which to sit. 

A tiny stream flowed out of a dense fern-brake, slipped down amossy-lipped stone, and ran across the path at their feet. From thevalley arose the mellow song of meadow-larks, while about them, in andout, through sunshine and shadow, fluttered great yellow butterflies. 

Up from below came another sound that broke in upon Walt reading softlyfrom his manuscript. It was a crunching of heavy feet, punctuated nowand again by the clattering of a displaced stone. As Walt finished andlooked to his wife for approval, a man came into view around the turn ofthe trail. He was bare-headed and sweaty. With a handkerchief in onehand he mopped his face, while in the other hand he carried a new hat anda wilted starched collar which he had removed from his neck. He was awell-built man, and his muscles seemed on the point of bursting out ofthe painfully new and ready-made black clothes he wore. 

"Warm day, " Walt greeted him. Walt believed in country democracy, andnever missed an opportunity to practise it. 

The man paused and nodded. 

"I guess I ain't used much to the warm, " he vouchsafed halfapologetically. "I'm more accustomed to zero weather. "

"You don't find any of that in this country, " Walt laughed. 

"Should say not, " the man answered. "An' I ain't here a-lookin' for itneither. I'm tryin' to find my sister. Mebbe you know where she lives. Her name's Johnson, Mrs. William Johnson. "

"You're not her Klondike brother!" Madge cried, her eyes bright withinterest, "about whom we've heard so much?"

"Yes'm, that's me, " he answered modestly. "My name's Miller, SkiffMiller. I just thought I'd s'prise her. "

"You are on the right track then. Only you've come by the foot-path. "Madge stood up to direct him, pointing up the canyon a quarter of a mile. "You see that blasted redwood? Take the little trail turning off to theright. It's the short cut to her house. You can't miss it. "

"Yes'm, thank you, ma'am, " he said. He made tentative efforts to go, butseemed awkwardly rooted to the spot. He was gazing at her with an openadmiration of which he was quite unconscious, and which was drowning, along with him, in the rising sea of embarrassment in which hefloundered. 

"We'd like to hear you tell about the Klondike, " Madge said. "Mayn't wecome over some day while you are at your sister's? Or, better yet, won'tyou come over and have dinner with us?"

"Yes'm, thank you, ma'am, " he mumbled mechanically. Then he caughthimself up and added: "I ain't stoppin' long. I got to be pullin' northagain. I go out on to-night's train. You see, I've got a mail contractwith the government. "

When Madge had said that it was too bad, he made another futile effort togo. But he could not take his eyes from her face. He forgot hisembarrassment in his admiration, and it was her turn to flush and feeluncomfortable. 

It was at this juncture, when Walt had just decided it was time for himto be saying something to relieve the strain, that Wolf, who had beenaway nosing through the brush, trotted wolf-like into view. 

Skiff Miller's abstraction disappeared. The pretty woman before himpassed out of his field of vision. He had eyes only for the dog, and agreat wonder came into his face. 

"Well, I'll be damned!" he enunciated slowly and solemnly. 

He sat down ponderingly on the log, leaving Madge standing. At the soundof his voice, Wolf's ears had flattened down, then his mouth had openedin a laugh. He trotted slowly up to the stranger and first smelled hishands, then licked them with his tongue. 

Skiff Miller patted the dog's head, and slowly and solemnly repeated, "Well, I'll be damned!"

"Excuse me, ma'am, " he said the next moment "I was just s'prised some, that was all. "

"We're surprised, too, " she answered lightly. "We never saw Wolf make upto a stranger before. "

"Is that what you call him--Wolf?" the man asked. 

Madge nodded. "But I can't understand his friendliness toward you--unlessit's because you're from the Klondike. He's a Klondike dog, you know. "

"Yes'm, " Miller said absently. He lifted one of Wolf's fore legs andexamined the foot-pads, pressing them and denting them with his thumb. "Kind of soft, " he remarked. "He ain't been on trail for a long time. "

"I say, " Walt broke in, "it is remarkable the way he lets you handlehim. "

Skiff Miller arose, no longer awkward with admiration of Madge, and in asharp, businesslike manner asked, "How long have you had him?"

But just then the dog, squirming and rubbing against the newcomer's legs, opened his mouth and barked. It was an explosive bark, brief and joyous, but a bark. 

"That's a new one on me, " Skiff Miller remarked. 

Walt and Madge stared at each other. The miracle had happened. Wolf hadbarked. 

"It's the first time he ever barked, " Madge said. 

"First time I ever heard him, too, " Miller volunteered. 

Madge smiled at him. The man was evidently a humorist. 

"Of course, " she said, "since you have only seen him for five minutes. "

Skiff Miller looked at her sharply, seeking in her face the guile herwords had led him to suspect. 

"I thought you understood, " he said slowly. "I thought you'd tumbled toit from his makin' up to me. He's my dog. His name ain't Wolf. It'sBrown. "

"Oh, Walt!" was Madge's instinctive cry to her husband. 

Walt was on the defensive at once. 

"How do you know he's your dog?" he demanded. 

"Because he is, " was the reply. 

"Mere assertion, " Walt said sharply. 

In his slow and pondering way, Skiff Miller looked at him, then asked, with a nod of his head toward Madge:

"How d'you know she's your wife? You just say, 'Because she is, ' andI'll say it's mere assertion. The dog's mine. I bred 'm an' raised 'm, an' I guess I ought to know. Look here. I'll prove it to you. "

Skiff Miller turned to the dog. "Brown!" His voice rang out sharply, and at the sound the dog's ears flattened down as to a caress. "Gee!"The dog made a swinging turn to the right. "Now mush-on!" And the dogceased his swing abruptly and started straight ahead, halting obedientlyat command. 

"I can do it with whistles, " Skiff Miller said proudly. "He was my leaddog. "

"But you are not going to take him away with you?" Madge askedtremulously. 

The man nodded. 

"Back into that awful Klondike world of suffering?"

He nodded and added: "Oh, it ain't so bad as all that. Look at me. Pretty healthy specimen, ain't I?"

"But the dogs! The terrible hardship, the heart-breaking toil, thestarvation, the frost! Oh, I've read about it and I know. "

"I nearly ate him once, over on Little Fish River, " Miller volunteeredgrimly. "If I hadn't got a moose that day was all that saved 'm. "

"I'd have died first!" Madge cried. 

"Things is different down here, " Miller explained. "You don't have toeat dogs. You think different just about the time you're all in. You'venever ben all in, so you don't know anything about it. "

"That's the very point, " she argued warmly. "Dogs are not eaten inCalifornia. Why not leave him here? He is happy. He'll never want forfood--you know that. He'll never suffer from cold and hardship. Hereall is softness and gentleness. Neither the human nor nature is savage. He will never know a whip-lash again. And as for the weather--why, itnever snows here. "

"But it's all-fired hot in summer, beggin' your pardon, " Skiff Millerlaughed. 

"But you do not answer, " Madge continued passionately. "What have you tooffer him in that northland life?"

"Grub, when I've got it, and that's most of the time, " came the answer. 

"And the rest of the time?"

"No grub. "

"And the work?"

"Yes, plenty of work, " Miller blurted out impatiently. "Work withoutend, an' famine, an' frost, an all the rest of the miseries--that's whathe'll get when he comes with me. But he likes it. He is used to it. Heknows that life. He was born to it an' brought up to it. An' you don'tknow anything about it. You don't know what you're talking about. That'swhere the dog belongs, and that's where he'll be happiest. "

"The dog doesn't go, " Walt announced in a determined voice. "So there isno need of further discussion. "

"What's that?" Skiff Miller demanded, his brows lowering and an obstinateflush of blood reddening his forehead. 

"I said the dog doesn't go, and that settles it. I don't believe he'syour dog. You may have seen him sometime. You may even sometime havedriven him for his owner. But his obeying the ordinary driving commandsof the Alaskan trail is no demonstration that he is yours. Any dog inAlaska would obey you as he obeyed. Besides, he is undoubtedly avaluable dog, as dogs go in Alaska, and that is sufficient explanation ofyour desire to get possession of him. Anyway, you've got to proveproperty. "

Skiff Miller, cool and collected, the obstinate flush a trifle deeper onhis forehead, his huge muscles bulging under the black cloth of his coat, carefully looked the poet up and down as though measuring the strength ofhis slenderness. 

The Klondiker's face took on a contemptuous expression as he saidfinally, "I reckon there's nothin' in sight to prevent me takin' the dogright here an' now. "

Walt's face reddened, and the striking-muscles of his arms and shouldersseemed to stiffen and grow tense. His wife fluttered apprehensively intothe breach. 

"Maybe Mr. Miller is right, " she said. "I am afraid that he is. Wolfdoes seem to know him, and certainly he answers to the name of 'Brown. 'He made friends with him instantly, and you know that's something henever did with anybody before. Besides, look at the way he barked. Hewas just bursting with joy. Joy over what? Without doubt at finding Mr. Miller. "

Walt's striking-muscles relaxed, and his shoulders seemed to droop withhopelessness. 

"I guess you're right, Madge, " he said. "Wolf isn't Wolf, but Brown, andhe must belong to Mr. Miller. "

"Perhaps Mr. Miller will sell him, " she suggested. "We can buy him. "

Skiff Miller shook his head, no longer belligerent, but kindly, quick tobe generous in response to generousness. 

"I had five dogs, " he said, casting about for the easiest way to temperhis refusal. "He was the leader. They was the crack team of Alaska. Nothin' could touch 'em. In 1898 I refused five thousand dollars for thebunch. Dogs was high, then, anyway; but that wasn't what made the fancyprice. It was the team itself. Brown was the best in the team. Thatwinter I refused twelve hundred for 'm. I didn't sell 'm then, an' Iain't a-sellin' 'm now. Besides, I think a mighty lot of that dog. I'veben lookin' for 'm for three years. It made me fair sick when I foundhe'd ben stole--not the value of him, but the--well, I liked 'm likehell, that's all, beggin' your pardon. I couldn't believe my eyes when Iseen 'm just now. I thought I was dreamin'. It was too good to be true. Why, I was his wet-nurse. I put 'm to bed, snug every night. His motherdied, and I brought 'm up on condensed milk at two dollars a can when Icouldn't afford it in my own coffee. He never knew any mother but me. Heused to suck my finger regular, the darn little cuss--that finger rightthere!"

And Skiff Miller, too overwrought for speech, held up a fore finger forthem to see. 

"That very finger, " he managed to articulate, as though it somehowclinched the proof of ownership and the bond of affection. 

He was still gazing at his extended finger when Madge began to speak. 

"But the dog, " she said. "You haven't considered the dog. "

Skiff Miller looked puzzled. 

"Have you thought about him?" she asked. 

"Don't know what you're drivin' at, " was the response. 

"Maybe the dog has some choice in the matter, " Madge went on. "Maybe hehas his likes and desires. You have not considered him. You give him nochoice. It has never entered your mind that possibly he might preferCalifornia to Alaska. You consider only what you like. You do with himas you would with a sack of potatoes or a bale of hay. "

This was a new way of looking at it, and Miller was visibly impressed ashe debated it in his mind. Madge took advantage of his indecision. 

"If you really love him, what would be happiness to him would be yourhappiness also, " she urged. 

Skiff Miller continued to debate with himself, and Madge stole a glanceof exultation to her husband, who looked back warm approval. 

"What do you think?" the Klondiker suddenly demanded. 

It was her turn to be puzzled. "What do you mean?" she asked. 

"D'ye think he'd sooner stay in California?"

She nodded her head with positiveness. "I am sure of it. "

Skiff Miller again debated with himself, though this time aloud, at thesame time running his gaze in a judicial way over the mooted animal. 

"He was a good worker. He's done a heap of work for me. He never loafedon me, an' he was a joe-dandy at hammerin' a raw team into shape. He'sgot a head on him. He can do everything but talk. He knows what you sayto him. Look at 'm now. He knows we're talkin' about him. "

The dog was lying at Skiff Miller's feet, head close down on paws, earserect and listening, and eyes that were quick and eager to follow thesound of speech as it fell from the lips of first one and then the other. 

"An' there's a lot of work in 'm yet. He's good for years to come. An'I do like him. I like him like hell. "

Once or twice after that Skiff Miller opened his mouth and closed itagain without speaking. Finally he said:

"I'll tell you what I'll do. Your remarks, ma'am, has some weight inthem. The dog's worked hard, and maybe he's earned a soft berth an' hasgot a right to choose. Anyway, we'll leave it up to him. Whatever hesays, goes. You people stay right here settin' down. I'll say good-byand walk off casual-like. If he wants to stay, he can stay. If he wantsto come with me, let 'm come. I won't call 'm to come an' don't you call'm to come back. "

He looked with sudden suspicion at Madge, and added, "Only you must playfair. No persuadin' after my back is turned. "

"We'll play fair, " Madge began, but Skiff Miller broke in on herassurances. 

"I know the ways of women, " he announced. "Their hearts is soft. Whentheir hearts is touched they're likely to stack the cards, look at thebottom of the deck, an' lie like the devil--beggin' your pardon, ma'am. I'm only discoursin' about women in general. "

"I don't know how to thank you, " Madge quavered. 

"I don't see as you've got any call to thank me, " he replied. "Brownain't decided yet. Now you won't mind if I go away slow? It's no more'nfair, seein' I'll be out of sight inside a hundred yards. "--Madge agreed, and added, "And I promise you faithfully that we won't do anything toinfluence him. "

"Well, then, I might as well be gettin' along, " Skiff Miller said in theordinary tones of one departing. 

At this change in his voice, Wolf lifted his head quickly, and still morequickly got to his feet when the man and woman shook hands. He sprang upon his hind legs, resting his fore paws on her hip and at the same timelicking Skiff Miller's hand. When the latter shook hands with Walt, Wolfrepeated his act, resting his weight on Walt and licking both men'shands. 

"It ain't no picnic, I can tell you that, " were the Klondiker's lastwords, as he turned and went slowly up the trail. 

For the distance of twenty feet Wolf watched him go, himself alleagerness and expectancy, as though waiting for the man to turn andretrace his steps. Then, with a quick low whine, Wolf sprang after him, overtook him, caught his hand between his teeth with reluctanttenderness, and strove gently to make him pause. 

Failing in this, Wolf raced back to where Walt Irvine sat, catching hiscoat-sleeve in his teeth and trying vainly to drag him after theretreating man. 

Wolf's perturbation began to wax. He desired ubiquity. He wanted to bein two places at the same time, with the old master and the new, andsteadily the distance between them was increasing. He sprang aboutexcitedly, making short nervous leaps and twists, now toward one, nowtoward the other, in painful indecision, not knowing his own mind, desiring both and unable to choose, uttering quick sharp whines andbeginning to pant. 

He sat down abruptly on his haunches, thrusting his nose upward, themouth opening and closing with jerking movements, each time openingwider. These jerking movements were in unison with the recurrent spasmsthat attacked the throat, each spasm severer and more intense than thepreceding one. And in accord with jerks and spasms the larynx began tovibrate, at first silently, accompanied by the rush of air expelled fromthe lungs, then sounding a low, deep note, the lowest in the register ofthe human ear. All this was the nervous and muscular preliminary tohowling. 

But just as the howl was on the verge of bursting from the full throat, the wide-opened mouth was closed, the paroxysms ceased, and he lookedlong and steadily at the retreating man. Suddenly Wolf turned his head, and over his shoulder just as steadily regarded Walt. The appeal wasunanswered. Not a word nor a sign did the dog receive, no suggestion andno clew as to what his conduct should be. 

A glance ahead to where the old master was nearing the curve of the trailexcited him again. He sprang to his feet with a whine, and then, struckby a new idea, turned his attention to Madge. Hitherto he had ignoredher, but now, both masters failing him, she alone was left. He went overto her and snuggled his head in her lap, nudging her arm with his nose--anold trick of his when begging for favors. He backed away from her andbegan writhing and twisting playfully, curvetting and prancing, halfrearing and striking his fore paws to the earth, struggling with all hisbody, from the wheedling eyes and flattening ears to the wagging tail, toexpress the thought that was in him and that was denied him utterance. 

This, too, he soon abandoned. He was depressed by the coldness of thesehumans who had never been cold before. No response could he draw fromthem, no help could he get. They did not consider him. They were asdead. 

He turned and silently gazed after the old master. Skiff Miller wasrounding the curve. In a moment he would be gone from view. Yet henever turned his head, plodding straight onward, slowly and methodically, as though possessed of no interest in what was occurring behind his back. 

And in this fashion he went out of view. Wolf waited for him toreappear. He waited a long minute, silently, quietly, without movement, as though turned to stone--withal stone quick with eagerness and desire. He barked once, and waited. Then he turned and trotted back to WaltIrvine. He sniffed his hand and dropped down heavily at his feet, watching the trail where it curved emptily from view. 

The tiny stream slipping down the mossy-lipped stone seemed suddenly toincrease the volume of its gurgling noise. Save for the meadow-larks, there was no other sound. The great yellow butterflies drifted silentlythrough the sunshine and lost themselves in the drowsy shadows. Madgegazed triumphantly at her husband. 

A few minutes later Wolf got upon his feet. Decision and deliberationmarked his movements. He did not glance at the man and woman. His eyeswere fixed up the trail. He had made up his mind. They knew it. Andthey knew, so far as they were concerned, that the ordeal had just begun. 

He broke into a trot, and Madge's lips pursed, forming an avenue for thecaressing sound that it was the will of her to send forth. But thecaressing sound was not made. She was impelled to look at her husband, and she saw the sternness with which he watched her. The pursed lipsrelaxed, and she sighed inaudibly. 

Wolf's trot broke into a run. Wider and wider were the leaps he made. Not once did he turn his head, his wolf's brush standing out straightbehind him. He cut sharply across the curve of the trail and was gone. 

THE SUN-DOG TRAIL

Sitka Charley smoked his pipe and gazed thoughtfully at the _PoliceGazette_ illustration on the wall. For half an hour he had been steadilyregarding it, and for half an hour I had been slyly watching him. Something was going on in that mind of his, and, whatever it was, I knewit was well worth knowing. He had lived life, and seen things, andperformed that prodigy of prodigies, namely, the turning of his back uponhis own people, and, in so far as it was possible for an Indian, becominga white man even in his mental processes. As he phrased it himself, hehad come into the warm, sat among us, by our fires, and become one of us. He had never learned to read nor write, but his vocabulary wasremarkable, and more remarkable still was the completeness with which hehad assumed the white man's point of view, the white man's attitudetoward things. 

We had struck this deserted cabin after a hard day on trail. The dogshad been fed, the supper dishes washed, the beds made, and we were nowenjoying that most delicious hour that comes each day, and but once eachday, on the Alaskan trail, the hour when nothing intervenes between thetired body and bed save the smoking of the evening pipe. Some formerdenizen of the cabin had decorated its walls with illustrations torn frommagazines and newspapers, and it was these illustrations that had heldSitka Charley's attention from the moment of our arrival two hoursbefore. He had studied them intently, ranging from one to another andback again, and I could see that there was uncertainty in his mind, andbepuzzlement. 

"Well?" I finally broke the silence. 

He took the pipe from his mouth and said simply, "I do not understand. "

He smoked on again, and again removed the pipe, using it to point at the_Police Gazette_ illustration. 

"That picture--what does it mean? I do not understand. "

I looked at the picture. A man, with a preposterously wicked face, hisright hand pressed dramatically to his heart, was falling backward to thefloor. Confronting him, with a face that was a composite of destroyingangel and Adonis, was a man holding a smoking revolver. 

"One man is killing the other man, " I said, aware of a distinctbepuzzlement of my own and of failure to explain. 

"Why?" asked Sitka Charley. 

"I do not know, " I confessed. 

"That picture is all end, " he said. "It has no beginning. "

"It is life, " I said. 

"Life has beginning, " he objected. 

I was silenced for the moment, while his eyes wandered on to an adjoiningdecoration, a photographic reproduction of somebody's "Leda and theSwan. "

"That picture, " he said, "has no beginning. It has no end. I do notunderstand pictures. "

"Look at that picture, " I commanded, pointing to a third decoration. "Itmeans something. Tell me what it means to you. "

He studied it for several minutes. 

"The little girl is sick, " he said finally. "That is the doctor lookingat her. They have been up all night--see, the oil is low in the lamp, the first morning light is coming in at the window. It is a greatsickness; maybe she will die, that is why the doctor looks so hard. Thatis the mother. It is a great sickness, because the mother's head is onthe table and she is crying. "

"How do you know she is crying?" I interrupted. "You cannot see herface. Perhaps she is asleep. "

Sitka Charley looked at me in swift surprise, then back at the picture. It was evident that he had not reasoned the impression. 

"Perhaps she is asleep, " he repeated. He studied it closely. "No, sheis not asleep. The shoulders show that she is not asleep. I have seenthe shoulders of a woman who cried. The mother is crying. It is a verygreat sickness. "

"And now you understand the picture, " I cried. 

He shook his head, and asked, "The little girl--does it die?"

It was my turn for silence. 

"Does it die?" he reiterated. "You are a painter-man. Maybe you know. "

"No, I do not know, " I confessed. 

"It is not life, " he delivered himself dogmatically. "In life littlegirl die or get well. Something happen in life. In picture nothinghappen. No, I do not understand pictures. "

His disappointment was patent. It was his desire to understand allthings that white men understand, and here, in this matter, he failed. Ifelt, also, that there was challenge in his attitude. He was bent uponcompelling me to show him the wisdom of pictures. Besides, he hadremarkable powers of visualization. I had long since learned this. Hevisualized everything. He saw life in pictures, felt life in pictures, generalized life in pictures; and yet he did not understand pictures whenseen through other men's eyes and expressed by those men with color andline upon canvas. 

"Pictures are bits of life, " I said. "We paint life as we see it. Forinstance, Charley, you are coming along the trail. It is night. You seea cabin. The window is lighted. You look through the window for onesecond, or for two seconds, you see something, and you go on your way. You saw maybe a man writing a letter. You saw something withoutbeginning or end. Nothing happened. Yet it was a bit of life you saw. You remember it afterward. It is like a picture in your memory. Thewindow is the frame of the picture. "

I could see that he was interested, and I knew that as I spoke he hadlooked through the window and seen the man writing the letter. 

"There is a picture you have painted that I understand, " he said. "It isa true picture. It has much meaning. It is in your cabin at Dawson. Itis a faro table. There are men playing. It is a large game. The limitis off. "

"How do you know the limit is off?" I broke in excitedly, for here waswhere my work could be tried out on an unbiassed judge who knew lifeonly, and not art, and who was a sheer master of reality. Also, I wasvery proud of that particular piece of work. I had named it "The LastTurn, " and I believed it to be one of the best things I had ever done. 

"There are no chips on the table, " Sitka Charley explained. "The men areplaying with markers. That means the roof is the limit. One man playyellow markers--maybe one yellow marker worth one thousand dollars, maybetwo thousand dollars. One man play red markers. Maybe they are worthfive hundred dollars, maybe one thousand dollars. It is a very big game. Everybody play very high, up to the roof. How do I know? You make thedealer with blood little bit warm in face. " (I was delighted. ) "Thelookout, you make him lean forward in his chair. Why he lean forward?Why his face very much quiet? Why his eyes very much bright? Why dealerwarm with blood a little bit in the face? Why all men very quiet?--theman with yellow markers? the man with white markers? the man with redmarkers? Why nobody talk? Because very much money. Because last turn. "

"How do you know it is the last turn?" I asked. 

"The king is coppered, the seven is played open, " he answered. "Nobodybet on other cards. Other cards all gone. Everybody one mind. Everybodyplay king to lose, seven to win. Maybe bank lose twenty thousanddollars, maybe bank win. Yes, that picture I understand. "

"Yet you do not know the end!" I cried triumphantly. "It is the lastturn, but the cards are not yet turned. In the picture they will neverbe turned. Nobody will ever know who wins nor who loses. "

"And the men will sit there and never talk, " he said, wonder and awegrowing in his face. "And the lookout will lean forward, and the bloodwill be warm in the face of the dealer. It is a strange thing. Alwayswill they sit there, always; and the cards will never be turned. "

"It is a picture, " I said. "It is life. You have seen things like ityourself. "

He looked at me and pondered, then said, very slowly: "No, as you say, there is no end to it. Nobody will ever know the end. Yet is it a truething. I have seen it. It is life. "

For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial wisdom ofthe white man and verifying it by the facts of life. He nodded his headseveral times, and grunted once or twice. Then he knocked the ashes fromhis pipe, carefully refilled it, and after a thoughtful pause, lighted itagain. 

"Then have I, too, seen many pictures of life, " he began; "pictures notpainted, but seen with the eyes. I have looked at them like through thewindow at the man writing the letter. I have seen many pieces of life, without beginning, without end, without understanding. "

With a sudden change of position he turned his eyes full upon me andregarded me thoughtfully. 

"Look you, " he said; "you are a painter-man. How would you paint thiswhich I saw, a picture without beginning, the ending of which I do notunderstand, a piece of life with the northern lights for a candle andAlaska for a frame. "

"It is a large canvas, " I murmured. 

But he ignored me, for the picture he had in mind was before his eyes andhe was seeing it. 

"There are many names for this picture, " he said. "But in the picturethere are many sun-dogs, and it comes into my mind to call it 'The Sun-Dog Trail. ' It was a long time ago, seven years ago, the fall of '97, when I saw the woman first time. At Lake Linderman I had one canoe, verygood Peterborough canoe. I came over Chilcoot Pass with two thousandletters for Dawson. I was letter carrier. Everybody rush to Klondike atthat time. Many people on trail. Many people chop down trees and makeboats. Last water, snow in the air, snow on the ground, ice on the lake, on the river ice in the eddies. Every day more snow, more ice. Maybeone day, maybe three days, maybe six days, any day maybe freeze-up come, then no more water, all ice, everybody walk, Dawson six hundred miles, long time walk. Boat go very quick. Everybody want to go boat. Everybody say, 'Charley, two hundred dollars you take me in canoe, ''Charley, three hundred dollars, ' 'Charley, four hundred dollars. ' I sayno, all the time I say no. I am letter carrier. 

"In morning I get to Lake Linderman. I walk all night and am much tired. I cook breakfast, I eat, then I sleep on the beach three hours. I wakeup. It is ten o'clock. Snow is falling. There is wind, much wind thatblows fair. Also, there is a woman who sits in the snow alongside. Sheis white woman, she is young, very pretty, maybe she is twenty years old, maybe twenty-five years old. She look at me. I look at her. She isvery tired. She is no dance-woman. I see that right away. She is goodwoman, and she is very tired. 

"'You are Sitka Charley, ' she says. I get up quick and roll blankets sosnow does not get inside. 'I go to Dawson, ' she says. 'I go in yourcanoe--how much?'

"I do not want anybody in my canoe. I do not like to say no. So I say, 'One thousand dollars. ' Just for fun I say it, so woman cannot come withme, much better than say no. She look at me very hard, then she says, 'When you start?' I say right away. Then she says all right, she willgive me one thousand dollars. 

"What can I say? I do not want the woman, yet have I given my word thatfor one thousand dollars she can come. I am surprised. Maybe she makefun, too, so I say, 'Let me see thousand dollars. ' And that woman, thatyoung woman, all alone on the trail, there in the snow, she take out onethousand dollars, in greenbacks, and she put them in my hand. I look atmoney, I look at her. What can I say? I say, 'No, my canoe very small. There is no room for outfit. ' She laugh. She says, 'I am greattraveller. This is my outfit. ' She kick one small pack in the snow. Itis two fur robes, canvas outside, some woman's clothes inside. I pick itup. Maybe thirty-five pounds. I am surprised. She take it away fromme. She says, 'Come, let us start. ' She carries pack into canoe. Whatcan I say? I put my blankets into canoe. We start. 

"And that is the way I saw the woman first time. The wind was fair. Iput up small sail. The canoe went very fast, it flew like a bird overthe high waves. The woman was much afraid. 'What for you come Klondikemuch afraid?' I ask. She laugh at me, a hard laugh, but she is stillmuch afraid. Also is she very tired. I run canoe through rapids to LakeBennett. Water very bad, and woman cry out because she is afraid. We godown Lake Bennett, snow, ice, wind like a gale, but woman is very tiredand go to sleep. 

"That night we make camp at Windy Arm. Woman sit by fire and eat supper. I look at her. She is pretty. She fix hair. There is much hair, and itis brown, also sometimes it is like gold in the firelight, when she turnher head, so, and flashes come from it like golden fire. The eyes arelarge and brown, sometimes warm like a candle behind a curtain, sometimesvery hard and bright like broken ice when sun shines upon it. When shesmile--how can I say?--when she smile I know white man like to kiss her, just like that, when she smile. She never do hard work. Her hands aresoft, like baby's hand. She is soft all over, like baby. She is notthin, but round like baby; her arm, her leg, her muscles, all soft andround like baby. Her waist is small, and when she stand up, when shewalk, or move her head or arm, it is--I do not know the word--but it isnice to look at, like--maybe I say she is built on lines like the linesof a good canoe, just like that, and when she move she is like themovement of the good canoe sliding through still water or leaping throughwater when it is white and fast and angry. It is very good to see. 

"Why does she come into Klondike, all alone, with plenty of money? I donot know. Next day I ask her. She laugh and says: 'Sitka Charley, thatis none of your business. I give you one thousand dollars take me toDawson. That only is your business. ' Next day after that I ask her whatis her name. She laugh, then she says, 'Mary Jones, that is my name. ' Ido not know her name, but I know all the time that Mary Jones is not hername. 

"It is very cold in canoe, and because of cold sometimes she not feelgood. Sometimes she feel good and she sing. Her voice is like a silverbell, and I feel good all over like when I go into church at Holy CrossMission, and when she sing I feel strong and paddle like hell. Then shelaugh and says, 'You think we get to Dawson before freeze-up, Charley?'Sometimes she sit in canoe and is thinking far away, her eyes like that, all empty. She does not see Sitka Charley, nor the ice, nor the snow. She is far away. Very often she is like that, thinking far away. Sometimes, when she is thinking far away, her face is not good to see. Itlooks like a face that is angry, like the face of one man when he want tokill another man. 

"Last day to Dawson very bad. Shore-ice in all the eddies, mush-ice inthe stream. I cannot paddle. The canoe freeze to ice. I cannot get toshore. There is much danger. All the time we go down Yukon in the ice. That night there is much noise of ice. Then ice stop, canoe stop, everything stop. 'Let us go to shore, ' the woman says. I say no, betterwait. By and by, everything start down-stream again. There is muchsnow. I cannot see. At eleven o'clock at night, everything stop. Atone o'clock everything start again. At three o'clock everything stop. Canoe is smashed like eggshell, but is on top of ice and cannot sink. Ihear dogs howling. We wait. We sleep. By and by morning come. Thereis no more snow. It is the freeze-up, and there is Dawson. Canoe smashand stop right at Dawson. Sitka Charley has come in with two thousandletters on very last water. 

"The woman rent a cabin on the hill, and for one week I see her no more. Then, one day, she come to me. 'Charley, ' she says, 'how do you like towork for me? You drive dogs, make camp, travel with me. ' I say that Imake too much money carrying letters. She says, 'Charley, I will pay youmore money. ' I tell her that pick-and-shovel man get fifteen dollars aday in the mines. She says, 'That is four hundred and fifty dollars amonth. ' And I say, 'Sitka Charley is no pick-and-shovel man. ' Then shesays, 'I understand, Charley. I will give you seven hundred and fiftydollars each month. ' It is a good price, and I go to work for her. Ibuy for her dogs and sled. We travel up Klondike, up Bonanza andEldorado, over to Indian River, to Sulphur Creek, to Dominion, backacross divide to Gold Bottom and to Too Much Gold, and back to Dawson. All the time she look for something, I do not know what. I am puzzled. 'What thing you look for?' I ask. She laugh. 'You look for gold?' Iask. She laugh. Then she says, 'That is none of your business, Charley. ' And after that I never ask any more. 

"She has a small revolver which she carries in her belt. Sometimes, ontrail, she makes practice with revolver. I laugh. 'What for you laugh, Charley?' she ask. 'What for you play with that?' I say. 'It is nogood. It is too small. It is for a child, a little plaything. ' When weget back to Dawson she ask me to buy good revolver for her. I buy aColt's 44. It is very heavy, but she carry it in her belt all the time. 

"At Dawson comes the man. Which way he come I do not know. Only do Iknow he is _checha-quo_--what you call tenderfoot. His hands are soft, just like hers. He never do hard work. He is soft all over. At first Ithink maybe he is her husband. But he is too young. Also, they make twobeds at night. He is maybe twenty years old. His eyes blue, his hairyellow, he has a little mustache which is yellow. His name is JohnJones. Maybe he is her brother. I do not know. I ask questions nomore. Only I think his name not John Jones. Other people call him Mr. Girvan. I do not think that is his name. I do not think her name isMiss Girvan, which other people call her. I think nobody know theirnames. 

"One night I am asleep at Dawson. He wake me up. He says, 'Get the dogsready; we start. ' No more do I ask questions, so I get the dogs readyand we start. We go down the Yukon. It is night-time, it is November, and it is very cold--sixty-five below. She is soft. He is soft. Thecold bites. They get tired. They cry under their breaths to themselves. By and by I say better we stop and make camp. But they say that theywill go on. Three times I say better to make camp and rest, but eachtime they say they will go on. After that I say nothing. All the time, day after day, is it that way. They are very soft. They get stiff andsore. They do not understand moccasins, and their feet hurt very much. They limp, they stagger like drunken people, they cry under theirbreaths; and all the time they say, 'On! on! We will go on!'

"They are like crazy people. All the time do they go on, and on. Why dothey go on? I do not know. Only do they go on. What are they after? Ido not know. They are not after gold. There is no stampede. Besides, they spend plenty of money. But I ask questions no more. I, too, go onand on, because I am strong on the trail and because I am greatly paid. 

"We make Circle City. That for which they look is not there. I thinknow that we will rest, and rest the dogs. But we do not rest, not forone day do we rest. 'Come, ' says the woman to the man, 'let us go on. 'And we go on. We leave the Yukon. We cross the divide to the west andswing down into the Tanana Country. There are new diggings there. Butthat for which they look is not there, and we take the back trail toCircle City. 

"It is a hard journey. December is most gone. The days are short. Itis very cold. One morning it is seventy below zero. 'Better that wedon't travel to-day, ' I say, 'else will the frost be unwarmed in thebreathing and bite all the edges of our lungs. After that we will havebad cough, and maybe next spring will come pneumonia. ' But they are_checha-quo_. They do not understand the trail. They are like deadpeople they are so tired, but they say, 'Let us go on. ' We go on. Thefrost bites their lungs, and they get the dry cough. They cough till thetears run down their cheeks. When bacon is frying they must run awayfrom the fire and cough half an hour in the snow. They freeze theircheeks a little bit, so that the skin turns black and is very sore. Also, the man freezes his thumb till the end is like to come off, and he mustwear a large thumb on his mitten to keep it warm. And sometimes, whenthe frost bites hard and the thumb is very cold, he must take off themitten and put the hand between his legs next to the skin, so that thethumb may get warm again. 

"We limp into Circle City, and even I, Sitka Charley, am tired. It isChristmas Eve. I dance, drink, make a good time, for to-morrow isChristmas Day and we will rest. But no. It is five o'clock in themorning--Christmas morning. I am two hours asleep. The man stand by mybed. 'Come, Charley, ' he says, 'harness the dogs. We start. '

"Have I not said that I ask questions no more? They pay me seven hundredand fifty dollars each month. They are my masters. I am their man. Ifthey say, 'Charley, come, let us start for hell, ' I will harness thedogs, and snap the whip, and start for hell. So I harness the dogs, andwe start down the Yukon. Where do we go? They do not say. Only do theysay, 'On! on! We will go on!'

"They are very weary. They have travelled many hundreds of miles, andthey do not understand the way of the trail. Besides, their cough isvery bad--the dry cough that makes strong men swear and weak men cry. Butthey go on. Every day they go on. Never do they rest the dogs. Alwaysdo they buy new dogs. At every camp, at every post, at every Indianvillage, do they cut out the tired dogs and put in fresh dogs. They havemuch money, money without end, and like water they spend it. They arecrazy? Sometimes I think so, for there is a devil in them that drivesthem on and on, always on. What is it that they try to find? It is notgold. Never do they dig in the ground. I think a long time. Then Ithink it is a man they try to find. But what man? Never do we see theman. Yet are they like wolves on the trail of the kill. But they arefunny wolves, soft wolves, baby wolves who do not understand the way ofthe trail. They cry aloud in their sleep at night. In their sleep theymoan and groan with the pain of their weariness. And in the day, as theystagger along the trail, they cry under their breaths. They are funnywolves. 

"We pass Fort Yukon. We pass Fort Hamilton. We pass Minook. Januaryhas come and nearly gone. The days are very short. At nine o'clockcomes daylight. At three o'clock comes night. And it is cold. And evenI, Sitka Charley, am tired. Will we go on forever this way without end?I do not know. But always do I look along the trail for that which theytry to find. There are few people on the trail. Sometimes we travel onehundred miles and never see a sign of life. It is very quiet. There isno sound. Sometimes it snows, and we are like wandering ghosts. Sometimes it is clear, and at midday the sun looks at us for a momentover the hills to the south. The northern lights flame in the sky, andthe sun-dogs dance, and the air is filled with frost-dust. 

"I am Sitka Charley, a strong man. I was born on the trail, and all mydays have I lived on the trail. And yet have these two baby wolves mademe very tired. I am lean, like a starved cat, and I am glad of my bed atnight, and in the morning am I greatly weary. Yet ever are we hittingthe trail in the dark before daylight, and still on the trail does thedark after nightfall find us. These two baby wolves! If I am lean likea starved cat, they are lean like cats that have never eaten and havedied. Their eyes are sunk deep in their heads, bright sometimes as withfever, dim and cloudy sometimes like the eyes of the dead. Their cheeksare hollow like caves in a cliff. Also are their cheeks black and rawfrom many freezings. Sometimes it is the woman in the morning who says, 'I cannot get up. I cannot move. Let me die. ' And it is the man whostands beside her and says, 'Come, let us go on. ' And they go on. Andsometimes it is the man who cannot get up, and the woman says, 'Come, letus go on. ' But the one thing they do, and always do, is to go on. Alwaysdo they go on. 

"Sometimes, at the trading posts, the man and woman get letters. I donot know what is in the letters. But it is the scent that they follow, these letters themselves are the scent. One time an Indian gives them aletter. I talk with him privately. He says it is a man with one eye whogives him the letter, a man who travels fast down the Yukon. That isall. But I know that the baby wolves are after the man with the one eye. 

"It is February, and we have travelled fifteen hundred miles. We aregetting near Bering Sea, and there are storms and blizzards. The goingis hard. We come to Anvig. I do not know, but I think sure they get aletter at Anvig, for they are much excited, and they say, 'Come, hurry, let us go on. ' But I say we must buy grub, and they say we must travellight and fast. Also, they say that we can get grub at Charley McKeon'scabin. Then do I know that they take the big cut-off, for it is therethat Charley McKeon lives where the Black Rock stands by the trail. 

"Before we start, I talk maybe two minutes with the priest at Anvig. Yes, there is a man with one eye who has gone by and who travels fast. And Iknow that for which they look is the man with the one eye. We leaveAnvig with little grub, and travel light and fast. There are three freshdogs bought in Anvig, and we travel very fast. The man and woman arelike mad. We start earlier in the morning, we travel later at night. Ilook sometimes to see them die, these two baby wolves, but they will notdie. They go on and on. When the dry cough take hold of them hard, theyhold their hands against their stomach and double up in the snow, andcough, and cough, and cough. They cannot walk, they cannot talk. Maybefor ten minutes they cough, maybe for half an hour, and then theystraighten up, the tears from the coughing frozen on their faces, and thewords they say are, 'Come, let us go on. '

"Even I, Sitka Charley, am greatly weary, and I think seven hundred andfifty dollars is a cheap price for the labor I do. We take the big cut-off, and the trail is fresh. The baby wolves have their noses down tothe trail, and they say, 'Hurry!' All the time do they say, 'Hurry!Faster! Faster!' It is hard on the dogs. We have not much food and wecannot give them enough to eat, and they grow weak. Also, they must workhard. The woman has true sorrow for them, and often, because of them, the tears are in her eyes. But the devil in her that drives her on willnot let her stop and rest the dogs. 

"And then we come upon the man with the one eye. He is in the snow bythe trail, and his leg is broken. Because of the leg he has made a poorcamp, and has been lying on his blankets for three days and keeping afire going. When we find him he is swearing. He swears like hell. Neverhave I heard a man swear like that man. I am glad. Now that they havefound that for which they look, we will have rest. But the woman says, 'Let us start. Hurry!'

"I am surprised. But the man with the one eye says, 'Never mind me. Giveme your grub. You will get more grub at McKeon's cabin to-morrow. SendMcKeon back for me. But do you go on. ' Here is another wolf, an oldwolf, and he, too, thinks but the one thought, to go on. So we give himour grub, which is not much, and we chop wood for his fire, and we takehis strongest dogs and go on. We left the man with one eye there in thesnow, and he died there in the snow, for McKeon never went back for him. And who that man was, and why he came to be there, I do not know. But Ithink he was greatly paid by the man and the woman, like me, to do theirwork for them. 

"That day and that night we had nothing to eat, and all next day wetravelled fast, and we were weak with hunger. Then we came to the BlackRock, which rose five hundred feet above the trail. It was at the end ofthe day. Darkness was coming, and we could not find the cabin of McKeon. We slept hungry, and in the morning looked for the cabin. It was notthere, which was a strange thing, for everybody knew that McKeon lived ina cabin at Black Rock. We were near to the coast, where the wind blowshard and there is much snow. Everywhere there were small hills of snowwhere the wind had piled it up. I have a thought, and I dig in one andanother of the hills of snow. Soon I find the walls of the cabin, and Idig down to the door. I go inside. McKeon is dead. Maybe two or threeweeks he is dead. A sickness had come upon him so that he could notleave the cabin. The wind and the snow had covered the cabin. He hadeaten his grub and died. I looked for his cache, but there was no grubin it. 

"'Let us go on, ' said the woman. Her eyes were hungry, and her hand wasupon her heart, as with the hurt of something inside. She bent back andforth like a tree in the wind as she stood there. 'Yes, let us go on, 'said the man. His voice was hollow, like the _klonk_ of an old raven, and he was hunger-mad. His eyes were like live coals of fire, and as hisbody rocked to and fro, so rocked his soul inside. And I, too, said, 'Let us go on. ' For that one thought, laid upon me like a lash for everymile of fifteen hundred miles, had burned itself into my soul, and Ithink that I, too, was mad. Besides, we could only go on, for there wasno grub. And we went on, giving no thought to the man with the one eyein the snow. 

"There is little travel on the big cut-off. Sometimes two or threemonths and nobody goes by. The snow had covered the trail, and there wasno sign that men had ever come or gone that way. All day the wind blewand the snow fell, and all day we travelled, while our stomachs gnawedtheir desire and our bodies grew weaker with every step they took. Thenthe woman began to fall. Then the man. I did not fall, but my feet wereheavy and I caught my toes and stumbled many times. 

"That night is the end of February. I kill three ptarmigan with thewoman's revolver, and we are made somewhat strong again. But the dogshave nothing to eat. They try to eat their harness, which is of leatherand walrus-hide, and I must fight them off with a club and hang all theharness in a tree. And all night they howl and fight around that tree. But we do not mind. We sleep like dead people, and in the morning get uplike dead people out of their graves and go on along the trail. 

"That morning is the 1st of March, and on that morning I see the firstsign of that after which the baby wolves are in search. It is clearweather, and cold. The sun stay longer in the sky, and there are sun-dogs flashing on either side, and the air is bright with frost-dust. Thesnow falls no more upon the trail, and I see the fresh sign of dogs andsled. There is one man with that outfit, and I see in the snow that heis not strong. He, too, has not enough to eat. The young wolves see thefresh sign, too, and they are much excited. 'Hurry!' they say. All thetime they say, 'Hurry! Faster, Charley, faster!'

"We make hurry very slow. All the time the man and the woman fall down. When they try to ride on sled the dogs are too weak, and the dogs falldown. Besides, it is so cold that if they ride on the sled they willfreeze. It is very easy for a hungry man to freeze. When the woman falldown, the man help her up. Sometimes the woman help the man up. By andby both fall down and cannot get up, and I must help them up all thetime, else they will not get up and will die there in the snow. This isvery hard work, for I am greatly weary, and as well I must drive thedogs, and the man and woman are very heavy with no strength in theirbodies. So, by and by, I, too, fall down in the snow, and there is noone to help me up. I must get up by myself. And always do I get up bymyself, and help them up, and make the dogs go on. 

"That night I get one ptarmigan, and we are very hungry. And that nightthe man says to me, 'What time start to-morrow, Charley?' It is like thevoice of a ghost. I say, 'All the time you make start at five o'clock. ''To-morrow, ' he says, 'we will start at three o'clock. ' I laugh in greatbitterness, and I say, 'You are dead man. ' And he says, 'To-morrow wewill start at three o'clock. '

"And we start at three o'clock, for I am their man, and that which theysay is to be done, I do. It is clear and cold, and there is no wind. When daylight comes we can see a long way off. And it is very quiet. Wecan hear no sound but the beat of our hearts, and in the silence that isa very loud sound. We are like sleep-walkers, and we walk in dreamsuntil we fall down; and then we know we must get up, and we see the trailonce more and bear the beating of our hearts. Sometimes, when I amwalking in dreams this way, I have strange thoughts. Why does SitkaCharley live? I ask myself. Why does Sitka Charley work hard, and gohungry, and have all this pain? For seven hundred and fifty dollars amonth, I make the answer, and I know it is a foolish answer. Also is ita true answer. And after that never again do I care for money. For thatday a large wisdom came to me. There was a great light, and I saw clear, and I knew that it was not for money that a man must live, but for ahappiness that no man can give, or buy, or sell, and that is beyond allvalue of all money in the world. 

"In the morning we come upon the last-night camp of the man who is beforeus. It is a poor camp, the kind a man makes who is hungry and withoutstrength. On the snow there are pieces of blanket and of canvas, and Iknow what has happened. His dogs have eaten their harness, and he hasmade new harness out of his blankets. The man and woman stare hard atwhat is to be seen, and as I look at them my back feels the chill as of acold wind against the skin. Their eyes are toil-mad and hunger-mad, andburn like fire deep in their heads. Their faces are like the faces ofpeople who have died of hunger, and their cheeks are black with the deadflesh of many freezings. 'Let us go on, ' says the man. But the womancoughs and falls in the snow. It is the dry cough where the frost hasbitten the lungs. For a long time she coughs, then like a woman crawlingout of her grave she crawls to her feet. The tears are ice upon hercheeks, and her breath makes a noise as it comes and goes, and she says, 'Let us go on. '

"We go on. And we walk in dreams through the silence. And every time wewalk is a dream and we are without pain; and every time we fall down isan awakening, and we see the snow and the mountains and the fresh trailof the man who is before us, and we know all our pain again. We come towhere we can see a long way over the snow, and that for which they lookis before them. A mile away there are black spots upon the snow. Theblack spots move. My eyes are dim, and I must stiffen my soul to see. And I see one man with dogs and a sled. The baby wolves see, too. Theycan no longer talk, but they whisper, 'On, on. Let us hurry!'

"And they fall down, but they go on. The man who is before us, hisblanket harness breaks often, and he must stop and mend it. Our harnessis good, for I have hung it in trees each night. At eleven o'clock theman is half a mile away. At one o'clock he is a quarter of a mile away. He is very weak. We see him fall down many times in the snow. One ofhis dogs can no longer travel, and he cuts it out of the harness. But hedoes not kill it. I kill it with the axe as I go by, as I kill one of mydogs which loses its legs and can travel no more. 

"Now we are three hundred yards away. We go very slow. Maybe in two, three hours we go one mile. We do not walk. All the time we fall down. We stand up and stagger two steps, maybe three steps, then we fall downagain. And all the time I must help up the man and woman. Sometimesthey rise to their knees and fall forward, maybe four or five timesbefore they can get to their feet again and stagger two or three stepsand fall. But always do they fall forward. Standing or kneeling, alwaysdo they fall forward, gaining on the trail each time by the length oftheir bodies. 

"Sometimes they crawl on hands and knees like animals that live in theforest. We go like snails, like snails that are dying we go so slow. Andyet we go faster than the man who is before us. For he, too, falls allthe time, and there is no Sitka Charley to lift him up. Now he is twohundred yards away. After a long time he is one hundred yards away. 

"It is a funny sight. I want to laugh out loud, Ha! ha! just like that, it is so funny. It is a race of dead men and dead dogs. It is like in adream when you have a nightmare and run away very fast for your life andgo very slow. The man who is with me is mad. The woman is mad. I ammad. All the world is mad, and I want to laugh, it is so funny. 

"The stranger-man who is before us leaves his dogs behind and goes onalone across the snow. After a long time we come to the dogs. They liehelpless in the snow, their harness of blanket and canvas on them, thesled behind them, and as we pass them they whine to us and cry likebabies that are hungry. 

"Then we, too, leave our dogs and go on alone across the snow. The manand the woman are nearly gone, and they moan and groan and sob, but theygo on. I, too, go on. I have but one thought. It is to come up to thestranger-man. Then it is that I shall rest, and not until then shall Irest, and it seems that I must lie down and sleep for a thousand years, Iam so tired. 

"The stranger-man is fifty yards away, all alone in the white snow. Hefalls and crawls, staggers, and falls and crawls again. He is like ananimal that is sore wounded and trying to run from the hunter. By and byhe crawls on hands and knees. He no longer stands up. And the man andwoman no longer stand up. They, too, crawl after him on hands and knees. But I stand up. Sometimes I fall, but always do I stand up again. 

"It is a strange thing to see. All about is the snow and the silence, and through it crawl the man and the woman, and the stranger-man who goesbefore. On either side the sun are sun-dogs, so that there are threesuns in the sky. The frost-dust is like the dust of diamonds, and allthe air is filled with it. Now the woman coughs, and lies still in thesnow until the fit has passed, when she crawls on again. Now the manlooks ahead, and he is blear-eyed as with old age and must rub his eyesso that he can see the stranger-man. And now the stranger-man looks backover his shoulder. And Sitka Charley, standing upright, maybe falls downand stands upright again. 

"After a long time the stranger-man crawls no more. He stands slowlyupon his feet and rocks back and forth. Also does he take off one mittenand wait with revolver in his hand, rocking back and forth as he waits. His face is skin and bones and frozen black. It is a hungry face. Theeyes are deep-sunk in his head, and the lips are snarling. The man andwoman, too, get upon their feet and they go toward him very slowly. Andall about is the snow and the silence. And in the sky are three suns, and all the air is flashing with the dust of diamonds. 

"And thus it was that I, Sitka Charley, saw the baby wolves make theirkill. No word is spoken. Only does the stranger-man snarl with hishungry face. Also does he rock to and fro, his shoulders drooping, hisknees bent, and his legs wide apart so that he does not fall down. Theman and the woman stop maybe fifty feet away. Their legs, too, are wideapart so that they do not fall down, and their bodies rock to and fro. The stranger-man is very weak. His arm shakes, so that when he shoots atthe man his bullet strikes in the snow. The man cannot take off hismitten. The stranger-man shoots at him again, and this time the bulletgoes by in the air. Then the man takes the mitten in his teeth and pullsit off. But his hand is frozen and he cannot hold the revolver, and itfails in the snow. I look at the woman. Her mitten is off, and the bigColt's revolver is in her hand. Three times she shoot, quick, just likethat. The hungry face of the stranger-man is still snarling as he fallsforward into the snow. 

"They do not look at the dead man. 'Let us go on, ' they say. And we goon. But now that they have found that for which they look, they are likedead. The last strength has gone out of them. They can stand no moreupon their feet. They will not crawl, but desire only to close theireyes and sleep. I see not far away a place for camp. I kick them. Ihave my dog-whip, and I give them the lash of it. They cry aloud, butthey must crawl. And they do crawl to the place for camp. I build fireso that they will not freeze. Then I go back for sled. Also, I kill thedogs of the stranger-man so that we may have food and not die. I put theman and woman in blankets and they sleep. Sometimes I wake them and givethem little bit of food. They are not awake, but they take the food. Thewoman sleep one day and a half. Then she wake up and go to sleep again. The man sleep two days and wake up and go to sleep again. After that wego down to the coast at St. Michaels. And when the ice goes out ofBering Sea, the man and woman go away on a steamship. But first they payme my seven hundred and fifty dollars a month. Also, they make me apresent of one thousand dollars. And that was the year that SitkaCharley gave much money to the Mission at Holy Cross. "

"But why did they kill the man?" I asked. 

Sitka Charley delayed reply until he had lighted his pipe. He glanced atthe _Police Gazette_ illustration and nodded his head at it familiarly. Then he said, speaking slowly and ponderingly:

"I have thought much. I do not know. It is something that happened. Itis a picture I remember. It is like looking in at the window and seeingthe man writing a letter. They came into my life and they went out of mylife, and the picture is as I have said, without beginning, the endwithout understanding. "

"You have painted many pictures in the telling, " I said. 

"Ay, " he nodded his head. "But they were without beginning and withoutend. "

"The last picture of all had an end, " I said. 

"Ay, " he answered. "But what end?"

"It was a piece of life, " I said. 

"Ay, " he answered. "It was a piece of life. "

NEGORE, THE COWARD

He had followed the trail of his fleeing people for eleven days, and hispursuit had been in itself a flight; for behind him he knew full wellwere the dreaded Russians, toiling through the swampy lowlands and overthe steep divides, bent on no less than the extermination of all hispeople. He was travelling light. A rabbit-skin sleeping-robe, a muzzle-loading rifle, and a few pounds of sun-dried salmon constituted hisoutfit. He would have marvelled that a whole people--women and childrenand aged--could travel so swiftly, had he not known the terror that drovethem on. 

It was in the old days of the Russian occupancy of Alaska, when thenineteenth century had run but half its course, that Negore fled afterhis fleeing tribe and came upon it this summer night by the head watersof the Pee-lat. Though near the midnight hour, it was bright day as hepassed through the weary camp. Many saw him, all knew him, but few andcold were the greetings he received. 

"Negore, the Coward, " he heard Illiha, a young woman, laugh, and Sun-ne, his sister's daughter, laughed with her. 

Black anger ate at his heart; but he gave no sign, threading his wayamong the camp-fires until he came to one where sat an old man. A youngwoman was kneading with skilful fingers the tired muscles of his legs. Heraised a sightless face and listened intently as Negore's foot crackled adead twig. 

"Who comes?" he queried in a thin, tremulous voice. 

"Negore, " said the young woman, scarcely looking up from her task. 

Negore's face was expressionless. For many minutes he stood and waited. The old man's head had sunk back upon his chest. The young woman pressedand prodded the wasted muscles, resting her body on her knees, her bowedhead hidden as in a cloud by her black wealth of hair. Negore watchedthe supple body, bending at the hips as a lynx's body might bend, pliantas a young willow stalk, and, withal, strong as only youth is strong. Helooked, and was aware of a great yearning, akin in sensation to physicalhunger. At last he spoke, saying:

"Is there no greeting for Negore, who has been long gone and has but nowcome back?"

She looked up at him with cold eyes. The old man chuckled to himselfafter the manner of the old. 

"Thou art my woman, Oona, " Negore said, his tones dominant and conveyinga hint of menace. 

She arose with catlike ease and suddenness to her full height, her eyesflashing, her nostrils quivering like a deer's. 

"I was thy woman to be, Negore, but thou art a coward; the daughter ofOld Kinoos mates not with a coward!"

She silenced him with an imperious gesture as he strove to speak. 

"Old Kinoos and I came among you from a strange land. Thy people took usin by their fires and made us warm, nor asked whence or why we wandered. It was their thought that Old Kinoos had lost the sight of his eyes fromage; nor did Old Kinoos say otherwise, nor did I, his daughter. OldKinoos is a brave man, but Old Kinoos was never a boaster. And now, whenI tell thee of how his blindness came to be, thou wilt know, beyondquestion, that the daughter of Kinoos cannot mother the children of acoward such as thou art, Negore. "

Again she silenced the speech that rushed up to his tongue. 

"Know, Negore, if journey be added unto journey of all thy journeyingsthrough this land, thou wouldst not come to the unknown Sitka on theGreat Salt Sea. In that place there be many Russian folk, and their ruleis harsh. And from Sitka, Old Kinoos, who was Young Kinoos in thosedays, fled away with me, a babe in his arms, along the islands in themidst of the sea. My mother dead tells the tale of his wrong; a Russian, dead with a spear through breast and back, tells the tale of thevengeance of Kinoos. 

"But wherever we fled, and however far we fled, always did we find thehated Russian folk. Kinoos was unafraid, but the sight of them was ahurt to his eyes; so we fled on and on, through the seas and years, tillwe came to the Great Fog Sea, Negore, of which thou hast heard, but whichthou hast never seen. We lived among many peoples, and I grew to be awoman; but Kinoos, growing old, took to him no other woman, nor did Itake a man. 

"At last we came to Pastolik, which is where the Yukon drowns itself inthe Great Fog Sea. Here we lived long, on the rim of the sea, among apeople by whom the Russians were well hated. But sometimes they came, these Russians, in great ships, and made the people of Pastolik show themthe way through the islands uncountable of the many-mouthed Yukon. Andsometimes the men they took to show them the way never came back, tillthe people became angry and planned a great plan. 

"So, when there came a ship, Old Kinoos stepped forward and said he wouldshow the way. He was an old man then, and his hair was white; but he wasunafraid. And he was cunning, for he took the ship to where the seasucks in to the land and the waves beat white on the mountain calledRomanoff. The sea sucked the ship in to where the waves beat white, andit ground upon the rocks and broke open its sides. Then came all thepeople of Pastolik, (for this was the plan), with their war-spears, andarrows, and some few guns. But first the Russians put out the eyes ofOld Kinoos that he might never show the way again, and then they fought, where the waves beat white, with the people of Pastolik. 

"Now the head-man of these Russians was Ivan. He it was, with his twothumbs, who drove out the eyes of Kinoos. He it was who fought his waythrough the white water, with two men left of all his men, and went awayalong the rim of the Great Fog Sea into the north. Kinoos was wise. Hecould see no more and was helpless as a child. So he fled away from thesea, up the great, strange Yukon, even to Nulato, and I fled with him. 

"This was the deed my father did, Kinoos, an old man. But how did theyoung man, Negore?"

Once again she silenced him. 

"With my own eyes I saw, at Nulato, before the gates of the great fort, and but few days gone. I saw the Russian, Ivan, who thrust out myfather's eyes, lay the lash of his dog-whip upon thee and beat thee likea dog. This I saw, and knew thee for a coward. But I saw thee not, thatnight, when all thy people--yea, even the boys not yet hunters--fell uponthe Russians and slew them all. "

"Not Ivan, " said Negore, quietly. "Even now is he on our heels, and withhim many Russians fresh up from the sea. "

Oona made no effort to hide her surprise and chagrin that Ivan was notdead, but went on:

"In the day I saw thee a coward; in the night, when all men fought, eventhe boys not yet hunters, I saw thee not and knew thee doubly a coward. "

"Thou art done? All done?" Negore asked. 

She nodded her head and looked at him askance, as though astonished thathe should have aught to say. 

"Know then that Negore is no coward, " he said; and his speech was verylow and quiet. "Know that when I was yet a boy I journeyed alone down tothe place where the Yukon drowns itself in the Great Fog Sea. Even toPastolik I journeyed, and even beyond, into the north, along the rim ofthe sea. This I did when I was a boy, and I was no coward. Nor was Icoward when I journeyed, a young man and alone, up the Yukon farther thanman had ever been, so far that I came to another folk, with white faces, who live in a great fort and talk speech other than that the Russianstalk. Also have I killed the great bear of the Tanana country, where noone of my people hath ever been. And I have fought with the Nuklukyets, and the Kaltags, and the Sticks in far regions, even I, and alone. Thesedeeds, whereof no man knows, I speak for myself. Let my people speak forme of things I have done which they know. They will not say Negore is acoward. "

He finished proudly, and proudly waited. 

"These be things which happened before I came into the land, " she said, "and I know not of them. Only do I know what I know, and I know I sawthee lashed like a dog in the day; and in the night, when the great fortflamed red and the men killed and were killed, I saw thee not. Also, thypeople do call thee Negore, the Coward. It is thy name now, Negore, theCoward. "

"It is not a good name, " Old Kinoos chuckled. 

"Thou dost not understand, Kinoos, " Negore said gently. "But I shallmake thee understand. Know that I was away on the hunt of the bear, withKamo-tah, my mother's son. And Kamo-tah fought with a great bear. Wehad no meat for three days, and Kamo-tah was not strong of arm nor swiftof foot. And the great bear crushed him, so, till his bones cracked likedry sticks. Thus I found him, very sick and groaning upon the ground. And there was no meat, nor could I kill aught that the sick man mighteat. 

"So I said, 'I will go to Nulato and bring thee food, also strong men tocarry thee to camp. ' And Kamo-tah said, 'Go thou to Nulato and get food, but say no word of what has befallen me. And when I have eaten, and amgrown well and strong, I will kill this bear. Then will I return inhonor to Nulato, and no man may laugh and say Kamo-tah was undone by abear. '

"So I gave heed to my brother's words; and when I was come to Nulato, andthe Russian, Ivan, laid the lash of his dog-whip upon me, I knew I mustnot fight. For no man knew of Kamo-tah, sick and groaning and hungry;and did I fight with Ivan, and die, then would my brother die, too. Soit was, Oona, that thou sawest me beaten like a dog. 

"Then I heard the talk of the shamans and chiefs that the Russians hadbrought strange sicknesses upon the people, and killed our men, andstolen our women, and that the land must be made clean. As I say, Iheard the talk, and I knew it for good talk, and I knew that in the nightthe Russians were to be killed. But there was my brother, Kamo-tah, sickand groaning and with no meat; so I could not stay and fight with the menand the boys not yet hunters. 

"And I took with me meat and fish, and the lash-marks of Ivan, and Ifound Kamo-tah no longer groaning, but dead. Then I went back to Nulato, and, behold, there was no Nulato--only ashes where the great fort hadstood, and the bodies of many men. And I saw the Russians come up theYukon in boats, fresh from the sea, many Russians; and I saw Ivan creepforth from where he lay hid and make talk with them. And the next day Isaw Ivan lead them upon the trail of the tribe. Even now are they uponthe trail, and I am here, Negore, but no coward. "

"This is a tale I hear, " said Oona, though her voice was gentler thanbefore. "Kamo-tah is dead and cannot speak for thee, and I know onlywhat I know, and I must know thee of my own eyes for no coward. "

Negore made an impatient gesture. 

"There be ways and ways, " she added. "Art thou willing to do no lessthan what Old Kinoos hath done?"

He nodded his head, and waited. 

"As thou hast said, they seek for us even now, these Russians. Show themthe way, Negore, even as Old Kinoos showed them the way, so that theycome, unprepared, to where we wait for them, in a passage up the rocks. Thou knowest the place, where the wall is broken and high. Then will wedestroy them, even Ivan. When they cling like flies to the wall, and topis no less near than bottom, our men shall fall upon them from above andeither side, with spears, and arrows, and guns. And the women andchildren, from above, shall loosen the great rocks and hurl them downupon them. It will be a great day, for the Russians will be killed, theland will be made clean, and Ivan, even Ivan who thrust out my father'seyes and laid the lash of his dog-whip upon thee, will be killed. Like adog gone mad will he die, his breath crushed out of him beneath therocks. And when the fighting begins, it is for thee, Negore, to crawlsecretly away so that thou be not slain. "

"Even so, " he answered. "Negore will show them the way. And then?"

"And then I shall be thy woman, Negore's woman, the brave man's woman. And thou shalt hunt meat for me and Old Kinoos, and I shall cook thyfood, and sew thee warm parkas and strong, and make thee moccasins afterthe way of my people, which is a better way than thy people's way. Andas I say, I shall be thy woman, Negore, always thy woman. And I shallmake thy life glad for thee, so that all thy days will be a song andlaughter, and thou wilt know the woman Oona as unlike all other women, for she has journeyed far, and lived in strange places, and is wise inthe ways of men and in the ways they may be made glad. And in thine oldage will she still make thee glad, and thy memory of her in the days ofthy strength will be sweet, for thou wilt know always that she was easeto thee, and peace, and rest, and that beyond all women to other men hasshe been woman to thee. "

"Even so, " said Negore, and the hunger for her ate at his heart, and hisarms went out for her as a hungry man's arms might go out for food. 

"When thou hast shown the way, Negore, " she chided him; but her eyes weresoft, and warm, and he knew she looked upon him as woman had never lookedbefore. 

"It is well, " he said, turning resolutely on his heel. "I go now to maketalk with the chiefs, so that they may know I am gone to show theRussians the way. "

"Oh, Negore, my man! my man!" she said to herself, as she watched him go, but she said it so softly that even Old Kinoos did not hear, and his earswere over keen, what of his blindness. 

* * * * *

Three days later, having with craft ill-concealed his hiding-place, Negore was dragged forth like a rat and brought before Ivan--"Ivan theTerrible" he was known by the men who marched at his back. Negore wasarmed with a miserable bone-barbed spear, and he kept his rabbit-skinrobe wrapped closely about him, and though the day was warm he shiveredas with an ague. He shook his head that he did not understand the speechIvan put at him, and made that he was very weary and sick, and wishedonly to sit down and rest, pointing the while to his stomach in sign ofhis sickness, and shivering fiercely. But Ivan had with him a man fromPastolik who talked the speech of Negore, and many and vain were thequestions they asked him concerning his tribe, till the man fromPastolik, who was called Karduk, said:

"It is the word of Ivan that thou shalt be lashed till thou diest if thoudost not speak. And know, strange brother, when I tell thee the word ofIvan is the law, that I am thy friend and no friend of Ivan. For I comenot willingly from my country by the sea, and I desire greatly to live;wherefore I obey the will of my master--as thou wilt obey, strangebrother, if thou art wise, and wouldst live. "

"Nay, strange brother, " Negore answered, "I know not the way my peopleare gone, for I was sick, and they fled so fast my legs gave out fromunder me, and I fell behind. "

Negore waited while Karduk talked with Ivan. Then Negore saw theRussian's face go dark, and he saw the men step to either side of him, snapping the lashes of their whips. Whereupon he betrayed a greatfright, and cried aloud that he was a sick man and knew nothing, butwould tell what he knew. And to such purpose did he tell, that Ivan gavethe word to his men to march, and on either side of Negore marched themen with the whips, that he might not run away. And when he made that hewas weak of his sickness, and stumbled and walked not so fast as theywalked, they laid their lashes upon him till he screamed with pain anddiscovered new strength. And when Karduk told him all would he well withhim when they had overtaken his tribe, he asked, "And then may I rest andmove not?"

Continually he asked, "And then may I rest and move not?"

And while he appeared very sick and looked about him with dull eyes, henoted the fighting strength of Ivan's men, and noted with satisfactionthat Ivan did not recognize him as the man he had beaten before the gatesof the fort. It was a strange following his dull eyes saw. There wereSlavonian hunters, fair-skinned and mighty-muscled; short, squat Finns, with flat noses and round faces; Siberian half-breeds, whose noses weremore like eagle-beaks; and lean, slant-eyed men, who bore in their veinsthe Mongol and Tartar blood as well as the blood of the Slav. Wildadventurers they were, forayers and destroyers from the far lands beyondthe Sea of Bering, who blasted the new and unknown world with fire andsword and clutched greedily for its wealth of fur and hide. Negorelooked upon them with satisfaction, and in his mind's eye he saw themcrushed and lifeless at the passage up the rocks. And ever he saw, waiting for him at the passage up the rocks, the face and the form ofOona, and ever he heard her voice in his ears and felt the soft, warmglow of her eyes. But never did he forget to shiver, nor to stumblewhere the footing was rough, nor to cry aloud at the bite of the lash. Also, he was afraid of Karduk, for he knew him for no true man. His wasa false eye, and an easy tongue--a tongue too easy, he judged, for theawkwardness of honest speech. 

All that day they marched. And on the next, when Karduk asked him atcommand of Ivan, he said he doubted they would meet with his tribe tillthe morrow. But Ivan, who had once been shown the way by Old Kinoos, andhad found that way to lead through the white water and a deadly fight, believed no more in anything. So when they came to a passage up therocks, he halted his forty men, and through Karduk demanded if the waywere clear. 

Negore looked at it shortly and carelessly. It was a vast slide thatbroke the straight wall of a cliff, and was overrun with brush andcreeping plants, where a score of tribes could have lain well hidden. 

He shook his head. "Nay, there be nothing there, " he said. "The way isclear. "

Again Ivan spoke to Karduk, and Karduk said:

"Know, strange brother, if thy talk be not straight, and if thy peopleblock the way and fall upon Ivan and his men, that thou shalt die, and atonce. "

"My talk is straight, " Negore said. "The way is clear. "

Still Ivan doubted, and ordered two of his Slavonian hunters to go upalone. Two other men he ordered to the side of Negore. They placedtheir guns against his breast and waited. All waited. And Negore knew, should one arrow fly, or one spear be flung, that his death would comeupon him. The two Slavonian hunters toiled upward till they grew smalland smaller, and when they reached the top and waved their hats that allwas well, they were like black specks against the sky. 

The guns were lowered from Negore's breast and Ivan gave the order forhis men to go forward. Ivan was silent, lost in thought. For an hour hemarched, as though puzzled, and then, through Karduk's mouth, he said toNegore:

"How didst thou know the way was clear when thou didst look so brieflyupon it?"

Negore thought of the little birds he had seen perched among the rocksand upon the bushes, and smiled, it was so simple; but he shrugged hisshoulders and made no answer. For he was thinking, likewise, of anotherpassage up the rocks, to which they would soon come, and where the littlebirds would all be gone. And he was glad that Karduk came from the GreatFog Sea, where there were no trees or bushes, and where men learned water-craft instead of land-craft and wood-craft. 

Three hours later, when the sun rode overhead, they came to anotherpassage up the rocks, and Karduk said:

"Look with all thine eyes, strange brother, and see if the way be clear, for Ivan is not minded this time to wait while men go up before. "

Negore looked, and he looked with two men by his side, their guns restingagainst his breast. He saw that the little birds were all gone, and oncehe saw the glint of sunlight on a rifle-barrel. And he thought of Oona, and of her words: "And when the fighting begins, it is for thee, Negore, to crawl secretly away so that thou be not slain. "

He felt the two guns pressing on his breast. This was not the way shehad planned. There would be no crawling secretly away. He would be thefirst to die when the fighting began. But he said, and his voice wassteady, and he still feigned to see with dull eyes and to shiver from hissickness:

"The way is clear. "

And they started up, Ivan and his forty men from the far lands beyond theSea of Bering. And there was Karduk, the man from Pastolik, and Negore, with the two guns always upon him. It was a long climb, and they couldnot go fast; but very fast to Negore they seemed to approach the midwaypoint where top was no less near than bottom. 

A gun cracked among the rocks to the right, and Negore heard the war-yellof all his tribe, and for an instant saw the rocks and bushes bristlealive with his kinfolk. Then he felt torn asunder by a burst of flamehot through his being, and as he fell he knew the sharp pangs of life asit wrenches at the flesh to be free. 

But he gripped his life with a miser's clutch and would not let it go. Hestill breathed the air, which bit his lungs with a painful sweetness; anddimly he saw and heard, with passing spells of blindness and deafness, the flashes of sight and sound again wherein he saw the hunters of Ivanfalling to their deaths, and his own brothers fringing the carnage andfilling the air with the tumult of their cries and weapons, and, farabove, the women and children loosing the great rocks that leaped likethings alive and thundered down. 

The sun danced above him in the sky, the huge walls reeled and swung, andstill he heard and saw dimly. And when the great Ivan fell across hislegs, hurled there lifeless and crushed by a down-rushing rock, heremembered the blind eyes of Old Kinoos and was glad. 

Then the sounds died down, and the rocks no longer thundered past, and hesaw his tribespeople creeping close and closer, spearing the wounded asthey came. And near to him he heard the scuffle of a mighty Slavonianhunter, loath to die, and, half uprisen, borne back and down by thethirsty spears. 

Then he saw above him the face of Oona, and felt about him the arms ofOona; and for a moment the sun steadied and stood still, and the greatwalls were upright and moved not. 

"Thou art a brave man, Negore, " he heard her say in his ear; "thou art myman, Negore. "

And in that moment he lived all the life of gladness of which she hadtold him, and the laughter and the song, and as the sun went out of thesky above him, as in his old age, he knew the memory of her was sweet. And as even the memories dimmed and died in the darkness that fell uponhim, he knew in her arms the fulfilment of all the ease and rest she hadpromised him. And as black night wrapped around him, his head upon herbreast, he felt a great peace steal about him, and he was aware of thehush of many twilights and the mystery of silence.