Author of “A Wireless for the Fangless One,”
“The Captain of the Quiberon,” etc.
THE MILLS OF THE GODS SET UP IN THE NORTHERN FASTNESS
GRIND OUT PERIL AND LOYALTY, FEAR AND COURAGE—AND THE
TESTS THAT ARE TO TRY THE SOULS OF THOSE WHOSE DESTINY
CALLS THEM TO THE LAND OF FROST AND GOLD.
I
He threw back his head and howled eerily. His muzzle lifted to the
stars and the most mournful sound known to man poured from his throat
and was echoed and reëchoed by the hooded cedars and the rocks about
him. He could not have told you why he howled. Dogs are not prone to
introspection. But he knew that his master, who should be in the cabin
yonder, would never come out again. He knew that the dying wisps of
smoke from the chimney would never billow out in thick gray clouds
again. And he knew that the other man—who had come out so hastily and
gone swinging down the river trail—would never, never return.
Cheechako was chained. It had originally been a mark of disgrace, an
unbearable humiliation to a malamute pup, but he did not mind it any
longer. His master had made sleeping quarters for him that were vastly
warmer than a snow-bed even in the coldest weather, and Cheechako
wholeheartedly approved. He was comfortable, he was fed, and Carson
released him now and then to stretch his legs and swore at him
affectionately from time to time, and no reasonable dog will demand
any more. Or so Cheechako viewed it, anyhow.
But now his muzzle tilted up. His eyes half-closed, and from his
throat those desolate and despairing howls poured forth.
_A-a-o-oooo-e-e! A-a-o-oooo-e-e!_ They were a dirge and a lament. They
were sounds of grief and they were noises of despair. Cheechako could
not explain their meaning at all, but when a man dies they spring
full-bodied from that man’s dog’s throat.
The hooded cedars watched, and echoed back the sound. The rocks about
him watched, and gave tongue stilly in a faint reflection of his
sorrow. The river listened, and babbled absently of sympathy and
rippled on. The river has seen too many men die to be disturbed. The
wilds listened. For many miles around the despairing, grief-stricken
howling reached. To tree and forest, and hill and valley, the thin and
muted wailing bore its message. Only the cabin seemed indifferent,
though the tragedy was within it. Somewhere within the four log walls
Carson lay sprawled out. Cheechako knew that he was dead without
knowing how he knew. There had been a shot. Later, the other man had
come out hastily with a pack on his back. He had taken the river trail
and disappeared.
And long into the night, until the pale moonlight faded and died,
Cheechako howled his sorrow for a thing he did not understand. Of his
own predicament, the dog had yet no knowledge. It was natural to be
chained. Food was brought when one was chained. That there was now no
one to bring him food, that no one was likely to come, and that the
most pertinacious of puppy teeth could not work through the chain that
bound him; these things did not disturb him. His head thrown back, his
eyes half-closed, he howled in an ecstasy of grief.
And while he gave vent to his sorrow in the immemorable tradition of
his race, a faint rumbling set up afar off in the wilds. It was hardly
more than a murmur, and maybe it was the wind among the trees. Maybe
it was a minor landslide in the hills not so many miles away—a few
hundred tons of earth and stone that plunged downward when the thaw of
spring released its keystone. Maybe it was any one of any number of
things, even a giant spruce tree crashing thunderously to the ground.
But it lasted a little too long for any such simple explanation. If
one were inclined to be fanciful, one would say it was the mill of one
of the forest gods, grinding the grist of men’s destinies, and set
going now by the murder of which Cheechako howled.
Certainly many unrelated things began to happen which bore obscurely
upon that killing. The man who had fled down-river reflected on his
cleverness and grinned to himself. He opened thick sausage-like bags
and ran his fingers through shining yellow dust. Remembering his
security against detection or punishment, he laughed cacklingly.
And very far away—away down in Seattle—Bob Holliday found courage to
ask a girl to marry him, and promised to go back to Alaska only long
enough to gather together what capital he had accumulated, when they
would be married. Most of what he owned, he told her, was in a placer
claim that he and Sam Carson worked together. He would sell out to Sam
and return. But he would not take her back to the hardships he had
endured. He was filled with a fierce desire to shield and protect her.
That meant money, Outside, of course. And he started north eagerly for
the results of many years’ suffering and work, which Sam Carson was
guarding for him.
And again, in a dingy small building a sleepy mail clerk discovered a
letter that had slipped behind account-books and been hidden for
months on end. He canceled its stamp and dropped it into a mail bag to
go to its proper destination.
Then, the rumbling murmur which might have been the mill of a forest
god off in the wilds stopped abruptly. The grist had had its first
grinding.
But the mill was not put away. Oh, no. Cheechako howled on until the
moonlight paled and day came again. And the letter that had lain so
long was dropped into a canoe and floated down to the coast in charge
of a half-breed paddleman. And Bob Holliday sped north for Alaska and
his partner, Sam Carson, who guarded a small fortune that Holliday had
earned in sweat and agony and fierce battle with the wilds and winter
snows. Holliday was very happy. The money his partner held for him
would mean comforts and even luxuries for the girl he loved.
The mill of the forest god was simply laid aside for a little while.
They grind, not slowly—these mills of the gods—but very swiftly, more
swiftly than the grist can come to their grinding stones. Now and then
they are forced to wait for more. But everything upon the earth comes
to them some time. High ambitions and most base desires, and women’s
laughter and red blood gushing, and all hopes and fears and lusts and
terrors together disappear between the millstones and come out
transformed into the product that the gods desire.
The mill was merely waiting.