proceeded to break camp. He packed the rolled blankets, the frying-pan,
rifle, and axe on the sled, and passed a lashing around the load. Then
he warmed his hands at the fire and pulled on his mittens. He was
foot-sore, and limped noticeably as he took his place at the head of the
sled. When he put the looped haul-rope over his shoulder, and leant his
weight against it to start the sled, he winced. His flesh was galled by
many days of contact with the haul-rope.
The trail led along the frozen breast of the Yukon. At the end of four
hours he came around a bend and entered the town of Minto. It was
perched on top of a high earth bank in the midst of a clearing, and
consisted of a road house, a saloon, and several cabins. He left his
sled at the door and entered the saloon.
"Enough for a drink?" he asked, laying an apparently empty gold sack
upon the bar.
The barkeeper looked sharply at it and him, then set out a bottle and a
glass.
"Never mind the dust," he said.
"Go on and take it," Morganson insisted.
The barkeeper held the sack mouth downward over the scales and shook it,
and a few flakes of gold dust fell out. Morganson took the sack from
him, turned it inside out, and dusted it carefully.
"I thought there was half-a-dollar in it," he said.
"Not quite," answered the other, "but near enough. I'll get it back with
the down weight on the next comer."
Morganson shyly poured the whisky into the glass, partly filling it.
"Go on, make it a man's drink," the barkeeper encouraged.
Morganson tilted the bottle and filled the glass to the brim. He drank
the liquor slowly, pleasuring in the fire of it that bit his tongue,
sank hotly down his throat, and with warm, gentle caresses permeated his
stomach.
"Scurvy, eh?" the barkeeper asked.
"A touch of it," he answered. "But I haven't begun to swell yet. Maybe I
can get to Dyea and fresh vegetables, and beat it out."
"Kind of all in, I'd say," the other laughed sympathetically. "No dogs,
no money, and the scurvy. I'd try spruce tea if I was you."
At the end of half-an-hour, Morganson said good-bye and left the saloon.
He put his galled shoulder to the haul-rope and took the river-trail
south. An hour later he halted. An inviting swale left the river and led
off to the right at an acute angle. He left his sled and limped up the
swale for half a mile. Between him and the river was three hundred yards
of flat ground covered with cottonwoods. He crossed the cottonwoods to
the bank of the Yukon. The trail went by just beneath, but he did not
descend to it. South toward Selkirk he could see the trail widen its
sunken length through the snow for over a mile. But to the north, in the
direction of Minto, a tree-covered out-jut in the bank a quarter of a
mile away screened the trail from him.
He seemed satisfied with the view and returned to the sled the way he
had come. He put the haul-rope over his shoulder and dragged the sled up
the swale. The snow was unpacked and soft, and it was hard work. The
runners clogged and stuck, and he was panting severely ere he had
covered the half-mile. Night had come on by the time he had pitched his
small tent, set up the sheet-iron stove, and chopped a supply of
firewood. He had no candles, and contented himself with a pot of tea
before crawling into his blankets.
In the morning, as soon as he got up, he drew on his mittens, pulled the
flaps of his cap down over his ears, and crossed through the cottonwoods
to the Yukon. He took his rifle with him. As before, he did not descend
the bank. He watched the empty trail for an hour, beating his hands and
stamping his feet to keep up the circulation, then returned to the tent
for breakfast. There was little tea left in the canister--half a dozen
drawings at most; but so meagre a pinch did he put in the teapot that he
bade fair to extend the lifetime of the tea indefinitely. His entire
food supply consisted of half-a-sack of flour and a part-full can of
baking powder. He made biscuits, and ate them slowly, chewing each
mouthful with infinite relish. When he had had three he called a halt.
He debated a while, reached for another biscuit, then hesitated. He
turned to the part sack of flour, lifted it, and judged its weight.
"I'm good for a couple of weeks," he spoke aloud.
"Maybe three," he added, as he put the biscuits away.
Again he drew on his mittens, pulled down his ear-flaps, took the rifle,
and went out to his station on the river bank. He crouched in the snow,
himself unseen, and watched. After a few minutes of inaction, the frost
began to bite in, and he rested the rifle across his knees and beat his
hands back and forth. Then the sting in his feet became intolerable, and
he stepped back from the bank and tramped heavily up and down among the
trees. But he did not tramp long at a time. Every several minutes he
came to the edge of the bank and peered up and down the trail, as though
by sheer will he could materialise the form of a man upon it. The short
morning passed, though it had seemed century-long to him, and the trail
remained empty.
It was easier in the afternoon, watching by the bank. The temperature
rose, and soon the snow began to fall--dry and fine and crystalline.
There was no wind, and it fell straight down, in quiet monotony. He
crouched with eyes closed, his head upon his knees, keeping his watch
upon the trail with his ears. But no whining of dogs, churning of sleds,
nor cries of drivers broke the silence. With twilight he returned to the
tent, cut a supply of firewood, ate two biscuits, and crawled into his
blankets. He slept restlessly, tossing about and groaning; and at
midnight he got up and ate another biscuit.
Each day grew colder. Four biscuits could not keep up the heat of his
body, despite the quantities of hot spruce tea he drank, and he
increased his allowance, morning and evening, to three biscuits. In the
middle of the day he ate nothing, contenting himself with several cups
of excessively weak real tea. This programme became routine. In the
morning three biscuits, at noon real tea, and at night three biscuits.
In between he drank spruce tea for his scurvy. He caught himself making
larger biscuits, and after a severe struggle with himself went back to
the old size.
On the fifth day the trail returned to life. To the south a dark object
appeared, and grew larger. Morganson became alert. He worked his rifle,
ejecting a loaded cartridge from the chamber, by the same action
replacing it with another, and returning the ejected cartridge into the
magazine. He lowered the trigger to half-cock, and drew on his mitten to
keep the trigger-hand warm. As the dark object came nearer he made it
out to be a man, without dogs or sled, travelling light. He grew
nervous, cocked the trigger, then put it back to half-cock again. The
man developed into an Indian, and Morganson, with a sigh of
disappointment, dropped the rifle across his knees. The Indian went on
past and disappeared towards Minto behind the out-jutting clump of
trees.
But Morganson conceived an idea. He changed his crouching spot to a
place where cottonwood limbs projected on either side of him. Into these
with his axe he chopped two broad notches. Then in one of the notches he
rested the barrel of his rifle and glanced along the sights. He covered
the trail thoroughly in that direction. He turned about, rested the
rifle in the other notch, and, looking along the sights, swept the trail
to the clump of trees behind which it disappeared.
He never descended to the trail. A man travelling the trail could have
no knowledge of his lurking presence on the bank above. The snow surface
was unbroken. There was no place where his tracks left the main trail.
As the nights grew longer, his periods of daylight watching of the trail
grew shorter. Once a sled went by with jingling bells in the darkness,
and with sullen resentment he chewed his biscuits and listened to the
sounds. Chance conspired against him. Faithfully he had watched the
trail for ten days, suffering from the cold all the prolonged torment of
the damned, and nothing had happened. Only an Indian, travelling light,
had passed in. Now, in the night, when it was impossible for him to
watch, men and dogs and a sled loaded with life, passed out, bound south
to the sea and the sun and civilisation.
So it was that he conceived of the sled for which he waited. It was
loaded with life, his life. His life was fading, fainting, gasping away
in the tent in the snow. He was weak from lack of food, and could not
travel of himself. But on the sled for which he waited were dogs that
would drag him, food that would fan up the flame of his life, money that
would furnish sea and sun and civilisation. Sea and sun and civilisation
became terms interchangeable with life, his life, and they were loaded
there on the sled for which he waited. The idea became an obsession, and
he grew to think of himself as the rightful and deprived owner of the
sled-load of life.
His flour was running short, and he went back to two biscuits in the
morning and two biscuits at night. Because, of this his weakness
increased and the cold bit in more savagely, and day by day he watched
by the dead trail that would not live for him. At last the scurvy
entered upon its next stage. The skin was unable longer to cast off the
impurity of the blood, and the result was that the body began to swell.
His ankles grew puffy, and the ache in them kept him awake long hours at
night. Next, the swelling jumped to his knees, and the sum of his pain
was more than doubled.
Then there came a cold snap. The temperature went down and down--forty,
fifty, sixty degrees below zero. He had no thermometer, but this he knew
by the signs and natural phenomena understood by all men in that
country--the crackling of water thrown on the snow, the swift sharpness
of the bite of the frost, and the rapidity with which his breath froze
and coated the canvas walls and roof of the tent. Vainly he fought the
cold and strove to maintain his watch on the bank. In his weak condition
he was an easy prey, and the frost sank its teeth deep into him before
he fled away to the tent and crouched by the fire. His nose and cheeks
were frozen and turned black, and his left thumb had frozen inside the
mitten. He concluded that he would escape with the loss of the first
joint.
Then it was, beaten into the tent by the frost, that the trail, with
monstrous irony, suddenly teemed with life. Three sleds went by the
first day, and two the second. Once, during each day, he fought his way
out to the bank only to succumb and retreat, and each of the two times,
within half-an-hour after he retreated, a sled went by.
The cold snap broke, and he was able to remain by the bank once more,
and the trail died again. For a week he crouched and watched, and never
life stirred along it, not a soul passed in or out. He had cut down to
one biscuit night and morning, and somehow he did not seem to notice it.
Sometimes he marvelled at the way life remained in him. He never would
have thought it possible to endure so much.
When the trail fluttered anew with life it was life with which he could
not cope. A detachment of the North-West police went by, a score of
them, with many sleds and dogs; and he cowered down on the bank above,
and they were unaware of the menace of death that lurked in the form of
a dying man beside the trail.
His frozen thumb gave him a great deal of trouble. While watching by the
bank he got into the habit of taking his mitten off and thrusting the
hand inside his shirt so as to rest the thumb in the warmth of his
arm-pit. A mail carrier came over the trail, and Morganson let him pass.
A mail carrier was an important person, and was sure to be missed
immediately.
On the first day after his last flour had gone it snowed. It was always
warm when the snow fell, and he sat out the whole eight hours of
daylight on the bank, without movement, terribly hungry and terribly
patient, for all the world like a monstrous spider waiting for its prey.
But the prey did not come, and he hobbled back to the tent through the
darkness, drank quarts of spruce tea and hot water, and went to bed.
The next morning circumstance eased its grip on him. As he started to
come out of the tent he saw a huge bull-moose crossing the swale some
four hundred yards away. Morganson felt a surge and bound of the blood
in him, and then went unaccountably weak. A nausea overpowered him, and
he was compelled to sit down a moment to recover. Then he reached for
his rifle and took careful aim. The first shot was a hit: he knew it;
but the moose turned and broke for the wooded hillside that came down to
the swale. Morganson pumped bullets wildly among the trees and brush at
the fleeing animal, until it dawned upon him that he was exhausting the
ammunition he needed for the sled-load of life for which he waited.
He stopped shooting, and watched. He noted the direction of the animal's
flight, and, high up on the hillside in an opening among the trees, saw
the trunk of a fallen pine. Continuing the moose's flight in his mind he
saw that it must pass the trunk. He resolved on one more shot, and in
the empty air above the trunk he aimed and steadied his wavering rifle.
The animal sprang into his field of vision, with lifted fore-legs as it
took the leap. He pulled the trigger. With the explosion the moose
seemed to somersault in the air. It crashed down to earth in the snow
beyond and flurried the snow into dust.
Morganson dashed up the hillside--at least he started to dash up. The
next he knew he was coming out of a faint and dragging himself to his
feet. He went up more slowly, pausing from time to time to breathe and
to steady his reeling senses. At last he crawled over the trunk. The
moose lay before him. He sat down heavily upon the carcase and laughed.
He buried his face in his mittened hands and laughed some more.
He shook the hysteria from him. He drew his hunting knife and worked as
rapidly as his injured thumb and weakness would permit him. He did not
stop to skin the moose, but quartered it with its hide on. It was a
Klondike of meat.
When he had finished he selected a piece of meat weighing a hundred
pounds, and started to drag it down to the tent. But the snow was soft,
and it was too much for him. He exchanged it for a twenty-pound piece,
and, with many pauses to rest, succeeded in getting it to the tent. He
fried some of the meat, but ate sparingly. Then, and automatically, he
went out to his crouching place on the bank. There were sled-tracks in
the fresh snow on the trail. The sled-load of life had passed by while
he had been cutting up the moose.
But he did not mind. He was glad that the sled had not passed before the
coming of the moose. The moose had changed his plans. Its meat was worth
fifty cents a pound, and he was but little more than three miles from
Minto. He need no longer wait for the sled-load of life. The moose was
the sled-load of life. He would sell it. He would buy a couple of dogs
at Minto, some food and some tobacco, and the dogs would haul him south
along the trail to the sea, the sun, and civilisation.
He felt hungry. The dull, monotonous ache of hunger had now become a
sharp and insistent pang. He hobbled back to the tent and fried a slice
of meat. After that he smoked two whole pipefuls of dried tea leaves.
Then he fried another slice of moose. He was aware of an unwonted glow
of strength, and went out and chopped some firewood. He followed that up
with a slice of meat. Teased on by the food, his hunger grew into an
inflammation. It became imperative every little while to fry a slice of
meat. He tried smaller slices and found himself frying oftener.
In the middle of the day he thought of the wild animals that might eat
his meat, and he climbed the hill, carrying along his axe, the haul
rope, and a sled lashing. In his weak state the making of the cache and
storing of the meat was an all-afternoon task. He cut young saplings,
trimmed them, and tied them together into a tall scaffold. It was not so
strong a cache as he would have desired to make, but he had done his
best. To hoist the meat to the top was heart-breaking. The larger pieces
defied him until he passed the rope over a limb above, and, with one end
fast to a piece of meat, put all his weight on the other end.
Once in the tent, he proceeded to indulge in a prolonged and solitary
orgy. He did not need friends. His stomach and he were company. Slice
after slice and many slices of meat he fried and ate. He ate pounds of
the meat. He brewed real tea, and brewed it strong. He brewed the last
he had. It did not matter. On the morrow he would be buying tea in
Minto. When it seemed he could eat no more, he smoked. He smoked all his
stock of dried tea leaves. What of it? On the morrow he would be smoking
tobacco. He knocked out his pipe, fried a final slice, and went to bed.
He had eaten so much he seemed bursting, yet he got out of his blankets
and had just one more mouthful of meat.
In the morning he awoke as from the sleep of death. In his ears were
strange sounds. He did not know where he was, and looked about him
stupidly until he caught sight of the frying-pan with the last piece of
meat in it, partly eaten. Then he remembered all, and with a quick start
turned his attention to the strange sounds. He sprang from the blankets
with an oath. His scurvy-ravaged legs gave under him and he winced with
the pain. He proceeded more slowly to put on his moccasins and leave
the tent.
From the cache up the hillside arose a confused noise of snapping and
snarling, punctuated by occasional short, sharp yelps. He increased his
speed at much expense of pain, and cried loudly and threateningly. He
saw the wolves hurrying away through the snow and underbrush, many of
them, and he saw the scaffold down on the ground. The animals were heavy
with the meat they had eaten, and they were content to slink away and
leave the wreckage.
The way of the disaster was clear to him. The wolves had scented his
cache. One of them had leapt from the trunk of the fallen tree to the
top of the cache. He could see marks of the brute's paws in the snow
that covered the trunk. He had not dreamt a wolf could leap so far. A
second had followed the first, and a third and fourth, until the flimsy
scaffold had gone down under their weight and movement.
His eyes were hard and savage for a moment as he contemplated the extent
of the calamity; then the old look of patience returned into them, and
he began to gather together the bones well picked and gnawed. There was
marrow in them, he knew; and also, here and there, as he sifted the
snow, he found scraps of meat that had escaped the maws of the brutes
made careless by plenty.
He spent the rest of the morning dragging the wreckage of the moose down
the hillside. In addition, he had at least ten pounds left of the chunk
of meat he had dragged down the previous day.
"I'm good for weeks yet," was his comment as he surveyed the heap.
He had learnt how to starve and live. He cleaned his rifle and counted
the cartridges that remained to him. There were seven. He loaded the
weapon and hobbled out to his crouching-place on the bank. All day he
watched the dead trail. He watched all the week, but no life passed over
it.
Thanks to the meat he felt stronger, though his scurvy was worse and
more painful. He now lived upon soup, drinking endless gallons of the
thin product of the boiling of the moose bones. The soup grew thinner
and thinner as he cracked the bones and boiled them over and over; but
the hot water with the essence of the meat in it was good for him, and
he was more vigorous than he had been previous to the shooting of the
moose.
It was in the next week that a new factor entered into Morganson's life.
He wanted to know the date. It became an obsession. He pondered and
calculated, but his conclusions were rarely twice the same. The first
thing in the morning and the last thing at night, and all day as well,
watching by the trail, he worried about it. He awoke at night and lay
awake for hours over the problem. To have known the date would have been
of no value to him; but his curiosity grew until it equalled his hunger
and his desire to live. Finally it mastered him, and he resolved to go
to Minto and find out.
It was dark when he arrived at Minto, but this served him. No one saw
him arrive. Besides, he knew he would have moonlight by which to return.
He climbed the bank and pushed open the saloon door. The light dazzled
him. The source of it was several candles, but he had been living for
long in an unlighted tent. As his eyes adjusted themselves, he saw three
men sitting around the stove. They were trail-travellers--he knew it at
once; and since they had not passed in, they were evidently bound out.
They would go by his tent next morning.
The barkeeper emitted a long and marvelling whistle.
"I thought you was dead," he said.
"Why?" Morganson asked in a faltering voice.
He had become unused to talking, and he was not acquainted with the
sound of his own voice. It seemed hoarse and strange.
"You've been dead for more'n two months, now," the barkeeper explained.
"You left here going south, and you never arrived at Selkirk. Where have
you been?"
"Chopping wood for the steamboat company," Morganson lied unsteadily.
He was still trying to become acquainted with his own voice. He hobbled
across the floor and leant against the bar. He knew he must lie
consistently; and while he maintained an appearance of careless
indifference, his heart was beating and pounding furiously and
irregularly, and he could not help looking hungrily at the three men by
the stove. They were the possessors of life--his life.
"But where in hell you been keeping yourself all this time?" the
barkeeper demanded.
"I located across the river," he answered. "I've got a mighty big stack
of wood chopped."
The barkeeper nodded. His face beamed with understanding.
"I heard sounds of chopping several times," he said. "So that was you,
eh? Have a drink?"
Morganson clutched the bar tightly. A drink! He could have thrown his
arms around the man's legs and kissed his feet. He tried vainly to utter
his acceptance; but the barkeeper had not waited and was already passing
out the bottle.
"But what did you do for grub?" the latter asked. "You don't look as if
you could chop wood to keep yourself warm. You look terribly bad,
friend."
Morganson yearned towards the delayed bottle and gulped dryly.
"I did the chopping before the scurvy got bad," he said. "Then I got a
moose right at the start. I've been living high all right. It's the
scurvy that's run me down."
He filled the glass, and added, "But the spruce tea's knocking it, I
think."
"Have another," the barkeeper said.
The action of the two glasses of whisky on Morganson's empty stomach and
weak condition was rapid. The next he knew he was sitting by the stove
on a box, and it seemed as though ages had passed. A tall,
broad-shouldered, black-whiskered man was paying for drinks. Morganson's
swimming eyes saw him drawing a greenback from a fat roll, and
Morganson's swimming eyes cleared on the instant. They were
hundred-dollar bills. It was life! His life! He felt an almost
irresistible impulse to snatch the money and dash madly out into the
night.
The black-whiskered man and one of his companions arose.
"Come on, Oleson," the former said to the third one of the party, a
fair-haired, ruddy-faced giant.
Oleson came to his feet, yawning and stretching.
"What are you going to bed so soon for?" the barkeeper asked
plaintively. "It's early yet."
"Got to make Selkirk to-morrow," said he of the black whiskers.
"On Christmas Day!" the barkeeper cried.
"The better the day the better the deed," the other laughed.
As the three men passed out of the door it came dimly to Morganson that
it was Christmas Eve. That was the date. That was what he had come to
Minto for. But it was overshadowed now by the three men themselves, and
the fat roll of hundred-dollar bills.
The door slammed.
"That's Jack Thompson," the barkeeper said. "Made two millions on
Bonanza and Sulphur, and got more coming. I'm going to bed. Have
another drink first."
Morganson hesitated.
"A Christmas drink," the other urged. "It's all right. I'll get it back
when you sell your wood."
Morganson mastered his drunkenness long enough to swallow the whisky,
say good night, and get out on the trail. It was moonlight, and he
hobbled along through the bright, silvery quiet, with a vision of life
before him that took the form of a roll of hundred-dollar bills.