"Must I, then, must I, then, now leave this town--
And you, my love, stay here?"--_Schwabian Folk-song_.
The singer, clean-faced and cheery-eyed, bent over and added water to a
pot of simmering beans, and then, rising, a stick of firewood in hand,
drove back the circling dogs from the grub-box and cooking-gear. He was
blue of eye, and his long hair was golden, and it was a pleasure to look
upon his lusty freshness. A new moon was thrusting a dim horn above the
white line of close-packed snow-capped pines which ringed the camp and
segregated it from all the world. Overhead, so clear it was and cold,
the stars danced with quick, pulsating movements. To the southeast an
evanescent greenish glow heralded the opening revels of the aurora
borealis. Two men, in the immediate foreground, lay upon the bearskin
which was their bed. Between the skin and naked snow was a six-inch
layer of pine boughs. The blankets were rolled back. For shelter, there
was a fly at their backs,--a sheet of canvas stretched between two trees
and angling at forty-five degrees. This caught the radiating heat from
the fire and flung it down upon the skin. Another man sat on a sled,
drawn close to the blaze, mending moccasins. To the right, a heap of
frozen gravel and a rude windlass denoted where they toiled each day in
dismal groping for the pay-streak. To the left, four pairs of snowshoes
stood erect, showing the mode of travel which obtained when the stamped
snow of the camp was left behind.
That Schwabian folk-song sounded strangely pathetic under the cold
northern stars, and did not do the men good who lounged about the fire
after the toil of the day. It put a dull ache into their hearts, and a
yearning which was akin to belly-hunger, and sent their souls questing
southward across the divides to the sun-lands.
"For the love of God, Sigmund, shut up!" expostulated one of the men. His
hands were clenched painfully, but he hid them from sight in the folds of
the bearskin upon which he lay.
"And what for, Dave Wertz?" Sigmund demanded. "Why shall I not sing when
the heart is glad?"
"Because you've got no call to, that's why. Look about you, man, and
think of the grub we've been defiling our bodies with for the last
twelvemonth, and the way we've lived and worked like beasts!"
Thus abjured, Sigmund, the golden-haired, surveyed it all, and the frost-
rimmed wolf-dogs and the vapor breaths of the men. "And why shall not
the heart be glad?" he laughed. "It is good; it is all good. As for the
grub--" He doubled up his arm and caressed the swelling biceps. "And if
we have lived and worked like beasts, have we not been paid like kings?
Twenty dollars to the pan the streak is running, and we know it to be
eight feet thick. It is another Klondike--and we know it--Jim Hawes
there, by your elbow, knows it and complains not. And there's Hitchcock!
He sews moccasins like an old woman, and waits against the time. Only
you can't wait and work until the wash-up in the spring. Then we shall
all be rich, rich as kings, only you cannot wait. You want to go back to
the States. So do I, and I was born there, but I can wait, when each day
the gold in the pan shows up yellow as butter in the churning. But you
want your good time, and, like a child, you cry for it now. Bah! Why
shall I not sing:
"In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
I shall stay no more away.
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day.
In a year, in a year, when my time is past,
Then I'll live in your love for aye.
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day."
The dogs, bristling and growling, drew in closer to the firelight. There
was a monotonous crunch-crunch of webbed shoes, and between each crunch
the dragging forward of the heel of the shoe like the sound of sifting
sugar. Sigmund broke off from his song to hurl oaths and firewood at the
animals. Then the light was parted by a fur-clad figure, and an Indian
girl slipped out of the webs, threw back the hood of her squirrel-skin
_parka_, and stood in their midst. Sigmund and the men on the bearskin
greeted her as "Sipsu," with the customary "Hello," but Hitchcock made
room on the sled that she might sit beside him.
"And how goes it, Sipsu?" he asked, talking, after her fashion, in broken
English and bastard Chinook. "Is the hunger still mighty in the camp?
and has the witch doctor yet found the cause wherefore game is scarce and
no moose in the land?"
"Yes; even so. There is little game, and we prepare to eat the dogs.
Also has the witch doctor found the cause of all this evil, and to-morrow
will he make sacrifice and cleanse the camp."
"And what does the sacrifice chance to be?--a new-born babe or some poor
devil of a squaw, old and shaky, who is a care to the tribe and better
out of the way?"
"It chanced not that wise; for the need was great, and he chose none
other than the chief's daughter; none other than I, Sipsu."
"Hell!" The word rose slowly to Hitchcock's lips, and brimmed over full
and deep, in a way which bespoke wonder and consideration.
"Wherefore we stand by a forking of the trail, you and I," she went on
calmly, "and I have come that we may look once more upon each other, and
once more only."
She was born of primitive stock, and primitive had been her traditions
and her days; so she regarded life stoically, and human sacrifice as part
of the natural order. The powers which ruled the day-light and the dark,
the flood and the frost, the bursting of the bud and the withering of the
leaf, were angry and in need of propitiation. This they exacted in many
ways,--death in the bad water, through the treacherous ice-crust, by the
grip of the grizzly, or a wasting sickness which fell upon a man in his
own lodge till he coughed, and the life of his lungs went out through his
mouth and nostrils. Likewise did the powers receive sacrifice. It was
all one. And the witch doctor was versed in the thoughts of the powers
and chose unerringly. It was very natural. Death came by many ways, yet
was it all one after all,--a manifestation of the all-powerful and
inscrutable.
But Hitchcock came of a later world-breed. His traditions were less
concrete and without reverence, and he said, "Not so, Sipsu. You are
young, and yet in the full joy of life. The witch doctor is a fool, and
his choice is evil. This thing shall not be."
She smiled and answered, "Life is not kind, and for many reasons. First,
it made of us twain the one white and the other red, which is bad. Then
it crossed our trails, and now it parts them again; and we can do
nothing. Once before, when the gods were angry, did your brothers come
to the camp. They were three, big men and white, and they said the thing
shall not be. But they died quickly, and the thing was."
Hitchcock nodded that he heard, half-turned, and lifted his voice. "Look
here, you fellows! There's a lot of foolery going on over to the camp,
and they're getting ready to murder Sipsu. What d'ye say?"
Wertz looked at Hawes, and Hawes looked back, but neither spoke. Sigmund
dropped his head, and petted the shepherd dog between his knees. He had
brought Shep in with him from the outside, and thought a great deal of
the animal. In fact, a certain girl, who was much in his thoughts, and
whose picture in the little locket on his breast often inspired him to
sing, had given him the dog and her blessing when they kissed good-by and
he started on his Northland quest.
"What d'ye say?" Hitchcock repeated.
"Mebbe it's not so serious," Hawes answered with deliberation. "Most
likely it's only a girl's story."
"That isn't the point!" Hitchcock felt a hot flush of anger sweep over
him at their evident reluctance. "The question is, if it is so, are we
going to stand it? What are we going to do?"
"I don't see any call to interfere," spoke up Wertz. "If it is so, it is
so, and that's all there is about it. It's a way these people have of
doing. It's their religion, and it's no concern of ours. Our concern is
to get the dust and then get out of this God-forsaken land. 'T isn't fit
for naught else but beasts? And what are these black devils but beasts?
Besides, it'd be damn poor policy."
"That's what I say," chimed in Hawes. "Here we are, four of us, three
hundred miles from the Yukon or a white face. And what can we do against
half-a-hundred Indians? If we quarrel with them, we have to vamose; if
we fight, we are wiped out. Further, we've struck pay, and, by God! I,
for one, am going to stick by it!"
"Ditto here," supplemented Wertz.