"In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
I shall stay no more away."
"Well, it's this way, Hitchcock," he finally said, "I'm in the same boat
with the rest. If three-score bucks have made up their mind to kill the
girl, why, we can't help it. One rush, and we'd be wiped off the
landscape. And what good'd that be? They'd still have the girl. There's
no use in going against the customs of a people except you're in force."
"But we are in force!" Hitchcock broke in. "Four whites are a match for
a hundred times as many reds. And think of the girl!"
Sigmund stroked the dog meditatively. "But I do think of the girl. And
her eyes are blue like summer skies, and laughing like summer seas, and
her hair is yellow, like mine, and braided in ropes the size of a big
man's arms. She's waiting for me, out there, in a better land. And
she's waited long, and now my pile's in sight I'm not going to throw it
away."
"And shamed I would be to look into the girl's blue eyes and remember the
black ones of the girl whose blood was on my hands," Hitchcock sneered;
for he was born to honor and championship, and to do the thing for the
thing's sake, nor stop to weigh or measure.
Sigmund shook his head. "You can't make me mad, Hitchcock, nor do mad
things because of your madness. It's a cold business proposition and a
question of facts. I didn't come to this country for my health, and,
further, it's impossible for us to raise a hand. If it is so, it is too
bad for the girl, that's all. It's a way of her people, and it just
happens we're on the spot this one time. They've done the same for a
thousand-thousand years, and they're going to do it now, and they'll go
on doing it for all time to come. Besides, they're not our kind. Nor's
the girl. No, I take my stand with Wertz and Hawes, and--"
But the dogs snarled and drew in, and he broke off, listening to the
crunch-crunch of many snowshoes. Indian after Indian stalked into the
firelight, tall and grim, fur-clad and silent, their shadows dancing
grotesquely on the snow. One, the witch doctor, spoke gutturally to
Sipsu. His face was daubed with savage paint blotches, and over his
shoulders was drawn a wolfskin, the gleaming teeth and cruel snout
surmounting his head. No other word was spoken. The prospectors held
the peace. Sipsu arose and slipped into her snowshoes.
"Good-by, O my man," she said to Hitchcock. But the man who had sat
beside her on the sled gave no sign, nor lifted his head as they filed
away into the white forest.
Unlike many men, his faculty of adaptation, while large, had never
suggested the expediency of an alliance with the women of the Northland.
His broad cosmopolitanism had never impelled toward covenanting in
marriage with the daughters of the soil. If it had, his philosophy of
life would not have stood between. But it simply had not. Sipsu? He
had pleasured in camp-fire chats with her, not as a man who knew himself
to be man and she woman, but as a man might with a child, and as a man of
his make certainly would if for no other reason than to vary the tedium
of a bleak existence. That was all. But there was a certain chivalric
thrill of warm blood in him, despite his Yankee ancestry and New England
upbringing, and he was so made that the commercial aspect of life often
seemed meaningless and bore contradiction to his deeper impulses.
So he sat silent, with head bowed forward, an organic force, greater than
himself, as great as his race, at work within him. Wertz and Hawes
looked askance at him from time to time, a faint but perceptible
trepidation in their manner. Sigmund also felt this. Hitchcock was
strong, and his strength had been impressed upon them in the course of
many an event in their precarious life. So they stood in a certain
definite awe and curiosity as to what his conduct would be when he moved
to action.
But his silence was long, and the fire nigh out, when Wertz stretched his
arms and yawned, and thought he'd go to bed. Then Hitchcock stood up his
full height.
"May God damn your souls to the deepest hells, you chicken-hearted
cowards! I'm done with you!" He said it calmly enough, but his strength
spoke in every syllable, and every intonation was advertisement of
intention. "Come on," he continued, "whack up, and in whatever way suits
you best. I own a quarter-interest in the claims; our contracts show
that. There're twenty-five or thirty ounces in the sack from the test
pans. Fetch out the scales. We'll divide that now. And you, Sigmund,
measure me my quarter-share of the grub and set it apart. Four of the
dogs are mine, and I want four more. I'll trade you my share in the camp
outfit and mining-gear for the dogs. And I'll throw in my six or seven
ounces and the spare 45-90 with the ammunition. What d'ye say?"
The three men drew apart and conferred. When they returned, Sigmund
acted as spokesman. "We'll whack up fair with you, Hitchcock. In
everything you'll get your quarter-share, neither more nor less; and you
can take it or leave it. But we want the dogs as bad as you do, so you
get four, and that's all. If you don't want to take your share of the
outfit and gear, why, that's your lookout. If you want it, you can have
it; if you don't, leave it."
"The letter of the law," Hitchcock sneered. "But go ahead. I'm willing.
And hurry up. I can't get out of this camp and away from its vermin any
too quick."
The division was effected without further comment. He lashed his meagre
belongings upon one of the sleds, rounded in his four dogs, and harnessed
up. His portion of outfit and gear he did not touch, though he threw
onto the sled half a dozen dog harnesses, and challenged them with his
eyes to interfere. But they shrugged their shoulders and watched him
disappear in the forest.
* * * * *
A man crawled upon his belly through the snow. On every hand loomed the
moose-hide lodges of the camp. Here and there a miserable dog howled or
snarled abuse upon his neighbor. Once, one of them approached the
creeping man, but the man became motionless. The dog came closer and
sniffed, and came yet closer, till its nose touched the strange object
which had not been there when darkness fell. Then Hitchcock, for it was
Hitchcock, upreared suddenly, shooting an unmittened hand out to the
brute's shaggy throat. And the dog knew its death in that clutch, and
when the man moved on, was left broken-necked under the stars. In this
manner Hitchcock made the chief's lodge. For long he lay in the snow
without, listening to the voices of the occupants and striving to locate
Sipsu. Evidently there were many in the tent, and from the sounds they
were in high excitement. At last he heard the girl's voice, and crawled
around so that only the moose-hide divided them. Then burrowing in the
snow, he slowly wormed his head and shoulders underneath. When the warm
inner air smote his face, he stopped and waited, his legs and the greater
part of his body still on the outside. He could see nothing, nor did he
dare lift his head. On one side of him was a skin bale. He could smell
it, though he carefully felt to be certain. On the other side his face
barely touched a furry garment which he knew clothed a body. This must
be Sipsu. Though he wished she would speak again, he resolved to risk
it.
He could hear the chief and the witch doctor talking high, and in a far
corner some hungry child whimpering to sleep. Squirming over on his
side, he carefully raised his head, still just touching the furry
garment. He listened to the breathing. It was a woman's breathing; he
would chance it.
He pressed against her side softly but firmly, and felt her start at the
contact. Again he waited, till a questioning hand slipped down upon his
head and paused among the curls. The next instant the hand turned his
face gently upward, and he was gazing into Sipsu's eyes.
She was quite collected. Changing her position casually, she threw an
elbow well over on the skin bale, rested her body upon it, and arranged
her _parka_. In this way he was completely concealed. Then, and still
most casually, she reclined across him, so that he could breathe between
her arm and breast, and when she lowered her head her ear pressed lightly
against his lips.
"When the time suits, go thou," he whispered, "out of the lodge and
across the snow, down the wind to the bunch of jackpine in the curve of
the creek. There wilt thou find my dogs and my sled, packed for the
trail. This night we go down to the Yukon; and since we go fast, lay
thou hands upon what dogs come nigh thee, by the scruff of the neck, and
drag them to the sled in the curve of the creek."
Sipsu shook her head in dissent; but her eyes glistened with gladness,
and she was proud that this man had shown toward her such favor. But
she, like the women of all her race, was born to obey the will masculine,
and when Hitchcock repeated "Go!" he did it with authority, and though
she made no answer he knew that his will was law.
"And never mind harness for the dogs," he added, preparing to go. "I
shall wait. But waste no time. The day chaseth the night alway, nor
does it linger for man's pleasure."
Half an hour later, stamping his feet and swinging his arms by the sled,
he saw her coming, a surly dog in either hand. At the approach of these
his own animals waxed truculent, and he favored them with the butt of his
whip till they quieted. He had approached the camp up the wind, and
sound was the thing to be most feared in making his presence known.
"Put them into the sled," he ordered when she had got the harness on the
two dogs. "I want my leaders to the fore."
But when she had done this, the displaced animals pitched upon the
aliens. Though Hitchcock plunged among them with clubbed rifle, a riot
of sound went up and across the sleeping camp.
"Now we shall have dogs, and in plenty," he remarked grimly, slipping an
axe from the sled lashings. "Do thou harness whichever I fling thee, and
betweenwhiles protect the team."
He stepped a space in advance and waited between two pines. The dogs of
the camp were disturbing the night with their jangle, and he watched for
their coming. A dark spot, growing rapidly, took form upon the dim white
expanse of snow. It was a forerunner of the pack, leaping cleanly, and,
after the wolf fashion, singing direction to its brothers. Hitchcock
stood in the shadow. As it sprang past, he reached out, gripped its
forelegs in mid-career, and sent it whirling earthward. Then he struck
it a well-judged blow beneath the ear, and flung it to Sipsu. And while
she clapped on the harness, he, with his axe, held the passage between
the trees, till a shaggy flood of white teeth and glistening eyes surged
and crested just beyond reach. Sipsu worked rapidly. When she had
finished, he leaped forward, seized and stunned a second, and flung it to
her. This he repeated thrice again, and when the sled team stood
snarling in a string of ten, he called, "Enough!"
But at this instant a young buck, the forerunner of the tribe, and swift
of limb, wading through the dogs and cuffing right and left, attempted
the passage. The butt of Hitchcock's rifle drove him to his knees,
whence he toppled over sideways. The witch doctor, running lustily, saw
the blow fall.
Hitchcock called to Sipsu to pull out. At her shrill "Chook!" the
maddened brutes shot straight ahead, and the sled, bounding mightily,
just missed unseating her. The powers were evidently angry with the
witch doctor, for at this moment they plunged him upon the trail. The
lead-dog fouled his snowshoes and tripped him up, and the nine succeeding
dogs trod him under foot and the sled bumped over him. But he was quick
to his feet, and the night might have turned out differently had not
Sipsu struck backward with the long dog-whip and smitten him a blinding
blow across the eyes. Hitchcock, hurrying to overtake her, collided
against him as he swayed with pain in the middle of the trail. Thus it
was, when this primitive theologian got back to the chief's lodge, that
his wisdom had been increased in so far as concerns the efficacy of the
white man's fist. So, when he orated then and there in the council, he
was wroth against all white men.
* * * * *
"Tumble out, you loafers! Tumble out! Grub'll be ready before you get
into your footgear!"
Dave Wertz threw off the bearskin, sat up, and yawned.
Hawes stretched, discovered a lame muscle in his arm, and rubbed it
sleepily. "Wonder where Hitchcock bunked last night?" he queried,
reaching for his moccasins. They were stiff, and he walked gingerly in
his socks to the fire to thaw them out. "It's a blessing he's gone," he
added, "though he was a mighty good worker."
"Yep. Too masterful. That was his trouble. Too bad for Sipsu. Think
he cared for her much?"
"Don't think so. Just principle. That's all. He thought it wasn't
right--and, of course, it wasn't,--but that was no reason for us to
interfere and get hustled over the divide before our time."
"Principle is principle, and it's good in its place, but it's best left
to home when you go to Alaska. Eh?" Wertz had joined his mate, and both
were working pliability into their frozen moccasins. "Think we ought to
have taken a hand?"
Sigmund shook his head. He was very busy. A scud of chocolate-colored
foam was rising in the coffee-pot, and the bacon needed turning. Also,
he was thinking about the girl with laughing eyes like summer seas, and
he was humming softly.
His mates chuckled to each other and ceased talking. Though it was past
seven, daybreak was still three hours distant. The aurora borealis had
passed out of the sky, and the camp was an oasis of light in the midst of
deep darkness. And in this light the forms of the three men were sharply
defined. Emboldened by the silence, Sigmund raised his voice and opened
the last stanza of the old song:-
"In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe--"
Then the night was split with a rattling volley of rifle-shots. Hawes
sighed, made an effort to straighten himself, and collapsed. Wertz went
over on an elbow with drooping head. He choked a little, and a dark
stream flowed from his mouth. And Sigmund, the Golden-Haired, his throat
a-gurgle with the song, threw up his arms and pitched across the fire.
* * * * *
The witch doctor's eyes were well blackened, and his temper none of the
best; for he quarrelled with the chief over the possession of Wertz's
rifle, and took more than his share of the part-sack of beans. Also he
appropriated the bearskin, and caused grumbling among the tribesmen. And
finally, he tried to kill Sigmund's dog, which the girl had given him,
but the dog ran away, while he fell into the shaft and dislocated his
shoulder on the bucket. When the camp was well looted they went back to
their own lodges, and there was a great rejoicing among the women.
Further, a band of moose strayed over the south divide and fell before
the hunters, so the witch doctor attained yet greater honor, and the
people whispered among themselves that he spoke in council with the gods.
But later, when all were gone, the shepherd dog crept back to the
deserted camp, and all the night long and a day it wailed the dead. After
that it disappeared, though the years were not many before the Indian
hunters noted a change in the breed of timber wolves, and there were
dashes of bright color and variegated markings such as no wolf bore
before.