THE PIT
"L'humanité a commencé tout entière par le crime .... C'était le vieux
nourricier des hommes des cavernes."--ANATOLE FRANCE.
An old story now, these days of silent plodding through the driving
snow.
But if outward conditions lacked variety, not so their cumulative
effect upon poor human nature. A change was going on in the travellers
that will little commend them to the sentimentalist.
"I've come to think a snow-storm's all right to travel in, all right to
sleep in," said the Colonel one morning; "but to cook in, eat in, make
or break camp in--it's the devil's champion invention." For three days
they had worked like galley-slaves, and yet covered less than ten miles
a day. "And you never get rested," the Colonel went on; "I get up as
tired as I go to bed." Again the Boy only nodded. His body, if not his
temper, had got broken into the trail, but for a talkative person he
had in these days strangely little to say. It became manifest that, in
the long run, the Colonel would suffer the most physically; but his
young companion, having less patience and more ambition, more sheer
untamed vitality in him, would suffer the most in spirit. Every sense
in him was becoming numbed, save the gnawing in his stomach, and that
other, even more acute ache, queer compound of fatigue and anger. These
two sensations swallowed up all else, and seemed to grow by what they
fed on.
The loaded sled was a nightmare. It weighed a thousand tons. The very
first afternoon out from Anvik, when in the desperate hauling and
tugging that rescued it from a bottomless snow-drift, the lashing
slipped, the load loosened, tumbled off, and rolled open, the Colonel
stood quite still and swore till his half-frozen blood circulated
freely again. When it came to repacking, he considered in detail the
items that made up the intolerable weight, and fell to wondering which
of them they could do without.
The second day out from Anvik they had decided that it was absurd,
after all, to lug about so much tinware. They left a little saucepan
and the extra kettle at that camp. The idea, so potent at Anvik, of
having a tea-kettle in reserve--well, the notion lost weight, and the
kettle seemed to gain.
Two pairs of boots and some flannels marked the next stopping-place.
On the following day, when the Boy's rifle kept slipping and making a
brake to hold back the sled, "I reckon you'll have to plant that rifle
o' yours in the next big drift," said the Colonel; "one's all we need,
anyway."
"One's all you need, and one's all I need," answered the Boy stiffly.
But it wasn't easy to see immediate need for either. Never was country
so bare of game, they thought, not considering how little they hunted,
and how more and more every faculty, every sense, was absorbed in the
bare going forward.
The next time the Colonel said something about the uselessness of
carrying two guns, the Boy flared up: "If you object to guns, leave
yours."
This was a new tone for the Boy to use to the Colonel.
"Don't you think we'd better hold on to the best one?"
Now the Boy couldn't deny that the Colonel's was the better, but none
the less he had a great affection for his own old 44 Marlin, and the
Colonel shouldn't assume that he had the right to dictate. This
attitude of the "wise elder" seemed out of place on the trail.
"A gun's a necessity. I haven't brought along any whim-whams."
"Who has?"
"Well, it wasn't me that went loadin' up at Anvik with fool
thermometers and things."
"Thermometer! Why, it doesn't weigh--"
"Weighs something, and it's something to pack; frozen half the time,
too. And when it isn't, what's the good of havin' it hammered into us
how near we are to freezin' to death." But it annoyed him to think how
very little in argument a thermometer weighed against a rifle.
They said no more that day about lightening the load, but with a double
motive they made enormous inroads upon their provisions.
A morning came when the Colonel, packing hurriedly in the biting cold,
forgot to shove his pardner's gun into its accustomed place.
The Boy, returning from trail-breaking to the river, kicked at the butt
to draw attention to the omission. The Colonel flung down the end of
the ice-coated rope he had lashed the load with, and, "Pack it
yourself," says he.
The Boy let the rifle lie. But all day long he felt the loss of it
heavy on his heart, and no reconciling lightness in the sled.
The Colonel began to have qualms about the double rations they were
using. It was only the seventeenth night after turning their backs on
the Big Chimney, as the Colonel tipped the pan, pouring out half the
boiled beans into his pardner's plate, "That's the last o' the
strawberries! Don't go expectin' any more," says he.
"What!" ejaculated the Boy, aghast; then quickly, to keep a good face:
"You take my life when you do take the beans, whereby I live."
When the Colonel had disposed of his strawberries, "Lord!" he sighed,
trying to rub the stiffness out of his hands over the smoke, "the
appetite a fella can raise up here is something terrible. You eat and
eat, and it doesn't seem to make any impression. You're just as hungry
as ever."
_"And the stuff a fella can eat!"_
The Colonel recalled that speech of the Boy's the very next night,
when, after "a hell of a time" getting the fire alight, he was bending
forward in that attitude most trying to maintain, holding the
frying-pan at long range over the feebly-smoking sticks. He had to
cook, to live on snow-shoes nowadays, for the heavy Colonel had
illustrated oftener than the Boy, that going without meant breaking in,
floundering, and, finally, having to call for your pardner to haul you
out. This was one of the many uses of a pardner on the trail. The last
time the Colonel had trusted to the treacherous crust he had gone in
head foremost, and the Boy, happening to look round, saw only two
snow-shoes, bottom side up, moving spasmodically on the surface of the
drift. The Colonel was nearly suffocated by the time he was pulled out,
and after that object-lesson he stuck to snow-shoes every hour of the
twenty-four, except those spent in the sleeping-bag.
But few things on earth are more exasperating than trying to work
mounted on clumsy, long web-feet that keep jarring against, yet holding
you off from, the tree you are felling, or the fire you are cooking
over. You are constrained to stand wholly out of natural relation to
the thing you are trying to do--the thing you've got to do, if you mean
to come out alive.
The Colonel had been through all this time and time again. But as he
squatted on his heels to-night, cursing the foot and a half of
snow-shoe that held him away from the sullen fire, straining every
muscle to keep the outstretched frying-pan over the best of the blaze,
he said to himself that what had got him on the raw was that speech of
the Boy's yesterday about the stuff he had to eat. If the Boy objected
to having his rice parboiled in smoked water he was damned
unreasonable, that was all.
The culprit reappeared at the edge of the darkening wood. He came up
eagerly, and flung down an armful of fuel for the morning, hoping to
find supper ready. Since it wasn't, he knew that he mustn't stand about
and watch the preparations. By this time he had learned a good deal of
the trail-man's unwritten law. On no account must you hint that the
cook is incompetent, or even slow, any more than he may find fault with
your moment for calling halt, or with your choice of timber. So the
woodman turned wearily away from the sole spot of brightness in the
waste, and went back up the hill in the dark and the cold, to busy
himself about his own work, even to spin it out, if necessary, till he
should hear the gruff "Grub's ready!" And when that dinner-gong sounds,
don't you dally! Don't you wait a second. You may feel uncomfortable if
you find yourself twenty minutes late for a dinner in London or New
York, but to be five minutes late for dinner on the Winter Trail is to
lay up lasting trouble.
By the time the rice and bacon were done, and the flap-jack, still raw
in the middle, was burnt to charcoal on both sides, the Colonel's eyes
were smarting, in the acrid smoke, and the tears were running down his
cheeks.
"Grub's ready!"
The Boy came up and dropped on his heels in the usual attitude. The
Colonel tore a piece off the half-charred, half-raw pancake.
"Maybe you'll think the fire isn't thoroughly distributed, but _that's
_got to do for bread," he remarked severely, as if in reply to some
objection.
The Boy saw that something he had said or looked had been
misinterpreted.
"Hey? Too much fire outside, and not enough in? Well, sir, I'll trust
_my_ stomach to strike a balance. Guess the heat'll get distributed all
right once I've swallowed it."
When the Colonel, mollified, said something about cinders in the rice,
the Boy, with his mouth full of grit, answered: "I'm pretendin' it's
sugar."
Not since the episode of the abandoned rifle had he shown himself so
genial.
"Never in all my bohn life," says the Colonel after eating steadily for
some time--"never in a year, sah, have I thought as much about food as
I do in a day on this----trail."
"Same here."
"And it's quantity, not quality."
"Ditto."
The Boy turned his head sharply away from the fire. "Hear that?"
No need to ask. The Colonel had risen upright on his cramped legs, red
eyes starting out of his head. The Boy got up, turned about in the
direction of the hollow sound, and made one step away from the fire.
"You stay right where you are!" ordered the Colonel, quite in the old
way.
"Hey?"
"That's a bird-song."
"Thought so."
"Mr. Wolf smelt the cookin'; want's the rest of the pack to know
there's something queer up here on the hill." Then, as the Boy moved to
one side in the dark: "What you lookin' for?"
"My gun."
"Mine's here."
Oh yes! His own old 44 Marlin was lying far down the river under
eight-and-fifty hours of snow. It angered him newly and more than ever
to remember that if he had a shot at anything now it must needs be by
favour of the Colonel.
They listened for that sound again, the first since leaving Anvik not
made by themselves.
"Seems a lot quieter than it did," observed the Colonel by-and-bye.
The Boy nodded.
Without preface the Colonel observed: "It's five days since I washed my
face and hands."
"What's the good o' rememberin'?" returned the Boy sharply. Then more
mildly: "People talk about the bare necessaries o' life. Well, sir,
when they're really bare you find there ain't but three--food, warmth,
sleep."
Again in the distance that hollow baying.
"Food, warmth, sleep," repeated the Colonel. "We've about got down to
the wolf basis."
He said it half in defiance of the trail's fierce lessoning; but it was
truer than he knew.
They built up the fire to frighten off the wolves, but the Colonel had
his rifle along when they went over and crawled into their
sleeping-bag. Half in, half out, he laid the gun carefully along the
right on his snow-shoes. As the Boy buttoned the fur-lined flap down
over their heads he felt angrier with the Colonel than he had ever been
before.
"Took good care to hang on to his own shootin'-iron. Suppose anything
should happen"; and he said it over and over.
Exactly what could happen he did not make clear; the real danger was
not from wolves, but it was _something_. And he would need a rifle....
And he wouldn't have one.... And it was the Colonel's fault.
* * * * *
Now, it had long been understood that the woodman is lord of the wood.
When it came to the Colonel's giving unasked advice about the lumber
business, the Boy turned a deaf ear, and thought well of himself for
not openly resenting the interference.
"The Colonel talks an awful lot, anyway. He has more hot air to offer
than muscle."
When they sighted timber that commended itself to the woodman, if _he_
thought well of it, why, he just dropped the sled-rope without a word,
pulled the axe out of the lashing, trudged up the hillside, holding the
axe against his shirt underneath his parki, till he reached whatever
tree his eye had marked for his own. Off with the fur mitt, and bare
hand protected by the inner mitt of wool, he would feel the axe-head,
for there was always the danger of using it so cold that the steel
would chip and fly. As soon as he could be sure the proper molecular
change had been effected, he would take up his awkward attitude before
the selected spruce, leaning far forward on his snow-shoes, and seeming
to deliver the blows on tip-toe.
But the real trouble came when, after felling the dead tree, splitting
an armful of fuel and carrying it to the Colonel, he returned to the
task of cutting down the tough green spruce for their bedding. Many
strained blows must be delivered before he could effect the chopping of
even a little notch. Then he would shift his position and cut a
corresponding notch further round, so making painful circuit of the
bole. To-night, what with being held off by his snow-shoes, what with
utter weariness and a dulled axe, he growled to himself that he was
"only gnawin' a ring round the tree like a beaver!"
"Damn the whole--Wait!" Perhaps the cursed snow was packed enough now
to bear. He slipped off the web-feet, and standing gingerly, but
blessedly near, made effectual attack. Hooray! One more good 'un and
the thing was down. Hah! ugh! Woof-ff! The tree was down, but so was
he, floundering breast high, and at every effort to get out only
breaking down more of the crust and sinking deeper.
This was not the first time such a thing had happened. Why did he feel
as if it was for him the end of the world? He lay still an instant. It
would be happiness just to rest here and go to sleep. The Colonel! Oh,
well, the Colonel had taken his rifle. Funny there should be
orange-trees up here. He could smell them. He shut his eyes. Something
shone red and glowing. Why, that was the sun making an effect of
stained glass as it shone through the fat pine weather-boarding of his
little bedroom on the old place down in Florida. Suddenly a face. _Ah,
that face!_ He must be up and doing. He knew perfectly well how to get
out of this damn hole. You lie on your side and roll. Gradually you
pack the softness tight till it bears--not if you stand up on your
feet, but bears the length of your body, while you worm your way
obliquely to the top, and feel gingerly in the dimness after your
snow-shoes.
But if it happens on a pitch-dark night, and your pardner has chosen
camp out of earshot, you feel that you have looked close at the end of
the Long Trail.
On getting back to the fire, he found the Colonel annoyed at having
called "Grub!" three times--"yes, sah! three times, sah!"
And they ate in silence.
"Now I'm going to bed," said the Boy, rising stiffly.
"You just wait a minute."
"No."
Now, the Colonel himself had enunciated the law that whenever one of
them was ready to sleep the other must come too. He didn't know it, but
it is one of the iron rules of the Winter Trail. In absence of its
enforcement, the later comer brings into the warmed up sleeping-bag not
only the chill of his own body, he lets in the bitter wind, and brings
along whatever snow and ice is clinging to his boots and clothes. The
melting and warming-up is all to be done again.
But the Colonel was angry.
"Most unreasonable," he muttered--"damned unreasonable!"
Worse than the ice and the wet in the sleeping-bag, was this lying in
such close proximity to a young jackanapes who wouldn't come when you
called "Grub!" and wouldn't wait a second till you'd felt about in the
dimness for your gun. Hideous to lie so close to a man who snored, and
who'd deprived you of your 44 Marlin. Although it meant life, the Boy
grudged the mere animal heat that he gave and that he took. Full of
grudging, he dropped asleep. But the waking spirit followed him into
his dreams. An ugly picture painted itself upon the dark, and
struggling against the vision, he half awoke. With the first returning
consciousness came the oppression of the yoke, the impulse to match the
mental alienation with that of the body--strong need to move away.
You can't move away in a sleeping-bag.
In a city you may be alone, free.
On the trail, you walk in bonds with your yoke-fellow, make your bed
with him, with him rise up, and with him face the lash the livelong
day.
* * * * *
"Well," sighed the Colonel, after toiling onward for a couple of hours
the next morning, "this is the worst yet."
But by the middle of the afternoon, "What did I say? Why, this
morning--_everything_ up till now has been child's play." He kept
looking at the Boy to see if he could read any sign of halt in the
tense, scarred face.
Certainly the wind was worse, the going was worse. The sled kept
breaking through and sinking to the level of the load. There it went!
in again. They tugged and hauled, and only dragged the lashing loose,
while the sled seemed soldered to the hard-packed middle of the drift.
As they reloaded, the thermometer came to light. The Colonel threw it
out, with never a word. They had no clothes now but what they stood in,
and only one thing on the sled they could have lived without--their
money, a packet of trading stores. But they had thrown away more than
they knew. Day by day, not flannels and boots alone, not merely extra
kettle, thermometer and gun went overboard, but some grace of courtesy,
some decency of life had been left behind.
About three o'clock of this same day, dim with snow, and dizzy in a
hurricane of wind, "We can't go on like this," said the Boy suddenly.
"Wish I knew the way we _could_ go on," returned the Colonel, stopping
with an air of utter helplessness, and forcing his rigid hands into his
pockets. The Boy looked at him. The man of dignity and resource, who
had been the boss of the Big Chimney Camp--what had become of him? Here
was only a big, slouching creature, with ragged beard, smoke-blackened
countenance, and eyes that wept continually.
"Come on," said his equally ruffianly-looking pardner, "we'll both go
ahead."
So they abandoned their sled for awhile, and when they had forged a
way, came back, and one pulling, the other pushing, lifting, guiding,
between them, with infinite pains they got their burden to the end of
the beaten track, left it, and went ahead again--travelling three miles
to make one.
"What's the matter now?"
The Boy was too tired to turn his head round and look back, but he knew
that the other man wasn't doing his share. He remembered that other
time when the Colonel had fallen behind. It seemed years ago, and even
further away was the vague recollection of how he'd cared. How horribly
frightened he'd been! Wasn't he frightened now? No. It was only a dull
curiosity that turned him round at last to see what it was that made
the Colonel peg out this time. He was always peggin' out. Yes, there he
was, stoppin' to stroke himself. Trail-man? An old woman! Fit only for
the chimney-corner. And even when they went on again he kept saying to
himself as he bent to the galling strain, "An old woman--just an old
woman!" till he made a refrain of the words, and in the level places
marched to the tune. After that, whatever else his vague thought went
off upon, it came back to "An old woman--just an old woman!"
It was at a bad place towards the end of that forced march that the
Colonel, instead of lifting the back of the sled, bore hard on the
handle-bar. With a vicious sound it snapped. The Boy turned heavily at
the noise. When he saw the Colonel standing, dazed, with the splintered
bar in his hand, his dull eyes flashed. With sudden vigour he ran back
to see the extent of the damage.
"Well, it's pretty discouragin'," says the Colonel very low.
The Boy gritted his teeth with suppressed rage. It was only a chance
that it hadn't happened when he himself was behind, but he couldn't see
that. No; it was the Colonel's bungling--tryin' to spare himself;
leanin' on the bar instead o' liftin' the sled, as he, the Boy, would
have done.
With stiff hands they tried to improvise a makeshift with a stick of
birch and some string.
"Don't know what you think," says the Colonel presently, "but I call
this a desperate business we've undertaken."
The Boy didn't trust himself to call it anything. With a bungled job
they went lamely on. The loose snow was whirling about so, it was
impossible to say whether it was still falling, or only
hurricane-driven.
To the Colonel's great indignation it was later than usual before they
camped.
Not a word was spoken by either till they had finished their first
meal, and the Colonel had melted a frying-pan full of snow preparatory
to the second. He took up the rice-bag, held it by the top, and ran his
mittened hand down the gathered sack till he had outlined the contents
at the bottom.
"Lord! That's all there is."
The boy only blinked his half-shut eyes. The change in him, from
talkativeness to utter silence, had grown horribly oppressive to the
Colonel. He often felt he'd like to shake him till he shook some words
out. "I told you days ago," he went on, "that we ought to go on
rations."
Silence.
"But no! you knew so much better."
The Boy shut his eyes, and suddenly, like one struggling against sleep
or swooning, he roused himself.
"I thought I knew the more we took off the damn sled the lighter it'd
be. 'Tisn't so."
"And we didn't either of us think we'd come down from eighteen miles a
day to six," returned the Colonel, a little mollified by any sort of
answer. "I don't believe we're going to put this job through."
Now this was treason.
Any trail-man may think that twenty times a day, but no one ought to
say it. The Boy set his teeth, and his eyes closed. The whole thing was
suddenly harder--doubt of the issue had been born into the world. But
he opened his eyes again. The Colonel had carefully poured some of the
rice into the smoky water of the pan. What was the fool doing? Such a
little left, and making a second supper?
Only that morning the Boy had gone a long way when mentally he called
the boss of the Big Chimney Camp "an old woman." By night he was saying
in his heart, "The Colonel's a fool." His pardner caught the look that
matched the thought.
"No more second helpin's," he said in self-defence; "this'll freeze
into cakes for luncheon."
No answer. No implied apology for that look. In the tone his pardner
had come to dread the Colonel began: "If we don't strike a settlement
to-morrow----"
"Don't _talk!"_
The Boy's tired arm fell on the handle of the frying-pan. Over it
went--rice, water, and all in the fire. The culprit sprang up
speechless with dismay, enraged at the loss of the food he was hungry
for--enraged at "the fool fry-pan"--enraged at the fool Colonel for
balancing it so badly.
A column of steam and smoke rose into the frosty air between the two
men. As it cleared away a little the Boy could see the Colonel's
bloodshot eyes. The expression was ill to meet.
When they crouched down again, with the damped-out fire between them, a
sense of utter loneliness fell upon each man's heart.
* * * * *
The next morning, when they came to digging the sled out of the last
night's snow-drift, the Boy found to his horror that he was
weaker--yes, a good deal. As they went on he kept stumbling. The
Colonel fell every now and then. Sometimes he would lie still before he
could pull himself on his legs again.
In these hours they saw nothing of the grim and splendid waste; nothing
of the ranks of snow-laden trees; nothing of sun course or of stars,
only the half-yard of dazzling trail in front of them, and
--clairvoyant--the little store of flour and bacon that seemed to
shrink in the pack while they dragged it on.
Apart from partial snow-blindness, which fell at intervals upon the
Colonel, the tiredness of the eyes was like a special sickness upon
them both. For many hours together they never raised their lids,
looking out through slits, cat-like, on the world.
They had not spoken to each other for many days--or was it only
hours?--when the Colonel, looking at the Boy, said:
"You've got to have a face-guard. Those frostbites are eating in."
"'Xpect so."
"You ought to stop it. Make a guard."
"Out of a snow-ball, or chunk o' ice?"
"Cut a piece out o' the canvas o' the bag." But he didn't.
The big sores seemed such small matters beside the vast overshadowing
doubt, Shall we come out of this alive?--doubt never to be openly
admitted by him, but always knocking, knocking----
"You can't see your own face," the Colonel persisted.
"One piece o' luck, anyhow."
The old habit of looking after the Boy died hard. The Colonel
hesitated. For the last time he would remonstrate. "I used to think
frost_bite_ was a figure o' speech," said he, "but the teeth were set
in _your_ face, sonny, and they've bitten deep; they'll leave awful
scars."
"Battles do, I b'lieve." And it was with an effort that he remembered
there had been a time when they had been uncomfortable because they
hadn't washed their faces. Now, one man was content to let the very
skin go if he could keep the flesh on his face, and one was little
concerned even for that. Life--life! To push on and come out alive.
The Colonel had come to that point where he resented the Boy's staying
power, terrified at the indomitable young life in him. Yes, the Colonel
began to feel old, and to think with vague wrath of the insolence of
youth.
Each man fell to considering what he would do, how he would manage if
he were alone. And there ceased to be any terror in the thought.
"If it wasn't for him"--so and so; till in the gradual deadening of
judgment all the hardship was somehow your pardner's fault. Your nerves
made him responsible even for the snow and the wind. By-and-by he was
The Enemy. Not but what each had occasional moments of lucidity, and
drew back from the pit they were bending over. But the realisation
would fade. No longer did even the wiser of the two remember that this
is that same abyss out of which slowly, painfully, the race has
climbed. With the lessened power to keep from falling in, the terror of
it lessened. Many strange things grew natural. It was no longer
difficult or even shocking to conceive one's partner giving out and
falling by the way. Although playing about the thought, the one thing
that not even the Colonel was able actually to realise, was the
imminent probability of death for himself. Imagination always pictured
the other fellow down, one's self somehow forging ahead.
This obsession ended on the late afternoon when the Colonel broke
silence by saying suddenly:
"We must camp; I'm done." He flung himself down under a bare birch, and
hid his face.
The Boy remonstrated, grew angry; then, with a huge effort at
self-control, pointed out that since it had stopped snowing this was
the very moment to go on.
"Why, you can see the sun. Three of 'em! Look, Colonel!"
But Arctic meteorological phenomena had long since ceased to interest
the Kentuckian. Parhelia were less to him than covered eyes, and the
perilous peace of the snow. It seemed a long time before he sat up, and
began to beat the stiffness out of his hands against his breast. But
when he spoke, it was only to say:
"I mean to camp."
"For how long?"
"Till a team comes by--or something."
The Boy got up abruptly, slipped on his snow-shoes, and went round the
shoulder of the hill, and up on to the promontory, to get out of
earshot of that voice, and determine which of the two ice-roads,
stretching out before them, was main channel and which was tributary.
He found on the height only a cutting wind, and little enlightenment as
to the true course. North and east all nimbus still. A brace of
sun-dogs following the pale God of Day across the narrow field of
primrose that bordered the dun-coloured west. There would be more snow
to-morrow, and meanwhile the wind was rising again. Yes, sir, it was a
mean outlook.
As he took Mac's aneroid barometer out of his pocket, a sudden gust cut
across his raw and bleeding cheek. He turned abruptly; the barometer
slipped out of his numb fingers. He made a lunge to recover it,
clutched the air, and, sliding suddenly forward, over he went, flying
headlong down the steep escarpment.
He struck a jutting rock, only half snowed under, that broke the sheer
face of the promontory, and he bounded once like a rubber ball, struck
a second time, caught desperately at a solitary clump of ice-sheathed
alders, crashed through the snow-crust just below them, and was held
there like a mudlark in its cliff nest, halfway between bluff and
river.
His last clear thought had been an intense anxiety about his snow-shoes
as they sailed away, two liberated kites, but as he went on falling,
clutching at the air--falling--and felt the alder twigs snap under his
hands, he said to himself, "This is death," but calmly, as if it were a
small matter compared to losing one's snow-shoes.
It was only when he landed in the snow, that he was conscious of any of
the supposed natural excitement of a man meeting a violent end. It was
then, before he even got his breath back, that he began to struggle
frantically to get a foothold; but he only broke down more of the thin
ice-wall that kept him from the sheer drop to the river, sixty or
seventy feet below. He lay quite still. Would the Colonel come after
him? If he did come, would he risk his life to----If he did risk his
life, was it any use to try to----He craned his neck and looked up,
blinked, shut his eyes, and lay back in the snow with a sound of
far-off singing in his head. "Any use?" No, sir; it just about wasn't.
That bluff face would be easier to climb up than to climb down, and
either was impossible.
Then it was, that a great tide of longing swept over him--a flood of
passionate desire for more of this doubtful blessing, life. All the
bitter hardship--why, how sweet it was, after all, to battle and to
overcome! It was only this lying helpless, trapped, that was evil. The
endless Trail? Why, it was only the coming to the end that a man
minded.
Suddenly the beauty that for days had been veiled shone out. Nothing in
all the earth was glorious with the glory of the terrible white North.
And he had only just been wakened to it. Here, now, lying in his grave,
had come this special revelation of the rapture of living, and the
splendour of the visible universe.
The sky over his head--he had called it "a mean outlook," and turned
away. It was the same sky that bent over him now with a tenderness that
made him lift his cramped arms with tears, as a sick child might to its
mother. The haloed sun with his attendant dogs--how little the wonder
had touched him! Never had he seen them so dim and sad as to-night ...
saying good-bye to one who loved the sun.
The great frozen road out of sight below, road that came winding,
winding down out of the Arctic Circle--what other highway so majestic,
mysterious?--shining and beckoning on. An earthly Milky Way, leading to
the golden paradise he had been travelling towards since summer.
And he was to go no further?--not till the June rains and thaws and
winds and floods should carry him back, as he had foreseen, far below
there at Holy Cross.
With a sharp contraction of the heart he shut his eyes again. When he
opened them they rested on the alder-twig, a couple of yards above,
holding out mocking finger-tips, and he turned his head in the snow
till again he could see the mock-suns looking down.
"As well try to reach the sky as reach the alder-bush. What did that
mean? That he was really going to lie there till he died? _He_ die, and
the Colonel and everybody else go on living?"
He half rose on his elbow at the monstrous absurdity of the idea. "I
won't die!" he said out loud.
Crack, crack! warned the ice-crust between him and that long fall to
the river. With horror at his heart he shrank away and hugged the face
of the precipice. Presently he put out his hand and broke the ice-crust
above. With mittened fists and palms he pounded firm a little ledge of
snow. Reaching out further, he broke the crust obliquely just above,
and having packed the snow as well as he could immediately about, and
moving lengthwise with an infinite caution, he crawled up the few
inches to the narrow ledge, balancing his stiff body with a nicety
possible only to acrobat or sleep-walker.
It was in no normal state of ordinary waking senses that the work went
on--with never a downward look, nor even up, eyes riveted to the patch
of snow on which the mittened hands fell as steady and untrembling as
steel hammers. In the seconds of actual consciousness of his situation
that twice visited him, he crouched on the ledge with closed eyes, in
the clutch of an overmastering horror, absolutely still, like a bird in
the talons of a hawk. Each time when he opened his eyes he would stare
at the snow-ledge till hypnotised into disregard of danger, balance his
slight body, lift one hand, and go on pounding firm another shallow
step. When he reached the alder-bush his heart gave a great leap of
triumph. Then, for the first time since starting, he looked up. His
heart fell down. It seemed farther than ever, and the light waning.
But the twilight would be long, he told himself, and in that other,
beneficent inner twilight he worked on, packing the snow, and crawling
gingerly up the perilous stair a half-inch at a time.
At last he was on the jutting rock, and could stand secure. But here he
could see that the top of the bluff really did shelve over. To think so
is so common an illusion to the climber that the Boy had heartened
himself by saying, when he got there he would find it like the rest,
horribly steep, but not impossible. Well, it _was_ impossible. After
all his labour, he was no better off on the rock than in the snow-hole
below the alder, down there where he dared not look. The sun and his
dogs had travelled down, down. They touched the horizon while he sat
there; they slipped below the world's wide rim. He said in his heart,
"I'm freezing to death." Unexpectedly to himself his despair found
voice:
"Colonel!"
"Hello!"
He started violently.
Had he really heard that, or was imagination playing tricks with echo?
"Colonel!"
"Where the devil----"
A man's head appeared out of the sky.
"Got the rope?"
Words indistinguishable floated down--the head withdrawn--silence. The
Boy waited a very long time, but he stamped his feet, and kept his
blood in motion. The light was very grey when the head showed again at
the sky-line. He couldn't hear what was shouted down, and it occurred
to him, even in his huge predicament, that the Colonel was "giving him
hot air" as usual, instead of a life-line. Down the rope came, nearer,
and stopped about fifteen feet over his head.
"Got the axe? Let her down."
* * * * *
The night was bright with moonlight when the Boy stood again on the top
of the bluff.
"Humph!" says the Colonel, with agreeable anticipation; "you'll be glad
to camp for a few days after this, I reckon."
"Reckon I won't."
* * * * *
In their colossal fatigue they slept the clock round; their watches run
down, their sense of the very date blurred. Since the Colonel had made
the last laconic entry in the journal--was it three days or two--or
twenty?
In spite of a sensation as of many broken bones, the Boy put on the
Colonel's snow-shoes, and went off looking along the foot of the cliff
for his own. No luck, but he brought back some birch-bark and a handful
of willow-withes, and set about making a rude substitute.
Before they had despatched breakfast the great red moon arose, so it
was not morning, but evening. So much the better. The crust would be
firmer. The moon was full; it was bright enough to travel, and travel
they must.
"No!" said the Colonel, with a touch of his old pompous authority,
"we'll wait awhile."
The Boy simply pointed to the flour-bag. There wasn't a good handful
left.
They ate supper, studiously avoiding each other's eyes. In the
background of the Boy's mind: "He saved my life, but he ran no risk....
And I saved his. We're quits." In the Colonel's, vague, insistent,
stirred the thought, "I might have left him there to rot, half-way up
the precipice. Oh, he'd go! _And he'd take the sled_! No!" His vanished
strength flowed back upon a tide of rage. Only one sleeping-bag, one
kettle, one axe, one pair of snow-shoes ... _one gun_! No, by the
living Lord! not while I have a gun. Where's my gun? He looked about
guiltily, under his lowered lids. What? No! Yes! It was gone! Who
packed at the last camp? Why, he--himself, and he'd left it behind.
"Then it was because I didn't see it; the Boy took care I shouldn't see
it! Very likely he buried it so that I shouldn't see it! He--yes--if I
refuse to go on, he----"
And the Boy, seeing without looking, taking in every move, every shade
in the mood of the broken-spirited man, ready to die here, like a dog,
in the snow, instead of pressing on as long as he could crawl--the Boy,
in a fever of silent rage, called him that "meanest word in the
language--a quitter." And as, surreptitiously, he took in the vast
discouragement of the older man, there was nothing in the Boy's changed
heart to say, "Poor fellow! if he can't go on, I'll stay and die with
him"; but only, "He's _got_ to go on! ... and if he refuses ...
well----" He felt about in his deadened brain, and the best he could
bring forth was: "I won't leave him--_yet_."
* * * * *
A mighty river-jam had forced them up on the low range of hills. It was
about midnight to judge by the moon--clear of snow and the wind down.
The Boy straightened up at a curious sight just below them. Something
black in the moonlight. The Colonel paused, looked down, and passed his
hand over his eyes.
The Boy had seen the thing first, and had said to himself, "Looks like
a sled, but it's a vision. It's come to seeing things now."
When he saw the Colonel stop and stare, he threw down his rope and
began to laugh, for there below were the blackened remains of a big
fire, silhouetted sharply on the snow.
"Looks like we've come to a camp, Boss!"
He hadn't called the Colonel by the old nickname for many a day. He
stood there laughing in an idiotic kind of way, wrapping his stiff
hands in his parki, Indian fashion, and looking down to the level of
the ancient river terrace, where the weather-stained old Indian sled
was sharply etched on the moonlit whiteness.
Just a sled lying in the moonlight. But the change that can be wrought
in a man's heart upon sight of a human sign! it may be idle to speak of
that to any but those who have travelled the desolate ways of the
North.
Side by side the two went down the slope, slid and slipped and couldn't
stop themselves, till they were below the landmark. Looking up, they
saw that a piece of soiled canvas or a skin, held down with a
drift-log, fell from under the sled, portière-wise from the top of the
terrace, straight down to the sheltered level, where the camp fire had
been. Coming closer, they saw the curtain was not canvas, but dressed
deerskin.
"Indians!" said the Colonel.
But with the rubbing out of other distinctions this, too, was curiously
faint. Just so there were human beings it seemed enough. Within four
feet of the deerskin door the Colonel stopped, shot through by a sharp
misgiving. What was behind? A living man's camp, or a dead man's tomb?
Succour, or some stark picture of defeat, and of their own oncoming
doom?
The Colonel stood stock-still waiting for the Boy. For the first time
in many days even he hung back. He seemed to lack the courage to be the
one to extinguish hope by the mere drawing of a curtain from a
snow-drift's face. The Kentuckian pulled himself together and went
forward. He lifted his hand to the deerskin, but his fingers shook so
he couldn't take hold:
"Hello!" he called. No sound. Again: "Hello!"
"Who's there?"
The two outside turned and looked into each other's faces--but if you
want to know all the moment meant, you must travel the Winter Trail.