It was a darkness glittering with stars. Such stars as the men of the
South, the men of the cities, never see. Each was a blazing world hung
in nothingness, rayed with sapphire and rose. Now and then the white
ice-blink ran over and died beyond them in the spaces where even stars
were not. Desmond was lying on his back, staring at them through a
cranny in his sleeping-bag. He knew where he was, yet in his brain was a
sort of cold confusion. He seemed to hear Forbes speaking.
“Will ye stay here with me and rest—I’m all but blind the day—or will
ye go into Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the
dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with
Ohlsen?”
“And here I am, half-way to the fort, and sleeping out with Jooney and
the dogs,” Desmond muttered; “but I can’t remember coming.”
Yet, as he turned in his sleeping-bag, his knowledge of his whereabouts
was exact. He was in a stony little gully beyond Fachette, where high
banks cut off the wind and ground willows gave firing. The huskies were
asleep and warm in deep drift under the bank, after a full meal of dried
salmon.
“I’ll say this for young Jooney,” said Desmond, drowsily, “he’s got some
sense with dogs.”
Lajeune was beside him, asleep in another bag. Between them was the pack
of gold and the sledge harness. And the great plain, he knew, ran north
and south of the very lip of the gully, silver under the stars, ridged
and rippled by the wind, like white sand of the sea. The wind was now
still. The earth was again a star, bright, silent, and alone, akin to
her sisters of the infinite heavens.
“There ain’t so much gold in a place like this here,” Desmond whispered,
resentfully, to the night, “but jest you wait till I get south-east
again.” He was filled with blind longing for red brick, asphalt, and
crowded streets; even the hens and ducklings were not enough. He
hungered in this splendour of desolation for the little tumults of
mankind. It seemed as if the stars laughed.
“There ain’t nothing my gold won’t get me,” said Desmond more loudly.
His breath hung in little icicles on the edges of his spy-hole. It was
cruelly cold. He drew his hood closer round his head, and thrust it out
of the bag.
Lajeune was gone.
He did not feel afraid; only deadly cold and sick as he struggled to his
feet. Under their shelter of canvas and snow he was alone; everything
else was gone. He fell on his hands and knees, digging furiously in the
trodden snow, like a dog.
The gold was gone also.
“My luck,” whispered Desmond, stupidly, “My luck.”
He was still on his knees, shaping a little rounded column of snow;
suppose it might be Lajeune’s throat, and he with his hands on each side
of it—so. Lajeune’s dark face seemed to lie beneath him, but it was not
touched with fear, but with laughter. He was laughing, as the stars had
laughed, at Desmond and his luck. Desmond dashed the snow away with a
cry.
He scrambled out of the gully. The dog-trail was easy to read, running
straight across the silvery plain. He began to run along it.
As he ran he admired Lajeune very much. With what deadly quietness and
precision he must have worked! The gully and the deserted camp were a
gray streak behind him, were gone. He was running in Lajeune’s very
footprints, and he was sure he ran at an immense speed. The glittering
levels reeled away behind him. A star flared and fell, staining the
world with gold. Desmond had forgotten his gold. He had forgotten food
and shelter, life and death. He could think of nothing but Lajeune’s
brown throat with the scar across it. That throat, his own hands on each
side of it, and an end for ever to the singing and the laughter.
He thought Lajeune was near at hand, laughing at him. He felt the trail,
and searched. The dark face was everywhere, and the quick laughter; but
silence was waiting.
Again he knelt and groped in the snow; but he could feel nothing firm
and living. He tore off his mitts, and groped again, but there was only
the snow, drifting in his fingers like dust. Lajeune was near at hand,
yet he could not find him. He got up and began to run in circles. His
feet and hands were heavy and as cold as ice, and his breath hurt; but
Lajeune was alive and warm and lucky and laughing.
He fell, got up, and fell again. The third time he did not get up, for
he had caught young Lajeune at last. The brown throat was under his
hands, and the stricken face. He, Desmond, was doing all the laughing,
for Lajeune was dead.
“My luck, Jooney, my luck,” chuckled Desmond.
His head fell forward, and the dry snow was like dust in his mouth.
Darkness covered the stars.