War broke out in August, 1914, as everyone knows. In the October of that
same memorable year, Garry Redmond, descending from the Far-alone
country to the comparative civilisation of the All-alone, found in the
possession of John Akkamuk a bottle, with a scrap of newspaper stuck to
it.
Squatting in the thick murk of John Akkamuk’s winter house, Garry lifted
the bottle to the lamplight, and read the paper.
“You give me this, John?” he suggested.
John thought his white friend had gone mad; but then, he often thought
so.
“Yes,” he said, “you have him. You good feller.” He had just struck an
excellent bargain with Garry over a loon-skin rug, and felt generous.
Garry pulled out of his pocket a tiny canvas bag, from which he shook
into his broad palm a glittering fairy pyramid of gold dust.
“Where you get that?” asked John, leaning forward.
Garry grinned at him, happily.
“Ne’er mind, my simple heathen,” said he. “I’ll get lots more of it next
summer. This is just a free sample; but I’ll give it to you right now if
you can find me the bit that’s tore off this paper.”
“No go,” said John, gloomily. He had never had any more of the paper
than that piece stuck on the bottle. Garry took the bottle and the
loon-skin rug home with him, and when he had gone, John turned to and
beat his wives, one after the other, out of sheer vexation.
Garry’s home that winter was a one-roomed shack, lined with skins,
buried to the roof in earth, gravel, turf—anything that would keep the
winds out. It was built on the clean rock, because if you built on the
earth, the whole thing was likely to collapse in sludge, after the stove
had been lighted long enough to melt the ice under the earth. There was
not room in the shack for much but the stove, two bunks, and some
soapstone lamps that the Inniut use.
Kob Smit was lying in one of the bunks. He turned his head, with a dim
smile, as Garry entered. The whole of him was dimmed, sapped, whitened,
like a plant that’s been away from the light too long. Weeks earlier he
had fallen on the rocks, and had been ill since. He had a hard time of
it, fighting out from the Far-alone. Now he was “resting up,” in the
midst of every luxury to be had north of sixty-five; for next summer was
to bring the partners luck at last.
“This is for you, Kob,” said Garry, flinging the lovely feather rug over
his feet. “It’ll keep you fine and warm.”
“It’ll keep me fine and warm,” agreed Kob, nodding and smiling. He had a
gentle, docile voice, like a big child’s. “You’re a good feller, Garry.
Always white to me.”
“What d’you make of this?” Garry wished to change the subject, and
thrust the bottle forward where Kob could see it. Kob frowned at the
blurred words, reading them out almost letter by letter.
“Eng—land De—clares War—” he read. Then, with a sudden, mild
brightening: “Well, say, Garry, that’s quite interesting, ain’t it?’
England Declares War.’ But it don’t say who with, eh, Garry?”
“No, it don’t,” said Garry. “You wait now, Kob; I’m just goin’ to fix
you up some broth.”
“You’re awful good to me, Garry.”
Garry took the bottle away and hid it under his bunk. But Kob talked a
lot about the scrap of newspaper.
“My father,” said Kob, “he fought in a war over there, somewheres. He’d
got a wound, too.”
Garry did not talk of it again. But, sometimes when Kob was asleep, he
pulled the bottle out from under his bunk, and read the message on it
over and over. Once Kob woke in the night, and saw Garry standing over
him.
“What’s your real name, Kob?” said Garry.
“Yawcob Schmidt, I guess. But are you crazy, Garry?”
“No,” said Garry. “Hush up! Sleep!”
“Well,” Garry told himself, “I’ll know in the spring. Maybe it ain’t
anything, either.”
He settled down to the interminable monotony of wintering north—not his
first experience. What to another and softer breed of men would have
been a hardship and desolation unspeakable, he half-unconsciously
enjoyed. It was in this environment in which all his qualities of body
and soul, having freest range, came to their finest, stoic fruition. He
loved the first storms out of the Arctic, heralded by their clanging
clouds of wildfowl; the rare days of clear sun, when the sky was a
turquoise, and the poudre played its magic with the hills; track of wolf
and hare and caribou among the low birch scrub for his following. And
the nights—above all, the nights—when the earth was a star glittering
under the icy fires of the universe unveiled. All these things he had
loved, without knowing. That winter he began to know.
One night, he went swinging home on snowshoes, carrying a string of fish
frozen stiff as platters. He’d been fishing through the ice on a small
lake, sitting in the buckle, as he had been taught by the natives of a
yet farther north. It was so cold the air seared like heat, but he liked
it. He liked such a murderous night, that he might battle with it; he
liked to pit the heat of his generous blood against that cold; the
courage of his generous heart against the loneliness more fatal than
hunger; the strength of his limbs against those aching distances—and
win. He had been satisfied with those noble, homely endurances. He was
so no longer.
On the way he turned into John Akkamuk’s.
“You got the rest of that paper yet, John?”
“Me no got’m,” said John, sourly.
Garry turned to go, but paused, and asked idly after the dogs. Were
there any good dogs to be had—say, round the Backs? No, only pups. All
the grown sledge-dogs were dead of the sickness. Maybe the Montagnais at
Moon River might have some. Garry crawled out, not stopping to argue
that the Montagnais only had curs.
Once home, he thawed out the fish in the frying-pan. He was silent and
very thoughtful. After he had served Kob and helped himself, he brought
out the bottle, and sat holding it in both hands, reading and re-reading
that unfinished message. At last, he stood up with a long sigh,
stretching both arms above his head. He held them so a minute, still
thinking. When he lowered his arms, he had made up his mind. He went
slowly to the bunk.
“Kob!”
Kob blinked up at him, full-fed and kindly.
“Kob, I got to find out about this here—about this war.”
“Why, you’ll know when things open up in the spring, Garry.”
“I can’t wait so long. I have to know now, Kob. I guess I’ll have to
make Fort Scarlett and—and find out.”
Kob lay motionless, staring up at him, and into his mild, pale eyes fear
suddenly leapt, alive and vivid.
“You’d go to Fort Scarlett—go an’ leave me here like this—”
“No,” said Garry, gently; “no, I won’t leave you, Kob, and you know it.
I’ll take you along.”
“You’re _crazy_, Garry!”
“No, I ain’t crazy. I—I _got_ to know, Kob. There’s a nice hospital at
Fort Scarlett, Kob, where you could lay up.”
“You’ll never get me there—”
“Yes, I will, Kob; I’ll get you there. I _got_ to go—”
After a long silence, Kob said, fretfully:
“Well, if you _got_ to go, I’ll have to go, too.” He waited for the
brief grip of Garry’s hand, which he somehow expected. But Garry was
looking at him from a mental distance, very kindly. Seeing Kob’s vexed,
inquiring face, he said only, “I guess maybe it’s them Boers again,” and
went out to the cache behind the shack.
Quietly, for four days, he made his preparations for the biggest job he
had ever undertaken in his life—the job of getting Kob to Fort
Scarlett, single-handed and without dogs. Like most of the very strong,
he was ruthless in his purpose, but he was tenderly careful of Kob.
They started on the fifth day. Garry had left as little as possible to
chance. The sledge was loaded with many things besides Kob, including
two sealskin sleeping bags, a tiny canvas shelter, a big lamp for
cooking and heating, and food for ten days. He reckoned they could make
Fort Scarlett in ten days. Kob was well below his normal weight, but
even so, the load was over the two-hundred and fifty pounds, which is
about the limit that a man can pull.
Daylight only lasted about five hours, but there was a moon half-way to
the full; the weather was clear and still—so still that there was not a
sound to be heard save the shrieking runners as the sledge put out from
the shack, like a small ship putting out from a familiar harbour into a
trackless sea; Kob whimpering a little under the furs, the strange late
sun gilding the south, and the great stars lighting the rim of the grey
northern snows.
That sea was not trackless to Garry. His young eyes, weather-wrinkled at
the lids like an old man’s, picked up this mark and that; the wrinkle in
the vast white plain that was a river-bed, and the low hills like a
rampart, the wedge of spruce that drove to meet them like the vanguard
of an army fronting the implacable north. He knew it, was at home here,
soul and body. But now he felt a sudden pang of desolation at the
thought of the trodden snow about the shack; that ahead was untouched,
unmarked. The north receives no impress from man but a few foot-prints
in the ever-changing, eternal snow. For all his strength, that was the
only mark he had made on this land.
“You quite warm, Kob?”
Kob’s voice came, weak and muffled.
“Well, I ain’t exactly _warm_.”
“You c’n feel your hands ’n’ feet, Kob?”
“Oh, yes, I feel ’em!”
“That’s all right.” Garry slackened an instant, and shifted the sealskin
band that ran from the traces around his chest. It would cut him,
eventually, he knew, with that weight behind, in spite of the dried moss
he had stuffed into his shirt. The sledge sped on again, swiftly; the
miles were marked by no more than the imperceptible advance of the
spruce-belt and Garry’s monotonous, careful questions; “You all right,
Kob? How’s your feet, Kob? Do you still feel your hands?”
They made the edge of the trees that night under an electric-white moon.
The slope of the land had been in Garry’s favour, and the going easy. He
set up the tiny tent, packed Kob into the back of it, started the lamp,
made tea and cooked pork; then himself slept across the opening,
shielding Kob with the warmth of his own body, grimly satisfied. He
wondered if he had not set up a new record for single-sledge travelling.
Likely enough he had.
The next day was also clear and fair. Kob seemed stronger, and was
remarkably cheerful; he sang, under the muffling furs, sang of “Rosalie,
the Prairie Flower:”
“Fair as a lily,
Joyous and free;
Light of the prairie
Home was she-ee.”
But they made slower progress among the trees, thin though these were.
They saw fox-tracks, and sighted a wolf in the distance. The second
night was colder, but Garry collected dead wood, and coaxed a fire, and
they were content. They woke to find that snow had fallen while they
slept, to the depth of a couple of inches—no more. The clouds had gone,
and the sun rose at last on a dazzling world. Before the second hour of
daylight they had emerged from the narrow belt of trees and were once
more in rolling, open country.
The third day was absolutely uneventful, still, brief, radiant. But the
temperature dropped, and Kob’s spirits seemed to fall with it. He
complained of pains in his limbs; twice Garry had to stop, set up tent
and stove, and warm him back to life. In Garry himself there was no
change beyond a certain rigidity, a grim and watchful silence, that told
the fight was on. He set up the tent that night in a hollow, scooped in
a drift of deep snow. They were warm. But in the morning, tent and
sleeping-bags were stiff as boards, all but impossible to stow on the
sledge. The temperature was nearly forty below zero.
Again, there was no wind, not a cloud in the almost violet sky; nothing
but a vast, white circle that enclosed them, seeming to move as they
moved. Kob was quiet and drowsy. Garry’s attention was focussed on him;
so intense was his care of Kob that there seemed to be some mysterious
physical sympathy set up between them; so that Garry knew when Kob’s
left foot was frozen before Kob did himself. It took Garry two hours to
bring the foot round. They travelled on under a moon rounding to the
full. Sometimes their shadows streamed ink-black behind them; sometimes
these shadows shot suddenly to the front, as the aurora blazed and shook
gigantic spears that dimmed the moon. The rigidity in Garry became more
noticeable. He went on untiring, but bought every mile at the price of
that intense watchfulness. He did nothing but pull the sledge and care
for Kob, in a single monotony of effort. And all the time he was
fighting—fighting for all he was worth.
They camped for their fourth night under an outcrop of rock. Garry was
very silent. He slept restlessly, and once or twice groaned in his
sleep. Clouds rolled up from the south, covered the moon and the great
arching stars, and the temperature rose immediately. But the North had
struck at them.
They started in a soft, grey twilight, under those merciful low clouds,
for the fifth day of Garry’s fight. Kob was cheerful again with the
rising temperature, sat up among his furs, and talked of Fort Scarlett,
and how nice it would be to lie up in hospital.
“You does your best for me, Garry, and you’re as white to me as a feller
could be, but there’s lots you can’t do, stands to reason. Not but what
you always does your best.”
“Yes,” said Garry, slowly, “I does my best for you.”
“I know it, Garry. But there’s lots you can’t do. You’re tired, Garry?”
“No, Kob, I ain’t tired.”
Kob glanced at the great fur-clad limbs, tireless as machinery; at the
great shoulders bent to the yoke. A certain uneasiness stirred in him.
“You’re going mighty slow, Garry——”
Suddenly, with a great, slow sigh, Garry stopped. He stood, arms folded
on the yoke, head turned to the south, still as a rock.
“Kob!”
“What’s gettin’ you, Garry?”
“Kob, there should be a hill to the west, not a mile away—a hill
breaking out o’ the level like a cliff. Look and tell me if it’s there.”
As his voice ceased, the terrible silence closed in on them like iron,
so that all the senses ached to its grip.
“Garry!”
“Yes, Kob?”
“Garry! . . . . My God! . . . . You don’t mean—”
“I’m a’most blind, Kob. It’s the sun and the new snow. I can make shift
to see my feet—in a kind of red mist. No more. Is the hill there, Kob?”
The silence took them again, broken now by Kob, who screamed out like a
woman.
“Oh God, oh God, we’re done! You blind, and me sick! We’ll die here.
You’ll never get me to Fort Scarlett! Oh, why didn’t I stay at the
shack, and die there?”
When he had done, Garry spoke, gently, almost gaily. Kob could not see
the grey granite of his face.
“I passed you my word I’d get you to Fort Scarlett, Kob. You ain’t found
me break my word yet. I’ll get you there. I ain’t quite blind. No more’n
a horse in blinkers. You’ll have to be driver, Kob, and tell me where to
go.”
To all Kob’s cries and curses, to all the wild utterances of a sick
man’s despair, he answered the same thing:
“I’ll get you to Fort Scarlett, Kob, if you tell me where to go.”
Noon, and a vast sun showing momentarily through the fleeing rack: found
them going forward slowly, but steadily, Kob sitting erect in the sledge
and shouting to the blinded Garry as a man shouts to his dog-team. Once
and again Garry stopped, to feel Kob’s flesh with his own bare hands, in
fear of frostbite, to feed him, to wrap him more closely in the soft
seal fur. He was fighting every foot of the way. Kob watched him, fear
in his hollowed eyes; later, more than fear. He whispered:
“If it had not been for him, I’d ’a’ been home now, I’d ’a’ been safe.”
“Can you see a big rock nor’-by-east, Kob?”
“Yes, I see it, not half of a mile away, Garry, hang you!”
“Then we’re running true. Don’t you worry, Kob. I’ll get you to the
Fort. I passed you my word, Kob, didn’t I? And have you ever known me go
back on it?”
That day passed.
In the night Kob moaned and cursed. Garry said, “He’s ill,” and felt no
blame for Kob, nor for himself. He crawled out of his bag and rubbed
Kob’s feet for an hour. Once he stopped suddenly; he thought the
entrance to the tent darkened, and that John Akkamuk stood there,
holding the torn bit of newspaper. He grabbed at it, and it was gone.
The intense pain that accompanies snow-blindness was making Garry
light-headed. But he took care of Kob just the same. He always had taken
care of Kob.
The sixth day came, and Garry fought through it.
The sixth night he had no sleep. He wanted none. He was comforted with
visions as with rest. The visions were always of himself and Kob; not
the Kob who cursed and cried, but the old comrade Kob; they were washing
gold together away back in the Far-alone; or speeding south to spend it,
behind the finest team of huskies east of the Slave; or advancing
together, shoulder to shoulder, to some unknown victory or unfeared
defeat. But always together.
The seventh day Garry began to see this old Kob, pulling beside him on
the trace, as he had pulled a thousand times before. The new Kob, in the
sledge, cursed him horribly, and threw bits of ice at him to make him go
faster. In the night, Garry got up and heated tea for Kob, and softened
bits of pork in it, and fed him. Kob complained of pains in the stomach,
and Garry wrapped him in some of the blanket-strips he wore in his own
larrigans. All the time the vision went on—strange, nameless events,
and peopled starry spaces. But always Kob and himself together.
The eighth day, Garry could barely see his own feet. He began to stumble
and fall frequently. After one of these falls and slow recoveries, Garry
thought the sledge ran light. He turned back to it, felt it over, and it
was empty. On hands and knees he felt his way back along their trail;
found Kob where he had fallen off in the snow, half delirious; carried
him back to the sledge, wrapped him up, and tied him on with a spare
trace. Blood was on Garry’s parka; under it, his chest was cut to the
bone, where the trace pressed. But after this, he ceased to be conscious
of even suffering.
He knew nothing until he found the sledge running light as a feather; it
might have been hours after, or days, or years. In a brief glimmer of
sight, he saw a man beside him, pulling. A tall man, not Kob. His face
turned to Garry, seemed gentle in the shadow of the parka hood. Old
tales, old legends of lovely faith, returned to Garry Redmond; like a
child he leaned on the stranger.
* * * * *
In a certain blue-covered volume issued from Ottawa you will find,
should you care to look, the report of Brant Durgan, Sergeant,
R.N.W.M.P.
“I have the honour to report,” wrote the sergeant, laboriously, among
other things, “that on December 6th inst., coming into Fort Scarlett
with Patterson, trooper, from the Southern Moon, I encountered a sledge
party ten miles east of the Go-Soak, and about the same distance from
the Fort. There were two men and one sledge. It was apparent, from a
distance, that they were in difficulties. When I overhauled them it was
to find one man ill and tied to the sledge, and the man who pulled it
suffered from snow-blindness. Both being—(‘batty’ was crossed out in
the original)—both being delirious from exhaustion and exposure, we
assisted them to the Fort.”
That is all you will find. Some while after the report had gone in,
Garry opened his eyes. He was in a comfortable room, in a comfortable
cot, under a red H.B.C. blanket. There is an H.B.C. post at Fort
Scarlett, and a medical mission, and nearly twenty houses. It’s a great
place. The medical missionary, who had been busy for three weeks saving
Garry’s sight, and his feet, and his life, came in and looked at him;
Garry grinned anxiously.
“I got him here?” he said.
“You did,” said the missionary, who was a man of few words, but those
generally the right ones. “You got him in on your own, except the last
few miles. He’s all right. Like to see him?”
“No, not yet,” answered Garry, after a silence. “I’d like to see the
latest paper you got first, please.”
“For five minute,” said the missionary, looking at his eyes. But when
the paper came, it only took Garry about two seconds to find out. He
knew. Like a man of old, he turned his face to the wall.
He knew that never would he and Kob march shoulder to shoulder to any
defeat or victory. Kob would never pull beside him on any trace; never
work with him, drink with him, quarrel with him. It was all over. The
great gulf was fixed. The war reached out and touched him already, to
his hurt. He would not be taking care of Kob any more. Never again would
Britisher and German share the same shack.
In the spring, when he was healed, Garry went down to Winnipeg, and
enlisted. Away back in the All-alone, the sun melted the trodden snow
about the shack. And a little mouse got in and nibbled all the morsels
of newspaper off the broken bottle.