The journey extended over a month. The last three weeks of it were
starvation. At first this meant merely discomfort and the bearing of a
certain amount of pain. Later it became acute suffering. Later still it
developed into a necessity for proving what virtue resided in the bottom
of these men's souls.
Perforce now they must make a choice of what ideas they would keep. Some
things must be given up, just as some things had to be discarded when
they had lightened the sledge. All the lesser lumber had long since
gone. Certain bigger things still remained.
They held grimly to the idea of catching the Indian. Their natural love
of life held tenaciously to a hope of return. An equally natural hope
clung to the ridiculous idea that the impossible might happen, that the
needle should drop from the haystack, that the caribou might spring into
their view from the emptiness of space. Now it seemed that they must
make a choice between the first two.
"Dick," said Bolton, solemnly, "we've mighty little pemmican left. If we
turn around now, it'll just about get us back to the woods. If we go on
farther, we'll have to run into more food, or we'll never get out."
"I knew it," replied Dick.
"Well?"
Dick looked at him astonished. "Well, what?" he inquired.
"Shall we give it up?"
"Give it _up_!" cried the young man. "Of course not; what you thinking
of?"
"There's the caribou," suggested Sam, doubtfully; "or maybe Jingoss has
more grub than he's going to need. It's a slim chance."
They still further reduced the ration of pemmican. The malnutrition
began to play them tricks. It dizzied their brains, swarmed the vastness
with hordes of little, dancing black specks like mosquitoes. In the
morning every muscle of their bodies was stiffened to the consistency of
rawhide, and the movements necessary to loosen the fibres became an
agony hardly to be endured. Nothing of voluntary consciousness
remained, could remain, but the effort of lifting the feet, driving the
dogs, following the Trail; but involuntary consciousness lent them
strange hallucinations. They saw figures moving across the snow, but
when they steadied their vision, nothing was there.
They began to stumble over nothing; occasionally to fall. In this was
added effort, but more particularly added annoyance. They had
continually to watch their footsteps. The walking was no longer
involuntary, but they had definitely to think of each movement necessary
to the step, and this gave them a further reason for preoccupation, for
concentration. Dick's sullenness returned, more terrible than in the
summer. He went forward with his head down, refusing to take notice of
anything. He walked: that was to him the whole of existence.
Once reverting analogously to his grievance of that time, he mentioned
the girl, saying briefly that soon they must all die, and it was better
that she die now. Perhaps her share of the pemmican would bring them to
their quarry. The idea of return--not abandoned, but persistently
ignored--thrust into prominence this other,--to come to close quarters
with the man they pursued, to die grappled with him, dragging him down
to the same death by which these three perished. But Sam would have none
of it, and Dick easily dropped the subject, relapsing into his grim
monomania of pursuit.
In Dick's case even the hope of coming to grapples was fading. He
somehow had little faith in his enemy. The man was too intangible, too
difficult to gauge. Dick had not caught a glimpse of the Indian since
the pursuit began. The young man realised perfectly his own exhaustion;
but he had no means of knowing whether or not the Indian was tiring. His
faith waned, though his determination did not. Unconsciously he
substituted this monomania of pursuit. It took the place of the faith he
felt slipping from him--the faith that ever he would see the _fata
morgana_ luring him out into the Silent Places.
Soon it became necessary to kill another dog. Dick, with a remnant of
his old feeling, pleaded for the life of Billy, his pet. Sam would not
entertain for a moment the destruction of the hound. There remained
only Claire, the sledge-dog, with her pathetic brown eyes, and her
affectionate ways of the female dog. They went to kill her, and
discovered her in the act of defending the young to which she had just
given birth. Near at hand crouched Mack and Billy, their eyes red with
famine, their jaws a-slaver, eager to devour the newborn puppies. And in
the grim and dreadful sight Sam Bolton seemed at last to glimpse the
face of his terrible antagonist.
They beat back the dogs, and took the puppies. These they killed and
dressed. Thus Claire's life was bought for her by the sacrifice of her
progeny.
But even that was a temporary respite. She fell in her turn, and was
devoured, to the last scrap of her hide. Dick again intervened to save
Billy, but failed. Sam issued his orders the more peremptorily as he
felt his strength waning, and realised the necessity of economising
every ounce of it, even to that required in the arguing of expedients.
Dick yielded with slight resistance, as he had yielded in the case of
the girl. All matters but the one were rapidly becoming unimportant to
him. That concentration of his forces which represented the weapon of
his greatest utility, was gradually taking place. He was becoming an
engine of dogged determination, an engine whose burden the older man had
long carried on his shoulders, but which now he was preparing to launch
when his own strength should be gone.
At last there was left but the one dog, Mack, the hound, with the
wrinkled face and the long, hanging ears. He developed unexpected
endurance and an entire willingness, pulling strongly on the sledge,
waiting in patience for his scanty meal, searching the faces of his
masters with his wise brown eyes, dumbly sympathetic in a trouble whose
entirety he could not understand.
The two men took turns in harnessing themselves to the sledge with Mack.
The girl followed at the gee-pole.
May-may-gwán showed the endurance of a man. She made no complaint.
Always she followed, and followed with her mind alert. Where Dick shut
obstinately his faculties within the bare necessity of travel, she and
her other companion were continually alive to the possibilities of
expedient. This constituted an additional slight but constant drain on
their vital forces.
Starvation gained on them. Perceptibly their strength was waning. Dick
wanted to kill the other dog. His argument was plausible. The toboggan
was now very light. The men could draw it. They would have the dog-meat
to recruit their strength.
Sam shook his head. Dick insisted. He even threatened force. But then
the woodsman roused his old-time spirit and fairly beat the young man
into submission by the vehemence of his anger. The effort left him
exhausted. He sank back into himself, and refused, in the apathy of
weariness, to give any explanation.