But the next morning he was unable to rise. The last drop of his
vitality had run out. At length the connection between his will and his
body had been severed, so that the latter was no longer under his
command. After the first moment he knew well enough what this meant,
knew that here he must die, here he must lie crushed finally under the
sheer weight of his antagonist. It was as though she, the great North,
had heard his defiant words the night before, and thus proved to him
their emptiness.
And yet the last reserves of the old man's purpose were not yet
destroyed. Here he must remain, it is true, but still he possessed next
his hand the human weapon he had carried so far and so painfully by the
exercise of his ingenuity and the genius of his long experience. He had
staggered under its burden as far as he could; now was the moment for
launching it. He called the young man to him.
"I cannot go on," said he, in gasps. "Leave the sledge. Take the dog. Do
not lose him. Travel fast. You must get him by to-morrow night. Sleep
some to-night. Travel fast."
Dick nodded. He understood. Already the scarlet hate, the dogged mad
glare of a set purpose was glazing his vision. It was the sprint at the
end of the race. He need no longer save himself.
He took a single blanket and the little shreds of dog meat that
remained. Some of the pemmican, a mere scrap, he left with Sam. Mack he
held in leash.
"I will live five days," went on Sam, "perhaps six. I will try to live.
If you should come back in that time,--with meat--the caribou--you
understand." His voice trailed away, unwilling to mock the face of
probability with such a chance.
Dick nodded again. He had nothing to say. He wrung the old man's hand
and turned away.
Mack thrust his nose forward. They started. Sam, left alone, rolled
himself again in his thick coverings under the snow, which would protect
him from the night cold. There he would lie absolutely motionless,
hoarding the drops of his life. From time to time, at long intervals,
he would taste the pemmican. And characteristically enough, his regret,
his sorrow, was, not that he must be left to perish, not even that he
must acknowledge himself beaten, but that he was deprived of the chance
for this last desperate dash before death stooped.
When Dick stepped out on the trail, May-may-gwán followed. After a
moment he took cognisance of the crunch of her snow-shoes behind him. He
turned and curtly ordered her back. She persisted. Again he turned, his
face nervous with all the strength he had summoned for the final effort,
shouting at her hoarsely, laying on her the anger of his command. She
seemed not to hear him. He raised his fist and beat her, hitting her
again and again, finally reaching her face. She went down silently,
without even a moan. But when he stared back again, after the next dozen
steps, she had risen and was still tottering on along the Trail.
He threw his hands up with a gesture of abandonment. Then without a
word, grim and terrible, he put his head down and started.
He never looked back. Madness held him. Finesse, saving, the crafty
utilising of small advantages had had their day. It was the moment for
brute strength. All day he swung on in a swirl of snow, tireless. The
landscape swam about him, the white glare searched out the inmost
painful recesses of his brain. He knew enough to keep his eyes shut most
of the time, trusting to Mack. At noon he divided accurately the entire
food supply with the animal. At night he fasted. The two, man and dog,
slept huddled close together for the sake of the warmth. At midnight the
girl crept in broken and exhausted.
The next day Dick was as wonderful. A man strong in meat could not have
travelled so. The light snow whirled behind him in a cloud. The wind of
his going strained the capote from his emaciated face. So, in the nature
of the man, he would go until the end. Then he would give out all at
once, would fall from full life to complete dissolution of forces.
Behind him, pitifully remote, pitifully bent, struggling futilely,
obsessed by a mania as strong as that of these madmen who persisted even
beyond the end of all things, was the figure of the girl. She could not
stand upright, she could not breathe, yet she, too, followed the Trail,
that dread symbol of so many hopes and ideals and despairs. Dick did
not notice her, did not remember her existence, any more than he
remembered the existence of Sam Bolton, of trees, of streams, of summer
and warm winds, of the world, of the devil, of God, of himself.
All about him the landscape swayed like mist; the suns danced indecent
revel; specks and blotches, the beginning of snow-blindness, swam
grotesquely projected into a world less real than they. Living things
moved everywhere. Ordinarily the man paid no attention to them, knowing
them for what they were, but once, warned by some deep and subtle
instinct, he made the effort to clear his vision and saw a fox. By
another miracle he killed it. The carcass he divided with his dog. He
gave none of it to the girl.
By evening of the second day he had not yet overtaken his quarry. But
the trail was evidently fresher, and the fox's meat gave him another
chance. He slept, as before, with Mack the hound; and, as before,
May-may-gwán crept in hours later to fall exhausted.
And over the three figures, lying as dead, the North whirred in the
wind, waiting to stoop, triumphing, glorying that she had brought the
boasts of men to nothing.