“To watch always!”
Old Joe’s words echoed in Tom’s mind. Yes, that was the law of the
northland, and in some parts of it all the law that there was. Constant
watchfulness was necessary to life itself in the frozen regions.
Tom’s cheeks flushed as he thought that if constant watchfulness had
been observed at Camp _Yukon Rover_ there would have been no necessity
for their journey and all that it had led to.
The trail wound upward into country that grew more and more gloomy and
dispiriting. There was something about the great rock masses poised
above the trail, the slaty, leaden sky and the occasional gusts of
wind-blown snow that struck a chill to Tom’s heart.
There was little to break the monotony of precipice and sky on the one
side, while beside the trail on the other was a deep crevasse, and
beyond another wall of rock. Tom peered over into the depths from time
to time and thought, with a shudder, of the consequences of a fall. And
that possibility was by no means remote. One slip on the treacherous
foothold of the path that hung on the mountainside like an eyebrow on a
face, and the victim of the accident would go sliding and plunging down
the slippery slopes into that forbidding pit.
It was not a thought to inspire cheerfulness, and Tom refrained from
speaking of it to his companions. But it might have been noticed that he
kept to the inside of the trail. The mameluke dogs, too, by instinct
avoided the outer edge and kept hugging the inside wall of the trail as
far as possible from the gaping chasm.
It must have been toward mid-afternoon, as time is reckoned in those
latitudes, that old Joe paused with a worried look on his face.
“Attendez!” he cried, holding up one finger.
The mamelukes stopped, their red tongues lolling out and their breath
coming in long heaves. They were glad of the respite, whatever had
caused it.
Tom halted behind the sled, and Jack turned his eyes on old Joe, whose
face betokened the most eager attention. His body was tense with
concentrated energy, as if he were putting every fiber of his being into
what he was doing, which was listening.
Tom thought of the old man’s watchword, “To watch always.”
For some minutes they stood like this, and then old Joe signified that
all was well and they went forward again. But ever and anon the old man
cast an uneasy eye about him. It was plain that he was worried and
wished the long trail were at an end.
In that gloomy canyon between the beetling walls that rose on either
side seemingly straight up to the gray sky, the old trapper’s voice rang
stridently as he called to his dogs or cracked his whip with loud words
of encouragement.
“Courage, mes enfants!” he would cry to his struggling team. “Soon we be
at Pierre La Roche’s; den plentee feesh for you—bien—Boosh! En avant!”
His words always had a magical effect on the drooping mamelukes. With
stubborn determination they bent again to their task, their flagging
spirits revivified by the cries of their owner.
Jack turned to Tom after one of these intervals.
“Gee whiz! but I feel like a useless log,” he exclaimed, “lolling here
on a pile of soft blankets while those poor beasts are pulling me along
at the expense of almost all their strength.”
“It can’t be helped,” rejoined Tom briefly. “No one supposes that you
walked into that trap deliberately.”
“It’s just one of those accidents that have been happening to us right
along,” rejoined Jack irritably. “We have had nothing but bad luck so
far on this trip. It is too bad.”
“I agree with you,” rejoined Tom, “but, after all, whose fault is it?”
“Nobody’s, that I can see.”
“Think again.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Just this, that it all comes from our not having forced ourselves, to
use Joe’s words, ‘to watch always.’”
“Great Scott! we couldn’t have sat up all night to watch those foxes!”
“One of us could. We might have taken it in turns. However, it is too
late to worry about that now. But we will have to face the music when we
meet Uncle Chisholm and Mr. Chillingworth. I fancy they will have
something to say on the subject.”
“Ouch! The thought of that hurts me worse than my foot,” exclaimed Jack.
“I don’t much care about the idea of the explanations that will be up to
us to make.”
“Yet they have to be made.”
“Er-huh,” gloomily.
“I fancy that is just the usual result of neglected duty,” responded
Tom. “It is part of the price you have to pay for not being on the job.”
“Goodness, are you turning into a moralizer?”
“No. I’ve just been thinking things over. Somehow this canyon——”
Above them there was a sudden sharp crackling sound, like the trampling
of a thicket full of twigs. It was followed, or rather accompanied, by a
yell from old Joe.
“Back! Get back!”
The next instant Tom echoed his cry.
Simultaneously old Joe sprang forward and tried to turn the mamelukes,
but they, maddened by fright, plunged forward.
From above, loosened from its foundation by the softened snow, a huge
rock was bounding down upon them. Had the mamelukes stopped where they
were they might have been saved. As it was, their plunge forward had
brought them directly in the path of the great boulder. The destruction
of the sled appeared certain.
And on the sled was Jack, crippled and unable to make a move to save
himself from the impending doom.