Sitka Charley had achieved the impossible. Other Indians might have
known as much of the wisdom of the trail as he did; but he alone knew
the white man's wisdom, the honor of the trail, and the law. But these
things had not come to him in a day. The aboriginal mind is slow to
generalize, and many facts, repeated often, are required to compass an
understanding. Sitka Charley, from boyhood, had been thrown continually
with white men, and as a man he had elected to cast his fortunes with
them, expatriating himself, once and for all, from his own people. Even
then, respecting, almost venerating their power, and pondering over it,
he had yet to divine its secret essence--the honor and the law. And it
was only by the cumulative evidence of years that he had finally come
to understand. Being an alien, when he did know, he knew it better than
the white man himself; being an Indian, he had achieved the impossible.
And of these things had been bred a certain contempt for his own
people--a contempt which he had made it a custom to conceal, but which
now burst forth in a polyglot whirlwind of curses upon the heads of
Kah-Chucte and Gowhee. They cringed before him like a brace of snarling
wolf dogs, too cowardly to spring, too wolfish to cover their fangs.
They were not handsome creatures. Neither was Sitka Charley. All three
were frightful-looking. There was no flesh to their faces; their
cheekbones were massed with hideous scabs which had cracked and frozen
alternately under the intense frost; while their eyes burned luridly
with the light which is born of desperation and hunger. Men so
situated, beyond the pale of the honor and the law, are not to be
trusted. Sitka Charley knew this; and this was why he had forced them
to abandon their rifles with the rest of the camp outfit ten days
before. His rifle and Captain Eppingwell's were the only ones that
remained.
'Come, get a fire started,' he commanded, drawing out the precious
matchbox with its attendant strips of dry birchbark.
The two Indians fell sullenly to the task of gathering dead branches
and underwood. They were weak and paused often, catching themselves, in
the act of stooping, with giddy motions, or staggering to the center of
operations with their knees shaking like castanets.
After each trip they rested for a moment, as though sick and deadly
weary. At times their eyes took on the patient stoicism of dumb
suffering; and again the ego seemed almost burst forth with its wild
cry, 'I, I, I want to exist!'--the dominant note of the whole living
universe.
A light breath of air blew from the south, nipping the exposed portions
of their bodies and driving the frost, in needles of fire, through fur
and flesh to the bones. So, when the fire had grown lusty and thawed a
damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka Charley forced his reluctant
comrades to lend a hand in pitching a fly. It was a primitive affair,
merely a blanket stretched parallel with the fire and to windward of
it, at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees. This shut out the chill
wind and threw the heat backward and down upon those who were to huddle
in its shelter. Then a layer of green spruce boughs were spread, that
their bodies might not come in contact with the snow. When this task
was completed, Kah-Chucte and Gowhee proceeded to take care of their
feet. Their icebound moccasins were sadly worn by much travel, and the
sharp ice of the river jams had cut them to rags.
Their Siwash socks were similarly conditioned, and when these had been
thawed and removed, the dead-white tips of the toes, in the various
stages of mortification, told their simple tale of the trail.
Leaving the two to the drying of their footgear, Sitka Charley turned
back over the course he had come. He, too, had a mighty longing to sit
by the fire and tend his complaining flesh, but the honor and the law
forbade. He toiled painfully over the frozen field, each step a
protest, every muscle in revolt. Several times, where the open water
between the jams had recently crusted, he was forced to miserably
accelerate his movements as the fragile footing swayed and threatened
beneath him. In such places death was quick and easy; but it was not
his desire to endure no more.
His deepening anxiety vanished as two Indians dragged into view round a
bend in the river. They staggered and panted like men under heavy
burdens; yet the packs on their backs were a matter of but a few
pounds. He questioned them eagerly, and their replies seemed to relieve
him. He hurried on. Next came two white men, supporting between them a
woman. They also behaved as though drunken, and their limbs shook with
weakness. But the woman leaned lightly upon them, choosing to carry
herself forward with her own strength. At the sight of her a flash of
joy cast its fleeting light across Sitka Charley's face. He cherished a
very great regard for Mrs. Eppingwell. He had seen many white women,
but this was the first to travel the trail with him. When Captain
Eppingwell proposed the hazardous undertaking and made him an offer for
his services, he had shaken his head gravely; for it was an unknown
journey through the dismal vastnesses of the Northland, and he knew it
to be of the kind that try to the uttermost the souls of men.
But when he learned that the captain's wife was to accompany them, he
had refused flatly to have anything further to do with it. Had it been
a woman of his own race he would have harbored no objections; but these
women of the Southland--no, no, they were too soft, too tender, for
such enterprises.
Sitka Charley did not know this kind of woman. Five minutes before, he
did not even dream of taking charge of the expedition; but when she
came to him with her wonderful smile and her straight clean English,
and talked to the point, without pleading or persuading, he had
incontinently yielded. Had there been a softness and appeal to mercy in
the eyes, a tremble to the voice, a taking advantage of sex, he would
have stiffened to steel; instead her clear-searching eyes and
clear-ringing voice, her utter frankness and tacit assumption of
equality, had robbed him of his reason. He felt, then, that this was a
new breed of woman; and ere they had been trail mates for many days he
knew why the sons of such women mastered the land and the sea, and why
the sons of his own womankind could not prevail against them. Tender
and soft! Day after day he watched her, muscle-weary, exhausted,
indomitable, and the words beat in upon him in a perennial refrain.
Tender and soft! He knew her feet had been born to easy paths and sunny
lands, strangers to the moccasined pain of the North, unkissed by the
chill lips of the frost, and he watched and marveled at them twinkling
ever through the weary day.
She had always a smile and a word of cheer, from which not even the
meanest packer was excluded. As the way grew darker she seemed to
stiffen and gather greater strength, and when Kah-Chucte and Gowhee,
who had bragged that they knew every landmark of the way as a child did
the skin bails of the tepee, acknowledged that they knew not where they
were, it was she who raised a forgiving voice amid the curses of the
men. She had sung to them that night till they felt the weariness fall
from them and were ready to face the future with fresh hope. And when
the food failed and each scant stint was measured jealously, she it was
who rebelled against the machinations of her husband and Sitka Charley,
and demanded and received a share neither greater nor less than that of
the others.
Sitka Charley was proud to know this woman. A new richness, a greater
breadth, had come into his life with her presence. Hitherto he had been
his own mentor, had turned to right or left at no man's beck; he had
moulded himself according to his own dictates, nourished his manhood
regardless of all save his own opinion. For the first time he had felt
a call from without for the best that was in him, just a glance of
appreciation from the clear-searching eyes, a word of thanks from the
clear-ringing voice, just a slight wreathing of the lips in the
wonderful smile, and he walked with the gods for hours to come. It was
a new stimulant to his manhood; for the first time he thrilled with a
conscious pride in his wisdom of the trail; and between the twain they
ever lifted the sinking hearts of their comrades. The faces of the two
men and the woman brightened as they saw him, for after all he was the
staff they leaned upon. But Sitka Charley, rigid as was his wont,
concealing pain and pleasure impartially beneath an iron exterior,
asked them the welfare of the rest, told the distance to the fire, and
continued on the back-trip.
Next he met a single Indian, unburdened, limping, lips compressed, and
eyes set with the pain of a foot in which the quick fought a losing
battle with the dead. All possible care had been taken of him, but in
the last extremity the weak and unfortunate must perish, and Sitka
Charley deemed his days to be few. The man could not keep up for long,
so he gave him rough cheering words. After that came two more Indians,
to whom he had allotted the task of helping along Joe, the third white
man of the party. They had deserted him. Sitka Charley saw at a glance
the lurking spring in their bodies, and knew they had at last cast off
his mastery. So he was not taken unawares when he ordered them back in
quest of their abandoned charge, and saw the gleam of the hunting
knives that they drew from the sheaths. A pitiful spectacle, three weak
men lifting their puny strength in the face of the mighty vastness; but
the two recoiled under the fierce rifle blows of the one and returned
like beaten dogs to the leash. Two hours later, with Joe reeling
between them and Sitka Charley bringing up the rear, they came to the
fire, where the remainder of the expedition crouched in the shelter of
the fly.
'A few words, my comrades, before we sleep,' Sitka Charley said after
they had devoured their slim rations of unleavened bread. He was
speaking to the Indians in their own tongue, having already given the
import to the whites. 'A few words, my comrades, for your own good,
that ye may yet perchance live. I shall give you the law; on his own
head by the death of him that breaks it. We have passed the Hills of
Silence, and we now travel the head reaches of the Stuart. It may be
one sleep, it may be several, it may be many sleeps, but in time we
shall come among the men of the Yukon, who have much grub. It were well
that we look to the law. Today Kah-Chucte and Gowhee, whom I commanded
to break trail, forgot they were men, and like frightened children ran
away.
'True, they forgot; so let us forget. But hereafter, let them remember.
If it should happen they do not...' He touched his rifle carelessly,
grimly. 'Tomorrow they shall carry the flour and see that the white man
Joe lies not down by the trail. The cups of flour are counted; should
so much as an ounce be wanting at nightfall... Do ye understand? Today
there were others that forgot. Moose Head and Three Salmon left the
white man Joe to lie in the snow. Let them forget no more. With the
light of day shall they go forth and break trail. Ye have heard the
law. Look well, lest ye break it.' Sitka Charley found it beyond him to
keep the line close up. From Moose Head and Three Salmon, who broke
trail in advance, to Kah-Chucte, Gowhee, and Joe, it straggled out over
a mile. Each staggered, fell or rested as he saw fit.
The line of march was a progression through a chain of irregular halts.
Each drew upon the last remnant of his strength and stumbled onward
till it was expended, but in some miraculous way there was always
another last remnant. Each time a man fell it was with the firm belief
that he would rise no more; yet he did rise, and again and again. The
flesh yielded, the will conquered; but each triumph was a tragedy. The
Indian with the frozen foot, no longer erect, crawled forward on hand
and knee. He rarely rested, for he knew the penalty exacted by the
frost.
Even Mrs. Eppingwell's lips were at last set in a stony smile, and her
eyes, seeing, saw not. Often she stopped, pressing a mittened hand to
her heart, gasping and dizzy.
Joe, the white man, had passed beyond the stage of suffering. He no
longer begged to be let alone, prayed to die; but was soothed and
content under the anodyne of delirium. Kah-Chucte and Gowhee dragged
him on roughly, venting upon him many a savage glance or blow. To them
it was the acme of injustice.
Their hearts were bitter with hate, heavy with fear. Why should they
cumber their strength with his weakness? To do so meant death; not to
do so--and they remembered the law of Sitka Charley, and the rifle.
Joe fell with greater frequency as the daylight waned, and so hard was
he to raise that they dropped farther and farther behind. Sometimes all
three pitched into the snow, so weak had the Indians become. Yet on
their backs was life, and strength, and warmth.
Within the flour sacks were all the potentialities of existence. They
could not but think of this, and it was not strange, that which came to
pass. They had fallen by the side of a great timber jam where a
thousand cords of firewood waited the match. Near by was an air hole
through the ice. Kah-Chucte looked on the wood and the water, as did
Gowhee; then they looked at each other.
Never a word was spoken. Gowhee struck a fire; Kah-Chucte filled a tin
cup with water and heated it; Joe babbled of things in another land, in
a tongue they did not understand.
They mixed flour with the warm water till it was a thin paste, and of
this they drank many cups. They did not offer any to Joe; but he did
not mind. He did not mind anything, not even his moccasins, which
scorched and smoked among the coals.
A crystal mist of snow fell about them, softly, caressingly, wrapping
them in clinging robes of white. And their feet would have yet trod
many trails had not destiny brushed the clouds aside and cleared the
air. Nay, ten minutes' delay would have been salvation.
Sitka Charley, looking back, saw the pillared smoke of their fire, and
guessed. And he looked ahead at those who were faithful, and at Mrs.
Eppingwell. 'So, my good comrades, ye have again forgotten that you
were men? Good! Very good. There will be fewer bellies to feed.' Sitka
Charley retied the flour as he spoke, strapping the pack to the one on
his own back. He kicked Joe till the pain broke through the poor
devil's bliss and brought him doddering to his feet. Then he shoved him
out upon the trail and started him on his way. The two Indians
attempted to slip off.
'Hold, Gowhee! And thou, too, Kah-Chucte! Hath the flour given such
strength to thy legs that they may outrun the swift-winged lead? Think
not to cheat the law. Be men for the last time, and be content that ye
die full-stomached.
Come, step up, back to the timber, shoulder to shoulder. Come!' The two
men obeyed, quietly, without fear; for it is the future which pressed
upon the man, not the present.
'Thou, Gowhee, hast a wife and children and a deerskin lodge in the
Chipewyan. What is thy will in the matter?' 'Give thou her of the goods
which are mine by the word of the captain--the blankets, the beads, the
tobacco, the box which makes strange sounds after the manner of the
white men. Say that I did die on the trail, but say not how.' 'And
thou, Kah-Chucte, who hast nor wife nor child?' 'Mine is a sister, the
wife of the factor at Koshim. He beats her, and she is not happy. Give
thou her the goods which are mine by the contract, and tell her it were
well she go back to her own people. Shouldst thou meet the man, and be
so minded, it were a good deed that he should die. He beats her, and
she is afraid.' 'Are ye content to die by the law?' 'We are.' 'Then
good-bye, my good comrades. May ye sit by the well-filled pot, in warm
lodges, ere the day is done.' As he spoke he raised his rifle, and many
echoes broke the silence. Hardly had they died away when other rifles
spoke in the distance. Sitka Charley started.
There had been more than one shot, yet there was but one other rifle in
the party.
He gave a fleeting glance at the men who lay so quietly, smiled
viciously at the wisdom of the trail, and hurried on to meet the men of
the Yukon.