"Got the axe? Let her down."
The night was bright with moonlight when the Boy stood again on the top of the bluff.
"Humph!" says the Colonel, with agreeable antic.i.p.ation; "you"ll be glad to camp for a few days after this, I reckon."
"Reckon I won"t."
In their colossal fatigue they slept the clock round; their watches run down, their sense of the very date blurred. Since the Colonel had made the last laconic entry in the journal--was it three days or two--or twenty?
In spite of a sensation as of many broken bones, the Boy put on the Colonel"s snow-shoes, and went off looking along the foot of the cliff for his own. No luck, but he brought back some birch-bark and a handful of willow-withes, and set about making a rude subst.i.tute.
Before they had despatched breakfast the great red moon arose, so it was not morning, but evening. So much the better. The crust would be firmer. The moon was full; it was bright enough to travel, and travel they must.
"No!" said the Colonel, with a touch of his old pompous authority, "we"ll wait awhile."
The Boy simply pointed to the flour-bag. There wasn"t a good handful left.
They ate supper, studiously avoiding each other"s eyes. In the background of the Boy"s mind: "He saved my life, but he ran no risk....
And I saved his. We"re quits." In the Colonel"s, vague, insistent, stirred the thought, "I might have left him there to rot, half-way up the precipice. Oh, he"d go! _And he"d take the sled_! No!" His vanished strength flowed back upon a tide of rage. Only one sleeping-bag, one kettle, one axe, one pair of snow-shoes ... _one gun_! No, by the living Lord! not while I have a gun. Where"s my gun? He looked about guiltily, under his lowered lids. What? No! Yes! It was gone! Who packed at the last camp? Why, he--himself, and he"d left it behind.
"Then it was because I didn"t see it; the Boy took care I shouldn"t see it! Very likely he buried it so that I shouldn"t see it! He--yes--if I refuse to go on, he----"
And the Boy, seeing without looking, taking in every move, every shade in the mood of the broken-spirited man, ready to die here, like a dog, in the snow, instead of pressing on as long as he could crawl--the Boy, in a fever of silent rage, called him that "meanest word in the language--a quitter." And as, surrept.i.tiously, he took in the vast discouragement of the older man, there was nothing in the Boy"s changed heart to say, "Poor fellow! if he can"t go on, I"ll stay and die with him"; but only, "He"s _got_ to go on! ... and if he refuses ...
well----" He felt about in his deadened brain, and the best he could bring forth was: "I won"t leave him--_yet_."
A mighty river-jam had forced them up on the low range of hills. It was about midnight to judge by the moon--clear of snow and the wind down.
The Boy straightened up at a curious sight just below them. Something black in the moonlight. The Colonel paused, looked down, and pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes.
The Boy had seen the thing first, and had said to himself, "Looks like a sled, but it"s a vision. It"s come to seeing things now."
When he saw the Colonel stop and stare, he threw down his rope and began to laugh, for there below were the blackened remains of a big fire, silhouetted sharply on the snow.
"Looks like we"ve come to a camp, Boss!"
He hadn"t called the Colonel by the old nickname for many a day. He stood there laughing in an idiotic kind of way, wrapping his stiff hands in his parki, Indian fashion, and looking down to the level of the ancient river terrace, where the weather-stained old Indian sled was sharply etched on the moonlit whiteness.
Just a sled lying in the moonlight. But the change that can be wrought in a man"s heart upon sight of a human sign! it may be idle to speak of that to any but those who have travelled the desolate ways of the North.
Side by side the two went down the slope, slid and slipped and couldn"t stop themselves, till they were below the landmark. Looking up, they saw that a piece of soiled canvas or a skin, held down with a drift-log, fell from under the sled, portiere-wise from the top of the terrace, straight down to the sheltered level, where the camp fire had been. Coming closer, they saw the curtain was not canvas, but dressed deerskin.
"Indians!" said the Colonel.
But with the rubbing out of other distinctions this, too, was curiously faint. Just so there were human beings it seemed enough. Within four feet of the deerskin door the Colonel stopped, shot through by a sharp misgiving. What was behind? A living man"s camp, or a dead man"s tomb?
Succour, or some stark picture of defeat, and of their own oncoming doom?
The Colonel stood stock-still waiting for the Boy. For the first time in many days even he hung back. He seemed to lack the courage to be the one to extinguish hope by the mere drawing of a curtain from a snow-drift"s face. The Kentuckian pulled himself together and went forward. He lifted his hand to the deerskin, but his fingers shook so he couldn"t take hold:
"h.e.l.lo!" he called. No sound. Again: "h.e.l.lo!"
"Who"s there?"
The two outside turned and looked into each other"s faces--but if you want to know all the moment meant, you must travel the Winter Trail.
CHAPTER XIV
KURILLA
"And I swear to you Athenians--by the dog I swear!--for I must tell you the truth----."--SOCRATES.
The voice that had asked the question belonged to one of two stranded Klond.y.k.ers, as it turned out, who had burrowed a hole in the snow and faced it with drift-wood. They had plenty of provisions, enough to spare, and meant to stay here till the steamers ran, for the younger of the pair had frosted his feet and was crippled.
The last of their dogs had been frozen to death a few miles back on the trail, and they had no idea, apparently, how near they were to that "first Indian settlement this side of Kaltag" reached by the Colonel and the Boy after two days of rest and one day of travel.
No one ever sailed more joyfully into the Bay of Naples, or saw with keener rapture Constantinople"s mosques and minarets arise, than did these ice-armoured travellers, rounding the sharp bend in the river, sight the huts and hear the dogs howl on the farther sh.o.r.e.
"First thing I do, sah, is to speculate in a dog-team," said the Colonel.
Most of the bucks were gone off hunting, and most of the dogs were with them. Only three left in the village--but they were wonderful fellows those three! Where were they? Well, the old man you see before you, "_me_--got two."
He led the way behind a little shack, a troop of children following, and there were two wolf-dogs, not in the best condition, one reddish, with a white face and white forelegs, the other grey with a black splotch on his chest and a white one on his back.
"How much?"
"Fiftee dolla."
"And this one?"
"Fiftee dolla." As the Colonel hesitated, the old fellow added: "Bohf eightee dolla."
"Oh, eightee for the two?"
He nodded.
"Well, where"s the other?"
"Hein?"
"The other--the third dog. Two are no good."