The Colonel interrupted him, "That"s right!"
"Only if I do, you"ve got to know--what I"d never have guessed myself, but for the Trail. After I"ve told you, if you can bear to see me round----" He hesitated and suddenly stood up, his eyes still wet, but his head so high an onlooker who did not understand English would have called the governing impulse pride, defiance even. "It seems I"m the kind of man, Colonel--the kind of man who could leave his pardner to die like a dog in the snow."
"If any other fella said so, I"d knock him down."
"That night before we got to Snow Camp, when you wouldn"t--couldn"t go any farther, I meant to go and leave you--take the sled, and take--I guess I meant to take everything and leave you to starve."
They looked into each other"s faces, and years seemed to go by. The Colonel was the first to drop his eyes; but the other, pitilessly, like a judge arraigning a felon, his steady scrutiny never flinching: "Do you want that kind of a man round, Colonel?"
The Kentuckian turned quickly as if to avoid the stab of the other"s eye, and sat hunched together, elbows on knees, head in hands.
"I knew you didn"t." The Boy answered his own question. He limped over to his side of the tent, picked up some clothes, his blanket and few belongings, and made a pack. Not a word, not a sound, but some birds twittering outside in the sun and a locust making that frying sound in the fire-weed. The pack was slung on the Boy"s back, and he was throwing the diamond hitch to fasten it when the Colonel at last looked round.
"Lord, what you doin"?"
"Guess I"m goin" on."
"Where?"
"I"ll write you when I know; maybe I"ll even send you what I owe you, but I don"t feel like boastin" at the moment. Nig!"
"You can"t walk."
"Did you never happen to notice that one-legged fella pluggin" about Dawson?"
He had gone down on his hands and knees to see if Nig was asleep under the camp-bed. The Colonel got up, went to the door, and let down the flap. When he turned, the traveller and the dog were at his elbow. He squared his big frame at the entrance, looking down at the two, tried to speak, but the Boy broke in: "Don"t let"s get sentimental, Colonel; just stand aside."
Never stirring, he found a voice to say, "I"m not askin" you to stay"--the other turned and whistled, for Nig had retired again to the seclusion of the gray blanket screen--"I only want to tell you something before you go."
The Boy frowned a little, but rested his pack against the table in that way in which the Klond.y.k.er learns to make a chair-back of his burden.
"You seem to think you"ve been tellin" me news," said the Colonel.
"When you said that about goin" on, the night before we got to Snow Camp, I knew you simply meant you still intended to come out alive. I had thrown up my hands--at least, I thought I had. The only difference between us--I had given in and you hadn"t."
The other shook his head. "There was a lot more in it than that."
"You meant to take the only means there were--to carry off the sled that I couldn"t pull any farther----" The Boy looked up quickly.
Something stern and truth-compelling in the dark face forced the Colonel to add: "And along with the sled you meant to carry off--the--the things that meant life to us."
"Just that----" The Boy knotted his brown fingers in Nig"s hair as if to keep tight hold of one friend in the wreck.
"We couldn"t divide," the Colonel hurried on. "It was a case of crawlin" on together, and, maybe, come out alive, or part and one die sure."
The Boy nodded, tightening his lips.
"I knew well enough you"d fight for the off-chance. But"--the Colonel came away from the door and stood in front of his companion--"so would I. I hadn"t really given up the struggle."
"You were past strugglin", and I would have left you sick----"
"You wouldn"t have left me--if I"d had my gun."
The Boy remembered that he had more than suspected that at the time, but the impression had by-and-by waxed dim. It was too utterly unlike the Colonel--a thing dreamed. He had grown as ashamed of the dream as of the thing he knew was true. The egotism of memory absorbed itself in the part he himself had played--that other, an evil fancy born of an evil time. And here was the Colonel saying it was true. The Boy dropped his eyes. It had all happened in the night. There was something in the naked truth too ghastly for the day. But the Colonel went on in a harsh whisper:
"I looked round for my gun; if I"d found it I"d have left you behind."
And the Boy kept looking down at Nig, and the birds sang, and the locust whirred, and the hot sun filled the tent as high-tide flushes a sea-cave.
"You"ve been a little hard on me, Boy, bringin" it up like this--remindin" me--I wouldn"t have gone on myself, and makin" me admit----"
"No, no, Colonel."
"Makin" me admit that before I would have let you go on I"d have shot you!"
"Colonel!" He loosed his hold of Nig.
"I rather reckon I owe you my life--and something else besides"--the Colonel laid one hand on the thin shoulder where the pack-strap pressed, and closed the other hand tight over his pardner"s right--"and I hadn"t meant even to thank you neither."
"Don"t, for the Lord"s sake, don"t!" said the younger, and neither dared look at the other.
A scratching on the canvas, the Northern knock at the door.
"You fellers sound awake?"
A woman"s voice. Under his breath, "Who the devil"s that?" inquired the Colonel, brushing his hand over his eyes. Before he got across the tent Maudie had pushed the flap aside and put in her head.
"h.e.l.lo!"
"h.e.l.l-o! How d"e do?"
He shook hands, and the younger man nodded, "h.e.l.lo."
"When did you come to town?" asked the Colonel mendaciously.
"Why, nearly three weeks ago, on the Weare. Heard you had skipped out to Sulphur with MacCann. I had some business out that way, so that"s where I been."
"Have some breakfast, won"t you--dinner, I mean?"
"I put that job through at the Road House. Got to rustle around now and get my tent up. Where"s a good place?"
"Well, I--I hardly know. Goin" to stay some time?"
"Depends."
The Boy slipped off his pack.
"They"ve got rooms at the Gold Belt," he said.
"You mean that Dance Hall up at the Forks?"