Part I
Chapter I
The Trail of the Meat
Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadnessâa laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sledâblankets, an axe, and a coffee pot and frying pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.
In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over,âa man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission manâman who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.
But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.
They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies. On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and interplay of the great blind elements and forces.
An hour went by, and a second hour. The pale light of the short sunless day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note, where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away. It might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness. The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, across the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other.
A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness. Both men located the sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow expanse they had just traversed. A third and answering cry arose, also to the rear and to the left of the second cry.
âTheyâre after us, Bill,â said the man at the front.
His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent effort.
âMeat is scarce,â answered his comrade. âI ainât seen a rabbit sign for days.â
Thereafter they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for the hunting-cries that continued to rise behind them.
At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin, at the side of the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination to stray off into the darkness.
âSeems to me, Henry, theyâre stayinâ remarkable close to camp,â Bill commented.
Henry, squatting over the fire and settling the pot of coffee with a piece of ice, nodded. Nor did he speak till he had taken his seat on the coffin and begun to eat.
âThey know where their hides is safe,â he said. âTheyâd sooner eat grub than be grub. Theyâre pretty wise, them dogs.â
Bill shook his head. âOh, I donât know.â
His comrade looked at him curiously. âFirst time I ever heard you say anything about their not beinâ wise.â
âHenry,â said the other, munching with deliberation the beans he was eating, âdid you happen to notice the way them dogs kicked up when I was a-feedinâ âem?â
âThey did cut up moreân usual,â Henry acknowledged.
âHow many dogs âve we got, Henry?â
âSix.â
âWell, Henry . . .â Bill stopped for a moment, in order that his words might gain greater significance. âAs I was sayinâ, Henry, weâve got six dogs. I took six fish out of the bag. I gave one fish to each dog, anâ, Henry, I was one fish short.â
âYou counted wrong.â
âWeâve got six dogs,â the other reiterated dispassionately. âI took out six fish. One Ear didnât get no fish. I came back to the bag afterward anâ got âm his fish.â
âWeâve only got six dogs,â Henry said.
âHenry,â Bill went on. âI wonât say they was all dogs, but there was seven of âm that got fish.â
Henry stopped eating to glance across the fire and count the dogs.
âThereâs only six now,â he said.
âI saw the other one run off across the snow,â Bill announced with cool positiveness. âI saw seven.â
Henry looked at him commiseratingly, and said, âIâll be almighty glad when this tripâs over.â
âWhat dâye mean by that?â Bill demanded.
âI mean that this load of ourn is gettinâ on your nerves, anâ that youâre beginninâ to see things.â
âI thought of that,â Bill answered gravely. âAnâ so, when I saw it run off across the snow, I looked in the snow anâ saw its tracks. Then I counted the dogs anâ there was still six of âem. The tracks is there in the snow now. Dâye want to look at âem? Iâll show âem to you.â
Henry did not reply, but munched on in silence, until, the meal finished, he topped it with a final cup of coffee. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said:
âThen youâre thinkinâ as it wasââ
A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere in the darkness, had interrupted him. He stopped to listen to it, then he finished his sentence with a wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry, ââone of them?â
Bill nodded. âIâd a blame sight sooner think that than anything else. You noticed yourself the row the dogs made.â
Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a bedlam. From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their fear by huddling together and so close to the fire that their hair was scorched by the heat. Bill threw on more wood, before lighting his pipe.
âIâm thinking youâre down in the mouth some,â Henry said.
âHenry . . .â He sucked meditatively at his pipe for some time before he went on. âHenry, I was a-thinkinâ what a blame sight luckier he is than you anâ meâll ever be.â
He indicated the third person by a downward thrust of the thumb to the box on which they sat.
âYou anâ me, Henry, when we die, weâll be lucky if we get enough stones over our carcasses to keep the dogs off of us.â
âBut we ainât got people anâ money anâ all the rest, like him,â Henry rejoined. âLong-distance funerals is somethinâ you anâ me canât exactly afford.â
âWhat gets me, Henry, is what a chap like this, thatâs a lord or something in his own country, and thatâs never had to bother about grub nor blankets; why he comes a-buttinâ round the Godforsaken ends of the earthâthatâs what I canât exactly see.â
âHe might have lived to a ripe old age if heâd stayed at home,â Henry agreed.
Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, he pointed towards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every side. There was no suggestion of form in the utter blackness; only could be seen a pair of eyes gleaming like live coals. Henry indicated with his head a second pair, and a third. A circle of the gleaming eyes had drawn about their camp. Now and again a pair of eyes moved, or disappeared to appear again a moment later.
The unrest of the dogs had been increasing, and they stampeded, in a surge of sudden fear, to the near side of the fire, cringing and crawling about the legs of the men. In the scramble one of the dogs had been overturned on the edge of the fire, and it had yelped with pain and fright as the smell of its singed coat possessed the air. The commotion caused the circle of eyes to shift restlessly for a moment and even to withdraw a bit, but it settled down again as the dogs became quiet.
âHenry, itâs a blame misfortune to be out of ammunition.â
Bill had finished his pipe and was helping his companion to spread the bed of fur and blanket upon the spruce boughs which he had laid over the snow before supper. Henry grunted, and began unlacing his moccasins.
âHow many cartridges did you say you had left?â he asked.
âThree,â came the answer. âAnâ I wisht âtwas three hundred. Then Iâd show âem what for, damn âem!â
He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to prop his moccasins before the fire.
âAnâ I wisht this cold snapâd break,â he went on. âItâs ben fifty below for two weeks now. Anâ I wisht Iâd never started on this trip, Henry. I donât like the looks of it. I donât feel right, somehow. Anâ while Iâm wishinâ, I wisht the trip was over anâ done with, anâ you anâ me a-sittinâ by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now anâ playing cribbageâthatâs what I wisht.â
Henry grunted and crawled into bed. As he dozed off he was aroused by his comradeâs voice.
âSay, Henry, that other one that come in anâ got a fishâwhy didnât the dogs pitch into it? Thatâs whatâs botherinâ me.â
âYouâre botherinâ too much, Bill,â came the sleepy response. âYou was never like this before. You jesâ shut up now, anâ go to sleep, anâ youâll be all hunkydory in the morninâ. Your stomachâs sour, thatâs whatâs botherinâ you.â
The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side, under the one covering. The fire died down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer the circle they had flung about the camp. The dogs clustered together in fear, now and again snarling menacingly as a pair of eyes drew close. Once their uproar became so loud that Bill woke up. He got out of bed carefully, so as not to disturb the sleep of his comrade, and threw more wood on the fire. As it began to flame up, the circle of eyes drew farther back. He glanced casually at the huddling dogs. He rubbed his eyes and looked at them more sharply. Then he crawled back into the blankets.
âHenry,â he said. âOh, Henry.â
Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking, and demanded, âWhatâs wrong now?â
âNothinâ,â came the answer; âonly thereâs seven of âem again. I just counted.â
Henry acknowledged receipt of the information with a grunt that slid into a snore as he drifted back into sleep.
In the morning it was Henry who awoke first and routed his companion out of bed. Daylight was yet three hours away, though it was already six oâclock; and in the darkness Henry went about preparing breakfast, while Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing.
âSay, Henry,â he asked suddenly, âhow many dogs did you say we had?â
âSix.â
âWrong,â Bill proclaimed triumphantly.
âSeven again?â Henry queried.
âNo, five; oneâs gone.â
âThe hell!â Henry cried in wrath, leaving the cooking to come and count the dogs.
âYouâre right, Bill,â he concluded. âFattyâs gone.â
âAnâ he went like greased lightninâ once he got started. Couldnât âve seen âm for smoke.â
âNo chance at all,â Henry concluded. âThey jesâ swallowed âm alive. I bet he was yelpinâ as he went down their throats, damn âem!â
âHe always was a fool dog,â said Bill.
âBut no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off anâ commit suicide that way.â He looked over the remainder of the team with a speculative eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal. âI bet none of the others would do it.â
âCouldnât drive âem away from the fire with a club,â Bill agreed. âI always did think there was somethinâ wrong with Fatty anyway.â
And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trailâless scant than the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.
Chapter II
The She-Wolf
Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled, the men turned their backs on the cheery fire and launched out into the darkness. At once began to rise the cries that were fiercely sadâcries that called through the darkness and cold to one another and answered back. Conversation ceased. Daylight came at nine oâclock. At midday the sky to the south warmed to rose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the earth intervened between the meridian sun and the northern world. But the rose-colour swiftly faded. The grey light of day that remained lasted until three oâclock, when it, too, faded, and the pall of the Arctic night descended upon the lone and silent land.
As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew closerâso close that more than once they sent surges of fear through the toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.
At the conclusion of one such panic, when he and Henry had got the dogs back in the traces, Bill said:
âI wisht theyâd strike game somewheres, anâ go away anâ leave us alone.â
âThey do get on the nerves horrible,â Henry sympathised.
They spoke no more until camp was made.
Henry was bending over and adding ice to the babbling pot of beans when he was startled by the sound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a sharp snarling cry of pain from among the dogs. He straighte...