The way led steeply up through deep, powdery snow that was unmarred by sled-track or moccasin impression. Smoke, in the lead, pressed the fragile crystals down under his fat, short snow-shoes. The task required lungs and muscle, and he flung himself into it with all his strength. Behind, on the surface he packed, strained the string of six dogs, the steam-jets of their breathing their and the lowness of the temperature. Between the wheel-dog and the sled Shorty, his weight divided between the guiding gee-pole and the haul, for he was pulling with the dogs. Every half-hour he and Smoke exchanged places, for the snow-shoe work was even more than that of the gee-pole.
The whole was fresh and strong. It was merely hard work being done—the breaking of a midwinter trail across a divide. On this severe stretch, ten miles a day they called a decent . They kept in condition, but each night crawled well tired into their sleeping-furs. This was their sixth day out from the lively camp of Mucluc on the Yukon. In two days, with the loaded sled, they had covered the fifty miles of packed trail up Moose . Then had come the struggle with the four feet of untouched snow that was really not snow, but frost-crystals, so lacking in that when kicked it flew with the thin of granulated sugar. In three days they had wallowed thirty miles up Minnow Creek and across the series of low divides that separate the several flowing south into Siwash River; and now they were breasting the big divide, past the Bald Buttes, where the way would lead them down Creek to the middle reaches of Milk River. Higher up Milk River, it was fairly , were deposits of . And this was their goal—a hill of pure copper, half a mile to the right and up the first creek after Milk River issued from a deep to flow across a heavily timbered stretch of bottom. They would know it when they saw it. One-Eyed McCarthy had described it with sharp definiteness. It was impossible to miss it—unless McCarthy had lied.
Smoke was in the lead, and the small spruce-trees were becoming scarcer and smaller, when he saw one, dead and bone-dry, that stood in their path. There was no need for speech. His glance to Shorty was acknowledged by a “Whoa!” The dogs stood in the traces till they saw Shorty begin to the sled-lashings and Smoke attack the dead spruce with an ax; whereupon the animals dropped in the snow and curled into balls, the bush of each tail curved to cover four padded feet and an ice-rimmed .
The men worked with the quickness of long practice. Gold-pan, coffee-pot, and cooking-pail were soon the heaped frost-crystals into water. Smoke extracted a stick of beans from the sled. Already cooked, with a generous admixture of cubes of fat pork and bacon, the beans had been frozen into this portable immediacy. He chopped off with an ax, as if it were so much firewood, and put them into the frying-pan to . Solidly frozen sourdough biscuits were likewise placed to thaw. In twenty minutes from the time they halted, the meal was ready to eat.
“About forty below,” Shorty through a mouthful of beans. “Say—I hope it don't get colder—or warmer, neither. It's just right for trail breaking.”
Smoke did not answer. His own mouth full of beans, his working, he had chanced to glance at the lead-dog, lying half a dozen feet away. That gray and frosty wolf was gazing at him with the infinite wistfulness and that and so often in the eyes of Northland dogs. Smoke knew it well, but never got over the unfathomable wonder of it. As if to shake off the hypnotism, he set down his plate and coffee-cup, went to the sled, and began opening the dried-fish sack.
“Hey!” Shorty expostulated. “What 'r' you doin'?”
“Breaking all law, custom, , and trail usage,” Smoke replied. “I'm going to feed the dogs in the middle of the day—just this once. They've worked hard, and that last pull to the top of the divide is before them. Besides, Bright there has been talking to me, telling me all untellable things with those eyes of his.”
Shorty laughed skeptically. “Go on an' spoil 'em. Pretty soon you'll be manicurin' their nails. I'd recommend cold cream and electric massage—it's great for sled-dogs. And sometimes a Turkish bath does 'em fine.”
“I've never done it before,” Smoke defended. “And I won't again. But this once I'm going to. It's just a , I guess.”
“Oh, if it's a , go to it.” Shorty's tones showed how immediately he had been mollified. “A man's always got to follow his .”
“It isn't a hunch, Shorty. Bright just sort of got on my imagination for a couple of twists. He told me more in one minute with those eyes of his than I could read in the books in a thousand years. His eyes were acrawl with the secrets of life. They were just squirming and there. The trouble is I almost got them, and then I didn't. I'm no wiser than I was before, but I was near them.” He paused and then added, “I can't tell you, but that dog's eyes were just spilling over with cues to what life is, and evolution, and star-dust, and cosmic sap, and all the rest—everything.”
“Boiled down into simple American, you got a hunch,” Shorty insisted.
Smoke finished tossing the dried , one to each dog, and shook his head.
“I tell you yes,” Shorty argued. “Smoke, it's a sure hunch. Something's goin' to happen before the day is out. You'll see. And them dried fish'll have a bearin'.”
“You've got to show me,” said Smoke.
“No, I ain't. The day'll take care of itself an' show you. Now listen to what I'm tellin' you. I got a hunch myself out of your hunch. I'll bet eleven ounces against three ornery toothpicks I'm right. When I get a hunch I ain't a-scared to ride it.”
“You bet the toothpicks, and I'll bet the ounces,” Smoke returned.
“Nope. That'd be plain robbery. I win. I know a hunch when it me. Before the day's out somethin' 'll happen, an' them fish'll have a meanin'.”
“Hell,” said Smoke, dismissing the discussion contemptuously.
“An' it'll be hell,” Shorty came back. “An' I'll take three more toothpicks with you on them same that it'll be sure-enough hell.”
“Done,” said Smoke.
“I win,” Shorty . “Chicken-feather toothpicks for mine.”
An hour later they cleared the divide, dipped down past the Bald Buttes through a sharp elbow-canyon, and took the steep open slope that dropped into Porcupine Creek. Shorty, in the lead, stopped , and Smoke whoaed the dogs. Beneath them, coming up, was a procession of humans, scattered and draggled, a quarter of a mile long.
“They move like it was a funeral,” Shorty .
“They've no dogs,” said Smoke.
“Yep; there's a couple of men pullin' on a sled.”
“See that fellow fall down? There's something the matter, Shorty, and there must be two hundred of them.”
“Look at 'em stagger as if they was soused. There goes another.”
“It's a whole tribe. There are children there.”
“Smoke, I win,” Shorty proclaimed. “A hunch is a hunch, an' you can't beat it. There she comes. Look at her!—surgin' up like a lot of .”
The mass of Indians, at sight of the two men, had raised a cry of joy and accelerated its pace.
“They're sure tolerable woozy,” commented Shorty. “See 'em fallin' down in lumps and bunches.”
“Look at the face of that first one,” Smoke said. “It's starvation—that's what's the matter with them. They've eaten their dogs.”
“What'll we do? Run for it?”
“And leave the sled and dogs?” Smoke demanded reproachfully.
“They'll sure eat us if we don't. They look hungry enough for it. Hello, old skeeziks. What's wrong with you? Don't look at that dog that way. No cookin'-pot for him—?”
The were arriving and crowding about them, moaning and plainting in an . To Smoke the picture was and horrible. It was famine unmistakable. Their faces, hollow-cheeked and skin-stretched, were so many death's-heads. More and more arrived and crowded about, until Smoke and Shorty were in by the wild crew. Their garments of skin and fur were cut and away, and Smoke knew the reason for it when he saw a child on a squaw's back that sucked and chewed a strip of fur. Another child he observed a leather .
“Keep off there!—keep back!” Shorty yelled, falling back on English after attempts with the little Indian he did know.
and squaws and children and swayed on shaking legs and continued to surge in, their mad eyes swimming with weakness and burning with desire. A woman, moaning, staggered past Shorty and fell with spread and grasping arms on the sled. An old man followed her, panting and , with trembling hands striving to cast off the sled lashings, and get at the grub-sacks beneath. A young man, with a naked knife, tried to rush in, but was flung back by Smoke. The whole mass pressed in upon them, and the fight was on.
At first Smoke and Shorty shoved and thrust and threw back. Then they used the of the dog-whip and their fists on the food-mad crowd. And all this against a background of moaning and women and children. Here and there, in a dozen places, the sled-lashings were cut. Men crawled in on their , regardless of a rain of kicks and blows, and tried to drag out the grub. These had to be picked up bodily and flung back. And such was their weakness that they fell continually, under the slightest pressures or shoves. Yet they made no attempt to injure the two men who defended the sled.
It was the utter weakness of the Indians that saved Smoke and Shorty from being overborne. In five minutes the wall of up-, on-struggling Indians had been changed to heaps of fallen ones that moaned and gibbered in the snow, and cried and sniveled as their staring, swimming eyes focused on the grub that meant life to them and that brought the slaver to their lips. And behind it all arose the wailing of the women and children.
“Shut up! Oh, shut up!” Shorty yelled, thrusting his fingers into his ears and breathing heavily from his . “Ah, you would, would you!” was his cry as he lunged forward and kicked a knife from the hand of a man who, through the snow, was trying to stab the lead-dog in the throat.
“This is terrible,” Smoke muttered.
“I'm all het up,” Shorty replied, returning from the rescue of Bright. “I'm real sweaty. An' now what 'r' we goin' to do with this ambulance outfit?”
Smoke shook his head, and then the problem was solved for him. An Indian crawled forward, his one eye on Smoke instead of on the sled, and in it Smoke could see the struggle of to assert itself. Shorty remembered having punched the other eye, which was already shut. The Indian raised himself on his elbow and .
“Me Carluk. Me good Siwash. Me savvy Boston man plenty. Me plenty hungry. All people plenty hungry. All people no savvy Boston man. Me savvy. Me eat grub now. All people eat grub now. We buy 'm grub. Got 'm plenty gold. No got 'm grub. Summer, salmon no come Milk River. Winter, no come. No grub. Me make 'm talk all people. Me tell 'em plenty Boston man come Yukon. Boston man have plenty grub. Boston man like 'm gold. We take 'm gold, go Yukon, Boston man give 'm grub. Plenty gold. Me savvy Boston man like 'm gold.”
He began with wasted fingers at the draw-string of a he took from his belt.
“Too much make 'm noise,” Shorty broke in distractedly. “You tell 'm squaw, you tell 'm papoose, shut 'm up mouth.”
Carluk turned and addressed the wailing women. Other bucks, listening, raised their voices , and slowly the squaws stilled, and quieted the children near to them. Carluk paused from fumbling the draw-string and held up his fingers many times.
“Him people make 'm die,” he said.
And Smoke, following the count, knew that seventy-five of the tribe had starved to death.
“Me buy 'm grub,” Carluk said, as he got the pouch open and drew out a large of heavy metal. Others were following his example, and on every side appeared similar chunks. Shorty stared.
“Great Jeminey!” he cried. “Copper! Raw, red copper! An' they think it's gold!”
“Him gold,” Carluk assured them confidently, his quick comprehension having caught the of Shorty's .
“And the poor devils banked everything on it,” Smoke muttered. “Look at it. That chunk there weighs forty pounds. They've got hundreds of pounds of it, and they've carried it when they didn't have strength enough to drag themselves. Look here, Shorty. We've got to feed them.”
“Huh! Sounds easy. But how about statistics? You an' me has a month's grub, which is six meals times thirty, which is one hundred an' eighty meals. Here's two hundred Indians, with real, full-grown appetites. How the blazes can we give 'm one meal even?”
“There's the dog-grub,” Smoke answered. “A couple of hundred pounds of dried salmon ought to help out. We've got to do it. They've pinned their faith on the white man, you know.”
“Sure, an' we can't throw 'm down,” Shorty agreed. “An' we got two nasty jobs cut out for us, each just about twicet as nasty as the other. One of us has got to make a run of it to Mucluc an' raise a relief. The other has to stay here an' run the hospital an' most likely be eaten. Don't let it slip your noodle that we've been six days gettin' here; an' travelin' light, an' all played out, it can't be made back in less 'n three days.”
For a minute Smoke pondered the miles of the way they had come, visioning the miles in terms of time measured by his capacity for . “I can get there to-morrow night,” he announced.
“All right,” Shorty cheerfully. “An' I'll stay an' be eaten.”
“But I'm going to take one fish each for the dogs,” Smoke explained, “and one meal for myself.”
“An' you'll sure need it if you make Mucluc to-morrow night.”
Smoke, through the medium of Carluk, stated the program. “Make fires, long fires, plenty fires,” he concluded. “Plenty Boston man stop Mucluc. Boston man much good. Boston man plenty grub. Five sleeps I come back plenty grub. This man, his name Shorty, very good friend of mine. He stop here. He big boss—savvy?”
Carluk nodded and interpreted.
“All grub stop here. Shorty, he give 'm grub. He boss—savvy?”
Carluk interpreted, and nods and guttural cries of agreement proceeded from the men.
Smoke remained and managed until the full swing of the arrangement was under way. Those who were able, crawled or staggered in the collecting of firewood. Long, Indian fires were built that accommodated all. Shorty, aided by a dozen assistants, with a short club handy for the rapping of hungry , into the cooking. The women themselves to thawing snow in every that could be . First, a tiny piece of bacon was distributed all around, and, next, a spoonful of sugar to the edge of their razor appetites. Soon, on a circle of fires about Shorty, many pots of beans were boiling, and he, with a wrathful eye for what he called renigers, was frying and the thinnest of flapjacks.
“Me for the big cookin',” was his farewell to Smoke. “You just keep a-hikin'. all the way there an' run all the way back. It'll take you to-day an' to-morrow to get there, and you can't be back inside of three days more. To-morrow they'll eat the last of the dog-fish, an' then there'll be nary a for three days. You gotta keep a-comin', Smoke. You gotta keep a-comin'.”
Though the sled was light, loaded only with six dried salmon, a couple of pounds of frozen beans and bacon, and a sleeping-robe, Smoke could not make speed. Instead of riding the sled and running the dogs, he was compelled to at the gee-pole. Also, a day of work had already been done, and the freshness and spring had gone out of the dogs and himself. The long arctic was on when he cleared the divide and left the Bald Buttes behind.
Down the slope better time was , and often he was able to spring on the sled for short and get an exhausting six-mile clip out of the animals. Darkness cau............