The Silent Places Part 22

Sam Bolton saw to it. His was not only the bodily labour, but the mental anxiety. His att.i.tude was the tenseness of a helmsman in a heavy wind, quivering to the faintest indication, ready to give her all she will bear, but equally ready to luff this side of disaster. Only his equable mind could have resisted an almost overpowering impulse toward sporadic bursts of speed or lengthening of hours. He had much of this to repress in d.i.c.k. But on the other hand he watched zealously against the needless waste of even a single second. Every expedient his long woods life or his native ingenuity suggested he applied at once to the problem of the greatest speed, the least expenditure of energy to a given end, the smallest consumption of food compatible with the preservation of strength. The legitimate travel of a day might amount to twenty or thirty miles. Sam added an extra five or ten to them. And that five or ten he drew from the living tissues of his very life. They were a creation, made from nothing, given a body by the individual genius of the man. The drain cut down his nervous energy, made him lean, drew the anxious lines of an incipient exhaustion across his brow.

At first, as may be gathered, the advantages of the game seemed to be strongly in the Indian's favour. The food supply, the transportation facilities, and advantage of position in case game should be encountered were all his. Against him he need count seriously only the offset of dogged Anglo-Saxon grit. But as the travel defined itself, certain compensations made themselves evident.

Direct warfare was impossible to him. He possessed only a single-barrelled muzzle-loading gun of no great efficiency. In case of ambush he might, with luck, be able to kill one of his pursuers, but he would indubitably be captured by the other. He would be unable to approach them at night because of their dogs. His dog-team was stronger, but with it he had to break trail, which the others could utilise without further effort. Even should his position in advance bring him on game, without great luck, he would be unable to kill it, for he was alone and could not leave his team for long. And his very swiftness in itself would react against him, for he was continually under the temptation daily to exceed by a little his powers.

These considerations the white men at first could not see; and so, logically, they were more encouraged by them when at last they did appear. And then in turn, by natural reaction when the glow had died, the great discouragement of the barren places fell on their spirits.

They plodded, seeing no further than their daily necessity of travel.

They plodded, their eyes fixed to the trail, which led always on toward the pole star, undeviating, as a deer flies in a straight line hoping to shake off the wolves.

The dense forest growth was succeeded in time by the low spruce and poplar thickets; these in turn by the open reaches planted like a park with the pointed firs. Then came the Land of Little Sticks, and so on out into the vast whiteness of the true North, where the trees are liliputian and the s.p.a.ces gigantic beyond the measures of the earth; where living things dwindle to the significance of black specks on a limitless field of white, and the aurora crackles and shoots and spreads and threatens like a great inimical and magnificent spirit.

The tendency seemed toward a mighty simplification, as though the complexities of the world were reverting toward their original philosophic unity. The complex summer had become simple autumn; the autumn, winter; now the very winter itself was apparently losing its differentiations of bushes and trees, hills and valleys, streams and living things. The growths were disappearing; the hills were flattening toward the great northern wastes; the rare creatures inhabiting these barrens took on the colour of their environment. The ptarmigan matched the snow,--the fox,--the ermine. They moved either invisible or as ghosts.

Little by little such dwindling of the materials for diverse observation, in alliance with the too-severe labour and the starving, brought about a strange concentration of ideas. The inner world seemed to undergo the same process of simplification as the outer. Extraneous considerations disappeared. The entire cosmos of experience came to be an expanse of white, themselves, and the Trail. These three reacted one on the other, and outside of them there was no reaction.

In the expanse of white was no food: their food was dwindling; the Trail led on into barren lands where no food was to be had. That was the circle that whirled insistent in their brains.

At night they sank down, felled by the sheer burden of weariness, and no matter how exhausted they might be the Trail continued, springing on with the same apparently tireless energy toward its unknown goal in the North. Gradually they lost sight of the ultimate object of their quest.

It became obscured by the immediate object, and that was the following of the Trail. They forgot that a man had made it, or if for a moment it did occur to them that it was the product of some agency outside of and above itself, that agent loomed vaguely as a mysterious, extra-human power, like the winds or the cold or the great Wilderness itself. It did not seem possible that he could feel the need for food, for rest, that ever his vital forces could wane. In the north was starvation for them, a starvation to which they drew ever nearer day by day, but irresistibly the notion obsessed them that this forerunner, the forerunner of the Trail, proved no such material necessities, that he drew his sustenance from his environment in some mysterious manner not to be understood.

Always on and on and on the Trail was destined to lead them until they died, and then the maker of it,--not Jingoss, not the Weasel, the defaulter, the man of flesh and blood and nerves and thoughts and the capacities for suffering,--but a being elusive as the aurora, an embodiment of that dread country, a servant of the unfriendly North, would return as he had done.

Over the land lay silence. The sea has its undertone on the stillest nights; the woods are quiet with an hundred lesser noises; but here was absolute, terrifying, smothering silence,--the suspension of all sound, even the least,--looming like a threatening cloud larger and more dreadful above the cowering imagination. The human soul demanded to shriek aloud in order to preserve its sanity, and yet a whisper uttered over against the heavy portent of this universal stillness seemed a profanation that left the spirit crouched beneath a fear of retribution.

And then suddenly the aurora, the only privileged voice, would crackle like a silken banner.

At first the world in the vastness of its s.p.a.ces seemed to become bigger and bigger. Again abruptly it resumed its normal proportions, but they, the observers of it, had been struck small. To their own minds they seemed like little black insects crawling painfully. In the distance these insects crawled was a disproportion to the energy expended, a disproportion disheartening, filling the soul with the despair of an accomplishment that could mean anything in the following of that which made the Trail.

Always they ate pemmican. Of this there remained a fairly plentiful supply, but the dog meat was running low. It was essential that the team be well fed. d.i.c.k or Sam often travelled the entire day a quarter of a mile one side or the other, hoping thus to encounter game, but without much success. A fox or so, a few plarmigan, that was all. These they saved for the dogs. Three times a day they boiled tea and devoured the little square of pemmican. It did not supply the bulk their digestive organs needed, and became in time almost nauseatingly unpalatable, but it nourished. That, after all, was the main thing. The privation carved the flesh from their muscles, carved the muscles themselves to leanness.

But in spite of the best they could do, the dog feed ran out. There remained but one thing to do. Already the sledge was growing lighter, and three dogs would be quite adequate for the work. They killed Wolf, the surly and stupid "husky." Every sc.r.a.p they saved, even to the entrails, which froze at once to solidity. The remaining dogs were put on half rations, just sufficient to keep up their strength. The starvation told on their tempers. Especially did Claire, the sledge-dog, heavy with young, and ravenous to feed their growth, wander about like a spirit, whining mournfully and sniffing the barren breeze.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The journey extended over a month. The last three weeks of it were starvation. At first this meant merely discomfort and the bearing of a certain amount of pain. Later it became acute suffering. Later still it developed into a necessity for proving what virtue resided in the bottom of these men's souls.

Perforce now they must make a choice of what ideas they would keep. Some things must be given up, just as some things had to be discarded when they had lightened the sledge. All the lesser lumber had long since gone. Certain bigger things still remained.

They held grimly to the idea of catching the Indian. Their natural love of life held tenaciously to a hope of return. An equally natural hope clung to the ridiculous idea that the impossible might happen, that the needle should drop from the haystack, that the caribou might spring into their view from the emptiness of s.p.a.ce. Now it seemed that they must make a choice between the first two.

"d.i.c.k," said Bolton, solemnly, "we've mighty little pemmican left. If we turn around now, it'll just about get us back to the woods. If we go on farther, we'll have to run into more food, or we'll never get out."

"I knew it," replied d.i.c.k.

"Well?"

d.i.c.k looked at him astonished. "Well, what?" he inquired.

"Shall we give it up?"

"Give it _up_!" cried the young man. "Of course not; what you thinking of?"

"There's the caribou," suggested Sam, doubtfully; "or maybe Jingoss has more grub than he's going to need. It's a slim chance."

They still further reduced the ration of pemmican. The malnutrition began to play them tricks. It dizzied their brains, swarmed the vastness with hordes of little, dancing black specks like mosquitoes. In the morning every muscle of their bodies was stiffened to the consistency of rawhide, and the movements necessary to loosen the fibres became an agony hardly to be endured. Nothing of voluntary consciousness remained, could remain, but the effort of lifting the feet, driving the dogs, following the Trail; but involuntary consciousness lent them strange hallucinations. They saw figures moving across the snow, but when they steadied their vision, nothing was there.

They began to stumble over nothing; occasionally to fall. In this was added effort, but more particularly added annoyance. They had continually to watch their footsteps. The walking was no longer involuntary, but they had definitely to think of each movement necessary to the step, and this gave them a further reason for preoccupation, for concentration. d.i.c.k's sullenness returned, more terrible than in the summer. He went forward with his head down, refusing to take notice of anything. He walked: that was to him the whole of existence.

Once reverting a.n.a.logously to his grievance of that time, he mentioned the girl, saying briefly that soon they must all die, and it was better that she die now. Perhaps her share of the pemmican would bring them to their quarry. The idea of return--not abandoned, but persistently ignored--thrust into prominence this other,--to come to close quarters with the man they pursued, to die grappled with him, dragging him down to the same death by which these three perished. But Sam would have none of it, and d.i.c.k easily dropped the subject, relapsing into his grim monomania of pursuit.

In d.i.c.k's case even the hope of coming to grapples was fading. He somehow had little faith in his enemy. The man was too intangible, too difficult to gauge. d.i.c.k had not caught a glimpse of the Indian since the pursuit began. The young man realised perfectly his own exhaustion; but he had no means of knowing whether or not the Indian was tiring. His faith waned, though his determination did not. Unconsciously he subst.i.tuted this monomania of pursuit. It took the place of the faith he felt slipping from him--the faith that ever he would see the _fata morgana_ luring him out into the Silent Places.

Soon it became necessary to kill another dog. d.i.c.k, with a remnant of his old feeling, pleaded for the life of Billy, his pet. Sam would not entertain for a moment the destruction of the hound. There remained only Claire, the sledge-dog, with her pathetic brown eyes, and her affectionate ways of the female dog. They went to kill her, and discovered her in the act of defending the young to which she had just given birth. Near at hand crouched Mack and Billy, their eyes red with famine, their jaws a-slaver, eager to devour the newborn puppies. And in the grim and dreadful sight Sam Bolton seemed at last to glimpse the face of his terrible antagonist.

They beat back the dogs, and took the puppies. These they killed and dressed. Thus Claire's life was bought for her by the sacrifice of her progeny.

But even that was a temporary respite. She fell in her turn, and was devoured, to the last sc.r.a.p of her hide. d.i.c.k again intervened to save Billy, but failed. Sam issued his orders the more peremptorily as he felt his strength waning, and realised the necessity of economising every ounce of it, even to that required in the arguing of expedients.

d.i.c.k yielded with slight resistance, as he had yielded in the case of the girl. All matters but the one were rapidly becoming unimportant to him. That concentration of his forces which represented the weapon of his greatest utility, was gradually taking place. He was becoming an engine of dogged determination, an engine whose burden the older man had long carried on his shoulders, but which now he was preparing to launch when his own strength should be gone.

At last there was left but the one dog, Mack, the hound, with the wrinkled face and the long, hanging ears. He developed unexpected endurance and an entire willingness, pulling strongly on the sledge, waiting in patience for his scanty meal, searching the faces of his masters with his wise brown eyes, dumbly sympathetic in a trouble whose entirety he could not understand.

The two men took turns in harnessing themselves to the sledge with Mack.

The girl followed at the gee-pole.

May-may-gwan showed the endurance of a man. She made no complaint.

Always she followed, and followed with her mind alert. Where d.i.c.k shut obstinately his faculties within the bare necessity of travel, she and her other companion were continually alive to the possibilities of expedient. This const.i.tuted an additional slight but constant drain on their vital forces.

Starvation gained on them. Perceptibly their strength was waning. d.i.c.k wanted to kill the other dog. His argument was plausible. The toboggan was now very light. The men could draw it. They would have the dog-meat to recruit their strength.

Sam shook his head. d.i.c.k insisted. He even threatened force. But then the woodsman roused his old-time spirit and fairly beat the young man into submission by the vehemence of his anger. The effort left him exhausted. He sank back into himself, and refused, in the apathy of weariness, to give any explanation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

By now it was the first week in March. The weather began to a.s.sume a new aspect. During the winter months it had not snowed, for the moisture had all been squeezed from the air, leaving it crisp, brilliant, sparkling.

Now the sun, long hesitant, at last began to swing up the sky. Far south the warmer airs of spring were awakening the Kansas fields. Here in the barren country the steel sky melted to a haze. During the day, when the sun was up, the surface of the snow even softened a little, and a very perceptible warmth allowed them to rest, their parkas thrown back, without discomfort.

The men noticed this, and knew it as the precursor of the spring snow-fall. d.i.c.k grew desperately uneasy, desperately anxious to push on, to catch up before the complete obliteration of the trail, when his resources would perforce run out for lack of an object to which to apply them. He knew perfectly well that this must be what the Indian had antic.i.p.ated, the reason why he had dared to go out into the barren grounds, and to his present helpless lack of a further expedient the defaulter's confidence in the natural sequence seemed only too well justified. Sam remained inscrutable.

The expected happened late one afternoon. All day the haze had thickened, until at last, without definite transition, it had become a cloud covering the entire sky. Then it had snowed. The great, clogging flakes sifted down gently, ziz-zagging through the air like so many pieces of paper. They impacted softly against the world, standing away from each other and from the surface on which they alighted by the full stretch of their crystal arms. In an hour three inches had fallen. The hollows and depressions were filling to the level; the Trail was growing indistinct.

d.i.c.k watched from the shelter of a growing despair. Never had he felt so helpless. This thing was so simple, yet so effective; and nothing he could do would nullify its results. As sometimes in a crisis a man will give his whole attention to a trivial thing, so d.i.c.k fastened his gaze on a single snow-shoe track on the edge of a covered bowlder. By it he gauged the progress of the storm. When at last even his imagination could not differentiate it from the surface on either side, he looked up. The visible world was white and smooth and level. No faintest trace of the Trail remained. East, west, north, south, lay uniformity. The Indian had disappeared utterly from the face of the earth.

The storm lightened and faint streaks of light shot through the clouds.