The Heart of Unaga Part 50

"Would I need to--remain buried alive there?" he demanded.

Tough shook his head.

"Get possession of that place, that trade. Out those folks running the trade, and Lorson'll hand you one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and you'll be quit of the North if it suits you that way. You'll be quit of Lorson Harris, too. Well?"

"Gee!" Nicol pa.s.sed a moist palm across his forehead.

"It's a swell proposition!"

"It's a h.e.l.l of a proposition!"

"Well? You need to say right now. I don't need to remind you of Lorson Harris."

"G.o.d curse Lorson Harris!"

"Just so."

Tough was unrelenting in his pressure upon his victim. Lorson Harris chose his agents well.

Suddenly Nicol flung out his hands in a furious gesture.

"G.o.d's h.e.l.l light on him! Yes," he cried, with eyes aflame, and his ungovernable temper surging. "I'll put his filthy work through. But when I've done it he'll need to hand me that hundred thousand dollars in cash right here before he learns a darn thing of the place he's yearning to grab. Get me? He reckons that he's got the drop on me. Well, maybe he has. But he don't get my tongue wagging till I get the cash pappy. Savee that, and savee it good!"

"But you'll do it?"

"That's what I've been shouting at you."

"Good. Now listen, and I'll pa.s.s you the rest of Lorson's message."

Tough emptied his pannikin to the dregs, and, leaning back in his chair, beamed across at the man he knew to be at the mercy of Lorson Harris.

There was no feeling, no sympathy in him. He cared not one jot for anyone in the world but himself, and his standing with the man who paid for his services.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FAITH OF MEN

The men crouched for warmth and the shadow of comfort over a miserable fire. The dogs were beyond, herded far within the shelter, their fierce eyes agleam with a reflection of the feeble firelight as they gazed out hungrily in its direction. It was a cavernous break in the rock-bound confines of a nameless Northern river.

Steve pa.s.sed a hand down his face. He brushed away the moisture of melting ice. It was a significant gesture, accompanied as it was by a deep breath of weariness. Two hundred miles and more of Arctic terror lay behind him. As yet he had no reckoning of how much more lay ahead.

The world outside was lost in a chaos of warring elements. So it had lain for a week. In the fury of the blizzard the Arctic night was reduced to a pitchy blackness worse than the sightlessness of the blind.

How long? It was the question haunting Steve's mind, and the minds of those others with him. But the shrieking elements refused to enlighten him. It was their joy to mock, and taunt, and, if possible, to slay.

Steve rose from his seat over the fire. He turned and moved towards the mouth of the shelter. Beyond the light of the fire he had to grope his way. At the opening the snow was piled high, driven in by the storm.

There was left only the narrowest aperture leading to the black darkness beyond.

He paused at the opening. He was half buried in the drift, and the lash of the storm whipped his face mercilessly. For some moments he endured the a.s.sault, then his voice came back to the figures of his companions squatting moveless over the fire.

"Ho, you, Julyman!" he called sharply.

Moments later the Indian stood beside the white man, peering out into the desolation beyond.

"She's not going to last a deal longer."

Steve was wiping his face with a _bare_ hand.

Julyman missed the movement in the darkness.

"She mak' him break bimeby--soon. Oh, yes."

There was something almost heroic in the attempt Julyman made to throw confidence into his tone. But Steve needed no such support. He was preoccupied with his own discoveries. His bare hand was still wiping away the curiously moist snow that beat upon his face.

"Yes," he said conclusively. "She'll break soon." Then after a moment: "She's breaking _now_."

An interruption came from the distant dogs. It was the snarling yap of a quarrel. Then came the echo of Oolak's harsh voice and the thud of his club as he silenced them in the only manner they understood.

Steve's announcement failed to startle his companion. Nothing stirred Julyman but the fear of "devil-men," and his queer native superst.i.tions.

"Him soften. Oh, yes," he said. "Wind him all go west. Him soft. Yes."

The wind had been carrying "forty below zero" on its relentless bosom.

Its ferocity still remained, but now it was tempered by a warmth wholly unaccounted for by the change in its direction. A western wind in these lat.i.tudes was little less terrible than when it blew from the north. It had over three thousand miles of snow and ice to reduce its temperature.

Steve's voice again came in the howl of the wind.

"Guess we'll get back to the fire," he said decisively.

Julyman needed no second bidding; he turned and moved away.

Back at the fire Oolak watched his companions retake their places. He had no questions to ask. He simply waited. That was his way. He seemed to live at all times with a mind absorbed.

Steve pointed at the diminished pile of scrub wood.

"Best make up the fire," he said, addressing Julyman.

The Indian eyed him doubtfully. Their store of fuel was perilously low.

"Sure," Steve nodded. And the Indian obeyed without further demur.

Steve re-lit his pipe and sucked at it comfortably. Then he spoke with an a.s.surance he could not have displayed earlier.

"Say," he exclaimed, without looking up from the fire. "You get the meaning of it? Maybe you don't get the meaning I do."

He laughed. It was a curious laugh. It had no mirth. But it was an expression of feelings which required outlet.