The Trail of 98 (37 page)

"Then," said I to Berna, "we'll go and travel all over the world, and do it
in style."

"Will we, dear?" she answered tenderly. "But I don't want money much now, and
I don't know that I care so much about travel either. What I would like would be
to go to your home, and settle down
and live quietly. What I want is a nice flower garden, and a
pony to drive into town, and a home to fuss about. I would embroider, and read,
and play a little, and cook things, andjust be with you."

She was greatly interested in my description of Glengyle. She never tired of
questioning me about it. Particularly was she interested in my accounts of
Garry, and rather scoffed at my enthusiastic description of him.

"Oh, that wonderful brother of yours! One would think he was a small god, to
hear you talk. I declare I'm half afraid of him. Do you think he would like
me?"

"He would love you, little girl; any one would."

"Don't be foolish," she chided me. And then she drew my head down and kissed
me.

I think we had the prettiest little cabin in all Dawson. The big logs were
peeled smooth, and the ends squarely cut. The chinks were filled in with mortar.
The whole was painted a deep rich crimson. The roof was covered with sheet-iron,
and it, too, was painted crimson. There was a deep porch to it. It was the
snuggest, neatest little home in the world.

Windows hung with dainty lace curtains peeped through its clustering greenery
of vines, but the glory of it all was the flower garden. There was a bewildering
variety of flowers, but mostly I remember stocks and pinks, Iceland poppies,
marguerites, asters, marigolds, verbenas, hollyhocks, pansies and petunias,
growing in glorious profusion. Even the
roughest miner would stand and stare at them as he tramped
past on the board sidewalk.

They were a mosaic of glowing colour, yet the crowning triumph was the
poppies and sweet peas. Set in the centre of the lawn was a circle that was a
leaping glow of poppies. Of every shade were they, from starry pink to luminous
gold, from snowy white to passionate crimson. Like vari-coloured lamps they
swung, and wakened you to wonder and joy with the exultant challenge of their
beauty. And the sweet peas! All up the south side of the cabin they grew,
overtopping the eaves in their riotous perfection. They rivalled the poppies in
the radiant confusion of their colour, and they were so lavish of blossom we
could not pick them fast enough. I think ours was the pioneer garden of the
gold-born city, and awakened many to the growth-giving magic of the long, long
day.

And it was the joy and pride of Berna's heart. I would sit on the porch of a
summer's evening when down the mighty Yukon a sunset of vast and violent beauty
flamed and languished, and I would watch her as she worked among her flowers. I
can see her flitting figure in a dress of dainty white as she hovered over a
beautiful blossom. I can hear her calling me, her voice like the music of a
flute, calling me to come and see some triumph of her skill. I have a picture of
her coming towards me with her arms full of flowers, burying her face lovingly
among the velvet petals, and raising it again, the sweetest flower of all. How
radiantly outshone her eyes, and her
face, delicate as a cameo, seemed to have stolen the fairest
tints of the lily and the rose.

Starry vines screened the porch, and everywhere were swinging baskets of
silver birch, brimming over with the delicate green of smilax or clouded in an
amethystine mist of lobelias. I can still see the little sitting-room with its
piano, its plenitude of cushions, its book-rack, its Indian corner, its tasteful
paper, its pictures, and always and everywhere flowers, flowers. The air was
heavy with the fragrance of them. They glorified the crudest corner, and made
our home like a nook in fairyland.

I remember one night as I sat reading she came to me. Never did I see her
look so happy. She was almost childlike in her joy. She sat down by my chair and
looked up at me. Then she put her arms around me.

"Oh, I'm so happy," she said with a sigh.

"Are you, dearest?" I caressed the soft floss of her hair.

"Yes, I just wish we could live like this forever;" and she nestled up to me
ever so fondly.

Aye, she was happy, and I will always bless the memory of those days, and
thank God I was the means of bringing a little gladness into her marred life.
She was happy, and yet we were living in what society would call sin.
Conventionally we were not man and wife, yet never were man and wife more
devoted, more self-respecting. Never were man and wife endowed with purer
ideals, with a more exalted conception of the sanctity of love. Yet there were
many in the town not
half so delicate, so refined, so spiritual, who would have passed my little lady
like a pariah. But what cared we?

And perhaps it was the very greatness of my love for her that sometimes made
me fear; so that often in the ecstasy of a moment I would catch my breath and
wonder if it all could last. And when the poplars turned to gold, and up the
valley stole a shuddering breath of desolation, my fear grew apace. The sky was
all resplendent with the winter stars, and keen and hard their facets sparkled.
And I knew that somewhere underneath those stars there slept Locasto. But was it
the sleep of the living or of the dead? Would he return?

Two men were crawling over the winter-locked plain. In the aching circle of
its immensity they were like little black ants. One, the leader, was of great
bulk and of a vast strength; while the other was small and wiry, of the breed
that clings like a louse to life while better men perish.

On all sides of the frozen lake over which they were travelling were hills
covered with harsh pine, that pricked funereally up to the boulder-broken snows.
Above that was a stormy and fantastic sea of mountains baring many a fierce
peak-fang to the hollow heavens. The sky was a waxen grey, cold as a
corpse-light. The snow was an immaculate shroud, unmarked by track of bird or
beast. Death-sealed the land lay in its silent vastitude, in its despairful
desolation.

The small man was breaking trail. Down almost to his knees in the soft snow,
he sank at every step; yet ever he dragged a foot painfully upward, and made
another forward plunge. The snowshoe thong, jagged with ice, chafed him cruelly.
The muscles of his legs ached as insistently as if clamped in a vice. He lurched
forward with fatigue, so that he seemed to be ever stumbling, yet recovering
himself.

"Come on there, you darned little shrimp; get a
move on you," growled the big man from within the
frost-fringed hood of his parka.

The little man started as if galvanised into sudden life. His breath steamed
and almost hissed as it struck the icy air. At each raw intake of it his chest
heaved. He beat his mittened hands on his breast to keep them from freezing.
Under the hood of his parka great icicles had formed, hanging to the hairs of
his beard, walrus-like, and his eyes, thickly wadded with frost, glared out with
the furtive fear of a hunted beast.

"Curse him, curse him," he whimpered; but once more he lifted those leaden
snowshoes and staggered on.

The big man lashed fiercely at the dogs, and as they screamed at his blows he
laughed cruelly. They were straining forward in the harness, their bellies
almost level with the ground, their muscles standing out like whalebone. Great,
gaunt brutes they were, with ribs like barrel-staves, and hip-bones sharp as
stakes. Their woolly coats were white with frost, their sly, slit-eyed faces
ice-sheathed, their feet torn so that they left a bloody track on the snow at
every step.

"Mush on there, you curs, or I'll cut you in two," stormed the big man, and
once again the heavy whip fell on the yelling pack. They were pulling for all
they were worth, their heads down, their shoulders squared. Their breath came
pantingly, their tongues gleamed redly, their white teeth shone. They were
fighting, fighting for life, fighting to placate a cruel
master in a world where all was
cruelty and oppression.

For there in the Winter Wild pity was not even a name. It was the struggle
for life, desperate and never-ending. The Wild abhorred life, abhorred most of
all these atoms of heat and hurry in the midst of her triumphant stillness. The
Wild would crush those defiant pigmies that disputed the majesty of her
invincible calm.

A dog was hanging back in the harness. It whined; then as the husky following
snapped at it savagely, it gave a lurch and fell. The big man shot forward with
a sudden fury in his eyes. Swinging the heavy-thonged whip, again and again he
brought it down on the writhing brute. Then he twisted the thong around his hand
and belaboured its hollow ribs with the butt. It screamed for a while, but soon
it ceased to scream; it only moaned a little. With glistening fangs and ears
up-pricked the other dogs looked at their fallen comrade. They longed to leap on
it, to rend its gaunt limbs apart, to tear its quivering flesh; but there was
the big man with his murderous whip, and they cowered before him.

The big man kicked the fallen dog repeatedly. The little man paused in his
painful progress to look on apathetically.

"You'll stave in its ribs," he remarked presently; "and then we'll never make
timber by nightfall."

The big man had failed in his efforts to rouse the dog. There in that
lancinating cold, in an ecstasy of rage, despairfully he poised over it.

"Who told you to put
in your lip?" he snarled. "Who's running this show, you or I? I'll stave in its
ribs if I choose, and I'll hitch you to the sled and make you pull your guts
out, too."

The little man said no more. Then, the dog still refusing to rise, the big
man leapt over the harness and came down on the animal with both feet. There was
a scream of pitiful agony, and the snap of breaking bones. But the big man
slipped and fell. Down he came, and like a flash the whole pack piled onto
him.

For a moment there was a confused muddle of dogs and master. This was the
time for which they had waited, these savage semi-wolves. This man had beaten
them, had starved them, had been a devil to them, and now he was down and at
their mercy. Ferociously they sprang on him, and their white fangs snapped like
traps in his face. They fought to get at his throat. They tore at his parka. Oh,
if they could only make their teeth meet in his warm flesh! But no; they were
all tangled up in the harness, and the man was fighting like a giant. He had the
leader by the throat and was using her as a shield against the others. His right
hand swung the whip with flail-like blows. Foiled and confused the dogs fell to
fighting among themselves, and triumphantly the man leapt to his feet.

He was like a fiend now. Fiercely he raged among the snarling pack, kicking,
clubbing, cursing, till one and all he had them beaten into cowering
subjection.

He was still panting from his struggle. His face
was deathly pale, and his eyes were glittering. He
strode up to the little man, who had watched the performance stolidly.

"Why didn't you help me, you dirty little whelp?" he hissed. "You wanted to
see them chew me up; you know you did. You'd like to have them rip me to
ribbons. You wouldn't move a finger to save me. Oh, I know, I know. I've had
enough of you this trip to last me a lifetime. You've bucked me right along.
Now, blast your dirty little soul, I hate you, and for the rest of the way I'm
going to make your life hell. See! Now I'll begin."

The little man was afraid. He seemed to grow smaller, while over him towered
the other, dark, fierce and malignant. The little man was desperate. Defensively
he crouched, yet the next instant he was overthrown. Then, as he lay sprawling
in the snow, the big man fell to lashing him with the whip. Time after time he
struck, till the screams of his victim became one long, drawn-out wail of agony.
Then he desisted. Jerking the other on his feet once more, he bade him go on
breaking trail.

Again they struggled on. The light was beginning to fail, and there was no
thought in their minds but to reach that dark belt of timber before darkness
came. There was no sound but the crunch of their snowshoes, the panting of the
dogs, the rasping of the sleigh. When they paused the silence seemed to fall on
them like a blanket. There was something awful in the quality of this deathly
silence. It was as if something material, something tangible, hovered
over them, closed in on
them, choked them, throttled them. It was almost like a Presence.

Weary and worn were men and dogs as they struggled onwards in the growing
gloom, but because of the feeling in his heart the little man no longer was
conscious of bodily pain. It was black murder that raged there.

With straining sinews and bones that cracked, the dogs bent to a heavy pull,
while at the least sign of shirking down swished the relentless whip. And the
big man, as if proud of his strength, gazed insolently round on the Wild. He was
at home in this land, this stark wolf-land, so callous, so cruel. Was he not
cruel, too? Surely this land cowered before him. Its hardships could not daunt
him, nor its terrors dismay. As he urged on his bloody-footed dogs, he exulted
greatly. Of all Men of the High North was he not king?

At last they reached the forest fringe, and after a few harsh directions he
had the little man making camp. The little man worked with a strange
willingness. All his taciturnity had gone. As he gathered the firewood and
filled the Yukon stove, he hummed a merry air. He had the water boiling and soon
there was the fragrance of tea in the little tent. He produced sourdough bread
(which he fried in bacon fat), and some dried moose-meat.

To men of the trail this was a treat. They ate ravenously, but they did not
speak. Yet the little man was oddly cheerful. Time and again the big man looked
at him suspiciously. Outside it was a
steely night, with an icicle of a moon. The cold leapt on one
savagely. To step from the tent was like plunging into icy water, yet within
those canvas walls the men were warm and snug. The stove crackled its cheer. A
grease-light sputtered, and by its rays the little man was mending his
ice-stiffened moccasins. He hummed an Irish air, and he seemed to be tickled
with some thought he had.