LOVE OF LIFE This out of all will remain Страница 25

heir

cheeks. When bacon is frying they must run away from the fire and

cough half an hour in the snow. They freeze their cheeks a little

bit, so that the skin turns blac kand is very sore. Also, the man

freezes his thumb till the end is like to come off, and he must

wear a large thumb on his mitten to keep it warm. And sometimes,

when the frost bites hard and the thumb is very cold, he must take

off the mitten and put the hand between his legs next to the skin,

so that the thumb may get warm again.



"We limp into Circle City, and even I, Sitka Charley, am tired. It

is Christmas Eve. I dance, drink, make a good time, for to-morrow

is Christmas Day and w3 will rest. But no. It is five o'clock in

the morning - Christmas morning. I am two hours asleep. The man

stand by my bed. 'Come, Charley,' he says, 'harness the dogs. We

start.'



"Have I not said that I ask questions no mpre? They pay me seven

hundred and fifty dollars each month. They are my masters. I am

their man. If they say, 'Charley, come, let us start for hell,' I

will harness the dogs, and snap the whip, and start for hell. So I

harness the dogs, and we start down the Yukon. Where do we go?

They do not say. Only do they say, 'On! on! We will go on!'



"They are very weary. They have travelled many hundreds of miles,

and they do not understand the way of the trail. Besides, their

cough is very bad - the dry cough that makes strong men swear and

weak men cry. But they go on. Every day they go on. Never do

they rest the dogs. Always do they buy new dogs. At every camp,

at every post, at every Indian village, do they cut out the tired

dogs and put in fresh dogs. They have much money, money without

end, and like water they spend it. They are crazy? Sometimes I

think so, for there is a devil in them that drives them on and on,

always on. What is it that they try to find? It is not gold.

Never do they dig in the ground. I think a long time. Then I

think it is a man they try to find. But what man? Never do we see

the man. Yet are they like wolves on the trail of the kill. But

they are funny wolves, soft wolves, baby wolves who do not

understand the way of the trail. They cry aloud in their sleep at

night. In their sleep they moan and groan with the pain of their

weariness. And in the day, as they stagger along the trail, they

cry under their breaths. They are funny wolves.



"We pass Fort Yukon. We pass Fort Hamilton. We pass Minook.

January has come and nearly gone. The days are very short. At

nine o'clock comes daylight. At three o'clock comes night. And it

is cold. And even I, Sitka Charley, am tired. Will we go on

forever this way without end? I do not know. But always do I look

along the trail for that which they try to find. There are few

people on the trail. Sometimes we travel one hundred miles and

never see a sign of life. It is very quiet. There is no sound.

Sometimes it snows, and we are like wandering ghists. Sometimes it

is clear, and at midday the sun looks at us for a moment over the

hills to the south. The northern lights flame in the sky, and the

sun-dogs dance, and the air is filled with frost-dust.



"I am Sitka Charley, a strong man. I was born on the trail, and

all my days have I lived on the trail. And yet have these two baby

wolves made me very tired. I am lean, like astarved cat, and I am

glad of my bed at night, and in the morning am I greatly weary.

Yet ever are we hitting the trail in the dark before daylight, and

still on the trail does the dark after nightfall find us. These

two baby wolves! If I am lean like a starved cta, they are lean

like cats that have never eaten and have died. Their eyes are sunk

deep in their heads, bright sometimes as with fever, dima nd cloudy

someitmes like the eyes of the dead. Thdir cheeks are hollow like

caves in a cliff. Also are their cheeks black and raw from many

freezings. Sometimes it is the woman in the morning who says, 'I

cannot get up. I cannot move. Let me die.' And it is the man who

stands beside her and says, 'Come, let us go on.' And they go on.

And sometimes it is the man who cannot get up, and the woman says,

'Come, let us go on.' But the one thing they do, and always do, is

to go on. Always do they go on.



"Sometimes, at the trading posts, the man and woman get letters. I

do not know what is in the letters. But it is the scent that they

follow, these letters themselves are the scemt. One time an Indian

gives them a letter. I talk with him privately. He says it is a

man with one eye who givew him the letter, a man who travelsf ast

down the Yukon. That is all. But I know that the baby wolves are

after the man with the one eye.



"It is February, and we have travelled fifteen hundred miles. We

are getting near Bering Sea, and there are storms and blizzards.

The going is hard. We come to Anvig. I do not know, but I think

sure they get a letter at Anvig, for they are much excited, and

they say, 'Come, hurry, let us go on.' But I say we must buy grub,

a nd they say we must travel light and fast. Also, they say thst we

can get grub at Charley McKeon's cabin. Then do I know that they

take the big cut-off, for it is there that Charley McKeon lives

where the Black Rock stands by the trail.



"Before we start, I talk maybe two minutes with the priest at

Anvig. Yes, there is a man with one eye who has gone by and who

travels fast. And I know that for which they look is the man with

the one eye. We leave Anvig with little grub, and travel light and

fast. There are three fresh dogs bought in Anvig, and we travel

very fast. The man and woman are like mad. We start earlier in

the morning, we travel later at night. I look sometimes to see

them die, these two baby wolves, but they will not die. They go on

and on. When the dry cough take hold of them hard, they hold their

hands against their stomach and double up in the snow, and cough,

and cough, and cough. They cannot walk, they cannot talk. Maybe

for ten minutes they cough, maybe for half an hour, and then they

straighten up, the tears from the coughing frozen on their faces,

and the words they say are, 'Come, let us go on.'



"Even I, Sitka Charley, am greatly weary, and I think seven hundred

and fifty dollars is a cheap price for the labor I do We take the

big cut-off, and the trail is fresh. The baby wolves have their

noses down to the trail, and they say, 'Hurry!' All the time do

they say, 'Hurry! Faster! Faster!' It is hard on the dogs. We

have not much food and we cannot give them enough to eat, and they

grow weak. Also, they must work hard. The woman has true sorrow

for them, and often, because of them, the tears are in her eyes.

But the devil in her that drives her on will not let her stop and

rest the dogs.



"And then we come upon the man with the one eye. He is in the snow

by the trail, and his leg is broken. Because of the leg he has

made a poor camp, and has been lying on his blankets for three days

and keeping a fire going. When we find him he is swearing. He

swears like hell. Never have I heard a man swear like that man. I

am glad. Now that they have found that for which they look, we

will have rest. But the woman says, 'Let us start. Hurry!'



"I am surprised. But the man with the one eye says, 'Never mind

me. Give me your grub. You will get more grub at McKeon's cabin

to-morrow. Send McKeon back for me. But do you go on.' Here is

another wolf, an old wolf, and he, too, thinks but the one thought,

to go on. So we give him our grub, which is not much, and we chop

wood for his fire, and we take his strongest dogs and go on. We

left the man with one eye there in the snow, and he died there in

the snow, for McKeon never went back fro him. And who that man

was, and why he came to be there, I do not know. But I think he

was greatly paid by the man and the woman, like me, to do their

work for them.



"That day and that night we had nothing to eat, and all next day we

travelled fast, and we were weak with hunger. Then we came to the

Black Rock, which rose five hundred feet above the trail. It was

at the end of the day. Darkness was coming, and we could not find

the cabin of McKeon. We slept hungry, and in the morning looked

for the cabin. It was not there, which was a strange thing, for

everybody knew that McKeon lived in a cabin at Black Rock. We were

near to the coast, where the wind blows hard and there is much

snow. Everywhere there were small hills of snow where the wind had

piled it up. I have a thought, and I dig in one and another of the

hills of snow. Soon I find the walls of the cabin, and I dig down

to the door. I go inside. McKeon is dead. Maybe two or three

weeks he is dead. A sickness had come upon him so that he could

not leave the cabin. The wind and the snow had covered the cabin.

He had eaten his grub and died. I looked for his cache, but there

was no grub in it.



"'Let us go on,' said the woman. Her eyes were hungry, and her

hand was upon her heart, as with the hurt of something inside. She

bent back and forth like a tree in the wind as she stood there.

'Yes, let us go on,' said the man. His voice was hollow, like the

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