“I thought of that,” Bill answered gravely. “An’ so,when I saw it run off across the snow,I looked in the snow an’ saw its tracks.Then I counted the dogs an’ there was still six of ’em.The tracks is there in the snow now.D’ye want to look at ’em?I’ll show ’em to you.”
Henry did not reply, but munched on in silence, until,the meal finished, he topped it with a final cup of coffee.He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said:
“Then you’re thinkin’ as it was—”
A long wailing cry, fiercely sad,from somewhere in the darkness, had interrupted him.He stopped to listen to it,then he finished his sentence with a wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry, “—one of them?”
Bill nodded. “I’d a blame sight sooner think that than anything else.You noticed yourself the row the dogs made.”
Cry after cry, and answering cries,were turning the silence into a bedlam.From every side the cries arose,and the dogs betrayed their fear by huddling together and so close to the fire that their hair was scorched by the heat. Bill threw on more wood, before lighting his pipe.
“I’m thinking you’re down in the mouth some, ” Henry said.
“Henry . . . ” He sucked meditatively at his pipe for some time before he went on. “Henry, I was a-thinkin’ what a blame sight luckier he is than you an’ me’ll ever be.”
He indicated the third person by a downward thrust of the thumb to the box on which they sat.
“You an’ me, Henry, when we die,we’ll be lucky if we get enough stones over our carcases to keep the dogs off of us.”
“But we ain’t got people an’ money an’ all the rest,like him,” Henry rejoined.“Long-distance funerals is somethin’ you an’ me can’t exactly afford. ”
“What gets me, Henry, is what a chap like this,that’s a lord or something in his own country,and that’s never had to bother about grub nor blankets;why he comes a-buttin’ round the Godforsaken ends of the earth—that’s what I can’t exactly see.”
“He might have lived to a ripe old age if he’d stayed at home, ” Henry agreed.
Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind.Instead, he pointed towards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every side. There was no suggestion of form in the utter blackness; only could be seen a pair of eyes gleaming like live coals. Henry indicated with his head a second pair, and a third. A circle of the gleaming eyes had drawn about their camp. Now and again a pair of eyes moved, or disappeared to appear again a moment later.
The unrest of the dogs had been increasing,and they stampeded, in a surge of sudden fear,to the near side of the fire,cringing and crawling about the legs of the men.In the scramble one of the dogs had been overturned on the edge of the fire,and it had yelped with pain and fright as the smell of its singed coat possessed the air. The commotion caused the circle of eyes to shift restlessly for a moment and even to withdraw a bit, but it settled down again as the dogs became quiet.
“Henry, it’s a blame misfortune to be out of ammunition. ”
Bill had finished his pipe and was helping his companion to spread the bed of fur and blanket upon the spruce boughs which he had laid over the snow before supper. Henry grunted, and began unlacing his moccasins.
“How many cartridges did you say you had left?” he asked.
“Three,” came the answer.“An’ I wisht ’twas three hundred.Then I’d show ’em what for, damn ’em!”
He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes,and began securely to prop his moccasins before the fire.
“An’ I wisht this cold snap’d break,” he went on.“It’s ben fifty below for two weeks now.An’ I wisht I’d never started on this trip, Henry.I don’t like the looks of it. I don’t feel right,somehow. An’ while I’m wishin’,I wisht the trip was over an’ done with,an’ you an’ me a-sittin’ by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an’ playing cribbage—that’s what I wisht.”
Henry grunted and crawled into bed.As he dozed off he was aroused by his comrade’s voice.
“Say, Henry, that other one that come in an’ got a fish—why didn’t the dogs pitch into it?That’s what’s botherin’ me.”
“You’re botherin’ too much, Bill,” came the sleepy response.“You was never like this before. You jes’ shut up now,an’ go to sleep, an’ you’ll be all hunkydory in the mornin’.Your stomach’s sour, that’s what’s botherin’ you.”
The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side,under the one covering. The fire died down,and the gleaming eyes drew closer the circle they had flung about the camp.The dogs clustered together in fear,now and again snarling menacingly as a pair of eyes drew close.Once their uproar became so loud that Bill woke up.He got out of bed carefully,so as not to disturb the sleep of his comrade,and threw more wood on the fire.As it began to flame up,the circle of eyes drew farther back.He glanced casually at the huddling dogs.He rubbed his eyes and looked at them more sharply.Then he crawled back into the blankets.
“Henry,” he said. “Oh, Henry.”
Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking,and demanded, “What’s wrong now?”
“Nothin’,” came the answer;“only there’s seven of ’em again. I just counted.”
Henry acknowledged receipt of the information with a grunt that slid into a snore as he drifted back into sleep.
In the morning it was Henry who awoke first and routed his companion out of bed.Daylight was yet three hours away,though it was already six o’clock;and in the darkness Henry went about preparing breakfast,while Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing.
“Say, Henry,” he asked suddenly,“how many dogs did you say we had?”
“Six.”
“Wrong,” Bill proclaimed triumphantly.
“Seven again?” Henry queried.
“No, five; one’s gone.”
“The hell!” Henry cried in wrath,leaving the cooking to come and count the dogs.
“You’re right, Bill,” he concluded. “Fatty’s gone.”
“An’ he went like greased lightnin’ once he got started.Couldn’t ’ve seen ’m for smoke.”
“No chance at all,” Henry concluded.“They jes’ swallowed ’m alive.I bet he was yelpin’ as he went down their throats, damn ’em!”
“He always was a fool dog,” said Bill.
“But no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off an’ commit suicide that way.” He looked over the remainder of the team with a speculative eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal. “I bet none of the others would do it.”
“Couldn’t drive ’em away from the fire with a club,” Bill agreed. “I always did think there was somethin’ wrong with Fatty anyway. ”
And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail—less scant than the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.
CHAPTER II THE SHE-WOLF
Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled,the men turned their backs on the cheery fire and launched out into the darkness. At once began to rise the cries that were fiercely sad—cries that called through the darkness and cold to one another and answered back. Conversation ceased. Daylight came at nine o’clock. At midday the sky to the south warmed to rose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the earth intervened between the meridian sun and the northern world. But the rose-colour swiftly faded. The grey light of day that remained lasted until three o’clock, when it, too, faded, and the pall of the Arctic night descended upon the lone and silent land.
As darkness came on,the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew closer—so close that more than once they sent surges of fear through the toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.
At the conclusion of one such panic,when he and Henry had got the dogs back in the traces, Bill said:
“I wisht they’d strike game somewheres,an’ go away an’ leave us alone.”
“They do get on the nerves horrible,” Henry sympathised.
They spoke no more until camp was made.