The Magnetic North Part 71

"Get your dry things!"

"Feet aren't wet."

"Don't talk foolishness; here are your things." The Colonel flung in the Boy's direction the usual change, two pairs of heavy socks, the "German knitted" and "the felt."

"Not wet," repeated the Boy.

"You know you are."

"Could go through water in these mucklucks."

"I'm not saying the wet has come in from outside; but you know as well as I do a man sweats like a horse on the trail."

Still the Boy sat there, with his head sunk between his shoulders.

"First rule o' this country is to keep your feet dry, or else pneumonia, rheumatism--G.o.d knows what!"

"First rule o' this country is mind your own business, or else--G.o.d knows what!"

The Colonel looked at the Boy a moment, and then turned his back. The Boy glanced up conscience-stricken, but still only half alive, dulled by the weight of a crus.h.i.+ng weariness. The Colonel presently bent over the fire and was about to lift off the turbulently boiling pot. The Boy sprang to his feet, ready to shout, "You do your work, and keep your hands off mine," but the Colonel turned just in time to say with unusual gentleness:

"If you _like_, I'll make supper to-night;" and the Boy, catching his breath, ran forward, swaying a little, half blind, but with a different look in his tired eyes.

"No, no, old man. It isn't as bad as that."

And again it was two friends who slept side by side in the snow.

The next morning the Colonel, who had been kept awake half the night by what he had been thinking was neuralgia in his eyes, woke late, hearing the Boy calling:

"I say, Kentucky, aren't you _ever_ goin' to get up?"

"Get up?" said the Colonel. "Why should I, when it's pitch-dark?"

"_What?_"

"Fire clean out, eh?" But he smelt the tea and bacon, and sat up bewildered, with a hand over his smarting eyes. The Boy went over and knelt down by him, looking at him curiously.

"Guess you're a little snow-blind, Colonel; but it won't last, you know."

"Blind!"

"No, no, only _snow_-blind. Big difference;" and he took out his rag of a handkerchief, got some water in a tin cup, and the eyes were bathed and bandaged.

"It won't last, you know. You'll just have to take it easy for a few days."

The Colonel groaned.

For the first time he seemed to lose heart. He sat during breakfast with bandaged eyes, and a droop of the shoulders, that seemed to say old age had come upon him in a single night. The day that followed was pretty dark to both men. The Boy had to do all the work, except the monotonous, blind, pus.h.i.+ng from behind, in whatever direction the Boy dragged the sled.

Now, snow-blindness is not usually dangerous, but it is horribly painful while it lasts. Your eyes swell up and are stabbed continually by cutting pains; your head seems full of acute neuralgia, and often there is fever and other complications. The Colonel's was a bad case.

But he was a giant for strength and "sound as a dollar," as the Boy reminded him, "except for this little bother with your eyes, and you're a whole heap better already."

At a very slow rate they plodded along.

They had got into a region where there was no timber; but, as they couldn't camp without a fire, they took an extra rest that day at four o'clock, and regaled themselves on some cold grub. Then they took up the line of march again. But they had been going only about half an hour when the Colonel suddenly, without warning, stopped pus.h.i.+ng the sled, and stood stock-still on the trail. The Boy, feeling the removal of the pressure, looked round, went back to him, and found nothing in particular was the matter, but he just thought he wouldn't go any further.

"We can camp here."

"No, we can't," says the Boy; "there isn't a tree in sight."

But the Colonel seemed dazed. He thought he'd stop anyhow--"right where he was."

"Oh, no," says the Boy, a little frightened; "we'll camp the minute we come to wood." But the Colonel stood as if rooted. The Boy took his arm and led him on a few paces to the sled. "You needn't push hard, you know. Just keep your hand there so, without looking, you'll know where I'm going." This was very subtle of the Boy. For he knew the Colonel was blind as a bat and as sensitive as a woman. "We'll get through all right yet," he called back, as he stooped to take up the sledrope. "I bet on Kentucky."

Like a man walking in his sleep, the Colonel followed, now holding on to the sled and unconsciously pulling a little, and when the Boy, very nearly on his last legs, remonstrated, leaning against it, and so urging it a little forward.

Oh, but the wood was far to seek that night!

Concentrated on the two main things--to carry forward his almost intolerable load, and to go the shortest way to the nearest wood--the Boy, by-and-by, forgot to tell his tired nerves to take account of the unequal pressure from behind. If he felt it--well, the Colonel was a corker; if he didn't feel it--well, the Colonel was just about tuckered out. It was very late when at last the Boy raised a shout. Behind the cliff overhanging the river-bed that they were just rounding, there, spread out in the sparkling starlight, as far as he could see, a vast primeval forest. The Boy bettered his lagging pace.

"Ha! you haven't seen a wood like this since we left 'Frisco. It's all right now, Kentucky;" and he bent to his work with a will.

When he got to the edge of the wood, he flung down the rope and turned--to find himself alone.

"Colonel! Colonel! Where are you? _Colonel!_"

He stood in the silence, s.h.i.+vering with a sudden sense of desolation.

He took his bearings, propped a fallen fir sapling aslant by the sled, and, forgetting he was ready to drop, he ran swiftly hack along the way he came. They had travelled all that afternoon and evening on the river ice, hard as iron, retaining no trace of footprint or of runner possible to verify even in daylight. The Yukon here was fully three miles wide. They had meant to hug the right bank, but snow and ice refas.h.i.+on the world and laugh at the trustful geography of men. A traveller on this trail is not always sure whether he is following the mighty Yukon or some slough equally mighty for a few miles, or whether, in the protracted twilight, he has not wandered off upon some frozen swamp.

On the Boy went in the ghostly starlight, running, stumbling, calling at regular intervals, his voice falling into a melancholy monotony that sounded foreign to himself. It occurred to him that were he the Colonel he wouldn't recognise it, and he began instead to call "Kentucky!

Ken-tuck-kee!" sounding those fine barbaric syllables for the first time, most like, in that world of ice and silence.

He stood an instant after his voice died, and listened to the quiet.

Yes, the people were right who said nothing was so hard to bear in this country of hards.h.i.+p--nothing ends by being so ghastly--as the silence.

No bird stirs. The swift-flas.h.i.+ng fish are sealed under ice, the wood creatures gone to their underground sleep. No whispering of the pointed firs, stiff, snowclotted; no swaying of the scant herbage sheathed in ice or m.u.f.fled under winter's wide white blanket. No greater hush can reign in the interstellar s.p.a.ces than in winter on the Yukon.

"Colonel!"

Silence--like a negation of all puny things, friends.h.i.+p, human life--

"Colonel!"

Silence. No wonder men went mad up here, when they didn't drown this silence in strong drink.

On and on he ran, till he felt sure he must have pa.s.sed the Colonel, unless--yes, there were those air-holes in the river ice ... He felt choked and stopped to breathe. Should he go back? It was horrible to turn. It was like admitting that the man was not to be found--that this was the end.

"Colonel!"