new, and steadily the distance between them was increasing. He
sprang about excitedly, making short nervous leaps and twists, now
toward one, now toward the other, in painful indecision, not
knowing his own mind, desiring both and unable to choose, uttering
quick sharp whines and beginning to pant.
He sat down abruptly on his haunches, thrusting his nose upward,
the mouth opening and closing with jerking movements, each time
opening wider. These jerking movements were in unison with the
recurrent spasms that attacked the throat, each spasm severer and
more intense than the preceding one. And in accord with jerks and
spasms the larynx began to vibrate, at first silently, accompanied
by the rush of air expelled from the lungs, then sounding a low,
deep note, the lowest in the register of the human ear. All this
was the nervous and muscular preliminary to howling.
But just as the howl was on the verge of bursting from the full
throat, the wide-opened mouth was closed, the paroxysms ceased, and
he looked long and steadily at the retreating man. Suddenly Wolf
turned his head, and over his shoulder just as steadily regarded
Walt. The appeal was unanswered. Not a word nor a sign did the
dog receive, no suggestion and no clew as to what his conduct
should be.
A glance ahead to where the old master was nearing the curve of the
trail excited him again. He sprang to his feet with a whine, and
then, struck by a new idea, turned his attention to Madge.
Hitherto he had ignored her, but now, both masters failing him, she
alone was left. He went over to her and snuggled his head in her
lap, nudging her arm with his nose – an old trick of his when
begging for favors. He backed away from her and began writhing and
twisting playfully, curvetting and prancing, half rearing and
striking his fore paws to the earth, struggling with all his body,
from the wheedling eyes and flattening ears to the wagging tail, to
express the thought that was in him and that was denied him
utterance.
This, too, he soon abandoned. He was depressed by the coldness of
these humans who had never been cold before. No response could he
draw from them, no help could he get. They did not consider him.
They were as dead.
He turned and silently gazed after the old master. Skiff Miller
was rounding the curve. In a moment he would be gone from view.
Yet he never turned his head, plodding straight onward, slowly and
methodically, as though possessed of no interest in what was
occurring behind his back.
And in this fashion he went out of view. Wolf waited for him to
reappear. He waited a long minute, silently, quietly, without
movement, as though turned to stone – withal stone quick with
eagerness and desire. He barked once, and waited. Then he turned
and trotted back to Walt Irvine. He sniffed his hand and dropped
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74
down heavily at his feet, watching the trail where it curved
emptily from view.
The tiny stream slipping down the mossy-lipped stone seemed
suddenly to increase the volume of its gurgling noise. Save for
the meadow-larks, there was no other sound. The great yellow
butterflies drifted silently through the sunshine and lost
themselves in the drowsy shadows. Madge gazed triumphantly at her
husband.
A few minutes later Wolf got upon his feet. Decision and
deliberation marked his movements. He did not glance at the man
and woman. His eyes were fixed up the trail. He had made up his
mind. They knew it. And they knew, so far as they were concerned,
that the ordeal had just begun.
He broke into a trot, and Madge’s lips pursed, forming an avenue
for the caressing sound that it was the will of her to send forth.
But the caressing sound was not made. She was impelled to look at
her husband, and she saw the sternness with which he watched her.
The pursed lips relaxed, and she sighed inaudibly.
Wolf’s trot broke into a run. Wider and wider were the leaps he
made. Not once did he turn his head, his wolf’s brush standing out
straight behind him. He cut sharply across the curve of the trail
and was gone.
THE SUN-DOG TRAIL
SITKA CHARLEY smoked his pipe and gazed thoughtfully at the POLICE
GAZETTE illustration on the wall. For half an hour he had been
steadily regarding it, and for half an hour I had been slyly
watching him. Something was going on in that mind of his, and,
whatever it was, I knew it was well worth knowing. He had lived
life, and seen things, and performed that prodigy of prodigies,
namely, the turning of his back upon his own people, and, in so far
as it was possible for an Indian, becoming a white man even in his
mental processes. As he phrased it himself, he had come into the
warm, sat among us, by our fires, and become one of us. He had
never learned to read nor write, but his vocabulary was remarkable,
and more remarkable still was the completeness with which he had
assumed the white man’s point of view, the white man’s attitude
toward things.
We had struck this deserted cabin after a hard day on trail. The
dogs had been fed, the supper dishes washed, the beds made, and we
were now enjoying that most delicious hour that comes each day, and
but once each day, on the Alaskan trail, the hour when nothing
intervenes between the tired body and bed save the smoking of the
evening pipe. Some former denizen of the cabin had decorated its
walls with illustrations torn from magazines and newspapers, and it
was these illustrations that had held Sitka Charley’s attention
from the moment of our arrival two hours before. He had studied
LOVE OF LIFE AND OTHER STORIES
75
them intently, ranging from one to another and back again, and I
could see that there was uncertainty in his mind, and bepuzzlement.
“Well?” I finally broke the silence.
He took the pipe from his mouth and said simply, “I do not
understand.”
He smoked on again, and again removed the pipe, using it to point
at the POLICE GAZETTE illustration.
“That picture – what does it mean? I do not understand.”
I looked at the picture. A man, with a preposterously wicked face,
his right hand pressed dramatically to his heart, was falling
backward to the floor. Confronting him, with a face that was a
composite of destroying angel and Adonis, was a man holding a
smoking revolver.
“One man is killing the other man,” I said, aware of a distinct
bepuzzlement of my own and of failure to explain.
“Why?” asked Sitka Charley.
“I do not know,” I confessed.
“That picture is all end,” he said. “It has no beginning.”
“It is life,” I said.
“Life has beginning,” he objected.
I was silenced for the moment, while his eyes wandered on to an
adjoining decoration, a photographic reproduction of somebody’s
“Leda and the Swan.”
“That picture,” he said, “has no beginning. It has no end. I do
not understand pictures.”
“Look at that picture,” I commanded, pointing to a third
decoration. “It means something. Tell me what it means to you.”
He studied it for several minutes.
“The little girl is sick,” he said finally. “That is the doctor
looking at her. They have been up all night – see, the oil is low
in the lamp, the first morning light is coming in at the window.
It is a great sickness; maybe she will die, that is why the doctor
looks so hard. That is the mother. It is a great sickness,
because the mother’s head is on the table and she is crying.”
“How do you know she is crying?” I interrupted. “You cannot see
her face. Perhaps she is asleep.”
Sitka Charley looked at me in swift surprise, then back at the
picture. It was evident that he had not reasoned the impression.
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76
“Perhaps she is asleep,” he repeated. He studied it closely. “No,
she is not asleep. The shoulders show that she is not asleep. I
have seen the shoulders of a woman who cried. The mother is
crying. It is a very great sickness.”
“And now you understand the picture,” I cried.
He shook his head, and asked, “The little girl – does it die?”
It was my turn for silence.
“Does it die?” he reiterated. “You are a painter-man. Maybe you
know.”
“No, I do not know,” I confessed.
“It is not life,” he delivered himself dogmatically. “In life
little girl die or get well. Something happen in life. In picture
nothing happen. No, I do not understand pictures.”
His disappointment was patent. It was his desire to understand all
things that white men understand, and here, in this matter, he