that we don’t travel to-day,’ I say, ‘else will the frost be
unwarmed in the breathing and bite all the edges of our lungs.
After that we will have bad cough, and maybe next spring will come
pneumonia.’ But they are CHECHA-QUO. They do not understand the
trail. They are like dead people they are so tired, but they say,
‘Let us go on.’ We go on. The frost bites their lungs, and they
get the dry cough. They cough till the tears run down their
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 black and 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 we 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 more? 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,
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82
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 ghosts. 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 a starved 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 cat, 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, dim and cloudy
sometimes like the eyes of the dead. Their 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 scent. One time an Indian
gives them a letter. I talk with him privately. He says it is a
man with one eye who gives him the letter, a man who travels fast
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
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83
they say, ‘Come, hurry, let us go on.’ But I say we must buy grub,
and they say we must travel light and fast. Also, they say that 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