smoke-columns advertised the making of camps.
As for themselves, the going was hard. They wallowed through snow
to their waists, and were compelled to stop every few yards to
breathe. Shorty was the first to call a halt.
“We ben hittin’ the trail for over twelve hours,” he said. “Smoke,
I’m plum willin’ to say I’m good an’ tired. An’ so are you. An’
I’m free to shout that I can sure hang on to this here pascar like a
starvin’ Indian to a hunk of bear-meat. But this poor girl here
can’t keep her legs no time if she don’t get something in her
stomach. Here’s where we build a fire. What d’ye say?”
So quickly, so deftly and methodically, did they go about making a
temporary camp, that Joy, watching with jealous eyes, admitted to
herself that the old-timers could not do it better. Spruce boughs,
with a spread blanket on top, gave a foundation for rest and cooking
operations. But they kept away from the heat of the fire until
noses and cheeks had been rubbed cruelly.
Smoke spat in the air, and the resultant crackle was so immediate
and loud that he shook his head.
“I give it up,” he said. “I’ve never seen cold like this.”
”
One winter on the Koyokuk it went to eighty-six below,” Joy
answered. “It’s at least seventy or seventy-five right now, and I
know I’ve frosted my cheeks. They’re burning like fire.”
On the steep slope of the divide there was no ice, while snow, as
fine and hard and crystalline as granulated sugar, was poured into
the gold-pan by the bushel until enough water was melted for the
coffee. Smoke fried bacon and thawed biscuits. Shorty kept the
fuel supplied and tended the fire, and Joy set the simple table
SMOKE BELLEW
52
composed of two plates, two cups, two spoons, a tin of mixed salt
and pepper, and a tin of sugar. When it came to eating, she and
Smoke shared one set between them. They ate out of the same plate
and drank from the same cup.
It was nearly two in the afternoon when they cleared the crest of
the divide and began dropping down a feeder of Squaw Creek. Earlier
in the winter some moose-hunter had made a trail up the canyon–that
is, in going up and down he had stepped always in his previous
tracks. As a result, in the midst of soft snow, and veiled under
later snow falls, was a line of irregular hummocks. If one’s foot
missed a hummock, he plunged down through unpacked snow and usually
to a fall. Also, the moose-hunter had been an exceptionally long-
legged individual. Joy, who was eager now that the two men should
stake, and fearing that they were slackening pace on account of her
evident weariness, insisted on taking the lead. The speed and
manner in which she negotiated the precarious footing, called out
Shorty’s unqualified approval.
“Look at her!” he cried. “She’s the real goods an’ the red meat.
Look at them moccasins swing along. No high-heels there. She uses
the legs God gave her. She’s the right squaw for any bear-hunter.”
She flashed back a smile of acknowledgment that included Smoke. He
caught a feeling of chumminess, though at the same time he was
bitingly aware that it was very much of a woman who embraced him in
that comradely smile.
Looking back, as they came to the bank of Squaw Creek, they could
see the stampede, strung out irregularly, struggling along the
descent of the divide.
They slipped down the bank to the creek bed. The stream, frozen
solidly to bottom, was from twenty to thirty feet wide and ran
between six- and eight-foot earth banks of alluvial wash. No recent
feet had disturbed the snow that lay upon its ice, and they knew
they were above the Discovery claim and the last stakes of the Sea
Lion stampeders.
“Look out for springs,” Joy warned, as Smoke led the way down the
creek. “At seventy below you’ll lose your feet if you break
through.”
These springs, common to most Klondike streams, never ceased at the
lowest temperatures. The water flowed out from the banks and lay in
pools which were cuddled from the cold by later surface-freezings
and snow falls. Thus, a man, stepping on dry snow, might break
through half an inch of ice-skin and find himself up to the knees in
water. In five minutes, unless able to remove the wet gear, the
loss of one’s foot was the penalty.
Though only three in the afternoon, the long grey twilight of the
Arctic had settled down. They watched for a blazed tree on either
bank, which would show the centre-stake of the last claim located.
Joy, impulsively eager, was the first to find it. She darted ahead
of Smoke, crying: “Somebody’s been here! See the snow! Look for
the blaze! There it is! See that spruce!”
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53
She sank suddenly to her waist in the snow.
“Now I’ve done it,” she said woefully. Then she cried: “Don’t come
near me! I’ll wade out.”
Step by step, each time breaking through the thin skin of ice
concealed under the dry snow, she forced her way to solid footing.
Smoke did not wait, but sprang to the bank, where dry and seasoned
twigs and sticks, lodged amongst the brush by spring freshets,
waited the match. By the time she reached his side, the first
flames and flickers of an assured fire were rising.
“Sit down!” he commanded.
She obediently sat down in the snow. He slipped his pack from his
back, and spread a blanket for her feet.
From above came the voices of the stampeders who followed them.
“Let Shorty stake,” she urged
“Go on, Shorty,” Smoke said, as he attacked her moccasins, already
stiff with ice. “Pace off a thousand feet and place the two centre-
stakes. We can fix the corner-stakes afterwards.”
With his knife Smoke cut away the lacings and leather of the
moccasins. So stiff were they with ice that they snapped and
crackled under the hacking and sawing. The Siwash socks and heavy
woollen stockings were sheaths of ice. It was as if her feet and
calves were encased in corrugated iron.
“How are your feet?” he asked, as he worked.
“Pretty numb. I can’t move nor feel my toes. But it will be all
right. The fire is burning beautifully. Watch out you don’t freeze
your own hands. They must be numb now from the way you’re
fumbling.”
He slipped his mittens on, and for nearly a minute smashed the open
hands savagely against his sides. When he felt the blood-prickles,
he pulled off the mittens and ripped and tore and sawed and hacked
at the frozen garments. The white skin of one foot appeared, then
that of the other, to be exposed to the bite of seventy below zero,
which is the equivalent of one hundred and two below freezing.
Then came the rubbing with snow, carried on with an intensity of
cruel fierceness, till she squirmed and shrank and moved her toes,
and joyously complained of the hurt.
He half-dragged her, and she half-lifted herself, nearer to the
fire. He placed her feet on the blanket close to the flesh-saving
flames.
“You’ll have to take care of them for a while,” he said.
She could now safely remove her mittens and manipulate her own feet,
SMOKE BELLEW
54
with the wisdom of the initiated, being watchful that the heat of
the fire was absorbed slowly. While she did this, he attacked his
hands. The snow did not melt nor moisten. Its light crystals were
like so much sand. Slowly the stings and pangs of circulation came
back into the chilled flesh. Then he tended the fire, unstrapped
the light pack from her back, and got out a complete change of foot-
gear.
Shorty returned along the creek-bed and climbed the bank to them.
“I sure staked a full thousan’ feet,” he proclaimed. “Number
twenty-seven and number twenty-eight, though I’d only got the upper
stake of twenty-seven, when I met the first geezer of the bunch
behind. He just straight declared I wasn’t goin’ to stake twenty-
eight. An’ I told him . . . .”
“Yes, yes,” Joy cried. “What did you tell him?”
“Well, I told him straight that if he didn’t back up plum five
hundred feet I’d sure punch his frozen nose into ice-cream an’
chocolate eclaires. He backed up, an’ I’ve got in the centre-stakes
of two full an’ honest five-hundred-foot claims. He staked next,
and I guess by now the bunch has Squaw Creek located to head-waters
an’ down the other side. Ourn is safe. It’s too dark to see now,
but we can put out the corner-stakes in the mornin’.”
III.
When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the
night. So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual