A thousand deaths by Jack London

tree. And so the tale ran. Surprise Lake was a hoodoo; its

location was unremembered; and the gold still paved its undrained

bottom.

Two Cabins, no less mythical, was more definitely located. ‘Five

sleeps,’ up the McQuestion River from the Stewart, stood two ancient

cabins. So ancient were they that they must have been built before

ever the first known gold-hunter had entered the Yukon Basin.

Wandering moose-hunters, whom even Smoke had met and talked with,

claimed to have found the two cabins in the old days, but to have

sought vainly for the mine which those early adventurers must have

worked.

“I wish you was goin’ with me,” Shorty said wistfully, at parting.

“Just because you got the Indian bug ain’t no reason for to go

pokin’ into trouble. They’s no gettin’ away from it, that’s loco

country you’re bound for. The hoodoo’s sure on it, from the first

flip to the last call, judgin’ from all you an’ me has hearn tell

about it.”

“It’s all right, Shorty. I’ll make the round trip and be back in

Dawson in six weeks. The Yukon trail is packed, and the first

hundred miles or so of the Stewart ought to be packed. Old-timers

from Henderson have told me a number of outfits went up last fall

after the freeze-up. When I strike their trail I ought to hit her

up forty or fifty miles a day. I’m likely to be back inside a

month, once I get across.”

“Yes, once you get acrost. But it’s the gettin’ acrost that worries

me. Well, so long, Smoke. Keep your eyes open for that hoodoo,

that’s all. An’ don’t be ashamed to turn back if you don’t kill any

meat.”

SMOKE BELLEW

70

II.

A week later, Smoke found himself among the jumbled ranges south of

Indian River. On the divide from the Klondike he had abandoned the

sled and packed his wolf-dogs. The six big huskies each carried

fifty pounds, and on his own back was an equal burden. Through the

soft snow he led the way, packing it down under his snow-shoes, and

behind, in single file, toiled the dogs.

He loved the life, the deep arctic winter, the silent wilderness,

the unending snow-surface unpressed by the foot of any man. About

him towered icy peaks unnamed and uncharted. No hunter’s camp-

smoke, rising in the still air of the valleys, ever caught his eye.

He, alone, moved through the brooding quiet of the untravelled

wastes; nor was he oppressed by the solitude. He loved it all, the

day’s toil, the bickering wolf-dogs, the making of the camp in the

long twilight, the leaping stars overhead and the flaming pageant of

the aurora borealis.

Especially he loved his camp at the end of the day, and in it he saw

a picture which he ever yearned to paint and which he knew he would

never forget–a beaten place in the snow, where burned his fire; his

bed, a couple of rabbit-skin robes spread on fresh-chopped spruce-

boughs; his shelter, a stretched strip of canvas that caught and

threw back the heat of the fire; the blackened coffee-pot and pail

resting on a length of log, the moccasins propped on sticks to dry,

the snow-shoes up-ended in the snow; and across the fire the wolf-

dogs snuggling to it for the warmth, wistful and eager, furry and

frost-rimed, with bushy tails curled protectingly over their feet;

and all about, pressed backward but a space, the wall of encircling

darkness.

At such times San Francisco, The Billow, and O’Hara seemed very far

away, lost in a remote past, shadows of dreams that had never

happened. He found it hard to believe that he had known any other

life than this of the wild, and harder still was it for him to

reconcile himself to the fact that he had once dabbled and dawdled

in the Bohemian drift of city life. Alone, with no one to talk to,

he thought much, and deeply, and simply. He was appalled by the

wastage of his city years, by the cheapness, now, of the

philosophies of the schools and books, of the clever cynicism of the

studio and editorial room, of the cant of the business men in their

clubs. They knew neither food nor sleep, nor health; nor could they

ever possibly know the sting of real appetite, the goodly ache of

fatigue, nor the rush of mad strong blood that bit like wine through

all one’s body as work was done.

And all the time this fine, wise, Spartan North Land had been here,

and he had never known. What puzzled him was, that, with such

intrinsic fitness, he had never heard the slightest calling whisper,

had not himself gone forth to seek. But this, too, he solved in

time.

“Look here, Yellow-face, I’ve got it clear!”

The dog addressed lifted first one fore-foot and then the other with

SMOKE BELLEW

71

quick, appeasing movements, curled his bush of a tail about them

again, and laughed across the fire.

“Herbert Spencer was nearly forty before he caught the vision of his

greatest efficiency and desire. I’m none so slow. I didn’t have to

wait till I was thirty to catch mine. Right here is my efficiency

and desire. Almost, Yellow Face, do I wish I had been born a wolf-

boy and been brother all my days to you and yours.”

For days he wandered through a chaos of canyons and divides which

did not yield themselves to any rational topographical plan. It was

as if they had been flung there by some cosmic joker. In vain he

sought for a creek or feeder that flowed truly south toward the

McQuestion and the Stewart. Then came a mountain storm that blew a

blizzard across the riff-raff of high and shallow divides. Above

timber-line, fireless, for two days, he struggled blindly to find

lower levels. On the second day he came out upon the rim of an

enormous palisade. So thickly drove the snow that he could not see

the base of the wall, nor dared he attempt the descent. He rolled

himself in his robes and huddled the dogs about him in the depths of

a snow-drift, but did not permit himself to sleep.

In the morning, the storm spent, he crawled out to investigate. A

quarter of a mile beneath him, beyond all mistake, lay a frozen,

snow-covered lake. About it, on every side, rose jagged peaks. It

answered the description. Blindly, he had found Surprise Lake.

“Well-named,” he muttered, an hour later, as he came out upon its

margin. A clump of aged spruce was the only woods. On his way to

it, he stumbled upon three graves, snow-buried, but marked by hand-

hewn head-posts and undecipherable writing. On the edge of the

woods was a small ramshackle cabin. He pulled the latch and

entered. In a corner, on what had once been a bed of spruce-boughs,

still wrapped in mangy furs, that had rotted to fragments, lay a

skeleton. The last visitor to Surprise Lake, was Smoke’s

conclusion, as he picked up a lump of gold as large as his doubled

fist. Beside the lump was a pepper-can filled with nuggets of the

size of walnuts, rough-surfaced, showing no signs of wash.

So true had the tale run, that Smoke accepted without question that

the source of the gold was the lake’s bottom. Under many feet of

ice and inaccessible, there was nothing to be done, and at mid-day,

from the rim of the palisade, he took a farewell look back and down

at his find.

“It’s all right, Mr Lake,” he said. “You just keep right on staying

there. I’m coming back to drain you–if that hoodoo doesn’t catch

me. I don’t know how I got here, but I’ll know by the way I go

out.”

III.

In a little valley, beside a frozen stream and under beneficent

spruce trees, he built a fire four days later. Somewhere in that

white anarchy he left behind him, was Surprise Lake–somewhere, he

SMOKE BELLEW

72

knew not where; for a hundred hours of driftage and struggle through

blinding driving snow, had concealed his course from him, and he

knew not in what direction lay BEHIND. It was as if he had just

emerged from a nightmare. He was not sure that four days or a week

had passed. He had slept with the dogs, fought across a forgotten

number of shallow divides, followed the windings of weird canyons

that ended in pockets, and twice had managed to make a fire and thaw

out frozen moose-meat. And here he was, well-fed and well-camped.

The storm had passed, and it had turned clear and cold. The lay of

the land had again become rational. The creek he was on was natural

in appearance, and trended as it should toward the southwest. But

Surprise Lake was as lost to him as it had been to all its seekers