A thousand deaths by Jack London

in the past.

Half a day’s journey down the creek brought him to the valley of a

larger stream which he decided was the McQuestion. Here he shot a

moose, and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack

of meat. As he turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled-

trail. The late snows had drifted over, but underneath, it was

well-packed by travel. His conclusion was that two camps had been

established on the McQuestion, and that this was the connecting

trail. Evidently, Two Cabins had been found and it was the lower

camp, so he headed down the stream.

It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell

asleep wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two

Cabins, and if he would fetch it next day. At the first hint of

dawn he was under way, easily following the half-obliterated trail

and packing the recent snow with his webbed shoes so that the dogs

should not wallow.

And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of

the river. It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously.

The crack of the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing

through and across the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen

coat, pivoted him half around with the shock of its impact. He

staggered on his twisted snow-shoes to recover balance, and heard a

second crack of the rifle. This time it was a clean miss. He did

not wait for more, but plunged across the snow for the sheltering

trees of the bank a hundred feet away. Again and again the rifle

cracked, and he was unpleasantly aware of a trickle of warm moisture

down his back.

He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in

among the trees and brush. Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he

wallowed forward at full length and peered cautiously out. Nothing

was to be seen. Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the

trees of the opposite bank.

“If something doesn’t happen pretty soon,” he muttered at the end of

half an hour, “I’ll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze my

feet. Yellow Face, what’d you do, lying in the frost with

circulation getting slack and a man trying to plug you?”

He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig that

sent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another

half hour. Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable

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73

jingle of dog-bells. Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend.

Only one man was with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the

dogs along. The effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the

first human he had seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks

before. His next thought was of the potential murderer concealed on

the opposite bank.

Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly. The man did not

hear, and came on rapidly. Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled.

The man whoa’d his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke

when the rifle cracked. The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into

the wood in the direction of the sound. The man on the river had

been struck by the first shot. The shock of the high velocity

bullet staggered him. He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half-

falling, and pulled a rifle out from under the lashings. As he

strove to raise it to his shoulder, he crumpled at the waist and

sank down slowly to a sitting posture on the sled. Then, abruptly,

as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched backward and across a

corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see only his legs and

stomach.

From below came more jingling bells. The man did not move. Around

the bend swung three sleds, accompanied by half a dozen men. Smoke

cried warningly, but they had seen the condition of the first sled,

and they dashed on to it. No shots came from the other bank, and

Smoke, calling his dogs to follow, emerged into the open. There

were exclamations from the men, and two of them, flinging off the

mittens of their right hands, levelled their rifles at him.

“Come on, you red-handed murderer, you,” one of them, a black-

bearded man, commanded, “an’ jest pitch that gun of yourn in the

snow.”

Smoke hesitated, then dropped his rifle and came up to them.

“Go through him, Louis, an’ take his weapons,” the black-bearded man

ordered.

Louis, a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four of

the others, obeyed. His search revealed only Smoke’s hunting knife,

which was appropriated.

“Now, what have you got to say for yourself, Stranger, before I

shoot you dead?” the black-bearded man demanded.

“That you’re making a mistake if you think I killed that man,” Smoke

answered.

A cry came from one of the voyageurs. He had quested along the

trail and found Smoke’s tracks where he had left it to take refuge

on the bank. The man explained the nature of his find.

“What’d you kill Joe Kinade for?” he of the black beard asked.

“I tell you I didn’t–” Smoke began.

“Aw, what’s the good of talkin’. We got you red-handed. Right up

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74

there’s where you left the trail when you heard him comin’. You

laid among the trees an’ bushwhacked him. A short shot. You

couldn’t a-missed. Pierre, go an’ get that gun he dropped.”

“You might let me tell what happened,” Smoke objected.

“You shut up,” the man snarled at him. “I reckon your gun’ll tell

the story.”

All the men examined Smoke’s rifle, ejecting and counting the

cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.

“One shot,” Blackbeard concluded.

Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer’s,

sniffed at the breech.

“Him one fresh shot,” he said.

“The bullet entered his back,” Smoke said. “He was facing me when

he was shot. You see, it came from the other bank.”

Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook

his head.

“Nope. It won’t do. Turn him around to face the other bank–that’s

how you whopped him in the back. Some of you boys run up an’ down

the trail and see if you can see any tracks making for the other

bank.”

Their report was, that on that side the snow was unbroken. Not even

a snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it. Blackbeard, bending over the

dead man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand.

Shredding this, he found imbedded in the centre the bullet which had

perforated the body. Its nose was spread to the size of a half-

dollar, its butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it

with a cartridge from Smoke’s belt.

“That’s plain enough evidence, Stranger, to satisfy a blind man.

It’s soft-nosed an’ steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-

jacketed. It’s thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It’s

manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by

the J. and T. Arms Company. Now you come along an’ we’ll go over to

the bank an’ see jest how you done it.”

“I was bushwhacked myself,” Smoke said. “Look at the hole in my

parka.”

While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the

breech of the dead man’s gun. It was patent to all that it had been

fired once. The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.

“A damn shame poor Joe didn’t get you,” Blackbeard said bitterly.

“But he did pretty well with a hole like that in him. Come on,

you.”

“Search the other bank first,” Smoke urged.

SMOKE BELLEW

75

“You shut up an’ come on, an’ let the facts do the talkin’.”

They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up

the bank and in among the trees.

“Him dance that place keep him feet warm,” Louis pointed out. “That

place him crawl on belly. That place him put one elbow w’en him

shoot–”

“And by God there’s the empty cartridge he had done it with!” was

Blackbeard’s discovery. “Boys, there’s only one thing to do–”

“You might ask me how I came to fire that shot,” Smoke interrupted.

“An’ I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again.

You can answer them questions later on. Now, boys, we’re decent an’

law-abidin’, an’ we got to handle this right an’ regular. How far

do you reckon we’ve come, Pierre?”

“Twenty mile I t’ink for sure.”

“All right. We’ll cache the outfit an’ run him an’ poor Joe back to

Two Cabins. I reckon we’ve seen an’ can testify to what’ll stretch

his neck.”

IV.

It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his

captors arrived at Two Cabins. By the starlight, Smoke could make

out a dozen or more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger