girl. No, I take my stand with Wertz and Hawes, and–”
But the dogs snarled and drew in, and he broke off, listening to
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the crunch-crunch of many snowshoes. Indian after Indian stalked
into the firelight, tall and grim, fur-clad and silent, their
shadows dancing grotesquely on the snow. One, the witch doctor,
spoke gutturally to Sipsu. His face was daubed with savage paint
blotches, and over his shoulders was drawn a wolfskin, the
gleaming teeth and cruel snout surmounting his head. No other
word was spoken. The prospectors held the peace. Sipsu arose and
slipped into her snowshoes.
“Good-by, O my man,” she said to Hitchcock. But the man who had
sat beside her on the sled gave no sign, nor lifted his head as
they filed away into the white forest.
Unlike many men, his faculty of adaptation, while large, had never
suggested the expediency of an alliance with the women of the
Northland. His broad cosmopolitanism had never impelled toward
covenanting in marriage with the daughters of the soil. If it
had, his philosophy of life would not have stood between. But it
simply had not. Sipsu? He had pleasured in camp-fire chats with
her, not as a man who knew himself to be man and she woman, but as
a man might with a child, and as a man of his make certainly would
if for no other reason than to vary the tedium of a bleak
existence. That was all. But there was a certain chivalric
thrill of warm blood in him, despite his Yankee ancestry and New
England upbringing, and he was so made that the commercial aspect
of life often seemed meaningless and bore contradiction to his
deeper impulses.
So he sat silent, with head bowed forward, an organic force,
greater than himself, as great as his race, at work within him.
Wertz and Hawes looked askance at him from time to time, a faint
but perceptible trepidation in their manner. Sigmund also felt
this. Hitchcock was strong, and his strength had been impressed
upon them in the course of many an event in their precarious life.
So they stood in a certain definite awe and curiosity as to what
his conduct would be when he moved to action.
But his silence was long, and the fire nigh out, when Wertz
stretched his arms and yawned, and thought he’d go to bed. Then
Hitchcock stood up his full height.
“May God damn your souls to the deepest hells, you chicken-hearted
cowards! I’m done with you!” He said it calmly enough, but his
strength spoke in every syllable, and every intonation was
advertisement of intention. “Come on,” he continued, “whack up,
and in whatever way suits you best. I own a quarter-interest in
the claims; our contracts show that. There’re twenty-five or
thirty ounces in the sack from the test pans. Fetch out the
scales. We’ll divide that now. And you, Sigmund, measure me my
quarter-share of the grub and set it apart. Four of the dogs are
mine, and I want four more. I’ll trade you my share in the camp
outfit and mining-gear for the dogs. And I’ll throw in my six or
seven ounces and the spare 45-90 with the ammunition. What d’ye
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say?”
The three men drew apart and conferred. When they returned,
Sigmund acted as spokesman. “We’ll whack up fair with you,
Hitchcock. In everything you’ll get your quarter-share, neither
more nor less; and you can take it or leave it. But we want the
dogs as bad as you do, so you get four, and that’s all. If you
don’t want to take your share of the outfit and gear, why, that’s
your lookout. If you want it, you can have it; if you don’t,
leave it.”
“The letter of the law,” Hitchcock sneered. “But go ahead. I’m
willing. And hurry up. I can’t get out of this camp and away
from its vermin any too quick.”
The division was effected without further comment. He lashed his
meagre belongings upon one of the sleds, rounded in his four dogs,
and harnessed up. His portion of outfit and gear he did not
touch, though he threw onto the sled half a dozen dog harnesses,
and challenged them with his eyes to interfere. But they shrugged
their shoulders and watched him disappear in the forest.
A man crawled upon his belly through the snow. On every hand
loomed the moose-hide lodges of the camp. Here and there a
miserable dog howled or snarled abuse upon his neighbor. Once,
one of them approached the creeping man, but the man became
motionless. The dog came closer and sniffed, and came yet closer,
till its nose touched the strange object which had not been there
when darkness fell. Then Hitchcock, for it was Hitchcock,
upreared suddenly, shooting an unmittened hand out to the brute’s
shaggy throat. And the dog knew its death in that clutch, and
when the man moved on, was left broken-necked under the stars. In
this manner Hitchcock made the chief’s lodge. For long he lay in
the snow without, listening to the voices of the occupants and
striving to locate Sipsu. Evidently there were many in the tent,
and from the sounds they were in high excitement. At last he
heard the girl’s voice, and crawled around so that only the moose-
hide divided them. Then burrowing in the snow, he slowly wormed
his head and shoulders underneath. When the warm inner air smote
his face, he stopped and waited, his legs and the greater part of
his body still on the outside. He could see nothing, nor did he
dare lift his head. On one side of him was a skin bale. He could
smell it, though he carefully felt to be certain. On the other
side his face barely touched a furry garment which he knew clothed
a body. This must be Sipsu. Though he wished she would speak
again, he resolved to risk it.
He could hear the chief and the witch doctor talking high, and in
a far corner some hungry child whimpering to sleep. Squirming
over on his side, he carefully raised his head, still just
touching the furry garment. He listened to the breathing. It was
a woman’s breathing; he would chance it.
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77
He pressed against her side softly but firmly, and felt her start
at the contact. Again he waited, till a questioning hand slipped
down upon his head and paused among the curls. The next instant
the hand turned his face gently upward, and he was gazing into
Sipsu’s eyes.
She was quite collected. Changing her position casually, she
threw an elbow well over on the skin bale, rested her body upon
it, and arranged her parka. In this way he was completely
concealed. Then, and still most casually, she reclined across
him, so that he could breathe between her arm and breast, and when
she lowered her head her ear pressed lightly against his lips.
“When the time suits, go thou,” he whispered, “out of the lodge
and across the snow, down the wind to the bunch of jackpine in the
curve of the creek. There wilt thou find my dogs and my sled,
packed for the trail. This night we go down to the Yukon; and
since we go fast, lay thou hands upon what dogs come nigh thee, by
the scruff of the neck, and drag them to the sled in the curve of
the creek.”
Sipsu shook her head in dissent; but her eyes glistened with
gladness, and she was proud that this man had shown toward her
such favor. But she, like the women of all her race, was born to
obey the will masculine, and when Hitchcock repeated “Go!” he did
it with authority, and though she made no answer he knew that his
will was law.
“And never mind harness for the dogs,” he added, preparing to go.
“I shall wait. But waste no time. The day chaseth the night
alway, nor does it linger for man’s pleasure.”
Half an hour later, stamping his feet and swinging his arms by the
sled, he saw her coming, a surly dog in either hand. At the
approach of these his own animals waxed truculent, and he favored
them with the butt of his whip till they quieted. He had
approached the camp up the wind, and sound was the thing to be
most feared in making his presence known.
“Put them into the sled,” he ordered when she had got the harness
on the two dogs. “I want my leaders to the fore.”
But when she had done this, the displaced animals pitched upon the
aliens. Though Hitchcock plunged among them with clubbed rifle, a
riot of sound went up and across the sleeping camp.
“Now we shall have dogs, and in plenty,” he remarked grimly,
slipping an axe from the sled lashings. “Do thou harness