whichever I fling thee, and betweenwhiles protect the team.”
He stepped a space in advance and waited between two pines. The
dogs of the camp were disturbing the night with their jangle, and
Tales of the Klondyke
78
he watched for their coming. A dark spot, growing rapidly, took
form upon the dim white expanse of snow. It was a forerunner of
the pack, leaping cleanly, and, after the wolf fashion, singing
direction to its brothers. Hitchcock stood in the shadow. As it
sprang past, he reached out, gripped its forelegs in mid-career,
and sent it whirling earthward. Then he struck it a well-judged
blow beneath the ear, and flung it to Sipsu. And while she
clapped on the harness, he, with his axe, held the passage between
the trees, till a shaggy flood of white teeth and glistening eyes
surged and crested just beyond reach. Sipsu worked rapidly. When
she had finished, he leaped forward, seized and stunned a second,
and flung it to her. This he repeated thrice again, and when the
sled team stood snarling in a string of ten, he called, “Enough!”
But at this instant a young buck, the forerunner of the tribe, and
swift of limb, wading through the dogs and cuffing right and left,
attempted the passage. The butt of Hitchcock’s rifle drove him to
his knees, whence he toppled over sideways. The witch doctor,
running lustily, saw the blow fall.
Hitchcock called to Sipsu to pull out. At her shrill “Chook!” the
maddened brutes shot straight ahead, and the sled, bounding
mightily, just missed unseating her. The powers were evidently
angry with the witch doctor, for at this moment they plunged him
upon the trail. The lead-dog fouled his snowshoes and tripped him
up, and the nine succeeding dogs trod him under foot and the sled
bumped over him. But he was quick to his feet, and the night
might have turned out differently had not Sipsu struck backward
with the long dog-whip and smitten him a blinding blow across the
eyes. Hitchcock, hurrying to overtake her, collided against him
as he swayed with pain in the middle of the trail. Thus it was,
when this primitive theologian got back to the chief’s lodge, that
his wisdom had been increased in so far as concerns the efficacy
of the white man’s fist. So, when he orated then and there in the
council, he was wroth against all white men.
“Tumble out, you loafers! Tumble out! Grub’ll be ready before
you get into your footgear!”
Dave Wertz threw off the bearskin, sat up, and yawned.
Hawes stretched, discovered a lame muscle in his arm, and rubbed
it sleepily. “Wonder where Hitchcock bunked last night?” he
queried, reaching for his moccasins. They were stiff, and he
walked gingerly in his socks to the fire to thaw them out. “It’s
a blessing he’s gone,” he added, “though he was a mighty good
worker.”
“Yep. Too masterful. That was his trouble. Too bad for Sipsu.
Think he cared for her much?”
“Don’t think so. Just principle. That’s all. He thought it
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79
wasn’t right–and, of course, it wasn’t,–but that was no reason
for us to interfere and get hustled over the divide before our
time.”
“Principle is principle, and it’s good in its place, but it’s best
left to home when you go to Alaska. Eh?” Wertz had joined his
mate, and both were working pliability into their frozen
moccasins. “Think we ought to have taken a hand?”
Sigmund shook his head. He was very busy. A scud of chocolate-
colored foam was rising in the coffee-pot, and the bacon needed
turning. Also, he was thinking about the girl with laughing eyes
like summer seas, and he was humming softly.
His mates chuckled to each other and ceased talking. Though it
was past seven, daybreak was still three hours distant. The
aurora borealis had passed out of the sky, and the camp was an
oasis of light in the midst of deep darkness. And in this light
the forms of the three men were sharply defined. Emboldened by
the silence, Sigmund raised his voice and opened the last stanza
of the old song:-
“In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe–”
Then the night was split with a rattling volley of rifle-shots.
Hawes sighed, made an effort to straighten himself, and collapsed.
Wertz went over on an elbow with drooping head. He choked a
little, and a dark stream flowed from his mouth. And Sigmund, the
Golden-Haired, his throat a-gurgle with the song, threw up his
arms and pitched across the fire.
The witch doctor’s eyes were well blackened, and his temper none
of the best; for he quarrelled with the chief over the possession
of Wertz’s rifle, and took more than his share of the part-sack of
beans. Also he appropriated the bearskin, and caused grumbling
among the tribesmen. And finally, he tried to kill Sigmund’s dog,
which the girl had given him, but the dog ran away, while he fell
into the shaft and dislocated his shoulder on the bucket. When
the camp was well looted they went back to their own lodges, and
there was a great rejoicing among the women. Further, a band of
moose strayed over the south divide and fell before the hunters,
so the witch doctor attained yet greater honor, and the people
whispered among themselves that he spoke in council with the gods.
But later, when all were gone, the shepherd dog crept back to the
deserted camp, and all the night long and a day it wailed the
dead. After that it disappeared, though the years were not many
before the Indian hunters noted a change in the breed of timber
wolves, and there were dashes of bright color and variegated
markings such as no wolf bore before.
Tales of the Klondyke
80
A DAUGHTER OF THE AURORA
“You–what you call–lazy mans, you lazy mans would desire me to
haf for wife. It is not good. Nevaire, no, nevaire, will lazy
mans my hoosband be.”
Thus Joy Molineau spoke her mind to Jack Harrington, even as she
had spoken it, but more tritely and in his own tongue, to Louis
Savoy the previous night.
“Listen, Joy–”
“No, no; why moos’ I listen to lazy mans? It is vaire bad, you
hang rount, make visitation to my cabin, and do nothing. How you
get grub for the famine? Why haf not you the dust? Odder mans
haf plentee.”
“But I work hard, Joy. Never a day am I not on trail or up creek.
Even now have I just come off. My dogs are yet tired. Other men
have luck and find plenty of gold; but I–I have no luck.”
“Ah! But when this mans with the wife which is Indian, this mans
McCormack, when him discovaire the Klondike, you go not. Odder
mans go; odder mans now rich.”
“You know I was prospecting over on the head-reaches of the
Tanana,” Harrington protested, “and knew nothing of the Eldorado
or Bonanza until it was too late.”
“That is deeferent; only you are–what you call way off.”
“What?”
“Way off. In the–yes–in the dark. It is nevaire too late. One
vaire rich mine is there, on the creek which is Eldorado. The
mans drive the stake and him go ‘way. No odddr mans know what of
him become. The mans, him which drive the stake, is nevaire no
more. Sixty days no mans on that claim file the papaire. Then
odder mans, plentee odder mans–what you call–jump that claim.
Then they race, O so queek, like the wind, to file the papaire.
Him be vaire rich. Him get grub for famine.”
Harrington hid the major portion of his interest.
“When’s the time up?” he asked. “What claim is it?”
“So I speak Louis Savoy last night,” she continued, ignoring him.
“Him I think the winnaire.”
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81
“Hang Louis Savoy!”
“So Louis Savoy speak in my cabin last night. Him say, ‘Joy, I am
strong mans. I haf good dogs. I haf long wind. I will be
winnaire. Then you will haf me for hoosband?’ And I say to him,
I say–”
“What’d you say?”
“I say, ‘If Louis Savoy is winnaire, then will he haf me for
wife.'”
“And if he don’t win?”
“Then Louis Savoy, him will not be–what you call–the father of
my children.”
“And if I win?”
“You winnaire? Ha! ha! Nevaire!”
Exasperating as it was, Joy Molineau’s laughter was pretty to
hear. Harrington did not mind it. He had long since been broken
in. Besides, he was no exception. She had forced all her lovers
to suffer in kind. And very enticing she was just then, her lips
parted, her color heightened by the sharp kiss of the frost, her
eyes vibrant with the lure which is the greatest of all lures and
which may be seen nowhere save in woman’s eyes. Her sled-dogs
clustered about her in hirsute masses, and the leader, Wolf Fang,