heart was hard against you and filled with bitterness and fear.
But that was long ago. For you were kind to me, Charley, as a
good man is kind to his dog. Your heart was cold, and there was
no room for me; yet you dealt me fair and your ways were just.
And I was with you when you did bold deeds and led great ventures,
and I measured you against the men of other breeds, and I saw you
stood among them full of honor, and your word was wise, your
tongue true. And I grew proud of you, till it came that you
filled all my heart, and all my thought was of you. You were as
the midsummer sun, when its golden trail runs in a circle and
never leaves the sky. And whatever way I cast my eyes I beheld
the sun. But your heart was ever cold, Charley, and there was no
room.’
“And I said: ‘It is so. It was cold, and there was no room. But
that is past. Now my heart is like the snowfall in the spring,
when the sun has come back. There is a great thaw and a bending,
a sound of running waters, and a budding and sprouting of green
things. And there is drumming of partridges, and songs of robins,
and great music, for the winter is broken, Passuk, and I have
learned the love of woman.’
“She smiled and moved for me to draw her closer. And she said, ‘I
am glad.’ After that she lay quiet for a long time, breathing
softly, her head upon my breast. Then she whispered: ‘The trail
ends here, and I am tired. But first I would speak of other
things. In the long ago, when I was a girl on the Chilcat, I
played alone among the skin bales of my father’s lodge; for the
men were away on the hunt, and the women and boys were dragging in
the meat. It was in the spring, and I was alone. A great brown
bear, just awake from his winter’s sleep, hungry, his fur hanging
to the bones in flaps of leanness, shoved his head within the
lodge and said, “Oof!” My brother came running back with the
first sled of meat. And he fought the bear with burning sticks
from the fire, and the dogs in their harnesses, with the sled
behind them, fell upon the bear. There was a great battle and
much noise. They rolled in the fire, the skin bales were
scattered, the lodge overthrown. But in the end the bear lay
dead, with the fingers of my brother in his mouth and the marks of
his claws upon my brother’s face. Did you mark the Indian by the
Pelly trail, his mitten which had no thumb, his hand which he
warmed by our fire? He was my brother. And I said he should have
no grub. And he went away in the Silence without grub.’
“This, my brothers, was the love of Passuk, who died in the snow,
by the Caribou Crossing. It was a mighty love, for she denied her
brother for the man who led her away on weary trails to a bitter
end. And, further, such was this woman’s love, she denied
herself. Ere her eyes closed for the last time she took my hand
and slipped it under her squirrel-skin parka to her waist. I felt
there a well-filled pouch, and learned the secret of her lost
strength. Day by day we had shared fair, to the last least bit;
and day by day but half her share had she eaten. The other half
Tales of the Klondyke
70
had gone into the well-filled pouch.
“And she said: ‘This is the end of the trail for Passuk; but your
trail, Charley, leads on and on, over the great Chilcoot, down to
Haines Mission and the sea. And it leads on and on, by the light
of many suns, over unknown lands and strange waters, and it is
full of years and honors and great glories. It leads you to the
lodges of many women, and good women, but it will never lead you
to a greater love than the love of Passuk.’
“And I knew the woman spoke true. But a madness came upon me, and
I threw the well-filled pouch from me, and swore that my trail had
reached an end, till her tired eyes grew soft with tears, and she
said: ‘Among men has Sitka Charley walked in honor, and ever has
his word been true. Does he forget that honor now, and talk vain
words by the Caribou Crossing? Does he remember no more the men
of Forty Mile, who gave him of their grub the best, of their dogs
the pick? Ever has Passuk been proud of her man. Let him lift
himself up, gird on his snow-shoes, and begone, that she may still
keep her pride.’
“And when she grew cold in my arms I arose, and sought out the
well-filled pouch, and girt on my snowshoes, and staggered along
the trail; for there was a weakness in my knees, and my head was
dizzy, and in my ears there was a roaring, and a flashing of fire
upon my eyes. The forgotten trails of boyhood came back to me. I
sat by the full pots of the potlach feast, and raised my voice in
song, and danced to the chanting of the men and maidens and the
booming of the walrus drums. And Passuk held my hand and walked
by my side. When I laid down to sleep, she waked me. When I
stumbled and fell, she raised me. When I wandered in the deep
snow, she led me back to the trail. And in this wise, like a man
bereft of reason, who sees strange visions and whose thoughts are
light with wine, I came to Haines Mission by the sea.”
Sitka Charley threw back the tent-flaps. It was midday. To the
south, just clearing the bleak Henderson Divide, poised the cold-
disked sun. On either hand the sun-dogs blazed. The air was a
gossamer of glittering frost. In the foreground, beside the
trail, a wolf-dog, bristling with frost, thrust a long snout
heavenward and mourned.
WHERE THE TRAIL FORKS
“Must I, then, must I, then, now leave this town –
And you, my love, stay here?”–Schwabian Folk-song.
The singer, clean-faced and cheery-eyed, bent over and added water
Tales of the Klondyke
71
to a pot of simmering beans, and then, rising, a stick of firewood
in hand, drove back the circling dogs from the grub-box and
cooking-gear. He was blue of eye, and his long hair was golden,
and it was a pleasure to look upon his lusty freshness. A new
moon was thrusting a dim horn above the white line of close-packed
snow-capped pines which ringed the camp and segregated it from all
the world. Overhead, so clear it was and cold, the stars danced
with quick, pulsating movements. To the southeast an evanescent
greenish glow heralded the opening revels of the aurora borealis.
Two men, in the immediate foreground, lay upon the bearskin which
was their bed. Between the skin and naked snow was a six-inch
layer of pine boughs. The blankets were rolled back. For
shelter, there was a fly at their backs,–a sheet of canvas
stretched between two trees and angling at forty-five degrees.
This caught the radiating heat from the fire and flung it down
upon the skin. Another man sat on a sled, drawn close to the
blaze, mending moccasins. To the right, a heap of frozen gravel
and a rude windlass denoted where they toiled each day in dismal
groping for the pay-streak. To the left, four pairs of snowshoes
stood erect, showing the mode of travel which obtained when the
stamped snow of the camp was left behind.
That Schwabian folk-song sounded strangely pathetic under the cold
northern stars, and did not do the men good who lounged about the
fire after the toil of the day. It put a dull ache into their
hearts, and a yearning which was akin to belly-hunger, and sent
their souls questing southward across the divides to the sun-
lands.
“For the love of God, Sigmund, shut up!” expostulated one of the
men. His hands were clenched painfully, but he hid them from
sight in the folds of the bearskin upon which he lay.
“And what for, Dave Wertz?” Sigmund demanded. “Why shall I not
sing when the heart is glad?”
“Because you’ve got no call to, that’s why. Look about you, man,
and think of the grub we’ve been defiling our bodies with for the
last twelvemonth, and the way we’ve lived and worked like beasts!”
Thus abjured, Sigmund, the golden-haired, surveyed it all, and the
frost-rimmed wolf-dogs and the vapor breaths of the men. “And why
shall not the heart be glad?” he laughed. “It is good; it is all