good. As for the grub–” He doubled up his arm and caressed the
swelling biceps. “And if we have lived and worked like beasts,
have we not been paid like kings? Twenty dollars to the pan the
streak is running, and we know it to be eight feet thick. It is
another Klondike–and we know it–Jim Hawes there, by your elbow,
knows it and complains not. And there’s Hitchcock! He sews
moccasins like an old woman, and waits against the time. Only you
can’t wait and work until the wash-up in the spring. Then we
shall all be rich, rich as kings, only you cannot wait. You want
to go back to the States. So do I, and I was born there, but I
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72
can wait, when each day the gold in the pan shows up yellow as
butter in the churning. But you want your good time, and, like a
child, you cry for it now. Bah! Why shall I not sing:
“In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
I shall stay no more away.
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day.
In a year, in a year, when my time is past,
Then I’ll live in your love for aye.
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day.”
The dogs, bristling and growling, drew in closer to the firelight.
There was a monotonous crunch-crunch of webbed shoes, and between
each crunch the dragging forward of the heel of the shoe like the
sound of sifting sugar. Sigmund broke off from his song to hurl
oaths and firewood at the animals. Then the light was parted by a
fur-clad figure, and an Indian girl slipped out of the webs, threw
back the hood of her squirrel-skin parka, and stood in their
midst. Sigmund and the men on the bearskin greeted her as
“Sipsu,” with the customary “Hello,” but Hitchcock made room on
the sled that she might sit beside him.
“And how goes it, Sipsu?” he asked, talking, after her fashion, in
broken English and bastard Chinook. “Is the hunger still mighty
in the camp? and has the witch doctor yet found the cause
wherefore game is scarce and no moose in the land?”
“Yes; even so. There is little game, and we prepare to eat the
dogs. Also has the witch doctor found the cause of all this evil,
and to-morrow will he make sacrifice and cleanse the camp.”
“And what does the sacrifice chance to be?–a new-born babe or
some poor devil of a squaw, old and shaky, who is a care to the
tribe and better out of the way?”
“It chanced not that wise; for the need was great, and he chose
none other than the chief’s daughter; none other than I, Sipsu.”
“Hell!” The word rose slowly to Hitchcock’s lips, and brimmed
over full and deep, in a way which bespoke wonder and
consideration.
“Wherefore we stand by a forking of the trail, you and I,” she
went on calmly, “and I have come that we may look once more upon
each other, and once more only.”
She was born of primitive stock, and primitive had been her
traditions and her days; so she regarded life stoically, and human
sacrifice as part of the natural order. The powers which ruled
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73
the day-light and the dark, the flood and the frost, the bursting
of the bud and the withering of the leaf, were angry and in need
of propitiation. This they exacted in many ways,–death in the
bad water, through the treacherous ice-crust, by the grip of the
grizzly, or a wasting sickness which fell upon a man in his own
lodge till he coughed, and the life of his lungs went out through
his mouth and nostrils. Likewise did the powers receive
sacrifice. It was all one. And the witch doctor was versed in
the thoughts of the powers and chose unerringly. It was very
natural. Death came by many ways, yet was it all one after all,–
a manifestation of the all-powerful and inscrutable.
But Hitchcock came of a later world-breed. His traditions were
less concrete and without reverence, and he said, “Not so, Sipsu.
You are young, and yet in the full joy of life. The witch doctor
is a fool, and his choice is evil. This thing shall not be.”
She smiled and answered, “Life is not kind, and for many reasons.
First, it made of us twain the one white and the other red, which
is bad. Then it crossed our trails, and now it parts them again;
and we can do nothing. Once before, when the gods were angry, did
your brothers come to the camp. They were three, big men and
white, and they said the thing shall not be. But they died
quickly, and the thing was.”
Hitchcock nodded that he heard, half-turned, and lifted his voice.
“Look here, you fellows! There’s a lot of foolery going on over
to the camp, and they’re getting ready to murder Sipsu. What d’ye
say?”
Wertz looked at Hawes, and Hawes looked back, but neither spoke.
Sigmund dropped his head, and petted the shepherd dog between his
knees. He had brought Shep in with him from the outside, and
thought a great deal of the animal. In fact, a certain girl, who
was much in his thoughts, and whose picture in the little locket
on his breast often inspired him to sing, had given him the dog
and her blessing when they kissed good-by and he started on his
Northland quest.
“What d’ye say?” Hitchcock repeated.
“Mebbe it’s not so serious,” Hawes answered with deliberation.
“Most likely it’s only a girl’s story.”
“That isn’t the point!” Hitchcock felt a hot flush of anger sweep
over him at their evident reluctance. “The question is, if it is
so, are we going to stand it? What are we going to do?”
“I don’t see any call to interfere,” spoke up Wertz. “If it is
so, it is so, and that’s all there is about it. It’s a way these
people have of doing. It’s their religion, and it’s no concern of
ours. Our concern is to get the dust and then get out of this
God-forsaken land. ‘T isn’t fit for naught else but beasts? And
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74
what are these black devils but beasts? Besides, it’d be damn
poor policy.”
“That’s what I say,” chimed in Hawes. “Here we are, four of us,
three hundred miles from the Yukon or a white face. And what can
we do against half-a-hundred Indians? If we quarrel with them, we
have to vamose; if we fight, we are wiped out. Further, we’ve
struck pay, and, by God! I, for one, am going to stick by it!”
“Ditto here,” supplemented Wertz.
Hitchcock turned impatiently to Sigmund, who was softly singing, –
“In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
I shall stay no more away.”
“Well, it’s this way, Hitchcock,” he finally said, “I’m in the
same boat with the rest. If three-score bucks have made up their
mind to kill the girl, why, we can’t help it. One rush, and we’d
be wiped off the landscape. And what good’d that be? They’d
still have the girl. There’s no use in going against the customs
of a people except you’re in force.”
“But we are in force!” Hitchcock broke in. “Four whites are a
match for a hundred times as many reds. And think of the girl!”
Sigmund stroked the dog meditatively. “But I do think of the
girl. And her eyes are blue like summer skies, and laughing like
summer seas, and her hair is yellow, like mine, and braided in
ropes the size of a big man’s arms. She’s waiting for me, out
there, in a better land. And she’s waited long, and now my pile’s
in sight I’m not going to throw it away.”
“And shamed I would be to look into the girl’s blue eyes and
remember the black ones of the girl whose blood was on my hands,”
Hitchcock sneered; for he was born to honor and championship, and
to do the thing for the thing’s sake, nor stop to weigh or
measure.
Sigmund shook his head. “You can’t make me mad, Hitchcock, nor do
mad things because of your madness. It’s a cold business
proposition and a question of facts. I didn’t come to this
country for my health, and, further, it’s impossible for us to
raise a hand. If it is so, it is too bad for the girl, that’s
all. It’s a way of her people, and it just happens we’re on the
spot this one time. They’ve done the same for a thousand-thousand
years, and they’re going to do it now, and they’ll go on doing it
for all time to come. Besides, they’re not our kind. Nor’s the