CHAPTER XIV.
Something in us rebelled at laying the body of Sparhawk beside that of the poor girl he had unintentionally killed, although to have done so would save time. So, hard pushed as we were, we paused long enough to build another platform in the trees, and laid the Cœur d'Alener there in his bound blanket.
Every hour was now precious to us, and yet we had to build one more cache in the trees near the tent on which to store what was left of the food belonging to Sparhawk and Royce. Evidently the Hatchet, traveling light, had taken but little of it, and left the remainder scattered about, either through Sioux profligacy, or because he was eager to get away from the scene. Perhaps, also, as suggested by Kentucky, there had lurked in his mind the thought that with one mouth less to feed, he could reach his goal, and return at leisure to seize the supplies of the white men whom he had sped into eternity.
“The Hatchet's trail is about finished,” Kentuck said, as he thoughtfully wrapped some of the food into a compact bundle. “It looks to me as if he has an idea he could come back here 'most any time, and get this grub.”
Of the food there was not much; but even that slab of bacon, heel of flour, few pounds of oatmeal, can of baking powder, and two sacks of cornmeal that we were to leave behind were worth their weight in gold. But we knew that we could not add a pound's weight to our sled, because we were faced with another loss, and must go on, with but three dogs. I knew that could we lay up for a week, there was a chance of saving his life, and the four dogs were not animals to me. They were friends I had petted for two years, and who loved me, as I did them. I wavered for a long time over that last sacrifice. And I could not be the executioner.
“Kentuck,” I said, as we were making our last preparations, and had pegged the tent securely so that it might withstand any sudden wind, “I can't kill that dog. You'll have to do it.”
It was the only time I ever knew him to falter. He turned squarely on me, and answered: “I'd as soon put a man to death as kill Keno. You do it, Tom. It's all we can do. Of course, he's got to die. We cain't leave him here.”
“I'll be hanged if I will!” I retorted.
“Well, I won't, and that's an end to my part of it. You'll have to!”
I looked at him, and saw that he would not, and so faced the necessary task. I felt like a murderer as I assured myself that my gun was working, and took a long time to be sure of it, for my heart was heavy. I stood outside the tent when Kentucky called:
“Just wait about five minutes, won't you, Tom? You see, the fact is, I'm like you. Keno and me has been friends, and he's done his best for us, and he's worked himself to death for us on this cussed trail, and—well, I don't want to hear the shot!”
He turned and hurried away, and I stood there with the gun in my hand in my mackinaw pocket. I walked out to where the dogs were. Three of them were up to greet me with wagging tails; but Keno lifted only his head, and tried to tell me in his way that he was ill. I bent over him, and patted the faithful head, and he licked the hand that was preparing to put him out of existence. I held his head close up against my side, and he rested it there, as if believing me his natural protector.
I suppose that I am a fool! I suppose you will call me a fool when I tell you that I couldn't shoot, and that my eyes were blinded! But I slipped the pistol back, and picked Keno up in my arms, and carried him to the sled.
“Kentuck! Oh, Kentuck!” I called. “come here.”
My trail partner came slowly toward me, and his face was grave.
“I didn't hear it, thank Heaven!” he said.
I pointed at Keno, lying on the front end of the sled, in a little bed made in its hollow tarpaulin.
“I'll try to pull harder to-day,” I said, and Kentucky Smith shoved out his hand.
“You don't have to,” he said, “because I'm goin' to do about two men's work myself.”
And so we resumed the trail, with an added burden of weight, and a dog less to help drag it across the snow; but to this day I am unashamed.
We learned that the Hatchet had camped but a mile ahead of his pursuers on that fateful night, and, as far as we could read the story from the snow, he had left Mary to pitch camp, and turned back to watch their preparations for the night. Evidently he had then returned, and in the morning made that desperate journey to annihilate his trackers. Where he had halted on that night were blackened sticks, and nearly all the tracks around were those of the squaw who was unconsciously so near the end of life. Out at one side was the frozen, famished body of another dog, that had evidently succumbed to the same scourge that was decimating our team. That was all, and his trail led on toward the northern hills, that rose higher and higher in front of us.
We came to another place where he had halted. Another straggling stretch of timber cut across a valley, and here we found a bundle. It consisted of his stove, together with Mary's extra clothing and blankets, proving that the weight was telling on him, and that he was sacrificing everything, save food, to lighten his outfit.
We hurried forward as fast as we could, without apprehension of overtaking him very soon, for we knew that he must be at least three or four days ahead of us. And of this we were not sorry, for the Hatchet had proved that following him was like crawling into a jungle thicket after a wounded tiger. Indeed, we speculated, as we tugged and dragged alongside our train-worn dogs, what could be the outcome of our meeting, and whether we should have to kill him in self-defense, or, like Sparhawk and Royce, we should come upon him too unexpectedly.
Keno, faithful, and striving to understand, insisted on getting off the sled at intervals, and staggering alongside. He would crowd up beside his old team-mates, and turn back appealing eyes, as if asking why we had taken him out of the harness. His dumb distress haunted me continually as I pushed at the sled handles, or took my turn with a rope across my shoulders, pulling sometimes so hard that my snowshoes buried themselves in the softer places. Then he would begin to lag behind, and we would have to pick him up and lay him, panting, on the sled again.
Another dog showed signs of falling ill, by his lumbering gait, drooping tail, and irregular efforts at pulling, and disinclination to seize his scant rations.
“It's too bad,” Kentucky said, as we stopped to make camp on the third night out from the Sparhawk-Royce resting place. “It looks as if we'll have to leave stove and tent, to lighten up, the same as the Hatchet. We cain't go much farther with this load, and another dog goin' out of business.”
I did not answer, being too tired; but I knew that he was not whimpering or complaining; merely stating inexorable truth. We must lighten the load or abandon the chase, and the latter alternative was unbearable. It had become an obsession with us. We had come so far, over so many hundred miles of heartbreaking trail, through heart-chilling cold, that we would have died rather than turn back. We were in the midst of heavy trees, and it was already dark, for we had resolved always to make the camp where the Hatchet had stopped before resting, and this day had been long and hard. And the trees above us seemed gloomy as they stood, clouded firs with low-hanging limbs creeping along the ground, and silver birches, denuded by winter.
It was my night to do the cooking. We unharnessed the dogs, and gave them their fish, threw the line between the trees, and dragged the canvas across it, mounted the stove with its battered pipe that refused to join, brought in the blankets, and opened the grub sack.
I gathered near-by dead brush to start the fire, and had my hand in the flour sack and the sourdough can unswaddled, when I heard Kentuck's ax swinging into the tree he had chosen for fuel. I hoped it would have soft boughs on the end that we could drag in for a mattress over the snow, because I was deathly tired and stiff. My scant supply of brush was almost exhausted, and I went out and found some more, in the still white of the snow, and under the thin light of the stars.
“Got it 'most down?” I shouted, as the ax rested.
“Yes! Just a minute more!”
There were two or three more swinging strokes, and then the crash of the falling tree as its fronds swept downward to the bed of snow. It seemed to me that I heard an exclamation, and I waited an instant, with an armload of brush, to hear the ax resume. A premonitory chill attacked me, and for some inexplicable reason I shouted: “Kentuck!”
There was no answer, and I started toward him, forgetting that my snowshoes were sticking in the snow outside the tent.
“Oh, Tom! come here! I'm afraid you'll have to help me,” I heard his voice, and even then I distinguished in it a strained note.
I ran to the snowshoes, slipped my feet into the thongs, and hurried over the snow. Once I almost fell as in the darkness they tangled in the tops of brush concealed by the snow beneath.
“Here I am,” the voice called, and I turned in its direction, to find him lying under the fallen tree on his back.
“I can't get clear,” he said, “and somehow, Tom, I'm afraid one of my legs is caught. It hurts, and I can't use it. Help me out, won't you?”
I tried to drag him free; but had to desist because it pained him. The tree was not large, but was too heavy for me to lift. I cut a sapling, and tried to move it with this lever, but it turned soggishly, and then fell back into place, its limbs clinging to the snow in which they were imbedded. I hurriedly cut another sapling in the darkness, and worked it underneath as a support, then cut the tree in two, every blow torturing my pinioned companion. I got him free at last, and he made a heroic effort to rise; but he could not. I thought it must be his snowshoes, and burrowed under with my hands to unfasten the long, clumsy frames. Again he tried, and then settled back.
“Old man,” he said, “it's no use. My right leg is broken somewhere below the knee. I can feel the bone grate when I twist. It's all up with us!”
I hurried back and got the sled, and lifted him on it, and dragged it to the tent, where the fire was almost out. I piled in the remnant of my brush, and unrolled the blankets on the snow.
“Try to stick it out a few minutes,” I said, “while I get some wood. Whatever else we have to have, the first is fire.”
I rushed back out, and worked madly there in the gloom, cutting sufficient wood to last for a while, and then returned with it piled on the sled. And, surmising that it might be serious, I slashed off and brought back with me the top boughs of the tree, to protect the blankets from the snow. I refilled the stove, piled the boughs deeply and smoothly, and helped him to roll off the blankets until I could lay him upon this comfortabe couch. I made three other candlesticks, and, reckless of the expenditure of light, put the tent in a blaze. Without much effort I removed his trousers. Our fears were confirmed. His right leg was broken—a compound fracture that would be serious anywhere, but here might be fatal!
I began to straighten it out. The stove roared to a red heat, and the tent was hot. As yet the moment of acute suffering had not come to his nerves.
“It was my snowshoe,” he gasped, as I worked over him, forgetting all else at the moment. “The heel caught in the brush as I stepped back in the dark. It wasn't a big tree, but it caught me just right, as I fell while trying to stand clear of it. What on earth are we to do now?”
“Stay here till it gets better,” I asserted, and he did not answer. “I'll have to hurt you while I try to set it, old man; but you must bear it. Wait till I cut one of the blankets for bandages to hold it.”
I had seen crude surgery performed, but to see and perform is different. I cannot detail the hour of agony that followed as I did my best; how the sweat stood out on his forehead, and his hands clenched and unclenched, and he twisted, and writhed, and bit his lips; but he did not surrender, or lose consciousness, as I did my best, and laid thin sticks of wood alongside the broken leg, and wrapped the woolen strips around to hold them in place. He went to a pain-disturbed, broken sleep at last; but it was daylight when I completed my task. I went out, and by candlelight cut birch trees of the right size, selected my pieces, brought them in, and thawed them by the stove, and then peeled off the bark, and made splints such as are used by the lumbermen. Admirable and efficacious!
Utterly worn out, I crept outside to pile up more fuel and feed the dogs. Beside the tent lay a still, brown heap. It was Keno, dead. We were one dog less, and I had lost my pet. It seemed to me as if everything in the world were against us as I swung my ax blade into the remnants of the tree that had been our undoing. I made the breakfast without disturbing Kentuck, then aroused him. He was far better than I had thought he would be, his splendid youth and constitution, his uninjured body kept clean and abstemious all his life, now repaying him.
“It aches like the devil,” he said, “but I reckon that cain't be helped. I can eat, all right, and that's somethin' to be mighty thankful for. When did you work those out?” He saw the crude splints.
“Last night,” I said. “They will have to be used as best we can, inasmuch as we have nothing else.”
I did not tell him that the faithful Keno was dead, but went out to put the dog's body in the branches of a tree. The wolves should not have him! When I returned, Kentuck called to rest, and I threw myself on the blankets by his side, and was soon fast asleep. At intervals he awoke me when he moved, and I crawled up to put more fuel in the stove. Outside the dogs sniffed round the tent fly, and the short arctic day swept on across the sky.
I slept four hours, and then went out again, and cut wood as long as the light lasted, and piled it by the fly, and made the tent comfortable with a view to a prolonged stay; but all the time my heart was sinking when I thought of our scant food.
When I went to rest that night, Kentuck appeared better, but still lay there thinking about something, and now and then his face twitched with pain. It was dawn when he awoke me—not the dawn of the Southland, but of those chill latitudes into which we had penetrated in this foolish chase.
“I've been thinkin',” he drawled, as I made our simple breakfast. “And it's this way: We've come this far, and now, almost when we must be near the end of the trip, and when grub is about gone, and dogs 'most dead, I have to have this hard luck. And I don't believe much in luck, as a rule. There's just one way out of it. Tom, you've got to go on alone.”
I turned on him with protest. He silenced me, as he lay there on his blankets and bed of boughs.
“No use, old man,” he said, “it's the only way. You cain't do nothin' much for me here that I cain't do myself. You can fill the tent with wood, so it'll be close. You can bank the tent, and brace her so she won't sag or blow over. You can make kindlin' and get grub up around me so's I won't starve, and I'll be good.for four or five days, or longer, and that's all it's goin' to take.”
“But I might go farther.”
“Then you'd die, because the grub wouldn't last. And if you sat here we're goners. And if you don't go, 'most any night there may come a wind, and out goes the trail of the Hatchet. It's stay here and die, or go on and take a chance of makin' good. Tom, you've got to go on, and you've got to go as soon as you can!”
For an hour we argued,with him on the blankets and I squatted by him; then I had to agree. So it was that I again worked late, and did all I could, and made ready for my start into that still, stretching waste on the trail of the Sioux.