CHAPTER XVI.
Slowly, as I stood there with them in my hand, I pulled my senses together, and subjugated both fear and elation, which were strangely intermingled. I went back to the Hatchet's camp, and started the fire in the charred embers he had left, and hastened to unpack the sled and don dry moccasins, condemning myself for rushing into the water in my moment of frenzy. I threw the dogs a half fish each, to keep them away from my heels, and went out and with my feet felt the thin top covering of light snow.
I found the Hatchet's rifle at some distance from where I had discovered his skull. It was empty, and the stock was cracked and smeared, where he had made his last desperate fight after his ammunition was expended.
Probably he had clung to the moccasins through some wild pathetic regard for the squaw who had last owned them, and so brought them back to the source of their gold. Perhaps they had been carried as a useless burden in his clothing when he fell, hampering his very movements in that last stand, when movement meant life. Perhaps they had aided the wolves and death.
The whole dread picture, brought up by imagination, did not serve to render the spot more habitable! I could not help but wonder if the smoke of my fire might not bring back that famished pack. I had more ammunition, I was certain, than the Hatchet had, but no more endurance. That pack must have been great in numbers, a horde of famine. And it must have been a persistent pack, wearing him out with sleeplessness and unrest, until he lost caution, and gave way to temper, ready to die rather than have them longer glaring at him from the shadows, and now and then encroaching, perhaps sometimes leaping across to get at him, when his fire died low.
I invoiced his food supply. The man must have been mad to stop there a day, when under quarter rations he could scarcely have made the return trip to Sparhawk and Royce's camp. I must fight off a similar madness. I must control myself lest that red temptation keep me there a day too long, and send me backward starving, or drive me to madness and the end there by the steaming water.
At the very best I had not enough food to take me back to Kentuck on full rations. The dogs were the most important. Very well, I would eat no meat, and would cook the last of my dog fish and bacon sparingly, with oatmeal, and feed them on that. Kentuck and I had believed, as doubtless had the Hatchet, that the red gold was probably less than two days' journey from the camp where he had left the body of Mary; but it was almost double that, so I must not delay.
My discoveries were not over, for I made one trip upward along the banks of the stream above where the hot spring entered to wash its golden freight. A cairn of rocks was there, and I wondered what meaning it could have, so worked for an hour exposing its contents. They were gruesome, for the face of Pitkok, frozen and wide-eyed, stared up at me. I was glad I had found him, for the last remnant of suspicion of Sam Barstow was swept away. I could tell Cavanaugh, if I survived to see him, that Sam had told the truth. The torn body was evidence. Pitkok had been killed by a bear in the very goal of his foolish ambitions. Hurriedly I replaced the stones, and hurriedly I went back to the Hatchet's camp.
I patched up the dogs' moccasins, and thought with some satisfaction that the day's rest would put them in better condition, if they were well fed. I went down to the stream to get water. It was salt, and impregnated with iron. I had to take the time to melt snow for my meager cooking. I cut and dragged great piles of fuel, so that, if the wolves returned, I should at least have flame. And then, when all these tasks were complete, I braved the stream, and scooped out more of the gold, until I must have had fifty pounds of it in the tin receptacles I had inherited from the Sioux.
It is with some pride, even at this moment, that I recall my restraint; for there lay temptation which was almost irresistible, but that would have certainly led me to death. I suppose I gathered more than fifty pounds of that red metal, reveling drunkenly in having so much of it at hand, under such a thin coating of gravel, that all I had to do was to claw it from the natural riffles in the bed rock as the stream swept and cleaned it down the natural sluices. I still believe that nowhere in the world, not even on the Mother Lode, was there ever such a placer deposit, in that same space at least.
And then at night I sobered down, and thought of the weight we must pull, of the long trail, of the shortness of food, of the condition of my two dogs, of how weak I would be when traveling on poor nourishment, and slowly, handful by handful, reluctantly lightened my treasure, and carried it back, and threw it into the stream, where it would again be caught and preserved for that time when Kentucky or I might come again. And even then it seemed to me that the voice of prescience told me that neither of us would ever again stoop to gather it!
As night came there was a shadowy depression over everything. The dogs by my side howled until I had to use harsh measures to still them, lest that far-reaching wail bring those enemies of the tundra down upon me, as they had come down on the Hatchet, whose skull and such of his bones as I could gather were resting in the crotches of a tree. It seemed to me that his spirit hovered outside the blazing logs, and that he glared at me with his fierce eyes, impotent and angry because I was the only one of that sorry procession to live. It seemed to me that he wanted to drag me across the borderland of shadow.
I could not sleep. My nerves were tingling, and beside me the dogs shuddered, and whimpered, and burrowed against me, as if for protection. The northern sky grew lighter, a finger of flame appeared to stretch across it, to be followed by waving shrouds of white, like the vestments of an army of ghosts. They danced recklessly and rapidly across the vault of the night, and changed their colors to a riot of red, with here and there a somber spread of crimson and blue. They took fantastic shapes, as if rendering more unreal their dance of death. They threw, as if purposely, a background of light behind the three peaks above me, so that I might fully realize their dread presence, and see the cruel, malevolent, devilish face of rock.
But now that face in the twisting light seemed mobile, and sometimes leered, sometimes frowned, and 'most always threatened with such dread looks that I was chilled with a strange fear. The eagle no longer squatted, but his wings seemed lifting, little by little, and once I feared that he would launch himself downward, a mountain of stone, to bury me in his sweep. The trees beside our camp seemed to shudder, and whisper, and turn toward me, and the faint sound of the running water was a demoniacal consultation and prediction of my end.
Nerves? I don't know! Perhaps; but what matter, so long as fear had gripped me, and tore at me, and made me long to scream aloud! I believe that I should have died had I been thus obsessed for ten consecutive nights in that place, and I thought of the Hatchet's terror. What must it have meant to him with that hereditary belief in spirits of the dead, in the supernatural lore of the Indians, and the possibility of the place of red gold being cursed forever! May he have not seen Royce and Sparhawk across the fire, even as I fancied I saw him? May they not have stretched clutching fingers toward him, to drag him out, as he did toward me?
I fought with myself, piled more fuel on, and suppose I went to sleep.
I was awakened by the most blood-curdling snarls and howls I have ever heard. Both dogs were on me, and mad with fear. In the light I could see that their ruffs were raised, until every hair was on end, and their fangs were bared beneath their snarling lips as they confronted something I could not see, out beyond the flames. I threw them off, and got to my feet in one bound, with my rifle in my hand, my scalp itching as if with electric shocks, and my fingers twitching on the trigger. I scowled out into the darkness.
Nothing could be seen—nothing could be heard. I thought of wolves, and sprang to the fire, and kicked light sticks on it until it was in a furious blaze. I leaned across it, with the dogs so close to my heels that they were almost singed, and listened,
There was not a sound, save that made by the crackle of the flames and the stream which carried the red gold. Now it seemed to me to be hissing and angry. The shadows outside were still, but they had assumed indefinite shapes. Invisible enemies were waiting for me outside the line of fire. With a sudden determination of anger, I leaped across it, and with its light at my back could see. I was prepared for an attack; but none came.
Under the stars and on the underglow, dim and spectral, of the snow, I could see everywhere. There was nothing in sight. Only that deathly immobility of tree and plain and hill, and above me the three pinnacles that were leaning forward to menace me and guard the treasure. The dogs had leaped, whining, after me. Malicula stood between my legs, still growling and snarling at that something I could not see, and Barsick huddled at my feet, snapping now and then, as if attacking something invisible. I felt it, but could not see it, felt it as certainly as I am now alive!
I went back behind my barricade of fire, and sat there with my rifle between my knees, and my arms around my dogs, for centuries. I have lived a thousand years, if ever any man did, whether it be, as some might think, through fright and madness, or because every instant of that dread, expectant wait became a decade! And I am not afraid to die! Nor am I afraid of any living thing! But there was something there that night that was harder to wait for than either life or death!
I had packed the sled before rolling into my blankets, and all I had to do was to throw the latter in, lash the fastenings, hitch on the dogs, and go. I presume there are those who will say I was a coward when, at last, with the shriek of a madman, hoarse and inhuman, I caught the dogs, and dragged them out and slipped the harness over their heads.
All the time they snarled and threatened, but their anger was not directed at me, nor did they appear less eager than I to get away from there. It was not later than four o'clock in the morning, but we plunged away from the stream of gold almost before the last sled lash had been recklessly thrown, and ran, until breathless, through the trees and up the long slope dividing the pinnacled rocks from the tundra beyond.
We ran until I was divested of parka and mackinaw, a piece at a time, and the sweat trickled across my face in that fearful cold, and my lungs were aflame, and the dogs were exhausted. Then we slowed down as our sense returned, and traveled only to keep off the chill until we were cool, and tired, and the great fear was gone—left behind!
They whimpered to me now when I came alongside them, and licked my hand, as if thanking me for taking them away from that place of the curse, where they could apprehend shapes that to me were invisible. And, tired as I was, every mile put behind lightened my fear, until, when we made the camp where I had last halted before venturing toward the peaks, I could pause, and wonder what had so obsessed me, and could endeavor to laugh.
It had taken me three days to make the stream of treasure, and, with the additional weight of the gold, it took me four to return. And the last of these I went with scarcely any food, striving to conserve it all for the dogs, and believing that could they but last to where Kentucky was camped, we could survive. If they did not—well, then the end was not hard to conjecture for both him and me, unless the chase, problematical anywhere that far north, yielded fresh meat. There were a hundred times on that terrible trail when I resolved to dump overboard the gold that I was bringing back, and then the determination rose triumphant that I would at least die with something to show for the trip.
I think that brooding, after all that I had endured, was beginning to tell on me; for little things were catastrophes. The breaking of a harness strand, the loosening of a sled lashing, the tripping of a snowshoe, the lightest scurry of wind, a moment's perplexity as to what course I should take on that vast tundra where the trails had been wiped out—any of these would drive me to a paroxysm of temper. I thank God that I did not abuse the poor dumb brutes that were giving me their last ounce of strength in willingness and working with me as we trudged across that unending waste.
One morning after we had traveled until noon, I found that I had left behind, inexplicably, the most precious of my possessions, my knife. I roared in anger, and shook my fists at the, skies. I sprang to the sled, jerked off the lashings from the top, and took out the golden moccasins. I threw them as far as my arm could throw, cursing them as they fell heavily into the distant snow, as the cause of all my misfortune, and so, at last, they found a resting place after all their journeying, and all their association with tragedy.
Twice I lost my way, and wandered vainly for hours, brushing or blowing the top coating of light snow aside, in quest of the sled trails made by the Sioux and me in that desperate Northerward chase.
A scarecrow of a man, worn to a razor's edge, and driving dogs who dragged themselves wearily over the trail, I came at last to the copse I knew. The dogs lifted their heads, and barked joyously, and plunged forward more rapidly. I saw that smoke was curling from the stovepipe, and was choked with joy, for I knew that Kentuck was still alive, and I am not sure that I did not cry as a woman from weakness and satisfaction as we stopped in front of the tent.