The Magnetic North Part 51

Dillon swore a blood-curdling string of curses and cracked his whip over the leader.

"Why, you comin' back?"

"Bet your life!"

And n.o.body who looked at the face of the Yukon pioneer could doubt he meant what he said.

They went indoors. The cabin wore an unwonted and a rakish air. The stools seemed to have tried to dance the lancers and have fallen out about the figure. Two were overturned. The unwashed dishes were tossed helter-skelter. A tipsy Christmas tree leaned in drunken fas.h.i.+on against the wall, and under its boughs lay a forgotten child asleep. On the other side of the cabin an empty whisky bottle caught a ray of light from the fire, and glinted feebly back. Among the ashes on the hearth was a screw of paper, charred at one end, and thrown there after lighting someone's pipe. The Boy opened it. The famous programme of the Yukon Symposium!

"It's been a different sort of Christmas from what we planned,"

observed the Colonel, not quite as gaily as you might expect.

"Begob!" says O'Flynn, stretching out his interminable legs; "ye can't say we haven't hearrd Glad Tidings of gr-reat j'y--"

"Colonel," interrupts the Boy, throwing the Programme in the fire, "let's look at your nugget again."

And they all took turns. Except Potts. He was busy digging the remaining gold-grains out of the crack and the knothole.

CHAPTER IX

A CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC

"--giver mig Rum!

Himlen bar Stjerner Natten er stum."

It was a good many days before they got the dazzle of that gold out of their eyes. They found their tongues again, and talked "Minook" from morning till night among themselves and with the rare pa.s.ser up or down the trail.

Mac began to think they might get dogs at Anvik, or at one of the Ingalik villages, a little further on. The balance of opinion in the camp was against this view. But he had Potts on his side. When the New Year opened, the trail was in capital condition. On the second of January two lots of Indians pa.s.sed, one with dogs hauling flour and bacon for Benham, and the other lot without dogs, dragging light hand-sleds. Potts said restlessly:

"After all, _they_ can do it."

"So can we if we've a mind to," said Mac.

"Come on, then."

The camp tried hard to dissuade them. Naturally neither listened. They packed the Boy's sled and set off on the morning of the third, to Kaviak's unbounded surprise and disgust, his view of life being that, wherever Mac went, he was bound to follow. And he did follow--made off as hard as his swift little feet could carry him, straight up the Yukon trail, and Farva lost a good half of that first morning bringing him home.

Just eight days later the two men walked into the Cabin and sat down--Potts with a heart-rending groan, Mac with his jaw almost dislocated in his cast-iron attempt to set his face against defeat; their lips were cracked with the cold, their faces raw from frostbite, their eyes inflamed. The weather--they called it the weather--had been too much for them. It was obvious they hadn't brought back any dogs, but--

"What did you think of Anvik?" says the Boy.

"Anvik? You don't suppose we got to Anvik in weather like this!"

"How far _did_ you get?"

Mac didn't answer. Potts only groaned. He had frozen his cheek and his right hand.

They were doctored and put to bed.

"Did you see my friends at Holy Cross?" the Boy asked Potts when he brought him a bowl of hot bean-soup.

"You don't suppose we got as far as Holy Cross, with the wind--"

"Well, where _did_ you get to? Where you been?"

"Second native village above."

"Why, that isn't more'n sixteen miles."

"Sixteen miles too far."

Potts breathed long and deep between hot and comforting swallows.

"Where's the Boy's sled?" said the Colonel, coming in hurriedly.

"We cached it," answered Potts feebly.

"Couldn't even bring his sled home! _Where've_ you cached it?"

"It's all right--only a few miles back."

Potts relinquished the empty soup-bowl, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again late in the evening it was to say:

"Found some o' those suckers who were goin' so slick to Minook; some o'

_them_ down at the second village, and the rest are winterin' in Anvik, so the Indians say. Not a single son of a gun will see the diggins till the ice goes out."

"Then, badly off as we are here," says the Colonel to the Boy, "it's lucky for us we didn't join the procession."

When Mac and the Boy brought the sled home a couple of days later, it was found that a portion of its cargo consisted of a toy kyak and two bottles of hootchino, the maddening drink concocted by the natives out of fermented dough and sugar.

Apart from the question of drinking raised again by the "hootch," it is perhaps possible that, having so little else to do, they were ready to eat the more; it is also true that, busy or idle, the human body requires more nourishment in the North than it does in the South.

Certainly the men of the little Yukon camp began to find their rations horribly short commons, and to suffer a continual hunger, never wholly appeased. It is conditions like these that bring out the brute latent in all men. The day came to mean three scant meals. Each meal came to mean a silent struggle in each man's soul not to let his stomach get the better of his head and heart. At first they joked and laughed about their hunger and the scarcity. By-and-by it became too serious, the jest was wry-faced and rang false. They had, in the beginning, each helped himself from common dishes set in the middle of the rough plank table. Later, each found how, without meaning to--hating himself for it--he watched food on its way to others' plates with an evil eye. When it came to his turn, he had an ever-recurrent struggle with himself not to take the lion's share. There were ironical comments now and then, and ill-concealed bitterness. No one of the five would have believed he could feel so towards a human being about a morsel of food, but those who think they would be above it, have not wintered in the Arctic regions or fought in the Boer War. The difficulty was frankly faced at last, and it was ordained in council that the Colonel should be dispenser of the food.

"Can't say I like the office," quoth he, "but here goes!" and he cut the bacon with an anxious hand, and spooned out the beans solemnly as if he weighed each "go." And the Trio presently retired to the Little Cabin to discuss whether the Colonel didn't show favouritism to the Boy, and, when Mac was asleep, how they could get rid of Kaviak.

So presently another council was called, and the Colonel resigned his office, stipulating that each man in turn should hold it for a week, and learn how ungrateful it was. Moreover, that whoever was, for the nonce, occupying the painful post, should be loyally upheld by all the others, which arrangement was in force to the end.

And still, on grounds political, religious, social, trivial, the disaffection grew. Two of the Trio sided against the odd man, Potts, and turned him out of the Little Cabin one night during a furious snowstorm, that had already lasted two days, had more than half buried the hut, and nearly snowed up the little doorway. The Colonel and the Boy had been shovelling nearly all the day before to keep free the entrance to the Big Cabin and the precious "bottle" window, as well as their half of the path between the two dwellings. O'Flynn and Potts had played poker and quarrelled as usual.