The Magnetic North Part 73

"What!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Boy, aghast; then quickly, to keep a good face: "You take my life when you do take the beans, whereby I live."

When the Colonel had disposed of his strawberries, "Lord!" he sighed, trying to rub the stiffness out of his hands over the smoke, "the appet.i.te a fella can raise up here is something terrible. You eat and eat, and it doesn't seem to make any impression. You're just as hungry as ever."

_"And the stuff a fella can eat!"_

The Colonel recalled that speech of the Boy's the very next night, when, after "a h.e.l.l of a time" getting the fire alight, he was bending forward in that att.i.tude most trying to maintain, holding the frying-pan at long range over the feebly-smoking sticks. He had to cook, to live on snow-shoes nowadays, for the heavy Colonel had ill.u.s.trated oftener than the Boy, that going without meant breaking in, floundering, and, finally, having to call for your pardner to haul you out. This was one of the many uses of a pardner on the trail. The last time the Colonel had trusted to the treacherous crust he had gone in head foremost, and the Boy, happening to look round, saw only two snow-shoes, bottom side up, moving spasmodically on the surface of the drift. The Colonel was nearly suffocated by the time he was pulled out, and after that object-lesson he stuck to snow-shoes every hour of the twenty-four, except those spent in the sleeping-bag.

But few things on earth are more exasperating than trying to work mounted on clumsy, long web-feet that keep jarring against, yet holding you off from, the tree you are felling, or the fire you are cooking over. You are constrained to stand wholly out of natural relation to the thing you are trying to do--the thing you've got to do, if you mean to come out alive.

The Colonel had been through all this time and time again. But as he squatted on his heels to-night, cursing the foot and a half of snow-shoe that held him away from the sullen fire, straining every muscle to keep the outstretched frying-pan over the best of the blaze, he said to himself that what had got him on the raw was that speech of the Boy's yesterday about the stuff he had to eat. If the Boy objected to having his rice parboiled in smoked water he was d.a.m.ned unreasonable, that was all.

The culprit reappeared at the edge of the darkening wood. He came up eagerly, and flung down an armful of fuel for the morning, hoping to find supper ready. Since it wasn't, he knew that he mustn't stand about and watch the preparations. By this time he had learned a good deal of the trail-man's unwritten law. On no account must you hint that the cook is incompetent, or even slow, any more than he may find fault with your moment for calling halt, or with your choice of timber. So the woodman turned wearily away from the sole spot of brightness in the waste, and went back up the hill in the dark and the cold, to busy himself about his own work, even to spin it out, if necessary, till he should hear the gruff "Grub's ready!" And when that dinner-gong sounds, don't you dally! Don't you wait a second. You may feel uncomfortable if you find yourself twenty minutes late for a dinner in London or New York, but to be five minutes late for dinner on the Winter Trail is to lay up lasting trouble.

By the time the rice and bacon were done, and the flap-jack, still raw in the middle, was burnt to charcoal on both sides, the Colonel's eyes were smarting, in the acrid smoke, and the tears were running down his cheeks.

"Grub's ready!"

The Boy came up and dropped on his heels in the usual att.i.tude. The Colonel tore a piece off the half-charred, half-raw pancake.

"Maybe you'll think the fire isn't thoroughly distributed, but _that's _got to do for bread," he remarked severely, as if in reply to some objection.

The Boy saw that something he had said or looked had been misinterpreted.

"Hey? Too much fire outside, and not enough in? Well, sir, I'll trust _my_ stomach to strike a balance. Guess the heat'll get distributed all right once I've swallowed it."

When the Colonel, mollified, said something about cinders in the rice, the Boy, with his mouth full of grit, answered: "I'm pretendin' it's sugar."

Not since the episode of the abandoned rifle had he shown himself so genial.

"Never in all my bohn life," says the Colonel after eating steadily for some time--"never in a year, sah, have I thought as much about food as I do in a day on this----trail."

"Same here."

"And it's quant.i.ty, not quality."

"Ditto."

The Boy turned his head sharply away from the fire. "Hear that?"

No need to ask. The Colonel had risen upright on his cramped legs, red eyes starting out of his head. The Boy got up, turned about in the direction of the hollow sound, and made one step away from the fire.

"You stay right where you are!" ordered the Colonel, quite in the old way.

"Hey?"

"That's a bird-song."

"Thought so."

"Mr. Wolf smelt the cookin'; want's the rest of the pack to know there's something queer up here on the hill." Then, as the Boy moved to one side in the dark: "What you lookin' for?"

"My gun."

"Mine's here."

Oh yes! His own old 44 Marlin was lying far down the river under eight-and-fifty hours of snow. It angered him newly and more than ever to remember that if he had a shot at anything now it must needs be by favour of the Colonel.

They listened for that sound again, the first since leaving Anvik not made by themselves.

"Seems a lot quieter than it did," observed the Colonel by-and-bye.

The Boy nodded.

Without preface the Colonel observed: "It's five days since I washed my face and hands."

"What's the good o' rememberin'?" returned the Boy sharply. Then more mildly: "People talk about the bare necessaries o' life. Well, sir, when they're really bare you find there ain't but three--food, warmth, sleep."

Again in the distance that hollow baying.

"Food, warmth, sleep," repeated the Colonel. "We've about got down to the wolf basis."

He said it half in defiance of the trail's fierce lessoning; but it was truer than he knew.

They built up the fire to frighten off the wolves, but the Colonel had his rifle along when they went over and crawled into their sleeping-bag. Half in, half out, he laid the gun carefully along the right on his snow-shoes. As the Boy b.u.t.toned the fur-lined flap down over their heads he felt angrier with the Colonel than he had ever been before.

"Took good care to hang on to his own shootin'-iron. Suppose anything should happen"; and he said it over and over.

Exactly what could happen he did not make clear; the real danger was not from wolves, but it was _something_. And he would need a rifle....

And he wouldn't have one.... And it was the Colonel's fault.

Now, it had long been understood that the woodman is lord of the wood.

When it came to the Colonel's giving unasked advice about the lumber business, the Boy turned a deaf ear, and thought well of himself for not openly resenting the interference.

"The Colonel talks an awful lot, anyway. He has more hot air to offer than muscle."

When they sighted timber that commended itself to the woodman, if _he_ thought well of it, why, he just dropped the sled-rope without a word, pulled the axe out of the las.h.i.+ng, trudged up the hillside, holding the axe against his s.h.i.+rt underneath his parki, till he reached whatever tree his eye had marked for his own. Off with the fur mitt, and bare hand protected by the inner mitt of wool, he would feel the axe-head, for there was always the danger of using it so cold that the steel would chip and fly. As soon as he could be sure the proper molecular change had been effected, he would take up his awkward att.i.tude before the selected spruce, leaning far forward on his snow-shoes, and seeming to deliver the blows on tip-toe.

But the real trouble came when, after felling the dead tree, splitting an armful of fuel and carrying it to the Colonel, he returned to the task of cutting down the tough green spruce for their bedding. Many strained blows must be delivered before he could effect the chopping of even a little notch. Then he would s.h.i.+ft his position and cut a corresponding notch further round, so making painful circuit of the bole. To-night, what with being held off by his snow-shoes, what with utter weariness and a dulled axe, he growled to himself that he was "only gnawin' a ring round the tree like a beaver!"

"d.a.m.n the whole--Wait!" Perhaps the cursed snow was packed enough now to bear. He slipped off the web-feet, and standing gingerly, but blessedly near, made effectual attack. Hooray! One more good 'un and the thing was down. Hah! ugh! Woof-ff! The tree was down, but so was he, floundering breast high, and at every effort to get out only breaking down more of the crust and sinking deeper.

This was not the first time such a thing had happened. Why did he feel as if it was for him the end of the world? He lay still an instant. It would be happiness just to rest here and go to sleep. The Colonel! Oh, well, the Colonel had taken his rifle. Funny there should be orange-trees up here. He could smell them. He shut his eyes. Something shone red and glowing. Why, that was the sun making an effect of stained gla.s.s as it shone through the fat pine weather-boarding of his little bedroom on the old place down in Florida. Suddenly a face. _Ah, that face!_ He must be up and doing. He knew perfectly well how to get out of this d.a.m.n hole. You lie on your side and roll. Gradually you pack the softness tight till it bears--not if you stand up on your feet, but bears the length of your body, while you worm your way obliquely to the top, and feel gingerly in the dimness after your snow-shoes.

But if it happens on a pitch-dark night, and your pardner has chosen camp out of earshot, you feel that you have looked close at the end of the Long Trail.

On getting back to the fire, he found the Colonel annoyed at having called "Grub!" three times--"yes, sah! three times, sah!"