Colorado Jim Part 25

They camped on bleak mountains and along frozen creeks. In the latter case Jim made double use of the camp-fire. Before retiring into the snow-banked tent for the night the fire was heaped high with branches. In the morning the thawed ground beneath it was excavated and washed with snow-water, lest it harbor the much desired red mineral.

Muck! Always muck! It seemed to her amazing that he should continue this heartbreaking quest. Much as she had prized the things that money could buy, she began to hate it now. As they penetrated farther North, so the conditions grew more appalling. No longer the sun mounted the horizon.

Night and day were much the same thing--a mysterious luminiferousness, merging into the fantastic lights of the great Aurora Borealis, that occasionally leapt across the Northern sky in spectrumatic beauty, to flicker and die, and rise again.

Day after day the journey went on. The ice being now strong, they skimmed across rivers and creeks, raising the snow in clouds and "switchbacking"

over hummocks in a fas.h.i.+on that under other conditions might have been exhilarating. Then came the monotonous digging and was.h.i.+ng, with its inevitable unsuccessful issue.

Striking the Yukon River at the "flats"--where it is reputed to be thirty miles wide--they followed its course for three weary days, until Fort Yukon was pa.s.sed and the junction of the Chandalar River was made. It was while negotiating the rough surface of Chandalar that the "terror of the North" came down.

Jim heard it coming before Angela was aware of any unusual sound. For two days there had been no wind, saving a light zephyr that laid its bitter finger on the exposed flesh. Now a legion of devils were preparing for attack. A sound like unto a human sigh broke the silence. It died away and came again, a little stronger. Immediately Jim pulled the "leader" dog to the lift and cracked the long whip over the team.

"Mush, darn you, mus.h.!.+"

"What's that?" inquired Angela, as an uncanny groaning met her ears.

"The wind. Gee, but she's going to raise the dead!"

The high bank loomed up and the sled turned a half-circle and came close under a protecting bluff. Jim tied the team to a tree and ran forward to Angela. She was standing terror-stricken at the sound of the approaching monster. Behind her was a huge snow-drift. He pointed to the white ma.s.s, and shouted that his voice might be heard above the Niagara of sound.

"We'll sure freeze stiff unless we git inside that--hurry!"

They bored their way into the crisp snow, like dogs in a rabbit-hole.

There was scarcely need to urge Angela to use her strength. The noise of the approaching blizzard was like to fifty thousand shrieking devils. The little light that remained was suddenly blotted out. At nearly a hundred miles an hour the solid ma.s.s of wind and snow came roaring down from the mountains. The whole earth seemed to reel under the impact. Inside the sheltering snow ma.s.s it was cold enough, but outside nothing human could live. The dogs, familiar with this phenomenon of the higher lat.i.tudes, had crawled into the snow and would lie there until the noise subsided.

The two humans huddled up inside the snow heard nothing and saw nothing.

It was as if the whole world had suddenly crashed into a sister planet and was hurtling into s.p.a.ce, a broken ma.s.s. Hours pa.s.sed and no change came.

Occasionally the snow-drift seemed to s.h.i.+ft a little, and Jim dreaded that some clutching finger of the wind would tear the frozen morsel of shelter from the cliff and drive it into thin air. That were indeed the end, for at fifty degrees below zero the Arctic hurricane is like a knife, from whose murderous edge no escape is possible.

They crawled lower in the snow until they reached the ice itself. It was suffocating, for the wind had blown in the entrance and fresh air was excluded.... Jim felt the body close to him--it was still as death. A great fear swept through him. She was not strong enough for this trial--she was----! He thrust his hand inside the thick coat and felt the heart. It was beating but slowly, and her hands were cold. He clasped her to him and rubbed the face with snow, growling like an animal in pain as the hideous uproar continued.

She had nearly fainted; but another hour of this poisonous incarceration and she would never recover. He dare not attempt to get to the fresher air. Outside it was certain death, and any moment might a.s.sist the wind in carrying out the task it seemed so determined to perform.... A piercing wind suddenly entered, and the whole ma.s.s quivered. He realized that the worst was about to happen--the snow was moving. Before he could fix on his mittens the snow and its two inmates were flung like a rifle-shot across the ice. There was a thundering roar, and the whole pile broke into a myriad parts. Still clasping the unconscious Angela, he went helter-skelter before the blast, pitching and sliding on the ice. The power to think was leaving him. Brain and body seemed numbed and out of action. He was only conscious that he held in his arms the thing from which not even this murderous wind could sever him. He calmly waited for the end--the dreamy, painless end that freezing death would bring....

Then he suddenly gave vent to a choking cry of joy. The wind had suddenly, marvelously vanished. He heard it howling its way across the land to the South. He dragged himself from the ice and looked back. The Aurora was flas.h.i.+ng again and the sky was clear. The strange Arctic light was settling down on the scene, turning the snow-clad waste into mysterious colors. He rubbed his frost-bitten hands vigorously with snow and hurried up the river with Angela clasped in his arms.

He found the sled overturned, some distance from where he had left it, and hurriedly rigged up the tent on a suitable place on the bank. In a few minutes he had Angela inside, on a pile of blankets, and was forcing brandy between her lips. Seeing that she was reviving, he lit the oil stove and went to round up the dog-team.

When he returned Angela was boiling the kettle on top of the stove. She handed him a cup of cocoa in silence. He took it without attempting to drink it. Her extraordinary recovery amazed him.

"Is it all over?" she queried ultimately.

"Yep," he gasped. "But it sure did blow some."

"Yes--it's a good job we were inside the snow-drift," she replied indifferently.

He put down the mug of cocoa that he had taken up. Of all bewildering things this was the most bewildering. She was acting again--acting in her own subtle fas.h.i.+on. He came to the conclusion that women were beyond his comprehension--and Angela most of all.

On the next morning the temperature was moderately high. They left the river and found a good trail along the bank. Angela asked no questions regarding his destination. She had got beyond caring very much now. She determined to adopt an att.i.tude of cold indifference.

The sled was negotiating a bad piece of trail when it suddenly stopped, and she heard an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n from behind her. She saw Jim step down and examine something black in the snow. She gave a little cry as he caught the black object and pulled it up--it was a dead man, frozen as stiff as a board.

"Poor devil!" muttered Jim. "I guess he got caught in that wind."

He searched through the pockets of the mackinaw coat, but found nothing that would act as a means to identification. He let the body fall and covered it with snow.

"Aren't you going to bury him?"

He nodded and looked round him in expectant fas.h.i.+on.

"Must have a shack or a tent round about. He's got no pack of any kind. If it was a tent, likely enough it's a hundred miles away by now. If it was a shack it'll be very useful--to us."

She prayed it might be the latter. Anything was better than this mad wandering.

They found the shack ten minutes later, nestling in a hollow, with its chimney still smoking. They pulled up outside and went to investigate the home of the unfortunate stranger. It was a comfortable affair, containing two rooms and a small outhouse, plus a certain amount of rough furniture.

In the corner of the outer room was the ubiquitous Yukon stove, with a fryingpan on the top containing a much overdone "flapjack." A pair of snow-shoes lay in a corner, and sundry articles of clothing were hanging on nails. In the next room was a camp-bed and more clothes, two bags of flour, one of beans, a few tins of canned meat, a rifle and a hundred cartridges--but no letters or information of any kind respecting its late owner.

"It'll do," said Jim. "It'll be better than a tent, anyway."

Angela agreed reluctantly. Somehow it seemed heartless to coolly take possession of this place, with its late owner lying dead but a bare mile away. It gave her an uncanny sensation as she glanced at all the little things that belonged to him, that his cold hands had touched but a few hours ago. She reflected that a year ago such an incident as this would have chilled her with horror. But apart from arousing a small amount of sentimentality it affected her now very little. It came as a shock to her to realize that fact--she was becoming as wild as this "cowpuncher"

husband of hers, who even now was sallying forth with spade and ax to excavate a shallow grave in the frozen earth, to save a man's body from prowling wolves. And all without an atom of sentiment!

So little did she know of him! She did not see him remove his cap as he gently placed the luckless man in his last resting-place, or hear the short whispered prayer that he uttered.

The dogs were unharnessed and driven into the outhouse which was to serve as their future domicile. Jim collected the dead man's belongings together and made a neat pile of them in one corner of the outer room. Angela's personal things were taken into the more comfortable inner room, which boasted of a match-boarded wall--not to mention half a dozen rather indelicate prints tacked on to the same.

When he had occasion to go into the room again, after Angela had been there, he noticed that the prints had been torn from the walls. Angela was certainly very proper--for a married woman!

CHAPTER XIV

THE BREAKING-POINT

The weeks that followed were a testing-time for Angela. Her resolutions wavered and died, confronted as she was by the terrible isolation and loneliness. Stoicism was easy enough in theory but most difficult in practice. The unchanging icy vista and the eternal silence drove her to desperation. She tried work as an antidote, and found it dulled the edge of her despair.

They were fortunate enough to find a fish-trap in the outhouse. Jim regarded this discovery with great satisfaction. He chopped a hole in the river ice and, baiting the trap with a canned herring, managed to entice a "two-pounder" into the wicker basket. Angela's attempt to cook it was not entirely a failure, and the repast was a pleasant change from the eternal beans and pork.

Thereafter Angela took over the piscatorial department. It meant going to the river each morning and breaking the newly formed ice over the fish-hole--a task that called forth all her physical energy. At times the fish were scarce and the journeys without result, but they were not entirely wasted. She found that her body glowed with the exercise and her soft arms began to develop muscle.

Each day Jim took the sled and the dogs, and explored the creek in the neighborhood. Farther and farther afield he went, staying away at nights and leaving Angela to the melancholia of her soul. The shack seemed full of a strange presence, a ghostly kind of ego that made itself felt. Then along the valley came the bloodcurdling howl of a wolf, to add to her terror and misery.

The icehole froze up on one bitter night, and all the efforts of Jim could not reach water again. He eventually gave up the task as hopeless.

"Frozen right down to the river bed," he explained.

The great loneliness took deeper hold of her. The eternal gloom began to affect her mentally. She became the victim of prolonged fits of depression; Jim, tired and heavy-hearted with his arduous wanderings, noticed the change in her. It caused him acute mental agony, and not a little self-reproach. At nights he pondered the problem. Was he subjecting her to unjustifiable misery? Had he a right to do this? He knew he had not, but he was hoping--hoping vainly that she might abandon that spirit of antagonism, manifest in her every movement, and speak and act as one human being to another. He grew sick to realize that her will was no less strong than his own. What was there left to do but take her back and acknowledge defeat?