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The God of His Fathers: Tales of the Klondyke
WHERE THE TRAIL FORKS
"Must I, then, must I, then, now leave this town-- And you, my love,
stay here?"--_Schwabian Folk-song_.
The singer, clean-faced and cheery-eyed, bent over and added water to
a pot of simmering beans, and then, rising, a stick of firewood in
hand, drove back the circling dogs from the grub-box and cooking-gear.
He was blue of eye, and his long hair was golden, and it was a
pleasure to look upon his lusty freshness. A new moon was thrusting a
dim horn above the white line of close-packed snow-capped pines which
ringed the camp and segregated it from all the world. Overhead, so
clear it was and cold, the stars danced with quick, pulsating
movements. To the southeast an evanescent greenish glow heralded the
opening revels of the aurora borealis. Two men, in the immediate
foreground, lay upon the bearskin which was their bed. Between the
skin and naked snow was a six-inch layer of pine boughs. The blankets
were rolled back. For shelter, there was a fly at their backs,--a
sheet of canvas stretched between two trees and angling at forty-five
degrees. This caught the radiating heat from the fire and flung it
down upon the skin. Another man sat on a sled, drawn close to the
blaze, mending moccasins. To the right, a heap of frozen gravel and a
rude windlass denoted where they toiled each day in dismal groping for
the pay-streak. To the left, four pairs of snowshoes stood erect,
showing the mode of travel which obtained when the stamped snow of the
camp was left behind.
That Schwabian folk-song sounded strangely pathetic under the cold
northern stars, and did not do the men good who lounged about the fire
after the toil of the day. It put a dull ache into their hearts, and
a yearning which was akin to belly-hunger, and sent their souls
questing southward across the divides to the sun-lands.
"For the love of God, Sigmund, shut up!" expostulated one of the men.
His hands were clenched painfully, but he hid them from sight in the
folds of the bearskin upon which he lay.
"And what for, Dave Wertz?" Sigmund demanded. "Why shall I not sing
when the heart is glad?"
"Because you've got no call to, that's why. Look about you, man, and
think of the grub we've been defiling our bodies with for the last
twelvemonth, and the way we've lived and worked like beasts!"
Thus abjured, Sigmund, the golden-haired, surveyed it all, and the
frost- rimmed wolf-dogs and the vapor breaths of the men. "And why
shall not the heart be glad?" he laughed. "It is good; it is all
good. As for the grub--" He doubled up his arm and caressed the
swelling biceps. "And if we have lived and worked like beasts, have
we not been paid like kings? Twenty dollars to the pan the streak is
running, and we know it to be eight feet thick. It is another
Klondike--and we know it--Jim Hawes there, by your elbow, knows it and
complains not. And there's Hitchcock! He sews moccasins like an old
woman, and waits against the time. Only you can't wait and work until
the wash-up in the spring. Then we shall all be rich, rich as kings,
only you cannot wait. You want to go back to the States. So do I,
and I was born there, but I can wait, when each day the gold in the
pan shows up yellow as butter in the churning. But you want your good
time, and, like a child, you cry for it now. Bah! Why shall I not
sing:
"In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe, I shall stay no more
away. Then if you still are true, my love, It will be our wedding day.
In a year, in a year, when my time is past, Then I'll live in your
love for aye. Then if you still are true, my love, It will be our
wedding day."
The dogs, bristling and growling, drew in closer to the firelight.
There was a monotonous crunch-crunch of webbed shoes, and between each
crunch the dragging forward of the heel of the shoe like the sound of
sifting sugar. Sigmund broke off from his song to hurl oaths and
firewood at the animals. Then the light was parted by a fur-clad
figure, and an Indian girl slipped out of the webs, threw back the
hood of her squirrel-skin _parka_, and stood in their midst. Sigmund
and the men on the bearskin greeted her as "Sipsu," with the customary
"Hello," but Hitchcock made room on the sled that she might sit beside
him.
"And how goes it, Sipsu?" he asked, talking, after her fashion, in
broken English and bastard Chinook. "Is the hunger still mighty in
the camp? and has the witch doctor yet found the cause wherefore game
is scarce and no moose in the land?"
"Yes; even so. There is little game, and we prepare to eat the dogs.
Also has the witch doctor found the cause of all this evil, and
to-morrow will he make sacrifice and cleanse the camp."
"And what does the sacrifice chance to be?--a new-born babe or some
poor devil of a squaw, old and shaky, who is a care to the tribe and
better out of the way?"
"It chanced not that wise; for the need was great, and he chose none
other than the chief's daughter; none other than I, Sipsu."
"Hell!" The word rose slowly to Hitchcock's lips, and brimmed over
full and deep, in a way which bespoke wonder and consideration.
"Wherefore we stand by a forking of the trail, you and I," she went on
calmly, "and I have come that we may look once more upon each other,
and once more only."
She was born of primitive stock, and primitive had been her traditions
and her days; so she regarded life stoically, and human sacrifice as
part of the natural order. The powers which ruled the day-light and
the dark, the flood and the frost, the bursting of the bud and the
withering of the leaf, were angry and in need of propitiation. This
they exacted in many ways,--death in the bad water, through the
treacherous ice-crust, by the grip of the grizzly, or a wasting
sickness which fell upon a man in his own lodge till he coughed, and
the life of his lungs went out through his mouth and nostrils.
Likewise did the powers receive sacrifice. It was all one. And the
witch doctor was versed in the thoughts of the powers and chose
unerringly. It was very natural. Death came by many ways, yet was it
all one after all,--a manifestation of the all-powerful and
inscrutable.
But Hitchcock came of a later world-breed. His traditions were less
concrete and without reverence, and he said, "Not so, Sipsu. You are
young, and yet in the full joy of life. The witch doctor is a fool,
and his choice is evil. This thing shall not be."
She smiled and answered, "Life is not kind, and for many reasons.
First, it made of us twain the one white and the other red, which is
bad. Then it crossed our trails, and now it parts them again; and we
can do nothing. Once before, when the gods were angry, did your
brothers come to the camp. They were three, big men and white, and
they said the thing shall not be. But they died quickly, and the
thing was."
Hitchcock nodded that he heard, half-turned, and lifted his voice.
"Look here, you fellows! There's a lot of foolery going on over to
the camp, and they're getting ready to murder Sipsu. What d'ye say?"
Wertz looked at Hawes, and Hawes looked back, but neither spoke.
Sigmund dropped his head, and petted the shepherd dog between his
knees. He had brought Shep in with him from the outside, and thought
a great deal of the animal. In fact, a certain girl, who was much in
his thoughts, and whose picture in the little locket on his breast
often inspired him to sing, had given him the dog and her blessing
when they kissed good-by and he started on his Northland quest.
"What d'ye say?" Hitchcock repeated.
"Mebbe it's not so serious," Hawes answered with deliberation. "Most
likely it's only a girl's story."
"That isn't the point!" Hitchcock felt a hot flush of anger sweep
over him at their evident reluctance. "The question is, if it is so,
are we going to stand it? What are we going to do?"
"I don't see any call to interfere," spoke up Wertz. "If it is so, it
is so, and that's all there is about it. It's a way these people have
of doing. It's their religion, and it's no concern of ours. Our
concern is to get the dust and then get out of this God-forsaken land.
'T isn't fit for naught else but beasts? And what are these black
devils but beasts? Besides, it'd be damn poor policy."
"That's what I say," chimed in Hawes. "Here we are, four of us, three
hundred miles from the Yukon or a white face. And what can we do
against half-a-hundred Indians? If we quarrel with them, we have to
vamose; if we fight, we are wiped out. Further, we've struck pay,
and, by God! I, for one, am going to stick by it!"
"Ditto here," supplemented Wertz.
Hitchcock turned impatiently to Sigmund, who was softly singing,--
"In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe, I shall stay no more
away."
"Well, it's this way, Hitchcock," he finally said, "I'm in the same
boat with the rest. If three-score bucks have made up their mind to
kill the girl, why, we can't help it. One rush, and we'd be wiped off
the landscape. And what good'd that be? They'd still have the girl.
There's no use in going against the customs of a people except you're
in force."
"But we are in force!" Hitchcock broke in. "Four whites are a match
for a hundred times as many reds. And think of the girl!"
Sigmund stroked the dog meditatively. "But I do think of the girl.
And her eyes are blue like summer skies, and laughing like summer
seas, and her hair is yellow, like mine, and braided in ropes the size
of a big man's arms. She's waiting for me, out there, in a better
land. And she's waited long, and now my pile's in sight I'm not going
to throw it away."
"And shamed I would be to look into the girl's blue eyes and remember
the black ones of the girl whose blood was on my hands," Hitchcock
sneered; for he was born to honor and championship, and to do the
thing for the thing's sake, nor stop to weigh or measure.
Sigmund shook his head. "You can't make me mad, Hitchcock, nor do mad
things because of your madness. It's a cold business proposition and
a question of facts. I didn't come to this country for my health,
and, further, it's impossible for us to raise a hand. If it is so, it
is too bad for the girl, that's all. It's a way of her people, and it
just happens we're on the spot this one time. They've done the same
for a thousand-thousand years, and they're going to do it now, and
they'll go on doing it for all time to come. Besides, they're not our
kind. Nor's the girl. No, I take my stand with Wertz and Hawes,
and--"
But the dogs snarled and drew in, and he broke off, listening to the
crunch-crunch of many snowshoes. Indian after Indian stalked into the
firelight, tall and grim, fur-clad and silent, their shadows dancing
grotesquely on the snow. One, the witch doctor, spoke gutturally to
Sipsu. His face was daubed with savage paint blotches, and over his
shoulders was drawn a wolfskin, the gleaming teeth and cruel snout
surmounting his head. No other word was spoken. The prospectors held
the peace. Sipsu arose and slipped into her snowshoes.
"Good-by, O my man," she said to Hitchcock. But the man who had sat
beside her on the sled gave no sign, nor lifted his head as they filed
away into the white forest.
Unlike many men, his faculty of adaptation, while large, had never
suggested the expediency of an alliance with the women of the
Northland. His broad cosmopolitanism had never impelled toward
covenanting in marriage with the daughters of the soil. If it had,
his philosophy of life would not have stood between. But it simply
had not. Sipsu? He had pleasured in camp-fire chats with her, not as
a man who knew himself to be man and she woman, but as a man might
with a child, and as a man of his make certainly would if for no other
reason than to vary the tedium of a bleak existence. That was all.
But there was a certain chivalric thrill of warm blood in him, despite
his Yankee ancestry and New England upbringing, and he was so made
that the commercial aspect of life often seemed meaningless and bore
contradiction to his deeper impulses.
So he sat silent, with head bowed forward, an organic force, greater
than himself, as great as his race, at work within him. Wertz and
Hawes looked askance at him from time to time, a faint but perceptible
trepidation in their manner. Sigmund also felt this. Hitchcock was
strong, and his strength had been impressed upon them in the course of
many an event in their precarious life. So they stood in a certain
definite awe and curiosity as to what his conduct would be when he
moved to action.
But his silence was long, and the fire nigh out, when Wertz stretched
his arms and yawned, and thought he'd go to bed. Then Hitchcock stood
up his full height.
"May God damn your souls to the deepest hells, you chicken-hearted
cowards! I'm done with you!" He said it calmly enough, but his
strength spoke in every syllable, and every intonation was
advertisement of intention. "Come on," he continued, "whack up, and
in whatever way suits you best. I own a quarter-interest in the
claims; our contracts show that. There're twenty-five or thirty
ounces in the sack from the test pans. Fetch out the scales. We'll
divide that now. And you, Sigmund, measure me my quarter-share of the
grub and set it apart. Four of the dogs are mine, and I want four
more. I'll trade you my share in the camp outfit and mining-gear for
the dogs. And I'll throw in my six or seven ounces and the spare
45-90 with the ammunition. What d'ye say?"
The three men drew apart and conferred. When they returned, Sigmund
acted as spokesman. "We'll whack up fair with you, Hitchcock. In
everything you'll get your quarter-share, neither more nor less; and
you can take it or leave it. But we want the dogs as bad as you do,
so you get four, and that's all. If you don't want to take your share
of the outfit and gear, why, that's your lookout. If you want it, you
can have it; if you don't, leave it."
"The letter of the law," Hitchcock sneered. "But go ahead. I'm
willing. And hurry up. I can't get out of this camp and away from its
vermin any too quick."
The division was effected without further comment. He lashed his
meagre belongings upon one of the sleds, rounded in his four dogs, and
harnessed up. His portion of outfit and gear he did not touch, though
he threw onto the sled half a dozen dog harnesses, and challenged them
with his eyes to interfere. But they shrugged their shoulders and
watched him disappear in the forest.
* * * * *
A man crawled upon his belly through the snow. On every hand loomed
the moose-hide lodges of the camp. Here and there a miserable dog
howled or snarled abuse upon his neighbor. Once, one of them
approached the creeping man, but the man became motionless. The dog
came closer and sniffed, and came yet closer, till its nose touched
the strange object which had not been there when darkness fell. Then
Hitchcock, for it was Hitchcock, upreared suddenly, shooting an
unmittened hand out to the brute's shaggy throat. And the dog knew
its death in that clutch, and when the man moved on, was left
broken-necked under the stars. In this manner Hitchcock made the
chief's lodge. For long he lay in the snow without, listening to the
voices of the occupants and striving to locate Sipsu. Evidently there
were many in the tent, and from the sounds they were in high
excitement. At last he heard the girl's voice, and crawled around so
that only the moose-hide divided them. Then burrowing in the snow, he
slowly wormed his head and shoulders underneath. When the warm inner
air smote his face, he stopped and waited, his legs and the greater
part of his body still on the outside. He could see nothing, nor did
he dare lift his head. On one side of him was a skin bale. He could
smell it, though he carefully felt to be certain. On the other side
his face barely touched a furry garment which he knew clothed a body.
This must be Sipsu. Though he wished she would speak again, he
resolved to risk it.
He could hear the chief and the witch doctor talking high, and in a
far corner some hungry child whimpering to sleep. Squirming over on
his side, he carefully raised his head, still just touching the furry
garment. He listened to the breathing. It was a woman's breathing;
he would chance it.
He pressed against her side softly but firmly, and felt her start at
the contact. Again he waited, till a questioning hand slipped down
upon his head and paused among the curls. The next instant the hand
turned his face gently upward, and he was gazing into Sipsu's eyes.
She was quite collected. Changing her position casually, she threw an
elbow well over on the skin bale, rested her body upon it, and
arranged her _parka_. In this way he was completely concealed. Then,
and still most casually, she reclined across him, so that he could
breathe between her arm and breast, and when she lowered her head her
ear pressed lightly against his lips.
"When the time suits, go thou," he whispered, "out of the lodge and
across the snow, down the wind to the bunch of jackpine in the curve
of the creek. There wilt thou find my dogs and my sled, packed for
the trail. This night we go down to the Yukon; and since we go fast,
lay thou hands upon what dogs come nigh thee, by the scruff of the
neck, and drag them to the sled in the curve of the creek."
Sipsu shook her head in dissent; but her eyes glistened with gladness,
and she was proud that this man had shown toward her such favor. But
she, like the women of all her race, was born to obey the will
masculine, and when Hitchcock repeated "Go!" he did it with authority,
and though she made no answer he knew that his will was law.
"And never mind harness for the dogs," he added, preparing to go. "I
shall wait. But waste no time. The day chaseth the night alway, nor
does it linger for man's pleasure."
Half an hour later, stamping his feet and swinging his arms by the
sled, he saw her coming, a surly dog in either hand. At the approach
of these his own animals waxed truculent, and he favored them with the
butt of his whip till they quieted. He had approached the camp up the
wind, and sound was the thing to be most feared in making his presence
known.
"Put them into the sled," he ordered when she had got the harness on
the two dogs. "I want my leaders to the fore."
But when she had done this, the displaced animals pitched upon the
aliens. Though Hitchcock plunged among them with clubbed rifle, a
riot of sound went up and across the sleeping camp.
"Now we shall have dogs, and in plenty," he remarked grimly, slipping
an axe from the sled lashings. "Do thou harness whichever I fling
thee, and betweenwhiles protect the team."
He stepped a space in advance and waited between two pines. The dogs
of the camp were disturbing the night with their jangle, and he
watched for their coming. A dark spot, growing rapidly, took form
upon the dim white expanse of snow. It was a forerunner of the pack,
leaping cleanly, and, after the wolf fashion, singing direction to its
brothers. Hitchcock stood in the shadow. As it sprang past, he
reached out, gripped its forelegs in mid-career, and sent it whirling
earthward. Then he struck it a well-judged blow beneath the ear, and
flung it to Sipsu. And while she clapped on the harness, he, with his
axe, held the passage between the trees, till a shaggy flood of white
teeth and glistening eyes surged and crested just beyond reach. Sipsu
worked rapidly. When she had finished, he leaped forward, seized and
stunned a second, and flung it to her. This he repeated thrice again,
and when the sled team stood snarling in a string of ten, he called,
"Enough!"
But at this instant a young buck, the forerunner of the tribe, and
swift of limb, wading through the dogs and cuffing right and left,
attempted the passage. The butt of Hitchcock's rifle drove him to his
knees, whence he toppled over sideways. The witch doctor, running
lustily, saw the blow fall.
Hitchcock called to Sipsu to pull out. At her shrill "Chook!" the
maddened brutes shot straight ahead, and the sled, bounding mightily,
just missed unseating her. The powers were evidently angry with the
witch doctor, for at this moment they plunged him upon the trail. The
lead-dog fouled his snowshoes and tripped him up, and the nine
succeeding dogs trod him under foot and the sled bumped over him. But
he was quick to his feet, and the night might have turned out
differently had not Sipsu struck backward with the long dog-whip and
smitten him a blinding blow across the eyes. Hitchcock, hurrying to
overtake her, collided against him as he swayed with pain in the
middle of the trail. Thus it was, when this primitive theologian got
back to the chief's lodge, that his wisdom had been increased in so
far as concerns the efficacy of the white man's fist. So, when he
orated then and there in the council, he was wroth against all white
men.
* * * * *
"Tumble out, you loafers! Tumble out! Grub'll be ready before you
get into your footgear!"
Dave Wertz threw off the bearskin, sat up, and yawned.
Hawes stretched, discovered a lame muscle in his arm, and rubbed it
sleepily. "Wonder where Hitchcock bunked last night?" he queried,
reaching for his moccasins. They were stiff, and he walked gingerly
in his socks to the fire to thaw them out. "It's a blessing he's
gone," he added, "though he was a mighty good worker."
"Yep. Too masterful. That was his trouble. Too bad for Sipsu.
Think he cared for her much?"
"Don't think so. Just principle. That's all. He thought it wasn't
right--and, of course, it wasn't,--but that was no reason for us to
interfere and get hustled over the divide before our time."
"Principle is principle, and it's good in its place, but it's best
left to home when you go to Alaska. Eh?" Wertz had joined his mate,
and both were working pliability into their frozen moccasins. "Think
we ought to have taken a hand?"
Sigmund shook his head. He was very busy. A scud of
chocolate-colored foam was rising in the coffee-pot, and the bacon
needed turning. Also, he was thinking about the girl with laughing
eyes like summer seas, and he was humming softly.
His mates chuckled to each other and ceased talking. Though it was
past seven, daybreak was still three hours distant. The aurora
borealis had passed out of the sky, and the camp was an oasis of light
in the midst of deep darkness. And in this light the forms of the
three men were sharply defined. Emboldened by the silence, Sigmund
raised his voice and opened the last stanza of the old song:-
"In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe--"
Then the night was split with a rattling volley of rifle-shots. Hawes
sighed, made an effort to straighten himself, and collapsed. Wertz
went over on an elbow with drooping head. He choked a little, and a
dark stream flowed from his mouth. And Sigmund, the Golden-Haired,
his throat a-gurgle with the song, threw up his arms and pitched
across the fire.
* * * * *
The witch doctor's eyes were well blackened, and his temper none of
the best; for he quarrelled with the chief over the possession of
Wertz's rifle, and took more than his share of the part-sack of beans.
Also he appropriated the bearskin, and caused grumbling among the
tribesmen. And finally, he tried to kill Sigmund's dog, which the
girl had given him, but the dog ran away, while he fell into the shaft
and dislocated his shoulder on the bucket. When the camp was well
looted they went back to their own lodges, and there was a great
rejoicing among the women. Further, a band of moose strayed over the
south divide and fell before the hunters, so the witch doctor attained
yet greater honor, and the people whispered among themselves that he
spoke in council with the gods.
But later, when all were gone, the shepherd dog crept back to the
deserted camp, and all the night long and a day it wailed the dead.
After that it disappeared, though the years were not many before the
Indian hunters noted a change in the breed of timber wolves, and there
were dashes of bright color and variegated markings such as no wolf
bore before.