Part 21 (2/2)
Figuratively, the camp's nose had tilted at this, and it stated pompously that it were better to preserve its cla.s.sic purity of features and pro rata of toes, than to jeopardize these adjuncts through fear of a possible blood disease.
”Blood disease, eh?” George snorted like a sea-lion. ”Wait till your legs get black and you spit your teeth out like plum-pits--mebbe you'll listen then. It'll come, see if it don't.”
He was right. Yet when the plague did grip the camp and men died, one in five, they failed to rise to it. Instead of fighting manfully they lapsed into a frightened, stubborn coma.
There was one, and only one, who did not. Klusky the Jew; Klusky the pariah. They said he worked just to be ornery and different from the rest, he hated them so. They enjoyed baiting him to witness his fury. It sated that taint of Roman cruelty inherent in the man of ignorance. He was all the amus.e.m.e.nt they had, for it wasn't policy to stir up the two others--they might slop over and clean up the village. So they continued to goad him as they had done since leaving 'Frisco. They gibed and jeered till he shunned them, living alone in the fringe of the pines, bitter and vicious, as an outcast from the pack will grow, whether human or lupine. He frequented only the house of Captain and George, because they were exiles like himself.
The partners did not relish this overmuch, for he was an odious being, avaricious, carping, and dirty.
”His face reminds me of a tool,” said George, once, ”nose an' chin shuts up like calipers. He's got the forehead of a salmon trout, an'
his chin don't retreat, it stampedes, plumb down ag'in his apple.
Look out for that droop of the mouth. I've seen it before, an' his eyes is bad, too. They've stirred him up an' pickled all the good he ever had. Some day he'll do a murder.”
”I wonder what he means by always saying he'll have revenge before spring. It makes me creep to hear him cackle and gloat. I think he's going crazy.”
”Can't tell. This bunch would bust anybody's mental tugs, an' they make a mistake drivin' him so. Say! How's my gums look tonight?”
George stretched his lips back, showing his teeth, while Captain made careful examination.
”All right. How are mine?”
”Red as a berry.”
Every day they searched thus for the symptoms, looking for discolouration, and anxiously watching bruises on limb or body. Men live in fear when their comrades vanish silently from their midst.
Each night upon retiring they felt legs nervously, punching here and there to see that the flesh retained its resiliency.
So insidious is the malady's approach that it may be detected only thus. A la.s.situde perhaps, a rheumatic laziness, or pains and swelling at the joints. Mayhap one notes a putty-like softness of the lower limbs. Where he presses, the finger mark remains, filling up sluggishly. No mental depression at first, nor fever, only a drooping ambition, fatigue, enlarging parts, now gradual, now sudden.
The grim humour of seeing grown men gravely poking their legs with rigid digits, or grinning anxiously into hand-mirrors had struck some of the tenderfeet at first, but the implacable progress of the disease; its black, merciless presence, pausing destructively here and there, had terrorized them into a hopeless fatalism till they cowered helplessly, awaiting its touch.
One night Captain announced to his partner. ”I'm going over to the Frenchmen's, I hear Menard is down.”
”What's the use of b.u.t.tin' in where ye ain't wanted? As fer me, them frogeaters can all die like salmon; I won't go nigh 'em an' I've told 'em so. I give 'em good advice, an' what'd I get? What'd that daffy doctor do? Pooh-poohed at me an' physiced them. Lord! Physic a man with scurvy--might as well bleed a patient fer amputation.” George spoke with considerable heat.
Captain pulled his parka hood well down so that the fox-tails around the edge protected his features, and stepped out into the evening.
He had made several such trips in the past few months to call on men smitten with the sickness, but all to no effect. Being ”chechakos”
they were supreme in their conceit, and refused to heed his advice.
Returning at bed time he found his partner webbing a pair of snow-shoes by the light of a stinking ”go-devil,” consisting of a string suspended in a can of molten grease. The camp had sold them grub, but refused the luxury of candles. Noting his gravity, George questioned:
”Well, how's Menard?”
”Dead!” Captain shook himself as though at the memory. ”It was awful. He died while I was talking to him.”
”Don't say! How's that?”
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