Part 1 (2/2)

He built a fire and war quarts of hot water, and e in the sa he did was to see that his matches were dry and to wind his watch The blankets et and clammy His ankle pulsed with pain But he knew only that he was hungry, and through his restless sleep he dreamed of feasts and banquets and of food served and spread in all iinable ways

He awoke chilled and sick There was no sun The gray of earth and sky had beco, and the first flurries of snohitening the hilltops The air about hirehite while he made a fire and boiled more water It et snow, half rain, and the flakes were large and soggy At first they melted as soon as they ca the ground, putting out the fire, spoiling his supply of nal for him to strap on his pack and stumble onward, he knew not where He was not concerned with the land of little sticks, nor with Bill and the cache under the upturned canoe by the river Dease He was er-as that course led hih the wet snow to the watery rass by the roots But it was tasteless stuff and did not satisfy He found a weed that tasted sour and he ate all he could find of it, which was not rowth, easily hidden under the several inches of snow

He had no fire that night, nor hot water, and crawled under his blanket to sleep the broken hunger-sleep The snow turned into a cold rain He awakenedon his upturned face Day ca The keenness of his hunger had departed Sensibility, as far as concerned the yearning for food, had been exhausted There was a dull, heavy ache in his stomach, but it did not bother him so much He was more rational, and once more he was chiefly interested in the land of little sticks and the cache by the river Dease

He ripped the remnant of one of his blankets into strips and bound his bleeding feet Also, he recinched the injured ankle and prepared himself for a day of travel When he ca over the squat moose-hide sack, but in the end it ith him

The snow had melted under the rain, and only the hilltops shohite The sun ca the points of the coh he kne that he was lost Perhaps, in his previous days' wanderings, he had edged away too far to the left He now bore off to the right to counteract the possible deviation froer so exquisite, he realized that he eak He was compelled to pause for frequent rests, when he attacked the ue felt dry and large, as though covered with a fine hairy growth, and it tasted bitter in his reat deal of trouble When he had travelled a few in a remorseless thump, thump, thump, and then leap up and away in a painful flutter of beats that choked hio faint and dizzy

In the e pool It was ied to catch theer, but he was not particularly hungry The dull ache in his sto duller and fainter It see He ate the fish raw,was an act of pure reason While he had no desire to eat, he knew that he ht threethe third for breakfast The sun had dried stray shreds of moss, and he was able to warm himself with hot water He had not coveredwhenever his heart permitted him, he covered no ive hione to sleep He was in a strange country, too, and the caribou were growing more plentiful, also the wolves Often their yelps drifted across the desolation, and once he saw three of theht; and in thethat fastened the squat moose-hide sack Froold-dust and nuggets

He roughly divided the gold in halves, caching one half on a pro the other half to the sack He also began to use strips of the one reun, for there were cartridges in that cache by the river Dease

This was a day of fog, and this day hunger awoke in hiiddiness which at ti now for hi once, he fell squarely into a ptaran nest There were four newly hatched chicks, a day old - little specks of pulsating life nothe- shells between his teeth The reat outcry He used his gun as a club hich to knock her over, but she dodged out of reach He threw stones at her and with one chance shot broke a wing Then she fluttered away, running, trailing the broken wing, with him in pursuit

The little chicks had no more than whetted his appetite He hopped and bobbed clu stones and screa silently along, picking hi his eyes with his hand when the giddiness threatened to overpower hiround in the bottoy moss They were not his own - he could see that They an was running on He would catch her first, then he would return and investigate

He exhausted theon her side He lay panting on his side, a dozen feet away, unable to crawl to her And as he recovered she recovered, fluttering out of reach as his hungry hand went out to her The chase was resuht settled down and she escaped He stumbled fro his cheek, his pack upon his back He did notwhile; then he rolled over on his side, wound his watch, and lay there untilHalf of his last blanket had gone into foot- wrappings He failed to pick up Bill's trail

It did not ly - only - only he wondered if Bill, too, were lost By ain he divided the gold, this tiround In the afternoon he threw the rest of it away, there re to him only the half-blanket, the tin bucket, and the rifle

An hallucination began to trouble hie remained to him It was in the chamber of the rifle and he had overlooked it On the other hand, he knew all the time that the chaht it off for hours, then threw his rifle open and was confronted with eh he had really expected to find the cartridge

He plodded on for half an hour, when the hallucination arose again Again he fought it, and still it persisted, till for very relief he opened his rifle to unconvince himself At times his mind wandered farther afield, and he plodded on, aat his brain like worms But these excursions out of the real were of brief duration, for ever the pangs of the hunger-bite called him back He was jerked back abruptly once froht that caused hi like a drunkenBefore him stood a horse A horse! He could not believe his eyes A thick ht He rubbed his eyes savagely to clear his vision, and beheld, not a horse, but a great brown bear The ani hiun halfway to his shoulder before he realized He lowered it and drew his hunting-knife from its beaded sheath at his hip Before hie of his knife

It was sharp The point was sharp He would fling hian its warning thump, thump, thump Then followed the wild upward leap and tattoo of flutters, the pressing as of an iron band about his forehead, the creeping of the dizziness into his brain

His desperate courage was evicted by a great surge of fear In his weakness, what if the ani stature, gripping the knife and staring hard at the bear The bear advanced cluave vent to a tentative growl If the man ran, he would run after him; but the e of fear He, too, growled, savagely, terribly, voicing the fear that is to life germane and that lies twisted about life's deepest roots

The bear edged away to one side, growling ly, hiht and unafraid But the er was past, when he yielded to a fit of tre and sank down into the wet ether and went on, afraid now in a neay It was not the fear that he should die passively from lack of food, but that he should be destroyed violently before starvation had exhausted the last particle of the endeavor in hi There were the wolves Back and forth across the desolation drifted their hoeaving the very air into a fabric of ible that he found hiht be the walls of a wind- blown tent

Now and again the wolves, in packs of two and three, crossed his path But they sheered clear of him They were not in sufficient nu the caribou, which did not battle, while this strange creature that walked erect ht scratch and bite

In the late afternoon he came upon scattered bones where the wolves had made a kill The debris had been a caribou calf an hour before, squawking and running and very much alive He contemplated the bones, clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in theht be that ere the day was done! Such was life, eh? A vain and fleeting thing It was only life that pained There was no hurt in death

To die was to sleep It meant cessation, rest Then as he not content to die?

But he did notin theat the shreds of life that still dyed it faintly pink The sweet meaty taste, thin and elusive almost as a memory, maddened him He closed his jaws on the bones and crunched Sometimes it was the bone that broke, sometimes his teeth Then he crushed the bones between rocks, pounded theers, too, in his haste, and yet found a ers did not hurt htful days of snow and rain He did not knohen he ht as much as in the day He rested wherever he fell, crawled on whenever the dying life in hier strove It was the life in hi to die, that drove him on He did not suffer His nerves had become blunted, numb, while his mind was filled eird visions and delicious dreams

But ever he sucked and chewed on the crushed bones of the caribou calf, the least reathered up and carried with him He crossed no e streah a wide and shallow valley He did not see this strea save visions Soul and body walked or crawled side by side, yet apart, so slender was the thread that bound the on his back on a rocky ledge The sun was shi+ning bright and war of caribou calves He are of vague memories of rain and wind and snow, but whether he had been beaten by the storm for two days or teeks he did not know

For soenial sunshi+ne pouring upon hi his ht Perhaps he could e to locate himself By a painful effort he rolled over on his side Below hiish river Its unfamiliarity puzzled hi in wide sweeps a than any hills he had yet encountered Slowly, deliberately, without excitement or more than the e streaht and shi+ning sea

He was still unexcited Most unusual, he thought, a vision or a e - more likely a vision, a trick of his disorderedat anchor in thesea He closed his eyes for a while, then opened thee He knew there were no seas or shi+ps in the heart of the barren lands, just as he had known there was no cartridge in the empty rifle

He heard a snuffle behind hih Very slowly, because of his exceeding weakness and stiffness, he rolled over on his other side He could see nothing near at hand, but he waited patiently Again caed rocks not a score of feet away he ray head of a wolf The sharp ears were not pricked so sharply as he had seen them on other wolves; the eyes were bleared and bloodshot, the head seemed to droop limply and forlornly The animal blinked continually in the sunshi+ne It seeain

This, at least, was real, he thought, and turned on the other side so that he ht see the reality of the world which had been veiled from him before by the vision But the sea still shone in the distance and the shi+p was plainly discernible Was it reality, after all? He closed his eyes for a long while and thought, and then it ca north by east, away from the Dease Divide and into the Copperish river was the Copper sea was the Arctic Ocean That shi+p was a whaler, strayed east, far east, fro at anchor in Coronation Gulf He reo, and it was all clear and reasonable to him

He sat up and turned his attention to is, and his feet were shapeless luone Rifle and knife were bothHe had lost his hat somewhere, with the bunch of ainst his chest were safe and dry inside the tobacco pouch and oil paper He looked at his watch

ItEvidently he had kept it wound

He was calh extrery The thought of food was not even pleasant to him, and whatever he did was done by his reason alone He ripped off his pants' legs to the knees and bound the the tin bucket He would have soan what he foresaas to be a terrible journey to the shi+p

His movements were slow He shook as with a palsy When he started to collect dry ain and again, then contented hi about on hands and knees Once he crawled near to the sick wolf The ani its chops with a tongue which seeth to curl The ue was not the customary healthy red It was a yellowish brown and seeh and half-dry mucus

After he had drunk a quart of hot water the man found he was able to stand, and even to walk as well as a dying ht be supposed to walk Every minute or so he was compelled to rest His steps were feeble and uncertain, just as the wolf's that trailed hiht, when the shi+ning sea was blotted out by blackness, he kneas nearer to it by no ht he heard the cough of the sick wolf, and now and then the squawking of the caribou calves There was life all around hi life, veryto the sick man's trail in the hope that thehis eyes, he beheld it regarding hiry stare It stood crouched, with tail between its legs, like aIt shi+vered in the chill rinned dispiritedly when the man spoke to it in a voice that achieved no htly, and allthesea The weather was perfect It was the brief Indian Suht last a week To-one

In the afternoon the man came upon a trail It was of another ed hiht be Bill, but he thought in a dull, uninterested way He had no curiosity In fact, sensation and eer susceptible to pain Stoone to sleep Yet the life that was in him drove him on He was very weary, but it refused to die It was because it refused to die that he still ateberries and minnows, drank his hot water, and kept a wary eye on the sick wolf

He followed the trail of the other , and soon cay moss was marked by the foot-pads of many wolves He saw a squat moose-hide sack, mate to his ohich had been torn by sharp teeth He picked it up, though its weight was alers Bill had carried it to the last Ha! ha! He would have the laugh on Bill He would survive and carry it to the shi+p in the shi+ning sea His hastly, like a raven's croak, and the sick wolf joined hiubriously

The h on Bill if that were Bill; if those bones, so pinky-white and clean, were Bill?

He turned away Well, Bill had deserted hiold, nor would he suck Bill's bones Bill would have, though, had it been the other way around, he ered on

He ca over in quest ofHe had caught sight of his reflected face So horrible was it that sensibility awoke long enough to be shocked There were three e to drain; and after several ineffectual attempts to catch them in the tin bucket he forbore He was afraid, because of his great weakness, that he ht fall in and drown It was for this reason that he did not trust his which lined its sand- spits

That day he decreased the distance between him and the shi+p by threenow as Bill had crawled; and the end of the fifth day found the shi+p still seven miles away and him unable to make even a mile a day Still the Indian Summer held on, and he continued to crawl and faint, turn and turn about; and ever the sick wolf coughed and wheezed at his heels His knees had becoh he padded them with the shi+rt from his back it was a red track he left behind hi back, he saw the wolf licking hungrily his bleeding trail, and he saw sharply what his own end an as griedy of existence as was ever played - a sick ing their dying carcasses across the desolation and hunting each other's lives

Had it been a olf, it would not haveto feed the nant to hiain, and to be perplexed by hallucinations, while his lucid intervals grew rarer and shorter

He akened once from a faint by a wheeze close in his ear The wolf leaped la in its weakness It was ludicrous, but he was not aone for that But his mind was for the moment clear, and he lay and considered The shi+p was no more than four miles away He could see it quite distinctly when he rubbed the mists out of his eyes, and he could see the white sail of a s sea But he could never crawl those four e He knew that he could not crawl half a mile And yet he wanted to live