Part 5 (1/2)
”So,” he said, ”one takes a small chunk of blubber, thus, and thus oes the whalebone, so, tightly coiled, and another piece of blubber is fitted over the whale-bone After that it is put outside where it freezes into a little round ball The bear ss the little round ball, the blubber ht, the bear gets sick, and when the bear is very sick, why, you kill hih-Gluk said ”Oh!” and Klosh-Kwan said ”Ah!” And each said so after his own manner, and all understood
And this is the story of Keesh, who lived long ago on the rim of the polar sea Because he exercised headcraft and not witchcraft, he rose froh all the years that he lived, it is related, his tribe was prosperous, and neithernor weak one cried aloud in the night because there was no meat
THE UNEXPECTED
IT is a simple matter to see the obvious, to do the expected The tendency of the individual life is to be static rather than dynamic, and this tendency is made into a propulsion by civilization, where the obvious only is seen, and the unexpected rarely happens When the unexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently grave import, the unfit perish They do not see what is not obvious, are unable to do the unexpected, are incapable of adjusting their well-grooved lives to other and strange grooves In short, when they coroove, they die
On the other hand, there are those that make toward survival, the fit individuals who escape from the rule of the obvious and the expected and adjust their lives to no rooves they may stray into, or into which they may be forced Such an individual was Edith Whittlesey She was born in a rural district of England, where life proceeds by rule of thumb and the unexpected is so very unexpected that when it happens it is looked upon as an i woression, she became a lady's maid
The effect of civilization is to impose human law upon environularity The objectionable is eliminated, the inevitable is foreseen One is not even made wet by the rain nor cold by the frost; while death, instead of stalking about grewso a well-oiled groove to the fa and the dust from the air is swept continually away
Such was the environ happened It could scarcely be called a happening, when, at the age of twenty-five, she accompanied her roove roove and well oiled It was a groove that bridged the Atlantic with uneventfulness, so that the shi+p was not a shi+p in the midst of the sea, but a capacious, many-corridored hotel thatthe waves into submission with its colossal bulk until the sea was a mill-pond, roove continued on over the land - a well-disposed, respectable groove that supplied hotels at every stopping-place, and hotels on wheels between the stopping- places
In Chicago, while her mistress saw one side of social life, Edith Whittlesey saw another side; and when she left her lady's service and became Edith Nelson, she betrayed, perhaps faintly, her ability to grapple with the unexpected and to rant, Swede by birth and carpenter by occupation, had in him that Teutonic unrest that drives the race ever ard on its great adventure He was a large-ination was coupled with immense initiative, and who possessed, withal, loyalty and affection as sturdy as his own strength
”When I have worked hard and saved o to Colorado,” he had told Edith on the day after their wedding A year later they were in Colorado, where Hans Nelson saw his firstled hion, and on into the mountains of British Columbia In ca his luck, his hardshi+p, and his toil The short step of the house-reared wo stride of the er clear- eyed and with understanding, losing forever that panic fear which is bred of ignorance and which afflicts the city-reared,them as silly as silly horses, so that they await fate in frozen horror instead of grappling with it, or sta terror which clutters the ith their crushed carcasses
Edith Nelson met the unexpected at every turn of the trail, and she trained her vision so that she saw in the landscape, not the obvious, but the concealed She, who had never cooked in her life, learned to -powder, and to bake bread, top and botto-pan before an open fire And when the last cup of flour was gone and the last rind of bacon, she was able to rise to the occasion, and of moccasins and the softer-tanned bits of leather in the outfit to rub-stake substitute that soer on She learned to pack a horse as well as a man, - a task to break the heart and the pride of any city-dweller, and she kne to throw the hitch best suited for any particular kind of pack Also, she could build a fire of ood in a downpour of rain and not lose her teuises she mastered the unexpected But the Great Unexpected was yet to coold-seeking tide was flooding northward into Alaska, and it was inevitable that Hans Nelson and his wife should he caught up by the stream and swept toward the Klondike The fall of 1897 found them at Dyea, but without the money to carry an outfit across Chilcoot Pass and float it down to Dawson So Hans Nelson worked at his trade that winter and helped rear the e of things, and throughout the winter he heard all Alaska calling to him Latuya Bay called loudest, so that the su the mazes of the broken coast-line in seventy-foot Siwash canoes With them were Indians, also three other men
The Indians landed theht of land a hundred uay; but the three other anized party Each had put an equal share of capital into the outfitting, and the profits were to he divided equally In that Edith Nelson undertook to cook for the outfit, a man's share was to be her portion
First, spruce trees were cut down and a three-room cabin constructed To keep this cabin was Edith Nelson's task The task of the old, which they likewise did It was not a startling find,hours of severe toil earned each man between fifteen and twenty dollars a day The brief Alaskan suth, and they took advantage of the opportunity, delaying their return to Skaguay to the last ements had been made to acco trip down the coast The Siwashes had waited on the white people until the eleventh hour, and then departed There was no course left the party but to wait for chance transportation In the meantime the claim was cleaned up and firewood stocked in
The Indian summer had dreales, winter ca wind, driving snow, and freezing water Storm followed storm, and between the storms there was the silence, broken only by the boom of the surf on the desolate shore, where the salt spray rimmed the beach with frozen white
All ell in the cabin Their gold-dust had weighed up soht thousand dollars, and they could not but be contented The men made snowshoes, hunted fresh a had ceased, Edith Nelson turned over the fire-building and the dish-washi+ng to the men, while she darned their socks and , no bickering, nor petty quarrelling in the little cabin, and they often congratulated one another on the general happiness of the party Hans Nelson was stolid and easy- going, while Edith had long before won his unbounded ad on with people Harkey, a long, lank Texan, was unusually friendly for one with a saturnine disposition, and, as long as his theory that gold greas not challenged, was quite companionable The fourth member of the party, Michael Dennin, contributed his Irish wit to the gayety of the cabin He was a large, powerful s, and of unfailing good-hus The fifth and lastbutt of the party He even went out of his way to raise a laugh at his own expense in order to keep things cheerful His deliberate aihter No serious quarrel had ever vexed the serenity of the party; and, now that each had sixteen hundred dollars to show for a short suned the well-fed, contented spirit of prosperity
And then the unexpected happened They had just sat down to the breakfast table Though it was already eight o'clock (late breakfasts had followed naturally upon cessation of the steady work at hted the meal Edith and Hans sat at each end of the table On one side, with their backs to the door, sat Harkey and Dutchy The place on the other side was vacant Dennin had not yet come in
Hans Nelson looked at the empty chair, shook his head slowly, and, with a ponderous atterub It is very strange Maybe he is sick”
”Where is Michael?” Edith asked
”Got up a little ahead of us and went outside,” Harkey answered
Dutchy's face beae of Dennin's absence, and affected a mysterious air, while they clamored for information Edith, after a peep into the men's bunk- room, returned to the table Hans looked at her, and she shook her head
”He was never late at meal-time before,” she remarked
”I cannot understand,” said Hans ”Always has he the great appetite like the horse”
”It is too bad,” Dutchy said, with a sad shake of his head
They were beginning to reat pity!” Dutchy volunteered
”What?” they demanded in chorus
”Poor Michael,” was thewith Michael?” Harkey asked
”He is not hungry no more,” wailed Dutchy ”He has lost der appetite He do not like der grub”
”Not from the way he pitches into it up to his ears,” remarked Harkey
”He does dot shust to be politeful to Mrs Nelson,” was Dutchy's quick retort ”I know, I know, and it is too pad Why is he not here? Pecause he haf gone out Why haf he gone out? For der defelopment of der appetite How does he defelop der appetite? He walks barefoots in der snow Ach! don't I know? It is der way der rich peoples chases after der appetite when it is noaway Michael haf sixteen hundred dollars He is rich peoples He haf no appetite Derefore, pecause, he is chasing der appetite Shust you open der door und you will see his barefoots in der snow No, you will not see der appetite Dot is shust his trouble When he sees der appetite he will catch it und cohter at Dutchy's nonsense The sound had scarcely died ahen the door opened and Dennin caun Even as they looked, he lifted it to his shoulder and fired twice At the first shot Dutchy sank upon the table, overturning hisin his plate of e of the plate, tilted the plate up against his hair at an angle of forty-five degrees Harkey was in the air, in his spring to his feet, at the second shot, and he pitched face down upon the floor, his ”My God!” gurgling and dying in his throat
It was the unexpected Hans and Edith were stunned They sat at the table with bodies tense, their eyes fixed in a fascinated gaze upon the h the s was to be heard save the drip- drip of Dutchy's spilled coffee on the floor Dennin threw open the breech of the shot-gun, ejecting the eun with one hand, he reached with the other into his pocket for fresh shells
He was thrusting the shells into the gun when Edith Nelson was aroused to action It was patent that he intended to kill Hans and her For a space of possibly three seconds of time she had been dazed and paralysed by the horrible and inconceivable form in which the unexpected had rappled with it She grappled with it concretely,his neck-cloth with both her hands The i backward several steps
He tried to shake her loose and still retain his hold on the gun This ard, for her firm-fleshed body had becorip at his throat nearly jerked hihtened himself and whirled swiftly Still faithful to her hold, her body followed the circle of his whirl so that her feet left the floor, and she swung through the air fastened to his throat by her hands The whirl culminated in a collision with a chair, and thefall that extended itself across half the length of the room
Hans Nelson was half a second behind his wife in rising to the unexpected His nerve processed and rosser organiser to perceive, and deterripped his throat, when Hans sprang to his feet But her coolness was not his He was in a blind fury, a Berserker rage At the instant he sprang from his chair his mouth opened and there issued forth a sound that was half roar, half bellow The whirl of the two bodies had already started, and still roaring, or bellowing, he pursued this whirl down the roo it when it fell to the floor
Hans hurled hi e-like blows, and when Edith felt Dennin's body relax she loosed her grip and rolled clear She lay on the floor, panting and watching The fury of blows continued to rain down Dennin did not seem to mind the blows He did not even move Then it dawned upon her that he was unconscious She cried out to Hans to stop She cried out again But he paid no heed to her voice She caught hi to it merely impeded his effort
It was no reasoned impulse that stirred her to do what she then did Nor was it a sense of pity, nor obedience to the ”Thou shalt not” of religion Rather was it some sense of law, an ethic of her race and early environment, that compelled her to interpose her body between her husband and the helplesshis wife that he ceased He allowed himself to be shoved away by her inallows itself to be shoved away by its y went even farther Deep in his throat, in an anie still ru back upon his prey and was only prevented by the woman's swiftly interposed body
Back and farther back Edith shoved her husband She had never seen hihtened of hile She could not believe that this raging beast was her Hans, and with a shock she becaht snap her hand in his teeth like any wild anied in his desire to return to the attack, Hans dodged back and forth But she resolutely dodged with hiave over
Both crawled to their feet Hans staggered back against the wall, where he leaned, his face working, in his throat the deep and continuous rumble that died aith the seconds and at last ceased The time for the reaction had co her hands, panting and gasping, her whole body tre, but Edith's eyes wandered wildly from detail to detail of what had taken place Dennin lay without movement The overturned chair, hurled onward in the un, still broken open at the breech Spilling out of his right hand were the two cartridges which he had failed to put into the gun and which he had clutched until consciousness left him Harkey lay on the floor, face doard, where he had fallen; while Dutchy rested forward on the table, his yellow mop of hair buried in his le of forty-five degrees This tilted plate fascinated her Why did it not fall down? It was ridiculous It was not in the nature of things for a mush-plate to up-end itself on the table, even if a lanced back at Dennin, but her eyes returned to the tilted plate It was so ridiculous! She felt a hysterical iot the plate in a desire for so to happen The monotonous drip of the coffee from the table to the floor ? say so? She looked at hiue refused its wonted duty There was a peculiar ache in her throat, and her mouth was dry and furry She could only look at Hans, who, in turn, looked at her