by John Buchan
He found Johnny at his side. “That’s the North,” he said solemnly. “The wolves and the Aurory. God send us a kind winter.”
9
One day the trail took an odd turn, for it left the parallel ridges and bore away to the east to higher ground. Johnny shook his head. “This is new country for me,” he said. “Here’s where Lew has taken the big chance.”
Mountains prematurely snow-covered had been visible from the Hares’ settlement, and Leithen at Lone Tree Camp had seen one sharp white peak in a gap very far off. Ever since then they had been moving among wooded ridges at the most two thousand feet high. But now they suddenly came out on a stony plateau, the trees fell away, and they looked on a new world.
The sedimentary rocks had given place to some kind of igneous formation. In front were cliffs and towers as fantastic as the Dolomites, black and sinister against a background of great snowfields, sweeping upward to ice arêtes and couloirs which reminded Leithen of Dauphiné. In the foreground the land dropped steeply into gorges which seemed to converge in a deep central trough, but they were very unlike the mild glens through which they had been ascending. These were rifts in the black rock, their edges feathered with dwarf pines, and from their inky darkness in the sunlight they must be deep. The rock towers were not white and shining like the gracious pinnacles above Cortina, but as black as if they had been hewn out of coal by a savage Creator.
But it was not the foreground that held the eye, but the immense airy sweep of the snow-fields and ice pinnacles up to a central point, where a tall peak soared into the blue. Leithen had seen many snow mountains in his time, but this was something new to him — new to the world. The icefield was gigantic, the descending glaciers were on the grand scale, the central mountain must compete with the chief summits of the southern Rockies. But unlike the Rockies the scene was composed as if by a great artist — nothing untidy and shapeless, but everything harmonised into an exquisite unity of line and colour.
His eyes dropped from the skyline to the foreground and the middle distance. He shivered. Somewhere down in that labyrinth was Galliard. Somewhere down there he would leave his own bones.
Johnny was staring at the scene without speaking a word, without even an exclamation. At last he drew a long breath.
“God!” he said. “Them’s the biggest mountains in the Northland and only you and me and Lew and his pal has seen ‘em, and some Indians that don’t count. But it’s going to be a blasted country to travel. See that black gash? I reckon that’s where the Sick Heart River flows, and it’ll be hell’s own job to get down to it.”
“D’you think Lew and Galliard are there?” Leithen asked.
“Sure. I got their trail a piece back on the sand of that little pond we passed. We’ll pick it up soon on them shale slides.”
“Is the road possible?”
“Lew thinks it is. I told you he’d seen the Sick Heart once but couldn’t get down the precipices. It couldn’t have been this place or he wouldn’t have gone on, for he don’t try impossibilities. He sure knows there’s a way down.”
Leithen, sitting on the mountain gravel, had a sudden sharp pang of hopelessness, almost of fear. He realised that this spectacle of a new mountain-land would once have sent him wild with excitement, the excitement both of the geographer and the mountaineer. But now he could only look at it with despair. It might have been a Pisgah-sight of a promised land; but now it was only a cruel reminder of his frailty. He had still to find Galliard, but Galliard had gone into this perilous labyrinth. Could he follow? Could he reach him? . . . But did it matter after all? The finding of Galliard was a task he had set himself, thinking less of success than of the task. It was to tide away the time manfully before his end so that he could die standing. A comforting phrase of Walt Whitman’s came back to him, “the delicious near-by assurance of death.”
Sometimes lately he had been surprised at himself. He had not thought that he possessed this one-idea’d stoicism which enabled him to climb the bleak staircase of his duty with scarcely a look behind. . . . But perhaps this was the way in which most men faced death. Had his health lasted he would be doing the same thing a dozen or a score of years ahead. Soon his friends would be doing it — Hannay and Lamancha and Clanroyden — if they were fated to end in their beds. It was the lot of everyone sooner or later to reach the bleak bag’s-end of life into which they must creep to die.
10
They soon picked up the tracks of their forerunners in the long spouts of gravel, and as they slowly zigzagged downhill to the tree line the weather changed. The cold blue sky beyond the mountains dulled to a colder grey and all light went out of the landscape. It was like the coming of the Polar Night of which he had read, the inexorable drawing down of a curtain upon the glory of the world. The snow began to fall in big flakes, not driven by any wind, but like the gentle emptying of a giant celestial bin. Soon there was nothing but white round them, except the tops of the little gnarled firs.
Luckily they had reached the tree line before the snow began, for otherwise they might have lost the trail. As it was, Johnny soon picked it up from the blazes on the diminutive trunks. It led them down a slope so steep that it was marvellous that any roots could cling to it. They had to ford many ice-cold streams, and before they reached flat ground in the evening Leithen was tottering on the very outside edge of his strength. He scarcely heard Johnny’s mutter, “Looks like Lew has lost his pal. Here’s where he camped and there’s just the one set of tracks.” He was repeating to himself Whitman’s words like a prayer.
Johnny saw his weariness and mercifully said no more, contenting himself with making camp and cooking supper. Leithen fell asleep as soon as he had finished his meal, and did not wake until he heard the crackling of the breakfast fire. The air was mild and most of the snow had gone, for the wind had shifted to the south-west. Every limb ached after the long march of yesterday, but his chest was easier and there seemed more pith in his bones.
Johnny wore an anxious face. “We’ve made up on ‘em,” he said. “I reckon Lew’s not two days ahead.”
Leithen asked how he knew this, but Johnny said he knew but could not explain — it would take too long and a stranger to the wilds would not understand.
“He’s gone on alone,” he repeated. “This was his camping-ground three nights back, and the other wasn’t here. They parted company some time that day, for we had the trail of both of ‘em on the shale slides. What in God’s name has happened? Lew has shook off his pal, and that pal is somewhere around here, and, being new to the job, he’ll die. Maybe he’s dead already.”
“Has Lew gone on?”
“Lew’s gone on. I’ve been over a bit of his trail. He’s not wastin’ time.”
“But the other — my friend — won’t he have followed Lew’s blazes?”
“He wouldn’t notice ‘em, being raw. Lew’s blazed a trail for his use on the way back, not for any pal to follow.”
So this was journey’s end for him — to have traced Galliard to the uttermost parts of the earth only to find him dead. Remembrance of his errand and his original purpose awoke exasperation, and exasperation stirred the dying embers of his vitality.
“Our job is to find Mr. Galliard,” he said. “We stay here until we get him, dead or alive.”
Johnny nodded. “I guess that’s right, but I’m mighty anxious about brother Lew. Looks like he’s gone haywire.”
The snow was the trouble, Johnny said. It was disappearing fast under sun and wind, and its melting would obliterate all tracks on soft ground, almost as completely as if it still covered them. He thought that the Hares were better trackers than himself and they might find what he missed. He proposed that Leithen should lie up in camp while he and the Indians went back on yesterday’s trail in the hope of finding the place where the two men had parted.
Johnny packed some food and in half an hour he and the Hares were climbing the steep side of the glen. Leithen carried his blankets out to a patch which
the sun had already dried, and basked in the thin winter sunshine. Oddly enough, Johnny’s news had not made him restless, though it threatened disaster to his journey. He had wanted that journey to succeed, but the mere finding of Galliard would not spell success, or the loss of him failure. Success lay in his own spirit. A slight increase of bodily comfort had given him also a certain spiritual ease. This sun was good, though soon for him it would not rise again.
The search-party did not return until the brief twilight. Johnny, as he entered the tent, shook his head dolefully.
“No good, mister. We’ve found where the other feller quit the trail — them Hares are demons at that game. Just what I expected — up on the barrens where there ain’t no trees to blaze and brother Lew had got out of sight. But after that we couldn’t pick up no trail. He might have gone left or he might have gone right, but anyhow he must have gone down into the woods. So we started to beat out the woods, each of us takin’ a line, but we’ve struck nothin’. Tomorrow we’ll have another try. I reckon he can’t have gone far, for he’s dead lame. He must be lyin’ up somewhere and starvin’.”
Johnny counted on his fingers.
“Say, look! He’s been three days quit of Lew — he’s dead lame, and I reckon he wasn’t carryin’ more’n his own weight — if he didn’t catch up with Lew at night he didn’t have no food — maybe he wasn’t able to make fire — maybe he didn’t carry more’n one blanket — if he’s alive he’s mighty cold and mighty hungry.”
He was silent until he went to bed, a certain proof of anxiety.
“This sure is one hell of a business,” he said as he turned in. “Lew kind of mad and streakin’ off into space, and his pal aimin’ to be a corpse. It’s enough to put a man off his feed.”
11
Johnny and the Hares were off at dawn next morning. The weather was mild, almost stuffy, and there had been little frost in the night. Leithen sat outside the tent, but there was no sun to warm him, only a grey misty sky which bent low on the hills. He was feeling his weakness again, and with it came a deep depression of spirit. The wilds were brutal, inhuman, the abode of horrid cruelty. They had driven one man mad and would be the death of another. Not much comfort for Felicity Galliard in his report—”Discovered where your man had gone. Followed him and found him dead.” That report would be carried by Johnny some time down into the civilised places, and cabled to New York, signed with the name of Leithen. But he would not see Felicity’s grief, for long before then he would be out of the world.
In the afternoon the weather changed. The heavens darkened and suddenly burst into a lace-work of lightning. It was almost like the aurora, only it covered the whole expanse of sky. From far away there was a kind of muttering, but there were no loud thunder peals. After an hour it ceased and a little cold wind came out of the west. This was followed by a torrential rain, the heaviest Leithen had ever seen, which fell not in sheets but with the solid three dimensions of a cataract. In five minutes the hillside was running with water and the floor of the tent was a bog. In half an hour the brook below was a raving torrent. The downpour ceased and was followed by a burst of sunshine from a pale lemon sky, and a sudden sharpening of the air. Johnny had spoken of this; he had said that the winter would not properly be on them until they had the father and mother of a thunderstorm and the last rains.
Leithen pulled on his gum-boots and went out for a breath of air. The hill was melting under him, and only by walking in the thicker patches of fern and berries could he find decent foothold. Somehow his depression had lifted with the passing of the storm, and in the sharp air his breath came easier. It was arduous work walking in that tangle. “I had better not go far,” he told himself, “or I’ll never get home. Not much chance for Johnny and the Indians after such a downpour.”
He turned to look back. . . . There seemed to be a lumbering body at the door of the tent trying to crawl inside. A bear, no doubt. If the brute got at the food there would be trouble. Leithen started to slither along the hillside, falling often, and feeling his breath run short.
The thing was inside. He had closed the door-flap before leaving, and now he tore it back to let in the light. The beast was there, crouching on its knees on the muddy floor. It was a sick beast, for it seemed to nuzzle the ground and emit feeble groans and gasps of pain. A bear! Its hinder parts were one clot of mud, but something like a ragged blanket seemed to be round its middle. The head! The head looked like black fur, and then he saw that this was a cap and that beneath it was shaggy human hair.
The thing moaned, and then from it came a sound which, though made by dry lips, was articulate speech.
“Frizelle!” it said. “Oh, Frizelle! . . . pour l’amour de Dieu!”
12
It took all Leithen’s strength to move Galliard from the floor to his bed. He folded a blanket and put it under his head. Then he undid the muffler at his throat and unbuttoned the shirt. The man’s lips were blue and sore, and his cheeks were shrunk with hunger and fatigue. He seemed to be in pain, for as he lay on his back he moaned and screwed up his eyes. His wits were dulled in a stupor, and, apart from his first muttered words, he seemed to be unconscious of his environment.
Leithen mixed a little brandy and tinned milk and forced it between his lips. It was swallowed and immediately vomited. So he lit the stove and put on the kettle to boil, fetching water from the nearby spring. The moaning continued as if the man were in pain, and he remembered that Johnny had guessed at a wounded foot. The sight of another mortal suffering seemed to give Leithen a certain access of strength. He found himself able to undo Galliard’s boots, and it was no light task, for they were crusted thick with mud. The left one had been sliced open like a gouty man’s shoe, to give ease to a wound in his shin, a raw, ragged gash which looked like an axe cut. Before the boot could be removed the moaning had several times changed to a gasp of pain. Leithen made an attempt to wash the wound, and bound it up with a handkerchief, which was all he had in the way of a bandage. That seemed to give Galliard relief, and the moaning ceased.
The kettle was boiling and he made tea. Galliard tried to take the pannikin, but his hands were shaking so that Leithen had to feed him like a child. He swallowed all that he did not spill and seemed to want more. So Leithen tried him again with brandy and milk, the milk this time thinned and heated. Now two brown eyes were staring at him, eyes in which consciousness was slowly dawning. The milk was drunk and Galliard lay for a little blinking at the tent wall. Then his eyes closed and he slept.
Leithen laid himself down on Johnny’s mattress and looked at the shapeless heap which had been the object of his quest. There was the tawny beard which he had come to expect, but for the rest — it was unfamiliar wreckage. Little in common had it with the gracious portrait in the Park Avenue hall, or the Nattier, or the Aubusson carpet, or Felicity’s rose-and-silver drawing-room. This man had chosen the wilderness, and now the wilderness had taken him and tossed him up like the jetsam of a flood.
There was no satisfaction for Leithen in the fact that he had been successful in his search. By an amazing piece of luck he had found Galliard and in so doing had achieved his purpose. But now the purpose seemed trivial. Was this derelict of so great importance after all? The unaccustomed bending in his handling of Galliard had given him a pain in his back, and the smell of the retched brandy and milk sickened him. He felt a desperate emptiness in his body, in his soul, and in the world.
It was almost dark when Johnny and the Hares returned. Leithen jerked his thumb towards the sleeping Galliard. Johnny nodded.
“I sort of suspicioned he’d be here. We got his tracks, but lost them in the mud. The whole darned hill is a mud-slide.” He spoke slowly and flatly, as if he were very tired.
But his return set the little camp going, and Leithen realised what a blundering amateur he was compared with Johnny and the Indians. In a few minutes a fire was crackling before the tent door. Galliard, still in a coma, was lifted and partly unclothed, and his damaged leg
was washed and rebandaged by Johnny with the neatness of a hospital nurse. The tent was tidied up and supper was set cooking — coffee on the stove and caribou steaks on the fire. Johnny concocted a dish of his own for the sick man, for he made a kind of chicken broth from a brace of willow grouse he had shot.
“You’d better eat,” he said. “We’ll feed the soup to that feller when he wakes. Best let him sleep a little longer. How you feelin’ yourself? When I come in you looked mighty bad.”
“I found Galliard more than I could manage; but never mind me. What about him?”
Johnny’s bat’s ears seemed to prick up as he bent over the sleeping figure. He was like a gnome in a fairy-tale; but he was human enough when he turned to Leithen, and the glow of the fire showed his troubled blue eyes.
“He’ll come through a’ right,” he said. “He’s been a healthy man and he ain’t bottomed his strength yet. But he’s plumb weary. He can’t have fed proper for three days, and I reckon he can’t have slept proper for a week.”
“The wound?”
“Nasty cut he’s got, and he’ll have to watch his self if he don’t want to go lame all his days. He can’t move for a good spell.”
“How long?”
“Ten days — a fortnight — maybe more.”
Leithen had the appetite of a bird, but Johnny was ordinarily a good trencherman. Tonight, however, he ate little, though he emptied the coffee-pot. His mind was clearly on his brother, but Leithen asked no questions. At last, after half an hour’s sucking at his pipe, he spoke.
