by Jack London
“And in this manner we came through the white forest, with the silence heavy upon us like a damp sea mist. And the ghosts of the past were in the air and all about us; and I saw the yellow beach of Akutan, and the kayaks racing home from the fishing, and the houses on the rim of the forest. And the men who had made themselves chiefs were there, the lawgivers whose blood I bore and whose blood I had wedded in Unga. Aye, and Yash-Noosh walked with me, the wet sand in his hair, and his war spear, broken as he fell upon it, still in his hand. And I knew the time was met, and saw in the eyes of Unga the promise.
“As I say, we came thus through the forest, till the smell of the camp smoke was in our nostrils. And I bent above him, and tore the ptarmigan from his teeth. He turned on his side and rested, the wonder mounting in his eyes, and the hand which was under slipping slow toward the knife at his hip. But I took it from him, smiling close in his face. Even then he did not understand. So I made to drink from black bottles, and to build high upon the snow a pile of goods to live again the things which happened on the night of my marriage. I spoke no words, but he understood. Yet was he unafraid. There was a sneer to his lips, and cold anger, and he gathered new strength with the knowledge. It was not far, but the snow was deep, and he dragged himself very slow. Once he lay so long I turned him over and gazed into his eyes. And sometimes he looked forth, and sometimes death. And when I loosed him he struggled on again. In this way we came to the fire. Unga was at his side on the instant. His lips moved without sound; then he pointed at me, that Unga might understand. And after that he lay in the snow, very still, for a long while. Even now is he there in the snow.
“I said no word till I had cooked the ptarmigan. Then I spoke to her, in her own tongue, which she had not heard in many years. She straightened herself, so, and her eyes were wonder-wide, and she asked who I was, and where I had learned that speech.
“ ‘I am Naass,’ I said.
“ ‘You?’ she said. ‘You?’ And she crept close that she might look upon me.
“ ‘Yes,’ I answered; ‘I am Naass, headman of Akutan, the last of the blood, as you are the last of the blood.’
“And she laughed. By all the things I have seen and the deeds I have done may I never hear such a laugh again. It put the chill to my soul, sitting there in the white silence, alone with death and this woman who laughed.
“ ‘Come!’ I said, for I thought she wandered. ‘Eat of the food and let us be gone. It is a far fetch from here to Akutan.’
“But she shoved her face in his yellow mane, and laughed till it seemed the heavens must fall about our ears. I had thought she would be overjoyed at the sight of me, and eager to go back to the memory of old times, but this seemed a strange form to take.
“ ‘Come!’ I cried, taking her strong by the hand. ‘The way is long and dark. Let us hurry!’
“ ‘Where?’ she asked, sitting up, and ceasing from her strange mirth.
“ ‘To Akutan,’ I answered, intent on the light to grow on her face at the thought. But it became like his, with a sneer to the lips, and cold anger.
“ ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘we will go, hand in hand, to Akutan, you and I. And we will live in the dirty huts, and eat of the fish and oil, and bring forth a spawn—a spawn to be proud of all the days of our life. We will forget the world and be happy, very happy. It is good, most good. Come! Let us hurry. Let us go back to Akutan.’
“And she ran her hand through his yellow hair, and smiled in a way which was not good. And there was no promise in her eyes.
“I sat silent, and marveled at the strangeness of woman. I went back to the night when he dragged her from me and she screamed and tore at his hair—at his hair which now she played with and would not leave. Then I remembered the price and the long years of waiting; and I gripped her close, and dragged her away as he had done. And she held back, even as on that night, and fought like a she-cat for its whelp. And when the fire was between us and the man, I loosed her, and she sat and listened. And I told her of all that lay between, of all that had happened to me on strange seas, of all that I had done in strange lands; of my weary quest, and the hungry years, and the promise which had been mine from the first. Aye, I told all, even to what had passed that day between the man and me, and in the days yet young. And as I spoke I saw the promise grow in her eyes, full and large like the break of dawn. And I read pity there, the tenderness of woman, the love, the heart and the soul of Unga. And I was a stripling again, for the look was the look of Unga as she ran up the beach, laughing, to the home of her mother. The stern unrest was gone, and the hunger, and the weary waiting. The time was met. I felt the call of her breast, and it seemed there I must pillow my head and forget. She opened her arms to me, and I came against her. Then, sudden, the hate flamed in her eye, her hand was at my hip. And once, twice, she passed the knife.
“ ‘Dog!’ she sneered, as she flung me into the snow. ‘Swine!’ And then she laughed till the silence cracked, and went back to her dead.
“As I say, once she passed the knife, and twice; but she was weak with hunger, and it was not meant that I should die. Yet was I minded to stay in that place, and to close my eyes in the last long sleep with those whose lives had crossed with mine and led my feet on unknown trails. But there lay a debt upon me which would not let me rest.
“And the way was long, the cold bitter, and there was little grub. The Pellys had found no moose, and had robbed my cache. And so had the three white men, but they lay thin and dead in their cabin as I passed. After that I do not remember, till I came here, and found food and fire—much fire.”
As he finished, he crouched closely, even jealously, over the stove. For a long while the slush-lamp shadows played tragedies upon the wall.
“But Unga!” cried Prince, the vision still strong upon him.
“Unga? She would not eat of the ptarmigan. She lay with her arms about his neck, her face deep in his yellow hair. I drew the fire close, that she might not feel the frost, but she crept to the other side. And I built a fire there; yet it was little good, for she would not eat. And in this manner they still lie up there in the snow.”
“And you?” asked Malemute Kid.
“I do not know; but Akutan is small, and I have little wish to go back and live on the edge of the world. Yet is there small use in life. I can go to Constantine, and he will put irons upon me, and one day they will tie a piece of rope, so, and I will sleep good. Yet—no; I do not know.”
“But, Kid,” protested Prince, “this is murder!”
“Hush!” commanded Malemute Kid. “There be things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and the wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.”
Naass drew yet closer to the fire. There was a great silence, and in each man’s eyes many pictures came and went.
To the Man on Trail
“Dump it in.”
“But I say, Kid, isn’t that going it a little too strong? Whisky and alcohol’s bad enough; but when it comes to brandy and pepper sauce and—”
“Dump it in. Who’s making this punch, anyway?” And Malemute Kid smiled benignantly through the clouds of steam. “By the time you’ve been in this country as long as I have, my son, and lived on rabbit tracks and salmon belly, you’ll learn that Christmas comes only once per annum. And a Christmas without punch is sinking a hole to bedrock with nary a pay streak.”
“Stack up on that fer a high cyard,” approved Big Jim Belden, who had come down from his claim on Mazy May to spend Christmas, and who, as everyone knew, had been living the two months past on straight moose meat. “Hain’t fergot the hooch we-uns made on the Tanana, hev yeh?”
“Well, I guess yes. Boys, it would have done your hearts good to see that whole tribe fighting drunk—and all because of a glorious ferment of sugar and sour dough. That was before your time,” Malemute Kid said as he turned to Stanley Prince, a young mining expert who had been in two years. “No white women in the country then, and Mason wanted to get married. Ru
th’s father was chief of the Tananas, and objected, like the rest of the tribe. Stiff? Why, I used my last pound of sugar; finest work in that line I ever did in my life. You should have seen the chase, down the river and across the portage.”
“But the squaw?” asked Louis Savoy, the tall French Canadian, becoming interested; for he had heard of this wild deed when at Forty Mile the preceding winter.
Then Malemute Kid, who was a born raconteur, told the unvarnished tale of the Northland Lochinvar. More than one rough adventurer of the North felt his heart-strings draw closer and experienced vague yearnings for the sunnier pastures of the Southland, where life promised something more than a barren struggle with cold and death.
“We struck the Yukon just behind the first ice run,” he concluded, “and the tribe only a quarter of an hour behind. But that saved us; for the second run broke the jam above and shut them out. When they finally got into Nuklukayet, the whole post was ready for them. And as to the forgathering, ask Father Roubeau here: he performed the ceremony.”
The Jesuit took the pipe from his lips but could only express his gratification with patriarchal smiles, while Protestant and Catholic vigorously applauded.
“By gar!” ejaculated Louis Savoy, who seemed overcome by the romance of it. “La petite squaw; mon Mason brav. By gar!”
Then, as the first tin cups of punch went round, Bettles the Unquenchable sprang to his feet and struck up his favorite drinking song:“There’s Henry Ward Beecher
And Sunday-school teachers,
All drink of the sassafras root;
But you bet all the same,
If it had its right name,
It’s the juice of the forbidden fruit.”
“Oh, the juice of the forbidden fruit,”
roared out the bacchanalian chorus,“Oh, the juice of the forbidden fruit;
But you bet all the same,
If it had its right name,
It’s the juice of the forbidden fruit.”
Malemute Kid’s frightful concoction did its work; the men of the camps and trails unbent in its genial glow, and jest and song and tales of past adventure went round the board. Aliens from a dozen lands, they toasted each and all. It was the Englishman, Prince, who pledged “Uncle Sam, the precocious infant of the New World”; the Yankee, Bettles, who drank to “The Queen, God bless her”; and together, Savoy and Meyers, the German trader, clanged their cups to Alsace and Lorraine.
Then Malemute Kid arose, cup in hand, and glanced at the greased-paper window, where the frost stood full three inches thick. “A health to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire.”
Crack! Crack! They heard the familiar music of the dog whip, the whining howl of the malemutes, and the crunch of a sled as it drew up to the cabin. Conversation languished while they waited the issue.
“An old-timer; cares for his dogs and then himself,” whispered Malemute Kid to Prince as they listened to the snapping jaws and the wolfish snarls and yelps of pain which proclaimed to their practiced ears that the stranger was beating back their dogs while he fed his own.
Then came the expected knock, sharp and confident, and the stranger entered. Dazzled by the light, he hesitated a moment at the door, giving to all a chance for scrutiny. He was a striking personage, and a most picturesque one, in his Arctic dress of wool and fur. Standing six foot two or three, with proportionate breadth of shoulders and depth of chest, his smooth-shaven face nipped by the cold to a gleaming pink, his long lashes and eyebrows white with ice, and the ear and neck flaps of his great wolfskin cap loosely raised, he seemed, of a verity, the Frost King, just stepped in out of the night. Clasped outside his Mackinaw jacket, a beaded belt held two large Colt’s revolvers and a hunting knife, while he carried, in addition to the inevitable dog whip, a smokeless rifle of the largest bore and latest pattern. As he came forward, for all his step was firm and elastic, they could see that fatigue bore heavily upon him.
An awkward silence had fallen, but his hearty “What cheer, my lads?” put them quickly at ease, and the next instant Malemute Kid and he had gripped hands. Though they had never met, each had heard of the other, and the recognition was mutual. A sweeping introduction and a mug of punch were forced upon him before he could explain his errand.
“How long since that basket sled, with three men and eight dogs, passed?” he asked.
“An even two days ahead. Are you after them?”
“Yes; my team. Run them off under my very nose, the cusses. I’ve gained two days on them already—pick them up on the next run.”
“Reckon they’ll show spunk?” asked Belden, in order to keep up the conversation, for Malemute Kid already had the coffeepot on and was busily frying bacon and moose meat.
The stranger significantly tapped his revolvers. “When’d yeh leave Dawson?”
“Twelve o’clock.”
“Last night?”—as a matter of course.
“Today.”
A murmur of surprise passed round the circle. And well it might; for it was just midnight, and seventy-five miles of rough river trail was not to be sneered at for a twelve hours’ run.
The talk soon became impersonal, however, harking back to the trails of childhood. As the young stranger ate of the rude fare, Malemute Kid attentively studied his face. Nor was he long in deciding that it was fair, honest, and open, and that he liked it. Still youthful, the lines had been firmly traced by toil and hardship. Though genial in conversation, and mild when at rest, the blue eyes gave promise of the hard steel-glitter which comes when called into action, especially against odds. The heavy jaw and square-cut chin demonstrated rugged pertinacity and in domitability. Nor, though the attributes of the lion were there, was there wanting the certain softness, the hint of womanliness, which bespoke the emotional nature.
“So thet’s how me an’ the ol’ woman got spliced,” said Belden, concluding the exciting tale of his courtship. “ ‘Here we be, Dad,’ sez she. ‘An’ may yeh be damned,’ sez he to her, an’ then to me, ‘Jim, yeh—yeh git outen them good duds o’ yourn; I want a right peart slice o’ thet forty acre plowed ’fore dinner.’ An’ then he turns on her an’ sez, ‘An’ yeh, Sal; yeh sail inter them dishes.’ An’ then he sort o’ sniffled an’ kissed her. An’ I was thet happy—but he seen me an’ roars out, ‘Yeh, Jim!’ An’ yeh bet I dusted fer the barn.”
“Any kids waiting for you back in the States?” asked the stranger.
“Nope; Sal died ’fore any come. Thet’s why I’m here.” Belden abstractedly began to light his pipe, which had failed to go out, and then brightened up with, “How ’bout yerself, stranger—married man?”
For reply, he opened his watch, slipped it from the thong which served for a chain, and passed it over. Beldin pricked up the slush lamp, surveyed the inside of the case critically, and, swearing admiringly to himself, handed it over to Louis Savoy. With numerous “By gars!” he finally surrendered it to Prince, and they noticed that his hands trembled and his eyes took on a peculiar softness. And so it passed from horny hand to horny hand—the pasted photograph of a woman, the clinging kind that such men fancy, with a babe at the breast. Those who had not yet seen the wonder were keen with curiosity; those who had became silent and retrospective. They could face the pinch of famine, the grip of scurvy, or the quick death by field or flood; but the pictured semblance of a strange woman and child made women and children of them all.
“Never have seen the youngster yet—he’s a boy, she says, and two years old,” said the stranger as he received the treasure back. A lingering moment he gazed upon it, then snapped the case and turned away, but not quick enough to hide the restrained rush of tears.
Malemute Kid led him to a bunk and bade him turn in.
“Call me at four sharp. Don’t fail me,” were his last words, and a moment later he was breathing in the heaviness of exhausted sleep.
“By Jove! He’s a plucky chap,” commented Prince. “Three h
ours’ sleep after seventy-five miles with the dogs, and then the trail again. Who is he, Kid?”
“Jack Westondale. Been in going on three years, with nothing but the name of working like a horse, and any amount of bad luck to his credit. I never knew him, but Sitka Charley told me about him.”
“It seems hard that a man with a sweet young wife like his should be putting in his years in this Godforsa ken hole, where every year counts two on the outside.”
“The trouble with him is clean grit and stubbornness. He’s cleaned up twice with a stake, but lost it both times.”
Here the conversation was broken off by an uproar from Bettles, for the effect had begun to wear away. And soon the bleak years of monotonous grub and deadening toil were being forgotten in rough merriment. Malemute Kid alone seemed unable to lose himself, and cast many an anxious look at his watch. Once he put on his mittens and beaver-skin cap, and, leaving the cabin, fell to rummaging about in the cache.
