Locasto opened his eyes. Within a foot of his face were the fangs of a malamute. At his slight movement it drew back with a snarl, and retreated to the door. Locasto could see the other dogs crouching and eyeing him fixedly. What could be the matter? What had gotten into the brutes? Where was the Worm? Where were the provisions? Why was the tent flap open and the stove stone-cold? Then with a dawning comprehension that he had been deserted, Locasto uttered a curse and tried to rise.
At first he thought he was stiff with cold, but a downward glance showed him his condition. He was helpless. He grew sick at the pit of his stomach, and glared at the dogs. They were drawing in on him. They seemed to bulk suddenly, to grow huge and menacing. Their gleaming teeth snapped in his face. He could fancy these teeth stripping the flesh from his body, gnawing at his bones with drooling jaws. Violently he shuddered. He must try to free himself, so that at least he could fight.
Grimly the Worm had done his work, but he had hardly reckoned on the strength of this man. With a vast throe of fear Locasto tried to free himself. Tenser, tenser grew the thongs; they strained, they bit into his flesh, but they would not break. Yet as he relaxed it seemed to him they were less tight. Then he rested for another effort.
Once again the gaunt, grey bitch was crawling up. He remembered how often he had starved it, clubbed it until it could barely stand. Now it was going to get even. It would snap at his throat, rip out his windpipe, bury its fangs in his bleeding flesh. He cursed it in the old way. With a spring it backed out again and stood with the others. He made another giant effort. Once again he felt the thongs strain and strain; then, when he ceased, he imagined they were still looser.
The dogs seemed to have lost all fear. They stood in a circle within a few feet of him, regarding him intently. They smelled the blood on his head, and a slaver ran from their jaws. Again he cursed them, but this time they did not move. They seemed to realise he could not harm them. With their evilly-slanted eyes they watched his struggles. Strange, wise, uncanny brutes, they were biding their time, waiting to rush in on him, to rend him.
Again he tried to get free. Now he fancied he could move his arm a little. He must hurry, for every instant the malamutes were growing bolder. Another strain and a wrench. Ha! he was able to squeeze his right arm from under the rawhide.
He felt the foul breath of the dogs on his face, and quickly he struck at them. They jumped back, then, as if at a signal, they sprang in again. There was no time to lose. They were attacking him in earnest. Quickly he wrenched out his other arm. He was just in time, for the dogs were upon him.
He struggled to his knees and shielded his head with his arms. Wildly he swung at the nearest dog. Full on the face he struck it, and it shot back as if hit by a bullet. But the others were on him. They had him down, snarling and ripping, a mad ferment of fury. Two of them were making for his face. As he lay on his back he gripped each by the throat. His hands were torn and bleeding, but he had them fast. In his grip of steel they struggled to free themselves in vain. They backed, they writhed, they twisted in a bow. With his huge hands he was choking them, choking them to death, using them as a shield against the other three. Then slowly he worked himself into a sitting position. He hurled one of the dogs to the tent door. He swung bludgeon blows at the others. They fled yelping and howling. He still held the Mackenzie River bitch. Getting his knee on her body, he bent her almost into a circle, bent her till her back broke with a snap.
Then he rose and freed himself from the remaining thongs. He was torn and cut and bleeding, but he had triumphed.
"Oh, the devil!" he growled, grinding his teeth. "He would have me chewed to rags by malamutes."
He stared around.
"He's taken everything, the scum! left me to starve. Ha! one thing he's forgottenthe matches. At least I can keep warm."
He picked up the canister of matches and relit the stove.
"I'll kill him for this," he muttered. "Night and day I'll follow him. I'll camp on his trail till I find him. ThenI'll torture him; I'll strip him and leave him naked in the snow."
He slipped into his snowshoes, gave a last look around to see that no food had been left, and with a final growl of fury he started in pursuit.
* * *
Ahead of him, ploughing their way through the virgin snow, he could see the dragging track of the long snowshoes. He examined it, and noted that it was sharp and crisp at the edges.
"He's got a good five hours' start of me! Travelling fast, too, by the length of the track."
He had a thought of capturing the dogs and hitching them up; but, thoroughly terrified, they had retreated into the woods. To overtake this man, to glut his lust for revenge, he must depend on his own strength and endurance.
"Now, Jack Locasto," he told himself grimly, "you've got a fight on your hands, such a fight as you never had before. Get right down to it."
So, with head bowed and shoulders sloping forward, he darted on the track of the Worm.
"He's got to break trail, the viper! and that's where I score. I can make twice the time. Oh, just wait, you little devil! just wait!"
He ground his teeth vindictively, and put an inch more onto his stride. He was descending a long, open valley that seemed from its trackless snows to have been immemorially life-shunned and accursed. Black, witch-like pines sentinelled its flanks, and accentuated its desolation. And over all there was the silence of the Wild, that double-strong solution of silence from which all other silences are distilled, and spread out. Yet, as he gazed around him in this everlasting solitude, there was no fear in his heart.
"I can fight this accursed land and beat it out every time," he exulted. "It can't get any the better of me."
It was cold, so cold that it was difficult to imagine it could ever be warm again. To expose flesh was to feel instantly the sharp sting that heralds frostbite. As he ran, the sharp intake of icy air made his lungs seem to contract. His eyes smarted and tingled. The lashes froze closely. Ice formed in his nostrils and his nose began to bleed. He pulled up a moment.
"Curse this infernal country!"
He had not eaten and the icy air begot a ravenous hunger. He dreamed of food, but chiefly of bacon, fat, greasy bacon. How glorious it would be just to eat of it, raw, tallow bacon! He had nothing to eat. He would have nothing till he had overtaken the Worm. On! On!
He came to where the Worm had made a camp. There were the ashes of a fire.
"Curse him; he's got some matches after all," he said with bitter chagrin. Eagerly he searched all around in the snow to see if he could not find even a crumb of food. There was nothing. He pushed on. Night fell and he was forced to make camp.
Oh, he was hungry! The night was vastly resplendent, a spendthrift night scattering everywhere its largess of stars. The cold had a crystalline quality and the trees detonated strangely in the silence. He built a huge fire: that at least he could have, and through eighteen hours of darkness he crouched by it, afraid to sleep for fear of freezing.
"If I only had a tin to boil water in," he muttered; "there's lots of reindeer moss, and I could stew some of my mucklucks. Ah! I'll try and roast a bit of them."
He cut a strip from the Indian boots he was wearing, and held it over the fire. The hair singed away and the corners crisped and charred. He put it in his mouth. It was pleasantly warm, but even his strong teeth refused to meet in it. However, he tore it into smaller pieces, and bolted them.
At last the dawn came, that evil, sneaking, corpse-like dawn, and Locasto flung himself once more on the trail. He was not feeling so fit now. Hunger and loss of blood had weakened him so that his stride insensibly shortened, and his step had lost its spring. However, he plodded on doggedly, an incarnation of vengeance and hate. Again he examined the snowshoe trail ever stretching in front, and noticed how crisped and hard was its edge. He was not making the time he had reckoned on. The Worm must be a long way ahead.
Still he did not despair. The little man might rest a day, or oversleep, or strain a si
new, then Locasto pictured with gloating joy the terror of the Worm as he awoke to find himself overtaken. Oh, the snake! the vermin! On! On!
Beyond a doubt he was growing weaker. Once or twice he stumbled, and the last time he lay a few moments before rising. He wanted to rest badly. The cold was keener than ever; it was merciless; it was excruciating. He no longer had the vitality to withstand it. It stabbed and stung him whenever he exposed bare flesh. He pulled the parka hood very close, so that only his eyes peered out. So he moved through the desolation of the Arctic Wild, a dark, muffled figure, a demon of vengeance, fierce and menacing.
He stood on a vast, still plateau. The sky was like a great grotto of ice. The land lay in a wan apathy of suffering, dumb, hopeless, drear. Icy land and icy sky met in a trap, a trap that held him fast; and over all, vast, titanic, terrible, the Spirit of the Wild seemed to brood. It laughed at him, a laugh of derision, of mockery, of callous gloating triumph. Locasto shuddered. Then night came and he built another giant fire.
Again he bolted down some roasted muckluck. Overhead the stars glittered vindictively. They were green and blue and red, and they had spiny rays like starfish on which they danced. This night he had to make tremendous efforts to keep from sleeping. Several times he drowsed forward, and almost fell into the fire. As he crouched there his beard was singeing and his face scorched, but his back seemed as if it was cased in ice. Often he would turn and warm it at the fire, but not for long. He hated to face the terror of the silence and the dark, the shadow where waited Death. Better the crackling cheer of the spruce flame.
At dawn the sky was leaden and the cold less despotic. Stretching interminably ahead was that lonely snowshoe trail. Locasto was puzzled.
"Where in creation is the little devil going to, anyway?" he said, knitting his brows. "I figured he'd make direct for Dawson, but he's either changed his mind or got a wrong steer. By Heavens, that's itthe little varmint's lost his way."
Locasto had an Indian's unerring sense of location.
"I guess I can't afford to follow him any more," he reflected. "I've gone too far already. I'm all petered out. I'll have to let him go in the meantime. It's save yourself, Jack Locasto, while there's yet time. Me for Dawson."
He struck off almost at right angles to the trail he had been following, over a low range of hills. It was evil going, and as he broke through the snow-crust mile after wearing mile, he felt himself grow weaker and weaker. "Buck up, old man," he adjured himself fiercely. "You've got to fight, fight."
There was a strange stillness in the air, not the natural stillness of the Wild, but an unhealthy one, as of a suspension of something, of a vacuum, of bated breath. It was curiously full of terror. More and more he felt like a trapped animal, caught in a vast cage. The sky to the north was glooming ominously. Every second the horizon grew blacker, more bodeful, and Locasto stared at it, with a sudden quake at his heart.
"Blizzard, by thunder!" he gasped.
Was that a breath of wind that stung his cheek? Was it a snowflake that drifted along with it? Denser and denser grew the gloom, and now there was a roaring as of a great wind. King Blizzard was come.
"I guess I'm done for," he hissed through clenched teeth. "But I'll fight to the finish. I'll die game."
* * *
CHAPTER XI
It was on him now with a swoop and a roar. He was in the thick of a mud-grey darkness, a bitter, blank darkness full of whirling wind-eddies and vast flurries of snow. He could not see more than a few feet before him. The stinging flakes blinded him; the coal-black night engulfed him. In that seething turmoil of the elements he was as helpless as a child.
"I guess you're on your last trail, Jack Locasto," he muttered grimly.
Nevertheless he lowered his head and butted desperately into the heart of the storm. He was very faint from lack of food, but despair had given him a new strength, and he plunged through drift and flurry with the fury of a goaded bull.
The night had fallen black as the pit. He was in an immensity of darkness, a darkness that packed close up to him, and hugged him, and enfolded him like a blanket. And in the black void winds were raging with an insane fury, whirling aloft mountains of snow and hurling them along plain and valley. The forests shrieked in fear; the creatures of the Wild cowered in their lairs, but the solitary man stumbled on and on. As if by magic barriers of snow piled up before him, and almost to his shoulders he floundered through them. The wind had a hatchet edge that pierced his clothes and hacked him viciously. He knew his only plan was to keep moving, to stumble, stagger on. It was a fight for life.
He had forgotten his hunger. Those wild visions of gluttony had gone from him. He had forgotten his thirst for revenge, forgotten everything but his own dire peril.
"Keep moving, keep moving for God's sake," he urged himself hoarsely. "You'll freeze if you let up a moment. Don't let up, don't!"
But oh, how hard it was not to rest! Every muscle in his body seemed to beg and pray for rest, yet the spirit in him drove them to work anew. He was making a certain mad headway, travelling, always travelling. He doubted not he was doomed, but instinct made him fight on as long as an atom of strength remained.
He floundered to his armpits in a snowdrift. He struggled out and staggered on once more. In the mad buffoonery of that cutting wind he scarce could stand upright. His parka was frozen stiff as a board. He could feel his hands grow numb in his mits. From his fingers the icy cold crept up and up. Long since he had lost all sensation in his feet. From the ankles down they were like wooden clogs. He had an idea they were frozen. He lifted them, and watched them sink and disappear in the clinging snow. He beat his numb hands against his breast. It was of no usehe could not get back the feeling in them. A craving to lie down in the snow assailed him.
Life was so sweet. He had visions of cities, of banquets, of theatres, of glittering triumphs, of glorious excitements, of women he had loved, conquered and thrown aside. Never again would he see that world. He would die here, and they would find him rigid and brittle, frozen so hard they would have to thaw him out before they buried him. He fancied he saw himself frozen in a grotesque position. There would be ice-crystals in the very centre of his heart, that heart that had glowed so fiercely with the lust of life. Yes, life was sweet. A vast self-pity surged over him. Well, he had done his best; he could struggle no more.
But struggle he did, another hour, two hours, three hours. Where was he going? Maybe round in a circle. He was like an automaton now. He did not think any more, he just kept moving. His feet clumped up and down. He lifted himself out of snowpits; he staggered a few steps, fell, crawled on all fours in the darkness, then in a lull of the furious wind rose once more to his feet. The night was abysmal; closer and closer it hugged him. The wind was charging him from all points, baffling him like a merry monster, beating him down. The snow whirled around him in a narrow eddy, and he tried to grope out of it and failed. Oh, he was tired, tired!
He must give up. It was too bad. He was so strong, and capable of so much for good or bad. Alas! it had been all for bad. Oh, if he had but another chance he might make his life tell a different tale! Well, he wasn't going to whine or cower. He would die game.
His feet were frozen; his arms were frozen. Here he would lie down andquit. It would soon be over, and it was a pleasant death, they said. One more look he gave through the writhing horror of the darkness; one more look before he closed his eyes to the horror of the Greater Darkness....
Ha! what was that? He fancied he saw a dim glow just ahead. It could not be. It was one of those cheating dreams that came to a dying man, an illusion, a mockery. He closed his eyes. Then he opened them againthe glow was still there.
Surely it must be real! It was steady. As he fell forward it seemed to grow more bright. On hands and knees he crawled to it. Brighter and brighter it grew. It was but a few feet away. Oh, God! could it be?
Then there was a lull in the storm, and with a final plunge Locasto fell forward, fell towards a lamp
lighted in a window, fell against the closed door of a little cabin.
* * *
The Worm suffered acutely from the intense cold. He cursed it in his prolific and exhaustive way. He cursed the leaden weight of his snowshoes, and the thongs that chafed his feet. He cursed the pack he carried on his back, which momently grew heavier. He cursed the country; then, after a general debauch of obscenity, he decided it was time to feed.
He gathered some dry twigs and built a fire on the snow. He hurried, for the freezing process was going on in his carcase, and he was afraid. It was all ready. Now to light itthe matches.
Where in hell were the matches? Surely he could not have left them at the camp. With feverish haste he overturned his pack. No, they were not there. Could he have dropped them on the trail? He had a wild idea of going back. Then he thought of Locasto lying in the tent. He could never face that. But he must have a fire. He was freezing to deathright now. Already his fingers were tingling and stiffening.
Huh! maybe he had some matches in his pockets. Noyes, he hadone, two, three, four, five, that was all. Five slim sulphur matches, part of a block, and jammed in a corner of his waistcoat pocket. Eagerly he lit one. The twigs caught. The flame leapt up. Oh it was good! He had a fire, a fire.
He made tea, and ate some bread and meat. Then he felt his strength and courage return. He had four matches left. Four matches meant four fires. That would mean four more days' travel. By that time he would have reached the Dawson country.
That night he made a huge blaze, chopping down several trees and setting them alight. There, lying in his sleeping-bag, he rested well. In the early dawn he was afoot once more.
Was there ever such an atrocious soul-freezing cold! He cursed it with every breath he drew. At noon he felt a vast temptation to make another fire, but he refrained. Then that night he had bad luck, for one of his precious matches proved little more than a sliver tipped with the shadow of pink. In spite of his efforts it was abortive, and he was compelled to use another. He was down to his last match.
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