Джек Лондон
Smoke Bellew
At ten that night Shorty, strolling down Main Street, aware of many curious eyes, his ears keyed tensely, heard a faint and distant explosion. Thirty seconds later there was a second, sufficiently loud to attract the attention of others on the street. Then came a third, so violent that it rattled the windows and brought the inhabitants into the street.
“Shook ‘em up beautiful,” Shorty proclaimed breathlessly, an hour afterward, when he arrived at the cabin on Tra-Lee. He gripped Smoke’s hand. “You should a-saw ‘em. Ever kick over a ant-hole? Dawson’s just like that. Main Street was crawlin’ an’ hummin’ when I pulled my freight. You won’t see Tra-Lee to-morrow for folks. An’ if they ain’t some a-sneakin’ acrost right now I don’t know minin’ nature, that’s all.”
Smoke grinned, stepped to the fake windlass, and gave it a couple of creaking turns. Shorty pulled out the moss-chinking from between the logs so as to make peep-holes on every side of the cabin. Then he blew out the candle.
“Now,” he whispered at the end of half an hour.
Smoke turned the windlass slowly, paused after several minutes, caught up a galvanized bucket filled with earth and struck it with slide and scrape and grind against the heap of rocks they had hauled in. Then he lighted a cigarette, shielding the flame of the match in his hands.
“They’s three of ‘em,” Shorty whispered. “You oughta saw ‘em. Say, when you made that bucket-dump noise they was fair quiverin’. They’s one at the window now tryin’ to peek in.”
Smoke glowed his cigarette, and glanced at his watch.
“We’ve got to do this thing regularly,” he breathed. “We’ll haul up a bucket every fifteen minutes. And in the meantime – ”
Through triple thicknesses of sacking, he struck a cold-chisel on the face of a rock.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” Shorty moaned with delight. He crept over noiselessly from the peep-hole. “They’ve got their heads together, an’ I can almost see ‘em talkin’.”
And from then until four in the morning, at fifteen-minute intervals, the seeming of a bucket was hoisted on the windlass that creaked and ran around on itself and hoisted nothing. Then their visitors departed, and Smoke and Shorty went to bed.
After daylight, Shorty examined the moccasin-marks. “Big Bill Saltman was one of them,” he concluded. “Look at the size of it.”
Smoke looked out over the river. “Get ready for visitors. There are two crossing the ice now.”
“Huh! Wait till Breck files that string of claims at nine o’clock. There’ll be two thousand crossing over.”
“And every mother’s son of them yammering ‘mother-lode,’” Smoke laughed. “‘The source of the Klondike placers found at last.’”
Shorty, who had clambered to the top of a steep shoulder of rock, gazed with the eye of a connoisseur at the strip they had staked.
“It sure looks like a true fissure vein,” he said. “A expert could almost trace the lines of it under the snow. It’d fool anybody. The slide fills the front of it an’ see them outcrops? Look like the real thing, only they ain’t.”
When the two men, crossing the river, climbed the zigzag trail up the slide, they found a closed cabin. Bill Saltman, who led the way, went softly to the door, listened, then beckoned Wild Water Charley up to him. From inside came the creak and whine of a windlass bearing a heavy load. They waited at the final pause, then heard the lower-away and the impact of a bucket on rock. Four times, in the next hour, they heard the thing repeated. Then Wild Water knocked on the door. From inside came low furtive noises, then silences, and more furtive noises, and at the end of five minutes Smoke, breathing heavily, opened the door an inch and peered out. They saw on his face and shirt powdered rock-fragments. His greeting was suspiciously genial.
“Wait a minute,” he added, “and I’ll be with you.”
Pulling on his mittens, he slipped through the door and confronted the visitors outside in the snow. Their quick eyes noted his shirt, across the shoulders, discolored and powdery, and the knees of his overalls that showed signs of dirt brushed hastily but not quite thoroughly away.
“Rather early for a call,” he observed. “What brings you across the river? Going hunting?”
“We’re on, Smoke,” Wild Water said confidentially. “An’ you’d just as well come through. You’ve got something here.”
“If you’re looking for eggs – ” Smoke began.
“Aw, forget it. We mean business.”
“You mean you want to buy lots, eh?” Smoke rattled on swiftly. “There’s some dandy building sites here. But, you see, we can’t sell yet. We haven’t had the town surveyed. Come around next week, Wild Water, and for peace and quietness, I’ll show you something swell, if you’re anxious to live over here. Next week, sure, it will be surveyed. Good-by. Sorry I can’t ask you inside, but Shorty – well, you know him. He’s peculiar. He says he came over for peace and quietness, and he’s asleep now. I wouldn’t wake him for the world.”
As Smoke talked he shook their hands warmly in farewell. Still talking and shaking their hands, he stepped inside and closed the door.
They looked at each other and nodded significantly.
“See the knees of his pants?” Saltman whispered hoarsely.
“Sure. An’ his shoulders. He’s been bumpin’ an’ crawlin’ around in a shaft.” As Wild Water talked, his eyes wandered up the snow-covered ravine until they were halted by something that brought a whistle to his lips. “Just cast your eyes up there, Bill. See where I’m pointing? If that ain’t a prospect-hole! An’ follow it out to both sides – you can see where they tramped in the snow. If it ain’t rim-rock on both sides I don’t know what rim-rock is. It’s a fissure vein, all right.”
“An’ look at the size of it!” Saltman cried. “They’ve got something here, you bet.”
“An’ run your eyes down the slide there – see them bluffs standin’ out an’ slopin’ in. The whole slide’s in the mouth of the vein as well.”
“And just keep a-lookin’ on, out on the ice there, on the trail,” Saltman directed. “Looks like most of Dawson, don’t it?”
Wild Water took one glance and saw the trail black with men clear to the far Dawson bank, down which the same unbroken string of men was pouring.
“Well, I’m goin’ to get a look-in at that prospect-hole before they get here,” he said, turning and starting swiftly up the ravine.
But the cabin door opened, and the two occupants stepped out.
“Hey!” Smoke called. “Where are you going?”
“To pick out a lot,” Wild Water called back. “Look at the river. All Dawson’s stampeding to buy lots, an’ we’re going to beat ‘em to it for the choice. That’s right, ain’t it, Bill?”
“Sure thing,” Saltman corroborated. “This has the makin’s of a Jim-dandy suburb, an’ it sure looks like it’ll be some popular.”
“Well, we’re not selling lots over in that section where you’re heading,” Smoke answered. “Over to the right there, and back on top of the bluffs are the lots. This section, running from the river and over the tops, is reserved. So come on back.”
“That’s the spot we’ve gone and selected,” Saltman argued.
“But there’s nothing doing, I tell you,” Smoke said sharply.
“Any objections to our strolling, then?” Saltman persisted.
“Decidedly. Your strolling is getting monotonous. Come on back out of that.”
“I just reckon we’ll stroll anyways,” Saltman replied stubbornly. “Come on, Wild Water.”
“I warn you, you are trespassing,” was Smoke’s final word.
“Nope, just strollin’,” Saltman gaily retorted, turning his back and starting on.
“Hey! Stop in your tracks, Bill, or I’ll sure bore you!” Shorty thundered, drawing and leveling two Colt’s forty-fours. “Step another step in your steps an’ I let eleven holes through your danged ornery carcass. Get that?”
Saltman stopped, perplexed.
“He sure got me,” Shorty mumbled to Smoke. “But if he goes on I’m up against it hard. I can’t shoot. What’ll I do?”
“Look here, Shorty, listen to reason,” Saltman begged.
“Come here to me an’ we’ll talk reason,” was Shorty’s retort.
And they were still talking reason when the head of the stampede emerged from the zigzag trail and came upon them.
“You can’t call a man a trespasser when he’s on a town-site lookin’ to buy lots,” Wild Water was arguing, and Shorty was objecting: “But they’s private property in town-sites, an’ that there strip is private property, that’s all. I tell you again, it ain’t for sale.”
“Now we’ve got to swing this thing on the jump,” Smoke muttered to Shorty. “If they ever get out of hand – ”
“You’ve sure got your nerve, if you think you can hold them,” Shorty muttered back. “They’s two thousan’ of ‘em an’ more a-comin’. They’ll break this line any minute.”
The line ran along the near rim of the ravine, and Shorty had formed it by halting the first arrivals when they got that far in their invasion. In the crowd were half a dozen Northwest policemen and a lieutenant. With the latter Smoke conferred in undertones.
“They’re still piling out of Dawson,” he said, “and before long there will be five thousand here. The danger is if they start jumping claims. When you figure there are only five claims, it means a thousand men to a claim, and four thousand out of the five will try to jump the nearest claim. It can’t be done, and if it ever starts, there’ll be more dead men here than in the whole history of Alaska. Besides, those five claims were recorded this morning and can’t be jumped. In short, claim-jumping mustn’t start.”
“Right-o,” said the lieutenant. “I’ll get my men together and station them. We can’t have any trouble here, and we won’t have. But you’d better get up and talk to them.”
“There must be some mistake, fellows,” Smoke began in a loud voice. “We’re not ready to sell lots. The streets are not surveyed yet. But next week we shall have the grand opening sale.”
He was interrupted by an outburst of impatience and indignation.
“We don’t want lots,” a young miner cried out. “We don’t want what’s on top of the ground. We’ve come for what’s under the ground.”
“We don’t know what we’ve got under the ground,” Smoke answered. “But we do know we’ve got a fine town-site on top of it.”
“Sure,” Shorty added. “Grand for scenery an’ solitude. Folks lovin’ solitude come a-flockin’ here by thousands. Most popular solitude on the Yukon.”
Again the impatient cries arose, and Saltman, who had been talking with the later comers, came to the front.
“We’re here to stake claims,” he opened. “We know what you’ve did – filed a string of five quartz claims on end, and there they are over there running across the town-site on the line of the slide and the canyon. Only you misplayed. Two of them entries is fake. Who is Seth Bierce? No one ever heard of him. You filed a claim this mornin’ in his name. An’ you filed a claim in the name of Harry Maxwell. Now Harry Maxwell ain’t in the country. He’s down in Seattle. Went out last fall. Them two claims is open to relocation.”
“Suppose I have his power of attorney?” Smoke queried.
“You ain’t,” Saltman answered. “An’ if you have you got to show it. Anyway, here’s where we relocate. Come on, fellows.”
Saltman, stepping across the dead-line, had turned to encourage a following, when the police lieutenant’s voice rang out and stopped the forward surge of the great mass.
“Hold on there! You can’t do that, you know!”
“Can’t, eh?” said Bill Saltman. “The law says a fake location can be relocated, don’t it?”
“Thet’s right, Bill! Stay with it!” the crowd cheered from the safe side of the line.
“It’s the law, ain’t it?” Saltman demanded truculently of the lieutenant.
“It may be the law,” came the steady answer. “But I can’t and won’t allow a mob of five thousand men to attempt to jump two claims. It would be a dangerous riot, and we’re here to see there is no riot. Here, now, on this spot, the Northwest police constitute the law. The next man who crosses that line will be shot. You, Bill Saltman, step back across it.”
Saltman obeyed reluctantly. But an ominous restlessness became apparent in the mass of men, irregularly packed and scattered as it was over a landscape that was mostly up-and-down.
“Heavens,” the lieutenant whispered to Smoke. “Look at them like flies on the edge of the cliff there. Any disorder in that mass would force hundreds of them over.”
Smoke shuddered and got up. “I’m willing to play fair, fellows. If you insist on town lots, I’ll sell them to you, one hundred apiece, and you can raffle locations when the survey is made.” With raised hand he stilled the movement of disgust. “Don’t move, anybody. If you do, there’ll be hundreds of you shoved over the bluff. The situation is dangerous.”
“Just the same, you can’t hog it,” a voice went up. “We don’t want lots. We want to relocate.”
“But there are only two disputed claims,” Smoke argued. “When they’re relocated where will the rest of you be?”
He mopped his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, and another voice cried out:
“Let us all in, share and share alike!”
Nor did those who roared their approbation dream that the suggestion had been made by a man primed to make it when he saw Smoke mop his forehead.
“Take your feet out of the trough an’ pool the town-site,” the man went on. “Pool the mineral rights with the town-site, too.”
“But there isn’t anything in the mineral rights, I tell you,” Smoke objected.
“Then pool them with the rest. We’ll take our chances on it.”
“Fellows, you’re forcing me,” Smoke said. “I wish you’d stayed on your side of the river.”
But wavering indecision was so manifest that with a mighty roar the crowd swept him on to agreement. Saltman and others in the front rank demurred.
“Bill Saltman, here, and Wild Water don’t want you all in,” Smoke informed the crowd. “Who’s hogging it now?”
And thereat Saltman and Wild Water became profoundly unpopular.
“Now how are we going to do it?” Smoke asked. “Shorty and I ought to keep control. We discovered this town-site.”
“That’s right!” many cried. “A square deal!” “It’s only fair!”
“Three-fifths to us,” Smoke suggested, “and you fellows come in for two-fifths. And you’ve got to pay for your shares.”
“Ten cents on the dollar!” was a cry. “And non-assessable!”
“And the president of the company to come around personally and pay you your dividends on a silver platter,” Smoke sneered. “No, sir. You fellows have got to be reasonable. Ten cents on the dollar will help start things. You buy two-fifths of the stock, hundred dollars par, at ten dollars. That’s the best I can do. And if you don’t like it, just start jumping the claims. I can’t stand more than a two-fifths gouge.”
“No big capitalization!” a voice called, and it was this voice that crystallized the collective mind of the crowd into consent.
“There’s about five thousand of you, which will make five thousand shares,” Smoke worked the problem aloud. “And five thousand is two-fifths of twelve thousand, five hundred. Therefore The Tra-Lee Town-Site Company is capitalized for one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, there being twelve thousand, five hundred shares, hundred par, you fellows buying five thousand of them at ten dollars apiece. And I don’t care a whoop whether you accept it or not. And I call you all to witness that you’re forcing me against my will.”
With the assurance of the crowd that they had caught him with the goods on him, in the shape of the two fake locations, a committee was formed and the rough organization of the Tra-Lee Town-Site Company effected. Scorning the proposal of delivering the shares next day in Dawson, and scorning it because of the objection that the portion of Dawson that had not engaged in the stampede would ring in for shares, the committee, by a fire on the ice at the foot of the slide, issued a receipt to each stampeder in return for ten dollars in dust duly weighed on two dozen gold-scales which were obtained from Dawson.
By twilight the work was accomplished and Tra-Lee was deserted, save for Smoke and Shorty, who ate supper in the cabin and chuckled at the list of shareholders, four thousand eight hundred and seventy-four strong, and at the gold-sacks, which they knew contained approximately forty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty dollars.
“But you ain’t swung it yet,” Shorty objected.
“He’ll be here,” Smoke asserted with conviction. “He’s a born gambler, and when Breck whispers the tip to him not even heart disease would stop him.”
Within the hour came a knock at the door, and Wild Water entered, followed by Bill Saltman. Their eyes swept the cabin eagerly, coming to rest on the windlass elaborately concealed by blankets.
“But suppose I did want to vote twelve hundred shares,” Wild Water was arguing half an hour later. “With the other five thousand sold to-day it’d make only sixty-two hundred shares. That’d leave you and Shorty with sixty-three hundred. You’d still control.”
“But what d’ you want with all that of a town-site?” Shorty queried.
“You can answer that better ‘n me,” Wild Water replied. “An’ between you an’ me,” his gaze drifted over the blanket-draped windlass, “it’s a pretty good-looking town-site.”
“But Bill wants some,” Smoke said grudgingly, “and we simply won’t part with more than five hundred shares.”
“How much you got to invest?” Wild Water asked Saltman.
“Oh, say five thousand. It was all I could scare up.”
“Wild Water,” Smoke went on, in the same grudging, complaining voice, “if I didn’t know you so well, I wouldn’t sell you a single besotted share. And, anyway, Shorty and I won’t part with more than five hundred, and they’ll cost you fifty dollars apiece. That’s the last word, and if you don’t like it, good-night. Bill can take a hundred and you can have the other four hundred.”
Next day Dawson began its laugh. It started early in the morning, just after daylight, when Smoke went to the bulletin-board outside the A. C. Company store and tacked up a notice. Men gathered and were reading and snickering over his shoulder ere he had driven the last tack. Soon the bulletin-board was crowded by hundreds who could not get near enough to read. Then a reader was appointed by acclamation, and thereafter, throughout the day, many men were acclaimed to read in loud voice the notice Smoke Bellew had nailed up. And there were numbers of men who stood in the snow and heard it read several times in order to memorize the succulent items that appeared in the following order:
The Tra-Lee Town-Site Company keeps its accounts on the wall. This is its first account and its last.
Any shareholder who objects to donating ten dollars to the Dawson General Hospital may obtain his ten dollars on personal application to Wild Water Charley, or, failing that, will absolutely obtain it on application to Smoke Bellew.
MONEYS RECEIVED AND DISBURSED
From 4874 shares at $10.00...........$48,740.00
To Dwight Sanderson for Town-Site of Tra-Lee.....10,000.00
To incidental expenses, to wit: powder, drills, windlass, gold commissioner’s office, etc…1,000.00
To Dawson General Hospital...........37,740.00
Total..............$48,740.00
From Bill Saltman, for 100 shares privately purchased at $50.00...........$ 5,000.00
From Wild Water Charley, for 400 shares privately purchased at $50.00............20,000.00
To Bill Saltman, in recognition of services as volunteer stampede promoter.........5,000.00
To Dawson General Hospital...........3,000.00
To Smoke Bellew and Jack Short, balance in full on egg deal and morally owing.........17,000.00
Total..............$25,000.00
Shares remaining to account for 7126. These shares, held by Smoke Bellew and Jack Short, value nil, may be obtained gratis, for the asking, by any and all residents of Dawson desiring change of domicile to the peace and solitude of the town of Tra-Lee.
(Note: Peace and solitude always and perpetually guaranteed in town of Tra-Lee)
(Signed) SMOKE BELLEW, President.(Signed) JACK SHORT, Secretary.
XII. WONDER OF WOMAN
“Just the same, I notice you ain’t tumbled over yourself to get married,” Shorty remarked, continuing a conversation that had lapsed some few minutes before.
Smoke, sitting on the edge of the sleeping-robe and examining the feet of a dog he had rolled snarling on its back in the snow, did not answer. And Shorty, turning a steaming moccasin propped on a stick before the fire, studied his partner’s face keenly.
“Cock your eye up at that there aurora borealis,” Shorty went on. “Some frivolous, eh? Just like any shilly-shallyin’, shirt-dancing woman. The best of them is frivolous, when they ain’t foolish. And they’s cats, all of ‘em, the littlest an’ the biggest, the nicest and the otherwise. They’re sure devourin’ lions an’ roarin’ hyenas when they get on the trail of a man they’ve cottoned to.”
Again the monologue languished. Smoke cuffed the dog when it attempted to snap his hand, and went on examining its bruised and bleeding pads.
“Huh!” pursued Shorty. “Mebbe I couldn’t ‘a’ married if I’d a mind to! An’ mebbe I wouldn’t ‘a’ been married without a mind to, if I hadn’t hiked for tall timber. Smoke, d’you want to know what saved me? I’ll tell you. My wind. I just kept a-runnin’. I’d like to see any skirt run me outa breath.”
Smoke released the animal and turned his own steaming, stick-propped moccasins. “We’ve got to rest over to-morrow and make moccasins,” he vouchsafed. “That little crust is playing the devil with their feet.”
“We oughta keep goin’ somehow,” Shorty objected. “We ain’t got grub enough to turn back with, and we gotta strike that run of caribou or them white Indians almighty soon or we’ll be eatin’ the dogs, sore feet an’ all. Now who ever seen them white Indians anyway? Nothin’ but hearsay. An’ how can a Indian be white? A black white man’d be as natural. Smoke, we just oughta travel to-morrow. The country’s plumb dead of game. We ain’t seen even a rabbit-track in a week, you know that. An’ we gotta get out of this dead streak into somewhere that meat’s runnin’.”
“They’ll travel all the better with a day’s rest for their feet and moccasins all around,” Smoke counseled. “If you get a chance at any low divide, take a peep over at the country beyond. We’re likely to strike open rolling country any time now. That’s what La Perle told us to look for.”
“Huh! By his own story, it was ten years ago that La Perle come through this section, an’ he was that loco from hunger he couldn’t know what he did see. Remember what he said of whoppin’ big flags floatin’ from the tops of the mountains? That shows how loco HE was. An’ he said himself he never seen any white Indians – that was Anton’s yarn. An’, besides, Anton kicked the bucket two years before you an’ me come to Alaska. But I’ll take a look to-morrow. An’ mebbe I might pick up a moose. What d’ you say we turn in?”
Smoke spent the morning in camp, sewing dog-moccasins and repairing harnesses. At noon he cooked a meal for two, ate his share, and began to look for Shorty’s return. An hour later he strapped on his snow-shoes and went out on his partner’s trail. The way led up the bed of the stream, through a narrow gorge that widened suddenly into a moose-pasture. But no moose had been there since the first snow of the preceding fall. The tracks of Shorty’s snow-shoes crossed the pasture and went up the easy slope of a low divide. At the crest Smoke halted. The tracks continued down the other slope. The first spruce-trees, in the creek bed, were a mile away, and it was evident that Shorty had passed through them and gone on. Smoke looked at his watch, remembered the oncoming darkness, the dogs, and the camp, and reluctantly decided against going farther. But before he retraced his steps he paused for a long look. All the eastern sky-line was saw-toothed by the snowy backbone of the Rockies. The whole mountain system, range upon range, seemed to trend to the northwest, cutting athwart the course to the open country reported by La Perle. The effect was as if the mountains conspired to thrust back the traveler toward the west and the Yukon. Smoke wondered how many men in the past, approaching as he had approached, had been turned aside by that forbidding aspect. La Perle had not been turned aside, but, then, La Perle had crossed over from the eastern slope of the Rockies.
Until midnight Smoke maintained a huge fire for the guidance of Shorty. And in the morning, waiting with camp broken and dogs harnessed for the first break of light, Smoke took up the pursuit. In the narrow pass of the canyon, his lead-dog pricked up its ears and whined. Then Smoke came upon the Indians, six of them, coming toward him. They were traveling light, without dogs, and on each man’s back was the smallest of pack outfits. Surrounding Smoke, they immediately gave him several matters for surprise. That they were looking for him was clear. That they talked no Indian tongue of which he knew a word was also quickly made clear. They were not white Indians, though they were taller and heavier than the Indians of the Yukon basin. Five of them carried the old-fashioned, long-barreled Hudson Bay Company musket, and in the hands of the sixth was a Winchester rifle which Smoke knew to be Shorty’s.
Nor did they waste time in making him a prisoner. Unarmed himself, Smoke could only submit. The contents of the sled were distributed among their own packs, and he was given a pack composed of his and Shorty’s sleeping-furs. The dogs were unharnessed, and when Smoke protested, one of the Indians, by signs, indicated a trail too rough for sled-travel. Smoke bowed to the inevitable, cached the sled end-on in the snow on the bank above the stream, and trudged on with his captors. Over the divide to the north they went, down to the spruce-trees which Smoke had glimpsed the preceding afternoon. They followed the stream for a dozen miles, abandoning it when it trended to the west and heading directly eastward up a narrow tributary.
The first night was spent in a camp which had been occupied for several days. Here was cached a quantity of dried salmon and a sort of pemmican, which the Indians added to their packs. From this camp a trail of many snow-shoes led off – Shorty’s captors, was Smoke’s conclusion; and before darkness fell he succeeded in making out the tracks Shorty’s narrower snow-shoes had left. On questioning the Indians by signs, they nodded affirmation and pointed to the north.
Always, in the days that followed, they pointed north; and always the trail, turning and twisting through a jumble of upstanding peaks, trended north. Everywhere, in this bleak snow-solitude, the way seemed barred, yet ever the trail curved and coiled, finding low divides and avoiding the higher and untraversable chains. The snow-fall was deeper than in the lower valleys, and every step of the way was snow-shoe work. Furthermore, Smoke’s captors, all young men, traveled light and fast; and he could not forbear the prick of pride in the knowledge that he easily kept up with them. They were travel-hardened and trained to snow-shoes from infancy; yet such was his condition that the traverse bore no more of ordinary hardship to him than to them.
In six days they gained and crossed the central pass, low in comparison with the mountains it threaded, yet formidable in itself and not possible for loaded sleds. Five days more of tortuous winding, from lower altitude to lower altitude, brought them to the open, rolling, and merely hilly country La Perle had found ten years before. Smoke knew it with the first glimpse, on a sharp cold day, the thermometer forty below zero, the atmosphere so clear that he could see a hundred miles. Far as he could see rolled the open country. High in the east the Rockies still thrust their snowy ramparts heavenward. To the south and west extended the broken ranges of the projecting spur-system they had crossed. And in this vast pocket lay the country La Perle had traversed – snow-blanketed, but assuredly fat with game at some time in the year, and in the summer a smiling, forested, and flowered land.
Before midday, traveling down a broad stream, past snow-buried willows and naked aspens, and across heavily timbered flats of spruce, they came upon the site of a large camp, recently abandoned. Glancing as he went by, Smoke estimated four or five hundred fires, and guessed the population to be in the thousands. So fresh was the trail, and so well packed by the multitude, that Smoke and his captors took off their snow-shoes and in their moccasins struck a swifter pace. Signs of game appeared and grew plentiful – tracks of wolves and lynxes that without meat could not be. Once, one of the Indians cried out with satisfaction and pointed to a large area of open snow, littered with fang-polished skulls of caribou, trampled and disrupted as if an army had fought upon it. And Smoke knew that a big killing had been made by the hunters since the last snow-flurry.
In the long twilight no sign was manifested of making camp. They held steadily on through a deepening gloom that vanished under a sky of light – great, glittering stars half veiled by a greenish vapor of pulsing aurora borealis. His dogs first caught the noises of the camp, pricking their ears and whining in low eagerness. Then it came to the ears of the humans, a murmur, dim with distance, but not invested with the soothing grace that is common to distant murmurs. Instead, it was in a high, wild key, a beat of shrill sound broken by shriller sounds – the long wolf-howling of many wolf-dogs, a screaming of unrest and pain, mournful with hopelessness and rebellion. Smoke swung back the crystal of his watch and by the feel of finger-tips on the naked hands made out eleven o’clock. The men about him quickened. The legs that had lifted through a dozen strenuous hours lifted in a still swifter pace that was half a run and mostly a running jog. Through a dark spruce-flat they burst upon an abrupt glare of light from many fires and upon an abrupt increase of sound. The great camp lay before them.
And as they entered and threaded the irregular runways of the hunting-camp, a vast tumult, as in a wave, rose to meet them and rolled on with them – cries, greetings, questions and answers, jests and jests thrust back again, the snapping snarl of wolf-dogs rushing in furry projectiles of wrath upon Smoke’s stranger dogs, the scolding of squaws, laughter, the whimpering of children and wailing of infants, the moans of the sick aroused afresh to pain, all the pandemonium of a camp of nerveless, primitive wilderness folk.
