The Magnetic North Part 74

And they ate in silence.

"Now I'm going to bed," said the Boy, rising stiffly.

"You just wait a minute."

"No."

Now, the Colonel himself had enunciated the law that whenever one of them was ready to sleep the other must come too. He didn't know it, but it is one of the iron rules of the Winter Trail. In absence of its enforcement, the later comer brings into the warmed up sleeping-bag not only the chill of his own body, he lets in the bitter wind, and brings along whatever snow and ice is clinging to his boots and clothes. The melting and warming-up is all to be done again.

But the Colonel was angry.

"Most unreasonable," he muttered--"d.a.m.ned unreasonable!"

Worse than the ice and the wet in the sleeping-bag, was this lying in such close proximity to a young jackanapes who wouldn't come when you called "Grub!" and wouldn't wait a second till you'd felt about in the dimness for your gun. Hideous to lie so close to a man who snored, and who'd deprived you of your 44 Marlin. Although it meant life, the Boy grudged the mere animal heat that he gave and that he took. Full of grudging, he dropped asleep. But the waking spirit followed him into his dreams. An ugly picture painted itself upon the dark, and struggling against the vision, he half awoke. With the first returning consciousness came the oppression of the yoke, the impulse to match the mental alienation with that of the body--strong need to move away.

You can't move away in a sleeping-bag.

In a city you may be alone, free.

On the trail, you walk in bonds with your yoke-fellow, make your bed with him, with him rise up, and with him face the lash the livelong day.

"Well," sighed the Colonel, after toiling onward for a couple of hours the next morning, "this is the worst yet."

But by the middle of the afternoon, "What did I say? Why, this morning--_everything_ up till now has been child's play." He kept looking at the Boy to see if he could read any sign of halt in the tense, scarred face.

Certainly the wind was worse, the going was worse. The sled kept breaking through and sinking to the level of the load. There it went!

in again. They tugged and hauled, and only dragged the lashing loose, while the sled seemed soldered to the hard-packed middle of the drift.

As they reloaded, the thermometer came to light. The Colonel threw it out, with never a word. They had no clothes now but what they stood in, and only one thing on the sled they could have lived without--their money, a packet of trading stores. But they had thrown away more than they knew. Day by day, not flannels and boots alone, not merely extra kettle, thermometer and gun went overboard, but some grace of courtesy, some decency of life had been left behind.

About three o'clock of this same day, dim with snow, and dizzy in a hurricane of wind, "We can't go on like this," said the Boy suddenly.

"Wish I knew the way we _could_ go on," returned the Colonel, stopping with an air of utter helplessness, and forcing his rigid hands into his pockets. The Boy looked at him. The man of dignity and resource, who had been the boss of the Big Chimney Camp--what had become of him? Here was only a big, slouching creature, with ragged beard, smoke-blackened countenance, and eyes that wept continually.

"Come on," said his equally ruffianly-looking pardner, "we'll both go ahead."

So they abandoned their sled for awhile, and when they had forged a way, came back, and one pulling, the other pushing, lifting, guiding, between them, with infinite pains they got their burden to the end of the beaten track, left it, and went ahead again--travelling three miles to make one.

"What's the matter now?"

The Boy was too tired to turn his head round and look back, but he knew that the other man wasn't doing his share. He remembered that other time when the Colonel had fallen behind. It seemed years ago, and even further away was the vague recollection of how he'd cared. How horribly frightened he'd been! Wasn't he frightened now? No. It was only a dull curiosity that turned him round at last to see what it was that made the Colonel peg out this time. He was always peggin' out. Yes, there he was, stoppin' to stroke himself. Trail-man? An old woman! Fit only for the chimney-corner. And even when they went on again he kept saying to himself as he bent to the galling strain, "An old woman--just an old woman!" till he made a refrain of the words, and in the level places marched to the tune. After that, whatever else his vague thought went off upon, it came back to "An old woman--just an old woman!"

It was at a bad place towards the end of that forced march that the Colonel, instead of lifting the back of the sled, bore hard on the handle-bar. With a vicious sound it snapped. The Boy turned heavily at the noise. When he saw the Colonel standing, dazed, with the splintered bar in his hand, his dull eyes flashed. With sudden vigour he ran back to see the extent of the damage.

"Well, it's pretty discouragin'," says the Colonel very low.

The Boy gritted his teeth with suppressed rage. It was only a chance that it hadn't happened when he himself was behind, but he couldn't see that. No; it was the Colonel's bungling--tryin' to spare himself; leanin' on the bar instead o' liftin' the sled, as he, the Boy, would have done.

With stiff hands they tried to improvise a makeshift with a stick of birch and some string.

"Don't know what you think," says the Colonel presently, "but I call this a desperate business we've undertaken."

The Boy didn't trust himself to call it anything. With a bungled job they went lamely on. The loose snow was whirling about so, it was impossible to say whether it was still falling, or only hurricane-driven.

To the Colonel's great indignation it was later than usual before they camped.

Not a word was spoken by either till they had finished their first meal, and the Colonel had melted a frying-pan full of snow preparatory to the second. He took up the rice-bag, held it by the top, and ran his mittened hand down the gathered sack till he had outlined the contents at the bottom.

"Lord! That's all there is."

The boy only blinked his half-shut eyes. The change in him, from talkativeness to utter silence, had grown horribly oppressive to the Colonel. He often felt he'd like to shake him till he shook some words out. "I told you days ago," he went on, "that we ought to go on rations."

Silence.

"But no! you knew so much better."

The Boy shut his eyes, and suddenly, like one struggling against sleep or swooning, he roused himself.

"I thought I knew the more we took off the d.a.m.n sled the lighter it'd be. 'Tisn't so."

"And we didn't either of us think we'd come down from eighteen miles a day to six," returned the Colonel, a little mollified by any sort of answer. "I don't believe we're going to put this job through."

Now this was treason.

Any trail-man may think that twenty times a day, but no one ought to say it. The Boy set his teeth, and his eyes closed. The whole thing was suddenly harder--doubt of the issue had been born into the world. But he opened his eyes again. The Colonel had carefully poured some of the rice into the smoky water of the pan. What was the fool doing? Such a little left, and making a second supper?

Only that morning the Boy had gone a long way when mentally he called the boss of the Big Chimney Camp "an old woman." By night he was saying in his heart, "The Colonel's a fool." His pardner caught the look that matched the thought.

"No more second helpin's," he said in self-defence; "this'll freeze into cakes for luncheon."

No answer. No implied apology for that look. In the tone his pardner had come to dread the Colonel began: "If we don't strike a settlement to-morrow----"

"Don't _talk!"_

The Boy's tired arm fell on the handle of the frying-pan. Over it went--rice, water, and all in the fire. The culprit sprang up speechless with dismay, enraged at the loss of the food he was hungry for--enraged at "the fool fry-pan"--enraged at the fool Colonel for balancing it so badly.

A column of steam and smoke rose into the frosty air between the two men. As it cleared away a little the Boy could see the Colonel's bloodshot eyes. The expression was ill to meet.

When they crouched down again, with the damped-out fire between them, a sense of utter loneliness fell upon each man's heart.

The next morning, when they came to digging the sled out of the last night's snow-drift, the Boy found to his horror that he was weaker--yes, a good deal. As they went on he kept stumbling. The Colonel fell every now and then. Sometimes he would lie still before he could pull himself on his legs again.

In these hours they saw nothing of the grim and splendid waste; nothing of the ranks of snow-laden trees; nothing of sun course or of stars, only the half-yard of dazzling trail in front of them, and --clairvoyant--the little store of flour and bacon that seemed to shrink in the pack while they dragged it on.

Apart from partial snow-blindness, which fell at intervals upon the Colonel, the tiredness of the eyes was like a special sickness upon them both. For many hours together they never raised their lids, looking out through slits, cat-like, on the world.