The Way of the Strong Part 9

Reluctantly enough he bestowed Tug's store of gold upon the sled, lashing it doubly secure after his disastrous experiences. Then he stored bedding and food upon the vehicle. He provided a sufficient but light enough load, for he knew he must travel fast and reach the coast long before those others. Si-wash was behind him, and Si-wash knew every inch of the trail, whereas he only had a vague knowledge which might fail him at any moment.

Within half an hour the pack on the sled was complete, and the great dogs stood in their harness ready to do the behests of their new master as willingly as those of the old. But the last item of his program still remained to be attended to. Leo searched his pockets and found the stub of a pencil, but no paper rewarded his efforts. For a moment he was at a loss. Then he bethought him of the tent, and pa.s.sed beneath the flap. In a few moments he returned with a sheet of waterproof paper, such as is used to line biscuit boxes, and he sat down on his pack and began to write. And all the time he was writing the grim twist of his lips remained. He seemed to find some sort of warped humor in what he was doing.

His writing finished he secured the paper on the front of the tent where it must easily be seen. Then he stood off to read it.

"My Dear Tug;

"I find it necessary to commandeer your gold. Mine is at the bottom of a precipice ten miles back, if you care to make the exchange. Si-wash will tell you where. I suggest you either wait here till they come along, or go back to my camp in the woods, beyond the broken hill, and join Si-wash there. Anyway you can travel down with him. They have dogs and camp outfit, and I have left here sufficient food, etc., for your needs. I have found you a better friend than I ever hoped to. So long.

Good luck.

"Leo."

Leo read his note over with evident satisfaction. He had no scruples whatever. He saw in one direction only. Straight ahead of him, his eyes turning neither to the right nor to the left of the path of life he had marked out for himself. He believed that the battle must always go to the strong; sentimentality, pity, were feelings he did not acknowledge.

He knew of their existence, and deplored them as the undermining germ responsible for the disease of decadence which has wrought the destruction of more than half the great empires in the world's history.

And what the world's history had not taught him he had gleaned from the lives of great men, as he saw greatness. Greatness to him meant conquest, and the world's conquerors had been men utterly devoid of all the tenderer feelings of humanity. They had embarked upon their careers thrilling with the l.u.s.t of the ancient savage, or the ruthless courage of the animal kingdom, qualities which he regarded as the essence of life, as Nature had intended it. So he gave himself up to a similar course. He would rather be a king by savage conquest, than the hereditary monarch of a race whose vitality is slowly being sapped by the vampire of sentimentality.

He picked up Tug's gee-pole, and gave one swift final glance over the camp. Then, stooping, he covered the staring face of the dead man with a blanket and turned to the dogs.

A sharp command and the traces were drawn taut. Another, and the journey had begun. The dogs, fresh from their week of idleness, strained at their breast harness, and the sled moved slowly, heavily over the dry bed of the forest. But it soon gained impetus, and the twilit shadows of the primordial forest quickly swallowed it up.

As the scrunch of the pine-cones under the steel runners died away the calm of ages once more settled upon the woods. The dying fire burned lower and lower, and the deathly stillness was unbroken even by a crackle of sputtering flame. The solitude was profound and full of melancholy.

The minutes crept on. They lengthened into an hour. Then far in the distance, it seemed, came the soft pad as of some prowling forest beast. But the pad quickly changed to the soft scrunch of moccasined feet, and, presently, a man, bearing a great load of wood upon his broad back, came on through the dusky aisles of the forest.

CHAPTER VII

DEAD FIRES

Tug did most things with a smile; but it was never the happy smile of a pleasant nature. Nor was it even a mask. It was an expression of his att.i.tude toward the world, toward all mankind. His eyes conveyed insolent contempt; and his smile was one of the irritating irony and cynicism which permeated all his thoughts and feelings.

But his smile was for those looking on. There were times when another man looked out of the same eyes; a man whose cold heart loomed up ugly and threatening out of those deeper recesses of feeling which the shrewd might guess at, but were rarely admitted to.

Tug was a man whose selfish desire was above and before all things. He was of that temper which saw injustice and wrong in every condition of life obtaining, in every established inst.i.tution of man, even in the very edicts of Nature. It was impossible for him to see anything but through the jaundiced light of his own utter selfishness. Every condition over which he had no control contained a threat, which, in his view of things, was directed against the fulfillment of his desires. He wanted the world and all its possibilities for comfort, pleasure, profit, for his own, without the effort of making it so; and had he obtained it he would undoubtedly have grumbled that there was no fence set up as a bar to all trespa.s.sers upon his property.

He detested the thought that others held possessions which he had not.

But it was not his way to air his grievance from a personal point of view. He adopted a subtler course, and a common enough course among men of his cla.s.s. He cloaked his own selfishness under a pa.s.sionate plea for those others similarly debarred, railing at the injustice of the distribution of the world's benefits, and storming against cla.s.s distinctions and all the lesser injustices which went to make up the dividing line between capacity and incapacity. In short he was, though as yet unprofessed, a perfect example of the modern socialist whose utter selfishness prompts methods and teachings which are the profoundest outrage against the doctrines of the Divine Master, who demanded that man should love his neighbor as himself.

Tug had not the moral courage for an open fight, and here he was far inferior to the greater adventurer, Leo. Leo would drive roughshod over everybody and everything; the whole wide world if necessary. He would gain his end by the frank courage of the fighter, which must always command a certain admiration, even if condemnation goes with it. But Tug had no such qualities. It was for him to wriggle and twist, using anybody and anything, by subtle underhand workings, to achieve a similar purpose. But again, even in his purpose he was Leo's inferior.

Leo's desire was for victory, victory in the great struggle of modern life, and not for the fleshpots which that victory would ent.i.tle him to. Tug desired victory, too, but it was that he might taste the sweetest morsels which those fleshpots contained. Whichever way the struggle went there could be little doubt as to who would claim the applause from the balconies at the fall of the curtain.

When Tug reached his camping ground he found himself in a land of dead fires. The cold, gray ashes were everywhere about him. Life had gone; hope had fled. And the charred embers of the camp-fire in the center of it were the symbol of the ruin.

His quick eyes took in the picture, while his cold heart read something of the meaning of what he beheld. The absence of his dogs first drew his attention, and this was swiftly followed by the realization that his sled was nowhere to be seen. Then his eyes caught the notice which was written on biscuit paper and secured to the front of his tent. He threw down his burden of dead wood, which had still remained upon his back, and stood in front of the message Leo had left him.

For long minutes he stood while the words, the bitter, ironical sentences, sank deep into his selfish heart. Here he was treated to the very att.i.tude he loved to a.s.sume himself, and it lashed him to a cold, deadly fury. Again and again he read the message and each time he read it he found fresh fuel with which to build the icy fire of his rage.

The theft itself was maddening, but strangely enough the tone of impudent triumph in which Leo addressed him drove him hardest. All that was worst in him was stirred, and the worst of this man was something so malignant and unsavory that the absent Leo might well have shrunk before its pursuing shadow.

No word pa.s.sed his lips; no expression changed his features, except for the sudden cold pallor which had spread itself over them. Words rarely expressed his deeper feelings; he was not the man to storm in his despair. His whole mind and body were concentrated in a deadly desire to find a means of coming up with the man who had injured him. With each pa.s.sing moment the words of the message gravened themselves deeper and deeper upon his mind, until they filled his whole thought, and left him panting for revenge. As long as he lived that message would float before his mind's eye, that message which told him of the dead fires about him, that message staring out at him upon the wreck of all his hopes. Yes, as long as he lived that moment would stay with him. As long as he lived he would wait for the ruin, even the life of the man who had wronged him.

Suddenly he made a movement with his moccasined heel. It was his only expression. The pine-cones crushed under it; and to him it was the life of the man, Leo, he was crushing out.

With a steady hand he reached out and removed the paper from its fastenings. He folded it deliberately, carefully, and bestowed it in an inner pocket. Somehow its possession had suddenly become precious to him, and a certain contentment was his as he turned away and seated himself on an upturned box.

It might have seemed curious that he made no attempt to search his camp. It would have been natural enough. But that was the man. In his mind there was no need for search. The message, he knew, told the truth, and the blow had fallen upon a nature that would not uselessly rack its feelings by vain hopes such as a search might inspire.

Besides, he knew this man Leo. He knew him, and hated him; and in his hatred he believed that the thought of his vain, searching would give his despoiler malicious pleasure.

For long he sat there before the dead fire. His comrade remained unheeded. He was thinking, thinking desperately in his cold fashion.

And curiously enough the possession of that paper helped to inspire him. Already he contemplated it as a sort of token that, in the end, he would return an hundredfold the injury done him. Yes, it should be his mascot through life, it should be a guiding star to his whole career.

It should be his inspiration when the moment came. No thought of any law entered his mind. He knew that the crimes of this bitter northern world were beyond the reach of the laws of civilized man. No, the only law that could serve him was the law that each made for himself. He would make his own law--when the time came. There would be no mercy.

Mercy? He smiled. And it was a smile so cruel and cold that it might well have damped the courage of the great Leo himself.

Night closed down before Tug stirred from his seat; and when the movement came it was inspired by the bitter cold which had eaten into his stiffening joints, and the gnawings of hunger to which he had been so long oblivious.

He rose abruptly. The present was with him again, the dread present of the bitter northern trail; and he set to work with all the deliberation of a man who understands the needs of the moment, and has no thought beyond them. He rekindled the fire, and boiled the water for his tea.

He prepared the dried fish and cooked it. Then he sat down and devoured his meal with all the relish of a hungry man without a care in the world.

But he did not seek his blankets afterwards. The fire had warmed his bones, and the food had satisfied his craving stomach. So he remained where he was, smoking and thinking; dreaming the ugly dreams of a mind devoid of any of the tenderer thoughts of humanity.

Hours pa.s.sed, and the long sleepless night dragged on toward a gray, hopeless dawn; and, by the time the black woods began to change their hue, and the gray to creep almost imperceptibly down the aged aisles, his last plans were complete.

Then he arose and stretched himself. He put his pipe away, and replenished the fire with the last of the wood, finally setting water thereon to boil. Then, picking up his axe, he moved off into the deeps of the wood.

In half an hour he returned with a burden of rough-hewn stakes which he flung down beside the fire, while he prepared his breakfast. He devoured his meal hurriedly, and within another half hour was at work upon his final tasks.

He stored all his property inside the tent, removing the furs and blankets from his dead comrade. It almost seemed like desecration. Yet Tug knew what he was at. It would not do to leave the body encased in warm furs. The man would have to be buried--later. In the meantime the cold would freeze the body, and preserve it until such time.

Now the purpose of his stakes became evident. Even Tug, selfish and callous as he was, acknowledged his duties to the dead. He knew the prowling scavengers of the forests too well to leave his comrade without sufficient protection. So he proceeded to secure the body under a cage of timber which would defy the attacks of marauding carnivora.

With Charlie left secure his work was complete. Broad daylight was shining among the rugged crowns of towering pines. The moment had come for his departure. He would obey the letter of Leo's instructions. He would follow the path he had marked out for him. Afterwards he would choose his own path; a path which he knew, somewhere in the future, near or far, would eventually bring him within striking distance of the quarry he intended to hunt down.

CHAPTER VIII

SI-WASH CHUCKLES

It was Si-wash who first witnessed the approach of the newcomer; and he at once realized that it was not the return of his friend, Leo, the man whom he still liked, in spite of the madness which he believed now possessed him.

So he watched thoughtfully from the shadow of the fringe of the forest.

He peered out over the white plain upon which an ineffective sun poured its steely rays, while he studied the details of figure and gait, which, in a country where contact with his fellows was limited, were not likely to leave him in doubt for long.