by Max Brand
Massey rose up from the chair as though some hand were pulling him by the hair of the head.
“Used to have?” he said.
“Yeah,” said Burr, not noticing the excitement. “He set a fool lot on that dog, and it was the meanest, sulkiest brute that I ever seen. Had to be muzzled. Would’ve took Calmont’s heart out as quick as a wink. I took him out on the lead, one day, and the beast whirled and tried for my throat. Nacherally, I let the lead strap loose, and off he went. When Calmont heard of that, he near went crazy. He jumped me when I wasn’t looking—”
Then he saw Massey’s face and paused.
XXI. ON THE TRAIL
WELL, HE HAD the best sort of a reason for stopping. I had seen Massey excited and angry before, but never so white and still, with his eyes burning in his face. Of course, Burr would not understand, but I did. There were three purposes in Massey’s mind.
One was to marry Marjorie, when he got out of the country to the south.
One was to kill Calmont.
And the third was to get back Alec the Great.
Of the three, there was no doubt as to which stood at the head of the list. It was Alec the Great.
That doesn’t talk down about his hatred of Calmont, either, or his love for Marjorie. Both those things were real, but Alec was something unique. He loved that dog like a friend, like a child, and like a dog, all in one. They had been through trouble together, of course. Not so many men can say honestly that they owe their lives to the brains and the teeth of a dog, but Massey could say that. Besides, he had a natural talent for animals, and I’ve seen him hold a long conversation with Alec, and Alec understanding most of the words.
Much as he wanted the life of Calmont, he wanted Alec the Great still more. Now he stood there white and still, looking down at Sam Burr, until the half-breed gaped up at him.
“Where is Calmont now?” asked Massey through his teeth.
“Why, up on the claim, I guess — unless he’s gone off through the woods trying to find that dang murdering dog!”
“Where’s the claim?”
“Up on Pension Creek.”
“Where on the creek?”
“It’s the only one on Pension Creek, and you can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” said Massey, and started for the door.
“Mind you,” sang out Sam Burr, “I been saving that gent for myself! But if you’re gunna try to help yourself first to him, leave a little for me. And be careful. He’s kept in good gun practice!”
Massey gave no reply to this, but went off through the doorway, with me fairly treading on his heels. He led the way back to the sleds, and there he said: “We’ll not go on together, son. We’ll make an even split right here, and you wait for me here with your half. Wait for ten days and, if I’m not back by that time, I’ll never be back, I reckon.”
I argued that I would have to stay with him, but he was like a stone, at first, and went on dividing up everything, until we had two equal loads and two dog teams, instead of the one. It gave me a mighty feeling of loneliness, I can tell you, to see him doing these things. Finally, I said: “I can’t stay behind, Hugh.”
He answered: “What sort of a man would I be, if I went in with a helper to fight against one man?”
I saw that I could not answer this with words, so I did not argue any more. We went off to get a meal, and then rented a small, damp, cold room, where we turned in.
I remember that Massey sat for a time on the edge of his bed with his chin in his hand.
“How far would Alec go?” he said over and over to himself. “How far would Alec go?”
“Clear back to nature,” I said. “There was always about sixty percent wolf in him.”
At this suggestion, he jerked back his head and groaned, but a moment later he wrapped himself in his blankets and went to sleep.
I was still dead tired from the trail when something waked me. I had heard nothing, but I had a definite feeling that I was alone in the room. A ghastly feeling in the arctic, and a thing that haunts many men on the trail — the dread that companions may leave them during the night.
I sat up with a jerk and, looking across the room, I could see by the dingy twilight that seeped through the little window that Massey had actually gone. He had gone for Pension Creek, of course, to get there and do his work before I arrived.
I jumped into my boots, and rolled my pack, and lighted out after him. I already had my sled in good order, after the division of the load. And the three dogs Massey had left for me were the better half of the pack. He was not the sort ever to give a friend the worst of anything.
In the cold bleakness of that morning, I got underway and headed out onto the Klondike. A low mist was hanging over the ice, over the town, over the trees. Breathing was difficult. I hated and dreaded the work before me and the goal to which I was driving, but I went on. I had been so long with Massey, thinking of his problems, and studying his welfare, and taking care of him, that I had no ability to attach myself to a lonely life and a goal of my own.
So I headed out there onto the ice.
It was very thin. Two or three times in the first mile I could feel it bending under me, and I increased the speed of the dogs for the sake of putting a less steady pressure upon any spot of the surface.
In this way I went over that first mile taking a zigzag course until I picked up the sign of a sled and dogs.
I studied the marks of the dog’s feet, where the surface was soft enough to keep a clear print of them, and presently I came to the wide-spreading, three-toed impression of Bosh, the big sled dog. I knew that print well, and there was no doubt in my mind that it was Bosh, all right.
Then I noted the very marks that the sled left, and a certain slight tendency it had to side slip toward the right. By this I was confirmed in all that I had felt before. It was without mistake the lead sled of our outfit, and that was the team of Hugh Massey.
After this, I settled down to a rapid pace, pressing the dogs a little. They went extremely well, for they were not overloaded, and they seemed to know that they were heading after an old human friend and many dog companions.
The mist finally lifted and the way became brighter and easier. Finally, I could see Massey going along ahead of me, his dogs strung out and pulling hard. I smiled to myself as I watched the rhythm of his marching shoulders, for this was a place where a light weight was better than a strong body. He had to go with consummate care over the frozen stream which had eaten up one life so recently and, as he wove from side to side, picking the secure going, and as his leader studied the ice as a good dog should, he was losing ground and time. I could march straight ahead without danger, and well my wise leader knew it.
I could afford to slow up our pace. The steel runners cut and gritted away at the cold road. The ice began to glow with brilliant reflections, and sometimes we went over places where the surface water had been frozen so suddenly and strongly that it seemed to have been arrested in mid- leap — for it was still clear and translucent, and every moment I expected to fall through the crust.
I stuck there in place behind my friend for several hours, and still, to my amazement, he never turned his head. Usually, he was as wary as a wild Indian, and he could not go a mile without sweeping everything round him with a glance.
But now it was a different matter. There was only one point in the compass that had any meaning for him, and this was the point toward which lay the claim of his enemy, Calmont. As a matter of fact, I kept there behind him, unnoticed, until he turned off the river to camp for the night, and then I pulled up beside him.
You never could tell what Massey would do in such a pinch as this. If he had ordered me furiously back to Dawson, or berated me coldly for being a fool, or turned a cold shoulder on me and said nothing at all, I should not have been surprised.
Instead, he acted as though we had been marching together all the day long and merely told me, quietly, what I was to do in the work of preparing the camp.
> We had about as cheerful a camp, that night, as we ever had made. Of course, there was plenty of fuel, and a whipping hail storm, followed by a fall of snow and then a gale of wind, was nothing to us. We ate a good big dinner, turned in, and slept just like rocks. At least, I can answer for my part.
In the morning, we resumed our march under a gray sky.
The wind had died before the snow stopped falling; the result was that the trees were streaked and piled with white along every branch, and now and then some unperceived touch of breeze would shake down a little shower, and make whispers of surprise in the forest. This snowfall dusted over the ice and gave a better grip for the dogs and, besides, it made the runners go more sweetly. For steel does not love ice, but bites hard upon it like a dog on a bone.
Our mileage was exceptionally good, this day, and we plugged along with a will. That night, Massey spoke for the first and last time about this new business I had taken in hand.
“I’ve tried to keep you out of this,” he said, “and it seemed that I couldn’t do it. Well, every man has to run his own business and, if you think that you belong here with me, perhaps you’re right. You know, of course, that you’re not to pull a gun on Calmont. I don’t think that there’ d be any need of it, anyway.”
“Hugh,” I said, “tell me how you feel about Calmont, really. Don’t you sometimes remember that he was your old partner and bunkie?”
He looked thoughtfully aside at me, nodding his head at his own thought, and not at me.
“Sometimes at night,” said Massey, “I dream of the old days. Yes, sometimes at night I remember him the way he used to be before he went mad. Why d’you ask?”
“Well, of course, I haven’t been through what you were through with him. Only, seeing that he was your old partner, I can’t help wondering how—”
“How I could want to kill him?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“It’s horrible to you, I suppose?” he said.
“Yes, it’s pretty horrible to me.”
He nodded again, and even whistled a little, until I thought that his mind had wandered far away and left me. But at length he merely remarked: “Yes, I suppose it would seem that way to you.”
This invitation of mine to have him talk a bit was not rewarded at all. But that good-natured calm of his reply, and the emotionless manner in which he received my suggestion of a conscience at work, meant more to me than if he had raved and gnashed his teeth and fallen into a stamping fury.
“Have you any doubt, Hugh?” I could not help going on.
“Doubt about what?” he said.
“About what will happen when you meet him? Are you sure that you can handle Calmont?”
He looked me straight in the eye and smiled.
“Just enough doubt, Joe,” he said, “to make the business a lark.”
XXII. WHEN TWO MEN MEET
WHEN WE REACHED Pension Creek, all the country was frozen as still as ice. The trees were like leaden clouds chained to the sides of the hills and frosted cold to the touch. It seemed that fire could never thaw and heat the iron hardness of that frozen wood. The axe edge I used bound back from it in my numb, weak fingers. The wind was iced into stillness, also, and for that we thanked our stars, because it was bitter weather even without a breeze to drive the invisible knife blades into us.
Never have I seen such evidences of cold, though I have no doubt that I have been in places where the thermometer sank lower. But here it was perhaps the dampness of the air which made every breath lodge, as it were, near the heart. The water seemed to have been checked in mid-flow, for instead of finding a solid, glassy surface, there were partial strata extending from the banks, turned to stone as they poured out on the main face of the water. This made very bumpy going. Besides, the stream was narrow, crooked, and had many cascades where we had to put all the dogs on one sled and heave with our shoulders to get it up.
It was a strange thing, that Pension Creek. Perhaps it was because we were drawing close to the claim where the battle was to be fought out, but it seemed to me that I never had seen a stream that wound in such a dark and secret snake trail through the woods.
We crawled with difficulty and pain up to the place where Pension Creek dwindled to a runlet.
“We should have taken the left fork,” said Massey. “We’ve left the main stream.”
I thought the same thing, but as we were about to check the dogs, we turned around a bend of the ice road and saw the shack before us. It was the usual thing — just a low log wall, with the look of crouching to avoid the cold. Close to the edge of the creek we saw the smudge of the thawing fire, and smoke was climbing out of the chimney at the end of the roof and walking up into the still air in a solid spiral. We stopped the team, then, swinging them close under the bank so that we could not be seen from the house.
Massey motioned to me to remain behind.
I wanted to. I had not the heart to see that battle but, on the other hand, I could not remain there shivering with the dogs, looking down at their heaving sides, when my friend was in that house fighting for his life. I wondered what it would be — a single crash and echo of an exploding gun, or a prolonged turmoil, a floundering struggle, perhaps someone yelling out, finally, as a knife or a bullet went home — perhaps only that awful noise which a choking man makes. I had heard that, once, during a rough-and-tumble fight in a Nome barroom.
Well, as Massey climbed up the bank, I climbed after him.
He was halfway toward the house when he knew I was coming. He paused and, glancing over his shoulder, shook his head and waved his hand to warn me back. But I would not be warned. He could not delay to argue the point. He went straight on, soft as a shadow, and I moved as silently as I could behind him.
This was as dreadful as anything that I ever have seen or heard of. I mean to say that stealthy, gliding motion with which Massey went toward the house, stalking a man.
He turned around the shoulder of the house just as the door squeaked in opening, and big Calmont walked out and fairly put his breast against the muzzle of Massey ‘s revolver.
Massey was still crouching like a beast of prey. I looked to hear the shot and see Calmont fall dead but the calm of that big fellow was wonderful to see. He merely looked down at the gun and then leisurely turned his gaze upon Massey.
“Well, you got me,” he said.
“Yes,” said Massey. “I got you — boy!”
No cursing or berating, you see. It was worse than cursing, however; the deep satisfaction in Massey’s voice. I can still hear it.
“Come in and sit down,” said Calmont.
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Massey.
Calmont went in before us. He had fixed that door so that it closed with a spring, and it was an odd sight to watch him enter and hold the door open — as if he feared that the back-swing of the door might unsettle Massey’s aim.
I pressed in behind them, and we sat down on three homemade stools, near the stove.
It was the sort of interior you would expect to find. Just naked usefulness and damp and misery. But this was made up for by the sight of some leather sacks in the corner of the room, lying unguarded on the floor. Two were plump. One was about half full.
“You’ve had luck,” said Massey, and turned his head and nodded toward the pile of little sacks.
No doubt, in his mind was a hope that Calmont would be tempted by this turning of the head to pull a gun, if he wore one. And he did wear one. We learned afterward that even when he was sure that Massey would be blind forever, he could not live without a Colt constantly in his clothes or under his hand. No surety was enough to put Massey out of his mind and his fear.
However, this temptation was a little too patent and open. Calmont made no move toward drawing a weapon, but he answered: “Yes, I’ve struck it rich.”
“That’s good,” answered Massey.
“Yeah. About thirty thousand dollars, if the stuff is seventeen an ounce.”
“
You’ve taken out near two thousand ounces?”
“Yeah. You see Sam Burr?”
“We saw him.”
“How’s Sam?”
“He’s getting better. He’s still a mite nervous.”
“Yeah,” said Calmont, “I reckon he might be. Never had nerves that were any good, Sam didn’t.”
He said to me: “There’s some coffee in that pot, kid. Go fetch it and fill some cups. Honest coffee is what is there! There’s some bacon yonder, too, and—”
I got up.
“Sit still,” ordered Massey. “We don’t eat and we don’t drink with Arnie Calmont.”
The glance of Calmont a second time flickered from the gun up to the face of his old companion, and I knew what was in his mind. It was a clever move, too. The smell of that simmering coffee filled the room. My very heart ached for a long, hot draft of it; but; of course, when you eat and drink with a man in the North, you’re bound to him as a guest, as he is to you as a host. This, among certain classes of men, is a sacred obligation. I could see at a glance where Calmont and Massey belonged in the category.
“Sam told you the way up?” said Calmont, not pressing his hospitality on us.
“No, he didn’t,” lied Massey.
Naturally, he did not want to draw the blame onto the head of any other man, or involve another in his quarrel.
“Nobody but Burr knew,” said Calmont. “If they did, they’d be up here in a crowd — but Burr still hopes that he’ll get out and manage to come up here and clean me out — and the rich surface deposits, too.”
“You’ve gone and lost Alec,” said Massey.
“Burr lost him,” said Calmont.
“After you stole him,” replied Massey.
“He’s my dog,” stated Calmont.
“He was judged to me.”