Mort broke out in friendly irritation one day. “Don’t try to do everything, Johnny. Remember I’m no cripple.”
“Humph! You proved that. I guess it’s up to me to do your work.”
“Oh, forget that day on the pass, can’t you?”
Johnny grunted a second time, and from his tone it was evident that he would never forget, unpleasant though the memory remained. Sensing his sullen resentment, the other tried to rally him, but made a bad job of it. The humor of men in the open is not delicate; their wit and their words become coarsened in direct proportion as they revert to the primitive; it is one effect of the solitudes.
Grant spoke extravagantly, mockingly, of his own superiority in a way which ordinarily would have brought a smile to Cantwell’s lips, but the latter did not smile. He taunted Johnny humorously on his lack of physical prowess, his lack of good looks and manly qualities—something which had never failed to result in a friendly exchange of badinage; he even teased him about his defeat with the Katmai girl.
Cantwell did respond finally, but afterward he found himself wondering if Mort could have been in earnest. He dismissed the thought with some impatience. But men on the trail have too much time for their thoughts; there is nothing in the monotonous routine of the day’s work to distract them, so the partner who had played out dwelt more and more upon his debt and upon his friend’s easy assumption of pre-eminence. The weight of obligation began to chafe him, lightly at first, but with ever-increasing discomfort. He began to think that Grant honestly considered himself the better man, merely because chance had played into his hands.
It was silly, even childish, to dwell on the subject, he reflected, and yet he could not banish it from his mind. It was always before him, in one form or another. He felt the strength in his lean muscles, and sneered at the thought that Mort should be deceived. If it came to a physical test he felt sure he could break his slighter partner with his bare hands, and as for endurance—well, he was hungry for a chance to demonstrate it.
They talked little; men seldom converse in the wastes, for there is something about the silence of the wilderness which discourages speech. And no land is so grimly silent, so hushed and soundless, as the frozen north. For days they marched through desolation, without glimpse of human habitation, without sight of track or trail, without sound of a human voice to break the monotony. There was no game in the country, with the exception of an occasional bird or rabbit, nothing but the white hills, the fringe of aldertops along the watercourses, and the thickets of gnarled, unhealthy spruce in the smothered valleys.
Their destination was a mysterious stream at the headwaters of the unmapped Kuskokwim, where rumor said there was gold, and whither they feared other men were hastening from the mining country far to the north.
Now it is a penalty of the White Country that men shall think of women. The open life brings health and vigor, strength and animal vitality, and these clamor for play. The cold of the still, clear days is no more biting than the fierce memories and appetites which charge through the brain at night. Passions intensify and imprisonment, recollections come to life, longings grow vivid and wild. Thoughts change to realities, the past creeps close, and dream figures are filled with blood and fire. One remembers pleasures and excesses, women’s smiles, women’s kisses, the invitation of outstretched arms. Wasted opportunities mock at one.
Cantwell began to brood about the Katmai girl, for she was the last; her eyes were haunting and distance had worked its usual enchantment. He reflected that Mort had shouldered him aside and won her favor, then boasted of it. Johnny awoke one night with a dream of her, and lay quivering.
“Hell! She was only a squaw,” he said, half aloud. “If I’d really tried—”
Grant lay beside him, snoring; the heat of their bodies intermingled. The waking man tried to compose himself, but his partner’s stertorous breathing irritated him beyond measure; for a long time he remained motionless, staring into the gray blur of the tent-top. He had played out. He owed his life to the man who had cheated him of the Katmai girl, and that man knew it. He had become a weak, helpless thing, dependent upon another’s strength, and that other now accepted his superiority as a matter of course. The obligation was insufferable, and—it was unjust. The north had played him a devilish trick, it had betrayed him, it had bound him to his benefactor with chains of gratitude which were irksome. Had they been real chains they could have galled him no more than at this moment.
As time passed the men spoke less frequently to each other. Grant joshed his mate roughly, once or twice, masking beneath an assumption of jocularity his own vague irritation at the change that had come over them. It was as if he had probed at an open wound with clumsy fingers.
Cantwell had by this time assumed most of those petty camp tasks which provoke tired trailers, those humdrum duties which are so trying to exhausted nerves, and of course they wore upon him as they wear upon every man. But, once he had taken them over, he began to resent Grant’s easy relinquishment; it rankled him to realize how willingly the other allowed him to do the cooking, the dishwashing, the fire-building, the bed-making. Little monotonies of this kind form the hardest part of winter travel, they are the rocks upon which friendships founder and partnerships are wrecked. Out on the trail, nature equalizes the work to a great extent, and no man can shirk unduly, but in camp, inside the cramped confines of a tent pitched on boughs laid over the snow, it is very different. There one must busy himself while the other rests and keeps his legs out of the way if possible. One man sits on the bedding at the rear of the shelter, and shivers, while the other squats over a tantalizing fire of green wood, blistering his face and parboiling his limbs inside his sweaty clothing. Dishes must be passed, food divided, and it is poor food, poorly prepared at best. Sometimes men criticize and voice longings for better grub and better cooking. Remarks of this kind have been known to result in tragedies, bitter words and flaming curses—then, perhaps, wild actions, memories of which the later years can never erase.
It is but one prank of the wilderness, one grim manifestation of its silent forces.
Had Grant been unable to do his part Cantwell would have willingly accepted the added burden, but Mort was able, he was nimble and “handy,” he was the better cook of the two; in fact, he was the better man in every way—or so he believed. Cantwell sneered at the last thought, and the memory of his debt was like bitter medicine.
His resentment—in reality nothing more than a phase of insanity begot of isolation and silence—could not help but communicate itself to his companion, and there resulted a mutual antagonism, which grew into a dislike, then festered into something more, something strange, reasonless, yet terribly vivid and amazingly potent for evil. Neither man ever mentioned it—their tongues were clenched between their teeth and they held themselves in check with harsh hands—but it was constantly in their minds, nevertheless. No man who has not suffered the manifold irritations of such an intimate association can appreciate the gnawing canker of animosity like this. It was dangerous because there was no relief from it: the two were bound together as by gyves; they shared each other’s every action and every plan; they trod in each other’s tracks, slept in the same bed, ate from the same plate. They were like prisoners ironed to the same staple.
Each fought the obsession in his own way, but it is hard to fight the impalpable, hence their sick fancies grew in spite of themselves. Their minds needed food to prey upon, but found none. Each began to criticize the other silently, to sneer at his weaknesses, to meditate derisively upon his peculiarities. After a time they no longer resisted the advance of these poisonous thoughts, but welcomed it.
On more than one occasion the embers of their wrath were upon the point of bursting into flame, but each realized that the first ill-considered word would serve to slip the leash from those demons that were straining to go free, and so managed to restrain himself.
The crisis came one crisp morning when a dog-team whirled around a bend in the r
iver and a white man hailed them. He was the mail carrier, on his way out from Nome, and he brought news of the “inside.”
“Where are you boys bound for?” he inquired when greetings were over and gossip of the trail had passed.
“We’re going to the Stony River strike,” Grant told him.
“Stony River? Up the Kuskokwim?”
“Yes!”
The mailman laughed. “Can you beat that? Ain’t you heard about Stony River?”
“No!”
“Why, it’s a fake—no such place.”
There was a silence; the partners avoided each other’s eyes.
“MacDonald, the fellow that started it, is on his way to Dawson. There’s a gang after him, too, and if he’s caught it’ll go hard with him. He wrote the letters—to himself—and spread the news just to raise a grubstake. He cleaned up big before they got on to him. He peddled his tips for real money.”
“Yes!” Grant spoke quietly. “Johnny bought one. That’s what brought us from Seattle. We went out on the last boat and figured we’d come in from this side before the breakup. So—fake! By God!”
“Gee! You fellers bit good.” The mail carrier shook his head. “Well! You’d better keep going now; you’ll get to Nome before the season opens. Better take dog-fish from Bethel—it’s four bits a pound on the Yukon. Sorry I didn’t hit your camp last night; we’d ’a’ had a visit. Tell the gang that you saw me.” He shook hands ceremoniously, yelled at his panting dogs, and went swiftly on his way, waving a mitten on high as he vanished around the next bend.
The partners watched him go, then Grant turned to Johnny, and repeated, “Fake! By God! MacDonald stung you.”
Cantwell’s face went as white as the snow behind him, his eyes blazed. “Why did you tell him I bit?” he demanded, harshly.
“Hunh! Didn’t you bite? Two thousand miles afoot; three months of hell; for nothing. That’s biting some.”
“Well!” The speaker’s face was convulsed, and Grant’s flamed with an answering anger. They glared at each other for a moment. “Don’t blame me. You fell for it, too.”
“I—” Mort checked his rushing words.
“Yes, you! Now, what are you going to do about it? Welch?”
“I’m going through to Nome.” The sight of his partner’s rage had set Mort to shaking with a furious desire to fly at his throat, but, fortunately, he retained a spark of sanity.
“Then shut up, and quit chewing the rag. You—talk too damned much.”
Mort’s eyes were bloodshot; they fell upon the carbine under the sled lashings, and lingered there, then wavered. He opened his lips, reconsidered, spoke softly to the team, then lifted the heavy dog whip and smote the malamutes with all his strength.
The men resumed their journey without further words, but each was cursing inwardly.
“So! I talk too much,” Grant thought. The accusation stuck in his mind and he determined to speak no more.
“He blames me,” Cantwell reflected, bitterly. “I’m in wrong again and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. A hell of a partner he is!”
All day they plodded on, neither trusting himself to speak. They ate their evening meal like mutes; they avoided each other’s eyes. Even the guide noticed the change and looked on curiously.
There were two robes and these the partners shared nightly, but their hatred had grown so during the past few hours that the thought of lying side by side, limb to limb, was distasteful. Yet neither dared suggest a division of the bedding, for that would have brought further words and resulted in the crash which they longed for, but feared. They stripped off their furs, and lay down beside each other with the same repugnance they would have felt had there been a serpent in the couch.
This unending malevolent silence became terrible. The strain of it increased, for each man now had something definite to cherish in the words and the looks that had passed. They divided the camp work with scrupulous nicety, each man waited upon himself and asked no favors. The knowledge of his debt forever chafed Cantwell; Grant resented his companion’s lack of gratitude.
Of course they spoke occasionally—it was beyond human endurance to remain entirely dumb—but they conversed in monosyllables, about trivial things, and their voices were throaty, as if the effort choked them. Meanwhile they continued to glow inwardly from a white heat.
Cantwell no longer felt the desire to merely match his strength against Grant’s; the estrangement had become too wide for that; a physical victory would have been flat and tasteless; he craved some deeper satisfaction. He began to think of the ax—just how or when or why he never knew. It was a thin-bladed, polished thing of frosty steel, and the more he thought of it the stronger grew his impulse to rid himself once and for all of that presence which exasperated him. It would be very easy, he reasoned; a sudden blow, with the weight of his shoulders behind it—he fancied he could feel the bit sink into Grant’s flesh, cleaving bone and cartilage in its course—a slanting downward stroke, aimed at the neck where it joined the body, and he would be forever satisfied. It would be ridiculously simple. He practiced in the gloom of evening as he felled spruce trees for firewood; he guarded the ax religiously; it became a living thing which urged him on to violence. He saw it standing by the tent fly when he closed his eyes to sleep; he dreamed of it; he sought it out with his eyes when he first awoke. He slid it loosely under the sled lashings every morning, thinking that its use could not long be delayed.
As for Grant, the carbine dwelt forever in his mind, and his fingers itched for it. He secretly slipped a cartridge into the chamber, and when an occasional ptarmigan offered itself for a target he saw the white spot on the breast of Johnny’s reindeer parkas, dancing ahead of the Lyman bead.
The solitude had done its work; the north had played its grim comedy to the final curtain, making sport of men’s affections and turning love to rankling hate. But into the mind of each man crept a certain craftiness. Each longed to strike, but feared to face the consequences. It was lonesome, here among the white hills and the deathly silences, yet they reflected that it would be still more lonesome if they were left to keep step with nothing more substantial than a memory. They determined, therefore, to wait until civilization was nearer, meanwhile rehearsing the moment they knew was inevitable. Over and over in their thoughts each of them enacted the scene, ending it always with the picture of a prostrate man in a patch of trampled snow which grew crimson as the other gloated.
They paused at Bethel Mission long enough to load with dried salmon, then made the ninety-mile portage over lake and tundra to the Yukon. There they got their first touch of the “inside” world. They camped in a barabara where white men had slept a few nights before, and heard their own language spoken by native tongues. The time was growing short now, and they purposely dismissed their guide, knowing that the trail was plain from there on. When they hitched up, on the next morning, Cantwell placed the ax, bit down, between the tarpaulin and the sled rail, leaving the helve projecting where his hand could reach it. Grant thrust the barrel of the rifle beneath a lashing, with the butt close by the handlebars, and it was loaded.
A mile from the village they were overtaken by an Indian and his squaw, travelling light behind hungry dogs. The natives attached themselves to the white men and hung stubbornly to their heels, taking advantage of their tracks. When night came they camped alongside, in the hope of food. They announced that they were bound for St. Michaels, and in spite of every effort to shake them off they remained close behind the partners until that point was reached.
At St. Michaels there were white men, practically the first Johnny and Mort had encountered since landing at Katmai, and for a day at least they were sane. But there were still three hundred miles to be travelled, three hundred miles of solitude and haunting thoughts. Just as they were about to start, Cantwell came upon Grant and the A. C. agent, and heard his name pronounced, also the word “Katmai.” He noted that Mort fell silent at his approach, and instantly his anger blazed afre
sh. He decided that the latter had been telling the story of their experience on the pass and boasting of his service. So much the better, he thought, in a blind rage; that which he planned doing would appear all the more like an accident, for who would dream that a man could kill the person to whom he owed his life?
That night he waited for a chance.
They were camped in a dismal hut on a windswept shore; they were alone. But Grant was waiting also, it seemed. They lay down beside each other, ostensibly to sleep; their limbs touched; the warmth from their bodies intermingled, but they did not close their eyes.
They were up and away early, with Nome drawing rapidly nearer. They had skirted an ocean, foot by foot; Bering Sea lay behind them, now, and its northern shore swung westward to their goal. For two months they had lived in silent animosity, feeding on bitter food while their elbows rubbed.
Noon found them floundering through one of those unheralded storms which make coast travel so hazardous. The morning had turned off gray, the sky was of a leaden hue which blended perfectly with the snow underfoot, there was no horizon, it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. The trail soon became obliterated and their eyes began to play tricks. For all they could distinguish, they might have been suspended in space; they seemed to be treading the measure of an endless dance in the center of a whirling cloud. Of course it was cold, for the wind off the open sea was damp, but they were not men to turn back.
A Century of Great Western Stories Page 27