by Rex Beach
THE TEST
Pierre "Feroce" showed disapproval in his every attitude as plainly asdisgust peered from the seams in his dark face; it lurked in his scowland in the curl of his long rawhide that bit among the sled dogs. Soat least thought Willard, as he clung to the swinging sledge.
They were skirting the coast, keeping to the glare ice, wind-swept andclean, that lay outside the jumbled shore pack. The team ran silentlyin the free gait of the grey wolf, romping in harness from pure joy ofmotion and the intoxication of perfect life, making the sled runnerswhine like the song of a cutlass.
This route is dangerous, of course, from hidden cracks in the floes,and most travellers hug the bluffs, but he who rides with Pierre"Feroce" takes chances. It was this that had won him the name of"Wild" Pierre--the most reckless, tireless man of the trails, a scofferat peril, bolting through danger with rush and frenzy, overcomingsheerly by vigour those obstacles which destroy strong men in the North.
The power that pulsed within him gleamed from his eyes, rang in hissong, showed in the aggressive thrust of his sensual face.
This particular morning, however, Pierre's distemper had crystallizedinto a great contempt for his companion. Of all trials, the mostdetestable is to hit the trail with half a man, a pale, anemic weaklinglike this stranger.
Though modest in the extent of his learning, Pierre gloated in afreedom of speech, the which no man dared deny him. He turned to eyehis companion cynically for a second time, and contempt was patent inhis gaze. Willard appeared slender and pallid in his furs, though hisclear-cut features spoke a certain strength and much refinement.
"Bah! I t'ink you dam poor feller," he said finally. "'Ow you 'goin'stan' thees trip, eh? She's need beeg mans, not leetle runt like you."
Amusement at this frankness glimmered in Willard's eyes.
"You're like all ignorant people. You think in order to stand hardshipa man should be able to toss a sack of flour in his teeth or juggle acask of salt-horse."
"Sure t'ing," grinned Pierre. "That's right. Look at me. Mebbe youhear 'bout Pierre 'Feroce' sometime, eh?"
"Oh, yes; everybody knows you; knows you're a big bully. I've seen youdrink a quart of this wood alcohol they call whisky up here, and thenjump the bar from a stand, but you're all animal--you haven't therefinement and the culture that makes real strength. It's the mindthat makes us stand punishment."
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Canadian. "Wat a fonny talk. She'll takethe heducate man for stan' the col', eh? Mon Dieu!" He roared againtill the sled dogs turned fearful glances backward and bushy tailsdrooped under the weight of their fright. Great noise came oftenestwith great rage from Pierre, and they had too frequently felt the bothto forget.
"Yes, you haven't the mentality. Sometime you'll use up your physicalresources and go to pieces like a burned wick."
Pierre was greatly amused. His yellow teeth shone, and he gave vent toviolent mirth as, following the thought, he pictured a naked mindwandering over the hills with the quicksilver at sixty degrees.
"Did you ever see a six-day race? Of course not; you barbarianshaven't sunk to the level of our dissolute East, where we joy in Romanspectacles, but if you had you'd see it's will that wins; it's the manthat eats his soul by inches. The educated soldier stands the campaignbest. You run too much to muscle--you're not balanced."
"I t'ink mebbe you'll 'ave chance for show 'im, thees stout will ofyours. She's goin' be long 'mush' troo the mountains, plentee snow,plentee cold."
Although Pierre's ridicule was galling, Willard felt the charm of themorning too strongly to admit of anger or to argue his pet theory.
The sun, brilliant and cold, lent a paradoxical cheerfulness to thedesolation, and, though never a sign of life broke the stillness aroundthem, the beauty of the scintillant, gleaming mountains, distinct ascameos, that guarded the bay, appealed to him with the strangeattraction of the Arctics; that attraction that calls and callsinsistently, till men forsake God's country for its mystery.
He breathed the biting air cleaned by leagues of lifeless barrens andvoids of crackling frost till he ached with the exhilaration of aperfect morning on the Circle.
Also before him undulated the grandest string of dogs the Coast hadknown. Seven there were, tall and grey, with tails like plumes, whomnone but Pierre could lay hand upon, fierce and fearless as theirmaster. He drove with the killing cruelty of a stampeder, and theyloved him.
"You say you have grub cached at the old Indian hut on the Good Hope?"questioned Willard.
"Sure! Five poun' bacon, leetle flour and rice. I cache one gum-boottoo, ha! Good thing for make fire queeck, eh?"
"You bet; an old rubber boot comes handy when it's too cold to makeshavings."
Leaving the coast, they ascended a deep and tortuous river where thesnow lay thick and soft. One man on snow-shoes broke trail for thedogs till they reached the foothills. It was hard work, but infinitelypreferable to that which followed, for now they came into a dangerousstretch of overflows. The stream, frozen to its bed, clogged thepassage of the spring water beneath, forcing it up through cracks tillit spread over the solid ice, forming pools and sheets covered withtreacherous ice-skins. Wet feet are fatal to man and beast, and theymade laborious detours, wallowing trails through tangled willows waistdeep in the snow smother, or clinging precariously to the overhangingbluffs. As they reached the river's source the sky blackened suddenly,and great clouds of snow rushed over the bleak hills, boiling down intothe valley with a furious draught. They flung up their flimsy tent,only to have it flattened by the force of the gale that cut likewell-honed steel. Frozen spots leaped out white on their faces, whiletheir hands stiffened ere they could fasten the guy strings.
Finally, having lashed the tent bottom to the protruding willow tops,by grace of heavy lifting they strained their flapping shelter upsufficiently to crawl within.
"By Gar! She's blow hup ver' queeck," yelled Pierre, as he set theten-pound sheet-iron stove, its pipe swaying drunkenly with the heavingtent.
"Good t'ing she hit us in the brush." He spoke as calmly as thoughdanger was distant, and a moment later the little box was roaring withits oil-soaked kindlings.
"Will this stove burn green willow tops?" cried Willard.
"Sure! She's good stove. She'll burn hicicles eef you get 'im startone times. See 'im get red?"
They rubbed the stiff spots from their cheeks, then, seizing the axe,Willard crawled forth into the storm and dug at the base of the gnarledbushes. Occasionally a shrub assumed the proportions of a man'swrist--but rarely. Gathering an armful, he bore them inside, andtwisting the tips into withes, he fed the fire. The frozen twigssizzled and snapped, threatening to fail utterly, but with much blowinghe sustained a blaze sufficient to melt a pot of snow. Boiling was outof the question, but the tea leaves became soaked and the baconcauterized.
Pierre freed and fed the dogs. Each gulped its dried salmon, and,curling in the lee of the tent, was quickly drifted over. Next he cutblocks from the solid bottom snow and built a barricade to windward.Then he accumulated a mow of willow tops without the tent-fly. All thetime the wind drew down the valley like the breath of a giant bellows.
"Supper," shouted Willard, and as Pierre crawled into the candle-lighthe found him squatted, fur-bundled, over the stove, which settledsteadily into the snow, melting its way downward toward a firmerfoundation.
The heat was insufficient to thaw the frozen sweat in his clothes; hiseyes were bleary and wet from smoke, and his nose needed continuousblowing, but he spoke pleasantly, a fact which Pierre noted withapproval.
"We'll need a habeas corpus for this stove if you don't get somethingto hold her up, and I might state, if it's worthy of mention, that yournose is frozen again."
Pierre brought an armful of stones from the creek edge, distributingthem beneath the stove on a bed of twisted willows; then swallowingtheir scanty, half-cooked food, they crawled, shivering, into thedeerskin sleeping-bags, that animal heat mig
ht dry their clammygarments.
Four days the wind roared and the ice filings poured over their shelterwhile they huddled beneath. When one travels on rations delay isdangerous. Each morning, dragging themselves out into the maelstrom,they took sticks and poked into the drifts for dogs. Each animal asfound was exhumed, given a fish, and became straightway reburied in thewhirling white that seethed down from the mountains.
On the fifth, without warning, the storm died, and the air stilled to aperfect silence.
"These dog bad froze," said Pierre, swearing earnestly as he harnessed."I don' like eet much. They goin' play hout I'm 'fraid." He knelt andchewed from between their toes the ice pellets that had accumulated. Amalamoot is hard pressed to let his feet mass, and this added to themen's uneasiness.
As they mounted the great divide, mountains rolled away on every hand,barren, desolate, marble-white; always the whiteness; always thelistening silence that oppressed like a weight. Myriads of creekvalleys radiated below in a bewildering maze of twisting seams.
"Those are the Ass's Ears, I suppose," said Willard, gazing at twogreat fangs that bit deep into the sky-line. "Is it true that no manhas ever reached them?"
"Yes. The hinjun say that's w'ere hall the storm come from, biccausew'en the win' blow troo the Ass's Ear, look out! Somebody goin' ketch'ell."
Dogs' feet wear quickly after freezing, for crusted snow cuts like aknife. Spots of blood showed in their tracks, growing more plentifultill every print was a crimson stain. They limped pitifully on theirraw pads, and occasionally one whined. At every stop they sank intrack, licking their lacerated paws, rising only at the cost of muchwhipping.
On the second night, faint and starved, they reached the hut. Diggingaway the drifts, they crawled inside to find it half full of snow--snowwhich had sifted through the crevices. Pierre groped among the shadowsand swore excitedly.
"What's up?" said Willard.
Vocal effort of the simplest is exhausting when spent with hunger, andthese were the first words he had spoken for hours.
"By Gar! she's gone. Somebody stole my grub!"
Willard felt a terrible sinking, and his stomach cried for food.
"How far is it to the Crooked River Road House?"
"One long day drive--forty mile."
"We must make it to-morrow or go hungry, eh? Well this isn't the firstdog fish I ever ate." Both men gnawed a mouldy dried salmon from theirprecious store.
As Willard removed his footgear he groaned.
"Wat's the mattaire?"
"I froze my foot two days ago--snow-shoe strap too tight." Heexhibited a heel, from which, in removing his inner sock, the flesh andskin had come away.
"That's all right," grinned Pierre. "You got the beeg will lef' yet.It take the heducate man for stan' the col', you know."
Willard gritted his teeth.
They awoke to the whine of a grey windstorm that swept the cutting snowin swirling clouds and made travel a madness. The next day was worse.
Two days of hunger weigh heavy when the cold weakens, and they grewgaunt and fell away in their features.
"I'm glad we've got another feed for the dogs," remarked Willard. "Wecan't let them run hungry, even if we do."
"I t'ink she's be hall right to-mor'," ventured Pierre. "Thees ain'tsnow--jus' win'; bimeby all blow hout. Sacre! I'll can eat 'nuff for'ole harmy."
For days both men had been cold, and the sensation of complete warmthhad come to seem strange and unreal, while their faces cracked wherethe spots had been.
Willard felt himself on the verge of collapse. He recalled his wordsabout strong men, gazing the while at Pierre. The Canadian evincedsuffering only in the haggard droop of eye and mouth; otherwise helooked strong and dogged.
Willard felt his own features had shrunk to a mask of loose-jawedsuffering, and he set his mental sinews, muttering to himself.
He was dizzy and faint as he stretched himself in the still morning airupon waking, and hobbled painfully, but as his companion emerged fromthe darkened shelter into the crystalline brightness he forgot his ownmisery at sight of him. The big man reeled as though struck when thedazzle from the hills reached him, and he moaned, shielding his sight.Snow-blindness had found him in a night.
Slowly they plodded out of the valley, for hunger gnawed acutely, andthey left a trail of blood tracks from the dogs. It took the combinedefforts of both men to lash them to foot after each pause. Thusprogress was slow and fraught with agony.
As they rose near the pass, miles of Arctic wastes bared themselves.All about towered bald domes, while everywhere stretched the monotonouswhite, the endless snow unbroken by tree or shrub, pallid and menacing,maddening to the eye.
"Thank God, the worst's over," sighed Willard, flinging himself ontothe sled. "We'll make it to the summit next time; then she's down hillall the way to the road house."
Pierre said nothing.
Away to the northward glimmered the Ass's Ears, and as the speaker eyedthem carelessly he noted gauzy shreds and streamers veiling their tops.The phenomena interested him, for he knew that here must be wind--wind,the terror of the bleak tundra; the hopeless, merciless master of thebarrens! However, the distant range beneath the twin peaks showedclear-cut and distinct against the sky, and he did not mention theoccurrence to the guide, although he recalled the words of the Indians:"Beware of the wind through the Ass's Ears."
Again they laboured up the steep slope, wallowing in the sliding snow,straining silently at the load; again they threw themselves, exhausted,upon it. Now, as he eyed the panorama below, it seemed to havesuffered a subtle change, indefinable and odd. Although but a fewminutes had elapsed, the coast mountains no longer loomed clear againstthe horizon, and his visual range appeared foreshortened, as though theutter distances had lengthened, bringing closer the edge of things.The twin peaks seemed endlessly distant and hazy, while the air hadthickened as though congested with possibilities, lending a remotenessto the landscape.
"If it blows up on us here, we're gone," he thought, "for it's miles toshelter, and we're right in the saddle of the hills."
Pierre, half blinded as he was, arose uneasily and cast the air like awild beast, his great head thrown back, his nostrils quivering.
"I smell the win'," he cried. "Mon Dieu! She's goin' blow!"
A volatile pennant floated out from a near-bye peak, hanging about itscrest like faint smoke. Then along the brow of the pass writhed a wispof drifting, twisting flakelets, idling hither and yon, astatic andaimless, settling in a hollow. They sensed a thrill and rustle to theair, though never a breath had touched them; then, as they mountedhigher, a draught fanned them, icy as interstellar space. The viewfrom the summit was grotesquely distorted, and glancing upward theyfound the guardian peaks had gone a-smoke with clouds of snow thatwhirled confusedly, while an increasing breath sucked over the summit,stronger each second. Dry snow began to rustle slothfully about theirfeet. So swiftly were the changes wrought, that before the mind hadgrasped their import the storm was on them, roaring down from everyside, swooping out of the boiling sky, a raging blast from the voids ofsunless space.
Pierre's shouts as he slashed at the sled lashings were snatched fromhis lips in scattered scraps. He dragged forth the whipping tent andthrew himself upon it with the sleeping-bags. Having cut loose thedogs, Willard crawled within his sack and they drew the flapping canvasover them. The air was twilight and heavy with efflorescent granulesthat hurtled past in a drone.
They removed their outer garments that the fur might fold closeragainst them, and lay exposed to the full hate of the gale. They hopedto be drifted over, but no snow could lodge in this hurricane, and itsifted past, dry and sharp, eddying out a bare place wherein they lay.Thus the wind drove the chill to their bones bitterly.
An unnourished human body responds but weakly, so, vitiated by theirfast and labours, their suffering smote them with tenfold cruelty.
All night the north wind shouted, and, as the next da
y waned with itsviolence undiminished, the frost crept in upon them till they rolledand tossed shivering. Twice they essayed to crawl out, but were drivenback to cower for endless, hopeless hours.
It is in such black, aimless times that thought becomes distorted.Willard felt his mind wandering through bleak dreams and torturedfancies, always to find himself harping on his early argument withPierre: "It's the mind that counts." Later he roused to the fact thathis knees, where they pressed against the bag, were frozen; also hisfeet were numb and senseless. In his acquired consciousness he knewthat along the course of his previous mental vagary lay madness, andthe need of action bore upon him imperatively.
He shouted to his mate, but "Wild" Pierre seemed strangely apathetic.
"We've got to run for it at daylight. We're freezing. Here! Hold on!What are you doing? Wait for daylight!" Pierre had scrambled stifflyout of his cover and his gabblings reached Willard. He raised aclenched fist into the darkness of the streaming night, cursinghorribly with words that appalled the other.
"Man! man! don't curse your God. This is bad enough as it is. Coverup. Quick!"
Although apparently unmindful of his presence, the other crawled backmuttering.
As the dim morning greyed the smother they rose and fought their waydownward toward the valley. Long since they had lost their gripinghunger, and now held only an apathetic indifference to food, with acringing dread of the cold and a stubborn sense of their extremenecessity.
They fell many times, but gradually drew themselves more under control,the exercise suscitating them, as they staggered downward, blinded andbuffeted, their only hope the road-house.
Willard marvelled dully at the change in Pierre. His face hadshrivelled to blackened freezes stretched upon a bony substructure, andlighted by feverish, glittering, black, black eyes. It seemed to himthat his own lagging body had long since failed, and that his aching,naked soul wandered stiffly through the endless day. As nightapproached Pierre stopped frequently, propping himself with legs farapart; sometimes he laughed. Invariably this horrible sound shockedWillard into a keener sense of the surroundings, and it grew toirritate him, for the Frenchman's mental wanderings increased with thedarkness. What made him rouse one with his awful laughter? Thesespells of walking insensibility were pleasanter far. At last the bigman fell. To Willard's mechanical endeavours to help he spokesleepily, but with the sanity of a man under great stress.
"Dat no good. I'm goin' freeze right 'ere--freeze stiff as 'ell. Aurevoir."
"Get up!" Willard kicked him weakly, then sat upon the prostrate man ashis own faculties went wandering.
Eventually he roused, and digging into the snow buried the other, firstcovering his face with the ample parka hood. Then he struck down thevalley. In one lucid spell he found he had followed a sled trail,which was blown clear and distinct by the wind that had now almost diedaway.
Occasionally his mind grew clear, and his pains beat in upon him tillhe grew furious at the life in him which refused to end, which forcedhim ever through this gauntlet of misery. More often he was consciousonly of a vague and terrible extremity outside of himself that goadedhim forever forward. Anon he strained to recollect his destination.His features had set in an implacable grimace of physical torture--likea runner in the fury of a finish--till the frost hardened them so. Attimes he fell heavily, face downward, and at length upon the trail,lying so till that omnipresent coercion that had frozen in his braindrove him forward.
He heard his own voice maundering through lifeless lips like that of astranger: "The man that can eat his soul will win, Pierre."
Sometimes he cried like a child and slaver ran from his open mouth,freezing at his breast. One of his hands was going dead. He strippedthe left mitten off and drew it laboriously over the right. One hewould save at least, even though he lost the other. He looked at thebare member dully, and he could not tell that the cold had eased tillthe bitterness was nearly out of the air. He laboured with the fitfulspurts of a machine run down.
Ten men and many dogs lay together in the Crooked River Road Housethrough the storm. At late bedtime of the last night came a scratchingon the door.
"Somebody's left a dog outside," said a teamster, and rose to let himin. He opened the door only to retreat affrightedly.
"My God!" he said. "My God!" and the miners crowded forward.
A figure tottered over the portal, swaying drunkenly. They shudderedat the sight of its face as it crossed toward the fire. It did notwalk; it shuffled, haltingly, with flexed knees and hanging shoulders,the strides measuring inches only--a grisly burlesque upon senility.
Pausing in the circle, it mumbled thickly, with great effort, as thoughgleaning words from infinite distance:
"Wild Pierre--frozen--buried--in--snow--hurry!" Then he straightenedand spoke strongly, his voice flooding the room:
"It's the mind, Pierre. Ha! ha! ha! The mind."
He cackled hideously, and plunged forward into a miner's arms.
It was many days before his delirium broke. Gradually he felt thepressure of many bandages upon him, and the hunger of convalescence.As he lay in his bunk the past came to him hazy and horrible; then thehum of voices, one loud, insistent, and familiar.
He turned weakly, to behold Pierre propped in a chair by the stove,frost-scarred and pale, but aggressive even in recuperation. Hegesticulated fiercely with a bandaged hand, hot in controversy withsome big-limbed, bearded strangers.
"Bah! You fellers no good--too beeg in the ches', too leetle in theforehead. She'll tak' the heducate mans for stan' the 'ardsheep--lak'me an' Meestaire Weelard."