Love of Life | Page 9

him
with a wistful and hungry stare. It stood crouched, with tail between its
legs, like a miserable and woe-begone dog. It shivered in the chill
morning wind, and grinned dispiritedly when the man spoke to it in a
voice that achieved no more than a hoarse whisper.
The sun rose brightly, and all morning the man tottered and fell toward
the ship on the shining sea. The weather was perfect. It was the brief
Indian Summer of the high latitudes. It might last a week. To-morrow
or next day it might he gone.
In the afternoon the man came upon a trail. It was of another man, who
did not walk, but who dragged himself on all fours. The man thought it
might be Bill, but he thought in a dull, uninterested way. He had no
curiosity. In fact, sensation and emotion had left him. He was no longer
susceptible to pain. Stomach and nerves had gone to sleep. Yet the life
that was in him drove him on. He was very weary, but it refused to die.
It was because it refused to die that he still ate muskeg berries and
minnows, drank his hot water, and kept a wary eye on the sick wolf.
He followed the trail of the other man who dragged himself along, and
soon came to the end of it - a few fresh-picked bones where the soggy
moss was marked by the foot-pads of many wolves. He saw a squat
moose-hide sack, mate to his own, which had been torn by sharp teeth.
He picked it up, though its weight was almost too much for his feeble
fingers. Bill had carried it to the last. Ha! ha! He would have the laugh
on Bill. He would survive and carry it to the ship in the shining sea. His
mirth was hoarse and ghastly, like a raven's croak, and the sick wolf
joined him, howling lugubriously. The man ceased suddenly. How
could he have the laugh on Bill if that were Bill; if those bones, so
pinky-white and clean, were Bill?
He turned away. Well, Bill had deserted him; but he would not take the
gold, nor would he suck Bill's bones. Bill would have, though, had it
been the other way around, he mused as he staggered on.
He came to a pool of water. Stooping over in quest of minnows, he

jerked his head back as though he had been stung. He had caught sight
of his reflected face. So horrible was it that sensibility awoke long
enough to be shocked. There were three minnows in the pool, which
was too large to drain; and after several ineffectual attempts to catch
them in the tin bucket he forbore. He was afraid, because of his great
weakness, that he might fall in and drown. It was for this reason that he
did not trust himself to the river astride one of the many drift-logs
which lined its sand- spits.
That day he decreased the distance between him and the ship by three
miles; the next day by two - for he was crawling now as Bill had
crawled; and the end of the fifth day found the ship still seven miles
away and him unable to make even a mile a day. Still the Indian
Summer held on, and he continued to crawl and faint, turn and turn
about; and ever the sick wolf coughed and wheezed at his heels. His
knees had become raw meat like his feet, and though he padded them
with the shirt from his back it was a red track he left behind him on the
moss and stones. Once, glancing back, he saw the wolf licking hungrily
his bleeding trail, and he saw sharply what his own end might be -
unless - unless he could get the wolf. Then began as grim a tragedy of
existence as was ever played - a sick man that crawled, a sick wolf that
limped, two creatures dragging their dying carcasses across the
desolation and hunting each other's lives.
Had it been a well wolf, it would not have mattered so much to the man;
but the thought of going to feed the maw of that loathsome and all but
dead thing was repugnant to him. He was finicky. His mind had begun
to wander again, and to be perplexed by hallucinations, while his lucid
intervals grew rarer and shorter.
He was awakened once from a faint by a wheeze close in his ear. The
wolf leaped lamely back, losing its footing and falling in its weakness.
It was ludicrous, but he was not amused. Nor was he even afraid. He
was too far gone for that. But his mind was for the moment clear, and
he lay and considered.