North

Back on the Koyukuk the nightless summer dragged wearily to its close for Lou Gordon. Father and daughter had been given an ovation in Nolan upon their return from Nome. It was a great moment in the little Arctic camp, when Lou Gordon placed in the hands of Clem Wilcox bank drafts totaling in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars for distribution among the men who had backed her dogs to win.

Instead of reviving her spirits, the long homeward journey had served only to increase the aching void in her breast. Even the gala day that celebrated their arrival in Nolan failed to arouse any enthusiasm in her heart, and in the little cabin on Myrtle she took up her round of duties as one assumes drudgery.

In July, when the little shallow-draught steamer transferred Old Man Gordon’s “b’iler,” to a waiting flat boat at Bettles, all Nolan turned out and man-hauled the ponderous piece of freight up a hundred miles of shallow water and set it in place on the Gordon claim.

“I’ll show ye!” the old man had prophesied when he thanked them for their help, “Ye’d better stay an’ fix up yer old cabins. For, ye’ll all be back on Myrtle in the spring!”

And the men of Nolan laughed, and returned up river.

And now, as the days grew short, and the nights long, and the sting of frost was in the air, Old Man Gordon, with a huge pile of wood ready to hand, waited impatiently for the coming of the cold that would allow him to steam his way into the iron-hard gravel of the creek.

Snow covered the land—and more snow. Lou Gordon broke puppies, shot caribou, and hauled the carcases to the meat cache. But there was no joy in the work. Life had lost its zest. Living had become simply the mechanical doing of things that had to be done.

One day in December she stood upon a long treeless ridge at noontime and, with her eyes fixed on the southern horizon, watched for the appearance of the sun. Yesterday only half his diameter had appeared for a few minutes above the horizon, and today the girl knew she would catch the last glimpse of his face for many long weeks to come. Overhead a few of the brighter stars glowed feebly through the pink radiance of the noonday dawn.

Gradually the rose-pink of the heavens deepened upon the southern horizon. Alternating bands of pink and lavender shot upward in ever widening bands that paled and merged as they approached the zenith. With startling swiftness the colors intensified, the bands of pink becoming, in the twinkling of an eye, bands of flaming crimson, and the lavender giving place to banners of purest purple. For many minutes Lou Gordon gazed upon the wonderful pageant of color. The red disk of the sun appeared above the horizon, and the next instant his yellow rays touched the glittering ice peaks with an aureole of golden glory. Only for a few moments was the segment of his disk visible, as it traveled its foreshortened arc—and was gone. The panorama of color reversed, and in the deepening twilight the big stars glowed in wan radiance.

It is an impressive sight, that swan song of the sun—that riot of flashing brilliance—that spectacular pomp of flaming color with which he bids the frozen world good night. One last blaze of glory to delight the eyes of the dwellers of the drear lone land of snow. For, until his next appearance, the land within the Circle is a dead land of black and white. Timber, cabins, animals, people that come within the short range of vision all appear a uniform dead black, against the cold dead whiteness of snow and ice.

Every winter when the heavens had been clear enough to permit it, Lou Gordon had taken her leave of the sun from this same bare ridge, and always the grand symphony of color tones had stirred her to the uttermost fibre of her being, stirred her to the very soul, heartened her for the long, long night. But, on this day there was no answering response in her heart. The sun, giver of light, and life, and warmth, had blazed his farewell from the rim of the world, and was gone. The North lay dead, as her heart was dead. Except that for the North, there would be an awakening.

She, too, had had her little day of glory. Two short weeks of wonderful pulsing life. Love had stirred her heart with the wonderful symphony of his song. Then the sun of love had set, and the world was black, and white, and toneless.

With a dull pain gnawing at her heart, the girl turned her back upon the southern horizon, spoke to her dogs, and wearily descended the ridge into the narrow valley of Myrtle.

The strong cold descended upon the land. Myrtle creek froze to the bottom, burst its ice bond, and froze again. The breath snapped and crackled as it left the lips, and men forsook the trails.

Then it was that Old Man Gordon’s “b’iler” froze to its very vitals. For four weeks he had managed, by firing night and day, to keep steam in her, but as the strong cold gripped the land, it gripped the boiler, too. Unprotected by any building it froze with the fire roaring in the fire-box, and stood out under the glittering stars, a black and useless thing of iron.

With the failure of his boiler Old Man Gordon lost his grip on life. In vain Lou tried to arouse him to return to his wood-thawing. But, the old man merely shook his head and sat staring through the hours of unchanging dark, into the little squares of light that showed at the draught holes of the stove.

December passed into January of the worst winter the Koyukuk had ever experienced. Furious blizzards followed upon the heels of the strong cold, and the strong cold upon the heels of the blizzards. Snow piled to unprecedented depths, and all trails were hopelessly buried.

Not until the second week in January did Lou Gordon become really alarmed about her father. The hours when she was not busy with her dogs she spent in reading, and in trying to awaken the old man from the apathy into which he had fallen. His appetite had dwindled until he was eating almost nothing. He rarely spoke, merely answering the girl’s questions with a nod, or a shake of the head.

Then came a day when she returned from the dog kennels to find the cabin empty. Her father’s mukluks and parka, and his heavy mittens were not on their accustomed place. She breathed a sigh of relief. At last he had taken interest in life. Removing her outer gear, she built up the fire, and settled herself to read. An hour later she laid down her book, and leaped to her feet with a start. Where was her father? A sudden fear gripped her, a nameless terror that struck a chill to her very heart. It was one of the coldest days of the winter. The thermometer recorded sixty-six below zero. And for weeks he had hardly touched his food! Frantically she drew on her heavy clothing, and dashed out into the gloom. Tracks led toward the boiler, whose iron side showed gaunt and black on the bank of the creek above the rim of a huge snowdrift. The wind, swirling and eddying about it had whipped the ground bare of snow and left the hideous black shape in the center of a pit.

Upon the edge of the surrounding drift the girl paused and stared down into this cavity. Before the open door of the fire-box crouched the figure of her father, barely distinguishable in the darkness. She called loudly, but there was no response—not so much as a turning of the head. And with a low cry of terror she leaped into the pit and stooped over the crouching figure. One glance into the marble-white face, that showed above the grizzled beard, one grip upon the iron-hard shoulder that resisted the clutch of her mittened fingers, and she drew swiftly back. For a full minute she stood stunned, her hands pressing her breast, her eyes closed. Then with tight-pressed lips, she returned slowly to the cabin and harnessed her dogs.

It required two hours of hard labor to remove the frozen body to the cabin, and two days of thawing beside the roaring stove before the doubled limbs could be straightened—days during which Lou Gordon returned to the cabin only to wait for her gravel-thawing fire to eat into the adamantine ground. Close beside the grave of her mother, she was burning in for this new grave. Side by side they should lie deep in the eternal frost, their bodies preserved without decay until the end of time. Bravely, in dry-eyed silence she worked, and made no plan for the future.

A journey to Nolan for assistance in her grewsome labor was out of the question. Sled travel in the deep loose snow was impossible, and she had no toboggan. So she worked alone. When the body had thawed, she straightened the limbs, folded the hands upon the breast, and wrapping it tightly in a wet blanket, removed it to the wood-shed, where the strong cold converted the blanket into a shroud of iron.

It took two weeks to burn into the gravel and when the grave was finished, the girl lowered the body gently to the bottom by means of a doubled babiche line. Then she carefully filled the grave, and erected a small wooden cross, into which she laboriously burned a simple inscription, with the point of a red hot spike. Then she retired to the cabin and, throwing herself upon her bunk, gave way to an uncontrollable fit of sobbing. That night the strong cold again gave way before a howling blizzard, and in the morning when she fed her dogs the little wooden cross was buried under a pure white mantle of snow.

Days passed, days hardly distinguishable from the darkness of night. A grey cloud-bank overhung the Koyukuk, lowering and sullen and heavily burdened with snow, obscuring even the dim twilight of high noon. And with the passing of the days a deep melancholy settled itself upon the girl. In vain she tried to interest herself in her books, and the twice read magazines. But it was no use. A great weight seemed pressing upon her, smothering her. Her head felt strange, and sleep came only in short, dream-troubled snatches. Mechanically she attended to her simple duties, fed her dogs, and carried wood from the wood house.

Each day was exactly like the preceding day, and the nights were the same as the days. The eyes of the dogs glowed like live coals as she moved among them in the darkness. There was something sinister—evil, in the greenish glint of these eyes that were always upon her. Why had she never noticed it before? Why did they glare at her out of the unending night? Twenty-one dogs out there in the dark—forty-two eyes! Eyes in the dark! Always eyes! Staring eyes! Flashing eyes! And eyes that glowed with sullen malevolence! Like the eyes of Dalzene! That was it, the eyes of Dalzene—flashing with hate, when he had threatened her in the roadhouse at Nolan. Glowing with smouldering hate when he passed her that day upon the trail near Soloman. Vividly the words of the man flashed through her brain: “Myrtle’s played out an’ dead.” Yes, Myrtle is dead—dead and forgotten—and the boiler is dead—and her father is dead—and her mother—all—all dead—dead and gone—and forgotten, as Dalzene had said.

With a shudder she recalled the leering glint of his eyes as he had begged her to throw in with him, “We’ll go where we kin have some fun—down on the Yukon, or over to Nome, that’s where the bright lights is.” The bright lights! Well, she had seen the bright lights—had basked in their brilliance. For two never-to-be-forgotten weeks she had lived.

And she recalled the terrible gleam in his eyes as he had uttered his threat: “Time will come when you will talk to Jake Dalzene—an’ talk pretty! Time will come when you’ll learn that Jake Dalzene don’t never fergit!” And his eyes had gleamed—like the eyes of the dogs in the dark.

That day, when she fed the dogs, she cast fearful, nervous glances behind her into the gloom. And, that night she took Skookum with her into the cabin. That night, also she cleaned and oiled her rifle, filled its magazine with cartridges, and stood it in the corner nearest her bunk.

Skookum was restless. Never before had he slept in a cabin, and all night long he dozed fitfully, awaking at short intervals with a start, to walk about the room. The click of his toe nails upon the floor awoke the girl, and each time she stirred in her bed the great dog would look toward her—two eyes that glowed in the dark. And, with a shudder she would turn her face to the wall—but not to sleep.

Cold fear gripped her heart. She would hit out for Nolan. Dalzene would never dare to show his face in Nolan. Tomorrow she would harness her dogs and hit the trail. But—she had no toboggan, and in the deep loose snow, the sled would be useless. No, she must stay here on Myrtle until the thaw came and hardened the surface of the snow. If she couldn’t travel, Dalzene couldn’t travel either. But—Dalzene had a toboggan! Pete Enright had told her of how the man had shifted to a toboggan and given them the slip below Bettles! She must go—somewhere. Dalzene would be out of jail. His time should have expired sometime last fall. He had had six months in which to nurse his hate, and to plot and plan, and three or four months since in which to carry out his plans. Dalzene never forgets! Even now he might be on Myrtle, trailing through the snow with a toboggan. There was the rifle. If Dalzene came she would kill him. Or, kill herself. Ah, that is it—no more darkness, no more gleaming eyes. No more fighting the dull pain that seemed weighting—always weighting her down. One quick flash, and then—oblivion. Sleep. Forever and forever—sleep. No eyes staring, glaring at her from the outer dark. No more fear of Dalzene. Myrtle is dead. Coldfoot is dead. Everything—everything is dead. They would bury her beside her father and her mother—the men of Nolan, when they found her in the spring—and she could sleep. And he would never know. Toiling, delving, far in the high North for his red gold he would never know that she wanted him. That for weeks and for months her soul had been calling, calling to his soul. He would never know that her heart cried out to him in the bright summer midnight, and in the darkness of the eternal winter night. Had he forgotten her? Some day he would find his red gold, and then—But, here on Myrtle she would be sleeping the long, long sleep.

Slowly her hand felt along the wall, nearer and nearer the corner, closer and closer it drew to the black barrel of the rifle. Her groping fingers reached it, and with a short, quick cry she drew them away from the icy coldness of its touch. In the darkness Skookum bounded to her side, and his warm red tongue brushed her cheek. Life! Splendid, pulsing life was in the two great bounds that had carried him to her side! Slowly the girl closed her eyes. He, too, was alive. He would never run away from it all. He would never seek the long, long sleep. He would live! Live and beat down the thing that was conquering him! For eight years alone he had been fighting the North. And he would win! He would laugh at the North, even as he gouged the red gold from its bosom! And she, too, would laugh at the North! With startling distinctness, the image of Huloimee Tilakum rose before her. Tall and straight, with the lithe easy movement of rugged strength he stood before her. He was smiling, the illusive, half-smile that barely curved his lips, but radiated a little fan of wrinkles from the corners of his eyes. And those eyes! The blue-grey eyes were looking directly into hers—intense, piercing—devouring. Straight into her heart they looked, and all unconsciously they were telling her what his lips had never told! Lou Gordon sat bolt upright and her two arms flew about Skookum’s great neck. “I’m coming! I’m coming! Huloimee Tilakum! In your eyes I have seen it—love! Oh, I am coming to you—my love. Into the far North—beyond the timber—beyond men—we two!” She was sobbing aloud, and the words were pouring from her lips into the great lead dog’s ears. “We will go to him, Skookum. Just as soon as the thaw makes travel possible. We will hunt for him on the Colville! And we will find him. And together we will find his red gold! Myrtle is dead, but we are alive, Skookum—alive! And way in the white land beyond the mountains we will live, and love, and find gold—red gold. In his eyes I have read it! Not once but many times! But—I did not know—then! Eyes, Skookum—never again will we be afraid of the eyes in the dark!”