Chapter Chapter 57 · BOOK IV CHAPTER X

The dogs! The dogs were closing in. Nearer and nearer they drew, headed

by a fierce Mackenzie River bitch. They wondered why their master did

not wake; they wondered why the little tent was so still; why no plume

of smoke rose from the slim stovepipe. All was oddly quiet and lifeless.

No curses greeted them; no whiplash cut into them; no strong arm jerked

them over the harness. Perhaps it was a primordial instinct that drew

them on, that made them strangely bold. Perhaps it was only the despair

of their hunger, the ache of empty bellies. Closer and closer they crept

to the silent tent.

Locasto opened his eyes. Within a foot of his face were the fangs of a

malamute. At his slight movement it drew back with a snarl, and

retreated to the door. Locasto could see the other dogs crouching and

eyeing him fixedly. What could be the matter? What had gotten into the

brutes? Where was the Worm? Where were the provisions? Why was the tent

flap open and the stove stone-cold? Then with a dawning comprehension

that he had been deserted, Locasto uttered a curse and tried to rise.

At first he thought he was stiff with cold, but a downward glance showed

him his condition. He was helpless. He grew sick at the pit of his

stomach, and glared at the dogs. They were drawing in on him. They

seemed to bulk suddenly, to grow huge and menacing. Their gleaming teeth

snapped in his face. He could fancy these teeth stripping the flesh from

his body, gnawing at his bones with drooling jaws. Violently he

shuddered. He must try to free himself, so that at least he could fight.

Grimly the Worm had done his work, but he had hardly reckoned on the

strength of this man. With a vast throe of fear Locasto tried to free

himself. Tenser, tenser grew the thongs; they strained, they bit into

his flesh, but they would not break. Yet as he relaxed it seemed to him

they were less tight. Then he rested for another effort.

Once again the gaunt, grey bitch was crawling up. He remembered how

often he had starved it, clubbed it until it could barely stand. Now it

was going to get even. It would snap at his throat, rip out his

windpipe, bury its fangs in his bleeding flesh. He cursed it in the old

way. With a spring it backed out again and stood with the others. He

made another giant effort. Once again he felt the thongs strain and

strain; then, when he ceased, he imagined they were still looser.

The dogs seemed to have lost all fear. They stood in a circle within a

few feet of him, regarding him intently. They smelled the blood on his

head, and a slaver ran from their jaws. Again he cursed them, but this

time they did not move. They seemed to realise he could not harm them.

With their evilly-slanted eyes they watched his struggles. Strange,

wise, uncanny brutes, they were biding their time, waiting to rush in on

him, to rend him.

Again he tried to get free. Now he fancied he could move his arm a

little. He must hurry, for every instant the malamutes were growing

bolder. Another strain and a wrench. Ha! he was able to squeeze his

right arm from under the rawhide.

He felt the foul breath of the dogs on his face, and quickly he struck

at them. They jumped back, then, as if at a signal, they sprang in

again. There was no time to lose. They were attacking him in earnest.

Quickly he wrenched out his other arm. He was just in time, for the dogs

were upon him.

He struggled to his knees and shielded his head with his arms. Wildly he

swung at the nearest dog. Full on the face he struck it, and it shot

back as if hit by a bullet. But the others were on him. They had him

down, snarling and ripping, a mad ferment of fury. Two of them were

making for his face. As he lay on his back he gripped each by the

throat. His hands were torn and bleeding, but he had them fast. In his

grip of steel they struggled to free themselves in vain. They backed,

they writhed, they twisted in a bow. With his huge hands he was choking

them, choking them to death, using them as a shield against the other

three. Then slowly he worked himself into a sitting position. He hurled

one of the dogs to the tent door. He swung bludgeon blows at the others.

They fled yelping and howling. He still held the Mackenzie River bitch.

Getting his knee on her body, he bent her almost into a circle, bent

her till her back broke with a snap.

Then he rose and freed himself from the remaining thongs. He was torn

and cut and bleeding, but he had triumphed.

"Oh, the devil!" he growled, grinding his teeth. "He would have me

chewed to rags by malamutes."

He stared around.

"He's taken everything, the scum! left me to starve. Ha! one thing he's

forgotten--the matches. At least I can keep warm."

He picked up the canister of matches and relit the stove.

"I'll kill him for this," he muttered. "Night and day I'll follow him.

I'll camp on his trail till I find him. Then--I'll torture him; I'll

strip him and leave him naked in the snow."

He slipped into his snowshoes, gave a last look around to see that no

food had been left, and with a final growl of fury he started in

pursuit.

* * * * *

Ahead of him, ploughing their way through the virgin snow, he could see

the dragging track of the long snowshoes. He examined it, and noted that

it was sharp and crisp at the edges.

"He's got a good five hours' start of me! Travelling fast, too, by the

length of the track."

He had a thought of capturing the dogs and hitching them up; but,

thoroughly terrified, they had retreated into the woods. To overtake

this man, to glut his lust for revenge, he must depend on his own

strength and endurance.

"Now, Jack Locasto," he told himself grimly, "you've got a fight on your

hands, such a fight as you never had before. Get right down to it."

So, with head bowed and shoulders sloping forward, he darted on the

track of the Worm.

"He's got to break trail, the viper! and that's where I score. I can

make twice the time. Oh, just wait, you little devil! just wait!"

He ground his teeth vindictively, and put an inch more onto his stride.

He was descending a long, open valley that seemed from its trackless

snows to have been immemorially life-shunned and accursed. Black,

witch-like pines sentinelled its flanks, and accentuated its desolation.

And over all there was the silence of the Wild, that double-strong

solution of silence from which all other silences are distilled, and

spread out. Yet, as he gazed around him in this everlasting solitude,

there was no fear in his heart.

"I can fight this accursed land and beat it out every time," he exulted.

"It can't get any the better of me."

It was cold, so cold that it was difficult to imagine it could ever be

warm again. To expose flesh was to feel instantly the sharp sting that

heralds frostbite. As he ran, the sharp intake of icy air made his lungs

seem to contract. His eyes smarted and tingled. The lashes froze

closely. Ice formed in his nostrils and his nose began to bleed. He

pulled up a moment.

"Curse this infernal country!"

He had not eaten and the icy air begot a ravenous hunger. He dreamed of

food, but chiefly of bacon, fat, greasy bacon. How glorious it would be

just to eat of it, raw, tallow bacon! He had nothing to eat. He would

have nothing till he had overtaken the Worm. On! On!

He came to where the Worm had made a camp. There were the ashes of a

fire.

"Curse him; he's got some matches after all," he said with bitter

chagrin. Eagerly he searched all around in the snow to see if he could

not find even a crumb of food. There was nothing. He pushed on. Night

fell and he was forced to make camp.

Oh, he was hungry! The night was vastly resplendent, a spendthrift night

scattering everywhere its largess of stars. The cold had a crystalline

quality and the trees detonated strangely in the silence. He built a

huge fire: that at least he could have, and through eighteen hours of

darkness he crouched by it, afraid to sleep for fear of freezing.

"If I only had a tin to boil water in," he muttered; "there's lots of

reindeer moss, and I could stew some of my mucklucks. Ah! I'll try and

roast a bit of them."

He cut a strip from the Indian boots he was wearing, and held it over

the fire. The hair singed away and the corners crisped and charred. He

put it in his mouth. It was pleasantly warm, but even his strong teeth

refused to meet in it. However, he tore it into smaller pieces, and

bolted them.

At last the dawn came, that evil, sneaking, corpse-like dawn, and

Locasto flung himself once more on the trail. He was not feeling so fit

now. Hunger and loss of blood had weakened him so that his stride

insensibly shortened, and his step had lost its spring. However, he

plodded on doggedly, an incarnation of vengeance and hate. Again he

examined the snowshoe trail ever stretching in front, and noticed how

crisped and hard was its edge. He was not making the time he had

reckoned on. The Worm must be a long way ahead.

Still he did not despair. The little man might rest a day, or oversleep,

or strain a sinew, then-- Locasto pictured with gloating joy the

terror of the Worm as he awoke to find himself overtaken. Oh, the snake!

the vermin! On! On!

Beyond a doubt he was growing weaker. Once or twice he stumbled, and the

last time he lay a few moments before rising. He wanted to rest badly.

The cold was keener than ever; it was merciless; it was excruciating. He

no longer had the vitality to withstand it. It stabbed and stung him

whenever he exposed bare flesh. He pulled the parka hood very close, so

that only his eyes peered out. So he moved through the desolation of the

Arctic Wild, a dark, muffled figure, a demon of vengeance, fierce and

menacing.

He stood on a vast, still plateau. The sky was like a great grotto of

ice. The land lay in a wan apathy of suffering, dumb, hopeless, drear.

Icy land and icy sky met in a trap, a trap that held him fast; and over

all, vast, titanic, terrible, the Spirit of the Wild seemed to brood. It

laughed at him, a laugh of derision, of mockery, of callous gloating

triumph. Locasto shuddered. Then night came and he built another giant

fire.

Again he bolted down some roasted muckluck. Overhead the stars glittered

vindictively. They were green and blue and red, and they had spiny rays

like starfish on which they danced. This night he had to make tremendous

efforts to keep from sleeping. Several times he drowsed forward, and

almost fell into the fire. As he crouched there his beard was singeing

and his face scorched, but his back seemed as if it was cased in ice.

Often he would turn and warm it at the fire, but not for long. He hated

to face the terror of the silence and the dark, the shadow where waited

Death. Better the crackling cheer of the spruce flame.

At dawn the sky was leaden and the cold less despotic. Stretching

interminably ahead was that lonely snowshoe trail. Locasto was puzzled.

"Where in creation is the little devil going to, anyway?" he said,

knitting his brows. "I figured he'd make direct for Dawson, but he's

either changed his mind or got a wrong steer. By Heavens, that's it--the

little varmint's lost his way."

Locasto had an Indian's unerring sense of location.

"I guess I can't afford to follow him any more," he reflected. "I've

gone too far already. I'm all petered out. I'll have to let him go in

the meantime. It's save yourself, Jack Locasto, while there's yet time.

Me for Dawson."

He struck off almost at right angles to the trail he had been following,

over a low range of hills. It was evil going, and as he broke through

the snow-crust mile after wearing mile, he felt himself grow weaker and

weaker. "Buck up, old man," he adjured himself fiercely. "You've got to

fight, fight."

There was a strange stillness in the air, not the natural stillness of

the Wild, but an unhealthy one, as of a suspension of something, of a

vacuum, of bated breath. It was curiously full of terror. More and more

he felt like a trapped animal, caught in a vast cage. The sky to the

north was glooming ominously. Every second the horizon grew blacker,

more bodeful, and Locasto stared at it, with a sudden quake at his

heart.

"Blizzard, by thunder!" he gasped.

Was that a breath of wind that stung his cheek? Was it a snowflake that

drifted along with it? Denser and denser grew the gloom, and now there

was a roaring as of a great wind. King Blizzard was come.

"I guess I'm done for," he hissed through clenched teeth. "But I'll

fight to the finish. I'll die game."