“We’re all going to have supper then. Best wait.” Then, after a pause: “Where from?”
“Forty Mile Creek,” said the other.
“You don’t say! Alone?”
There was a curious saving of words in this man’s mode of speech. Possibly he had learned this method from his Indian associates.
The traveller nodded.
“Yes.”
“Where to?”
“The sea-coast.”
The half-breed laughed gutturally.
“Forty Mile Creek. Sea-coast. On foot. Alone. Winter. You must be mad.”
The traveller shook his head.
“Not mad. I could have done it, only I lost my way. I had all my stages thought out carefully. I tramped from the sea-coast originally. Where am I now?”
The half-breed eyed the speaker curiously. He seemed to think well before he answered. Then–
“Within a few miles of the Pass. To the north.”
An impressive silence followed. The half-breed continued to eye the sick man, and, to judge from the expression of his face, his thoughts were not altogether unpleasant. He watched the weary face before him until the eyes gradually closed, and, in spite of the burning pains of the frost-bites, exhaustion did its work, and the man slept. He waited for some moments listening to the heavy, regular breathing, then he turned to his companions and spoke long and earnestly in a curious tongue. One of the Eskimos rose and removed a piece of bacon from a nail in the wall. This he placed in the camp-kettle on the stove. Then he took a tin billy and dipped it full from a bucket containing beans that had been set to soak. These also went into the camp-kettle. Then the fellow threw himself down again upon his blankets, and, for some time, the three men continued to converse in low tones. They glanced frequently at the sleeper, and occasionally gurgled out a curious throaty chuckle. Their whole attitude was furtive, and the man slept on.
An hour passed–two. The third was more than half gone. The hut reeked with the smell of cooking victuals. The Eskimo, who seemed to act as cook, occasionally looked into the camp-kettle. The other two were lying on their blankets, sometimes conversing, but more often silent, gazing stolidly before them. At length the cook uttered a sharp ejaculation and lifted the steaming kettle from its place on the stove. Then he produced four deep pannikins from a sack, and four greasy-looking spoons. From another he produced a pile of biscuits. “Hard tack,” well known on the northern trails.
Supper was ready, and the pock-marked man leant over and roused the traveller.
“Food,” he said laconically, as the startled sleeper rubbed his eyes.
The man sat up and gazed hungrily at the iron pot. The Indian served out the pork with ruthless hands. A knife divided the piece into four, and he placed one in each pannikin. Then he poured the beans and soup over each portion. The biscuits were placed within reach, and the supper was served.
The sick man devoured his uncouth food with great relish. The soup which had been first given him had done him much good, and now the “solid” completed the restoration so opportunely begun. He was a vigorous man, and his exhaustion had chiefly been brought about by lack of food. Now, as he sat with his empty pannikin in front of him, he looked gratefully over at his rescuers, and slowly munched some dry biscuit, and sipped occasionally from a great beaker of black coffee. Life was very sweet to him at that moment, and he thought joyfully of the belt inside his clothes laden with the golden result of his labours on Forty Mile Creek.
Now the half-breed turned to him.
“Feeling pretty good?” he observed, conversationally.
“Yes, thanks to you and your friends. You must let me pay you for this.” The suggestion was coarsely put. Returning strength was restoring the stranger to his usual condition of mind. There was little refinement about this man from the Yukon.
The other waived the suggestion.
“Sour-belly’s pretty good tack when y’ can’t get any better. Been many days on the road?”
“Three weeks.” The traveller was conscious of three pairs of eyes fixed upon his face.
“Hoofing right along?”
“Yes. I missed the trail nearly a week back. Followed the track of a dog-train. It came some distance this way. Then I lost it.”
“Ah! Food ran out, maybe.”
The half-breed had now turned away, and was gazing at the stove as though it had a great fascination for him.
“Yes, I meant to make the Pass where I could lay in a fresh store. Instead of that I wandered on till I found the empty pack got too heavy, then I left it.”
“Left it?” The half-breed raised his two little tufts of eyebrows, but his eyes remained staring at the stove.
“Oh, it was empty–clean empty. You see, I didn’t trust anything but food in my pack.”
“No. That’s so. Maybe gold isn’t safe in a pack?”
The pock-marked face remained turned towards the glowing stove. The man’s manner was quite indifferent. It suggested that he merely wished to talk.
The traveller seemed to draw back into his shell at the mention of gold. A slight pause followed.
“Maybe you ain’t been digging up there?” the half-breed went on presently.
“It’s rotten bad digging on the Creek,” the traveller said, clumsily endeavouring to evade the question.
“So I’ve heard,” said the half-breed.
He had produced a pipe, and was leisurely filling it from a pouch of antelope hide. His two companions did the same. The stranger took his pipe from his fur coat pocket and cut some tobacco from a plug. This he offered to his companions, but it was rejected in favour of their own.
“The only thing I’ve had–that and my fur coat–to keep me from freezing to death for more than four days. Haven’t so much as seen a sign of life since I lost the dog track.”
“This country’s a terror,” observed the half-breed emphatically.
All four men lit their pipes. The sick man only drew once or twice at his, then he laid it aside. The process of smoking caused the blisters on his face to smart terribly.
“Gives your face gyp,” said the half-breed, sympathetically. “Best not bother to smoke to-night.”
He pulled vigorously at his own pipe, and the two Indians followed suit. And gradually a pleasant odour, not of tobacco but some strange perfume, disguised the reek of the atmosphere. It was pungent but delightful, and the stranger remarked upon it.
“What’s that you are smoking?” he asked.
For one instant the half-breed’s eyes were turned upon him with a curious look. Then he turned back to the contemplation of the stove.
“Kind o’ weed that grows around these wilds,” he answered. “Only stuff we get hereabouts. It’s good when you’re used to it.” He laughed quietly.
The stranger looked from one to the other of his three companions. He was struck by a sudden thought.
“What do you do here? I mean for a living?”
“Trap,” replied the Breed shortly.
“Many furs about?”
“Fair.”
“Slow work,” said the stranger, indifferently.
Then a silence fell. The wayfarer was getting very drowsy. The pungent odour from his companions’ pipes seemed to have a strangely soothing effect upon him. Before he was aware of it he caught himself nodding, and, try as he would, he could not keep his heavy eyelids open. The men smoked on in silence. Three pairs of eyes watched the stranger’s efforts to keep awake,