Hugging the grateful warmth of an expiring camp fire, the figures of two stalwart men lay stretched out on the hard, frozen ground, bundled up in heavy army blankets. The mercury was forty-five below zero and still falling, but they did not appear to mind. Gaunt and hollow-eyed, enfeebled from long fasting, they had succumbed at last to utter physical exhaustion, and fallen into a sound and merciful sleep.
All Nature slept with them. The distant howling of wolves and the occasional scream of an eagle only served to intensify the universal stillness. The sepulchral silence of the Far North enveloped everything like an invisible mantle. Away to the east, the first gray mists of approaching daylight were creeping over the jagged mountain tops. The cold was intense. The snow was so deep in spots that the entire landscape was obliterated; only the trees, marvellously festooned with lace-like icicles, and a few huge, fire-scarred rocks which here and there thrust their jagged points above the surface, remained of the desolate marsh and forest land. Everywhere, as far as the eye could carry, was a trackless waste of snow drift.
The men lay motionless; only by their deep, rhythmical breathing could one know that they were alive. Dead to the world, they were as insensible to the cutting wind which, with the force of a half-gale, swept over the icy plains, sending the last flickering embers of their fire up in a cloud of flying sparks, as they were to the pain in their fever-racked bodies.
It was lucky they were still able to make a fire. The flames gave them warmth and kept the wolves at bay. But for that and the occasional small game they had been able to shoot, they would have perished long ago, and then the gold-fever would have claimed two victims more. For days and days they had tramped aimlessly through that wild region, prospecting for the yellow metal, until, footsore and weary, nature at last gave way. They had lost their bearings and could go no farther. Miles away from the nearest human habitation, they were face to face with death from starvation. Then the weather changed; it suddenly grew very cold; before they knew it, the blizzard was upon them. The suffering had been terrible, the obstacles inconceivable, yet they never faltered. A goal lay before them, and they pushed right on, determined to attain it. The prospector for gold plays for heavy stakes—a fortune or his life. Never willing to acknowledge defeat, undeterred by continual, heart-breaking disappointment, still he pushes on. Spurred by the irresistible lure of gold, there is no place so dangerous or so difficult of access that he will not penetrate to it. In winter he perishes of cold, in summer he is overcome by the heat, yet no matter. Nothing short of death itself can stop him in his determined, insensate quest for wealth.
It grew gradually lighter. The sky was overcast and threatening. A light snow began to fall. One of the men shivered and opened his eyes. Looking stupidly about him, with a long-drawn-out yawn, first at the dying fire, then at his still unconscious mate, he jumped up with a shout. At first he was too dazed with sleep to stand straight, and his teeth chattered from the cold. He was also ravenously hungry. But first they must think of the fire. That must be kept up at all costs. He was so weak that he staggered, and his clothes hung from him in rags; but shambling over to where his companion lay, he shook him roughly:
"Hello, Jim—hello, there! The d——d fire is almost out. Quick, man!"
Thus unceremoniously aroused from his trance-like slumber, John Madison, or what remained of him, lifted his head and painfully raised himself on one elbow. He was a pitiable-looking object. His hair, all dishevelled and matted, hung down over haggard-looking eyes; his cheeks were hollow from hunger, his ghastly pale face, livid from the cold, was covered with several weeks' growth of beard. From head to foot he was filthy and neglected from lack of the necessaries of life, and there was in his staring eyes a haunted, terrified look—the look of a man who has been face to face with death and yet lived to tell the tale. His remaining rags barely covered his emaciated, trembling frame. Shoes had gone long ago. His bleeding, frost-bitten feet were partly protected with coarse sacking tied with string. No one could have recognized in this human derelict the strapping specimen of proud manhood who six weeks before had said good-by to Laura and started out light-heartedly to conquer the world. Instead, the world had conquered him.
Throwing off the blanket, he staggered to his feet. He felt sick and dizzy. Once he reeled and nearly fell. Twenty hours without food takes the backbone out of any man, and it was as bad as that, with no prospect of anything better. Weakly he stooped, and gathering up a little snow, put it in his mouth. Then his face winced with pain. The hunger pangs were there again. Stamping the ground and exercising his arms vigorously for a few moments, to get his blood in circulation, he turned, and, stooping down again to his couch, drew from under the roll of blanket that had served him for a pillow, a formidable-looking Colt six-shooter and a girl's photograph. The Colt he slipped between his rags; the picture he pressed to his lips.
"God bless you, little one!" he murmured.
His companion, who was busy bending over the fire, trying to coax it back to life, happened to look up.