He had estimated his journey back to occupy two days, but he meant to do it in one. Illness on the trail meant death, and little as Life meant to him now, the natural desire to fight for it mastered the inclination to lay down and succumb to the fever and the elements.
Hour after hour the sled whirled along. Once he stopped and mechanically gave the dogs 231 a meal. He became transformed into an automaton, acting by some subliminal power that set his direction correctly and assisted to maintain his body in an upright position.
Only one part of his brain functioned, and that part was memory. All the outstanding incidents of his adventurous career passed before him in perspective. He saw himself fighting and winning from the time when first he had set out with a gripsack to seek a fortune in the wide plains of the West. At the end of this remarkable chain of successes was the dismal picture of his present failure. A woman, rather than suffer subjugation at his hands, had perjured her soul in a dreadful lie.
D’Arcy was right. Souls were not to be bought or “broken-in.” He had won in the old days because the primitive law prevailed in all things. No longer did that work. Civilization assessed man on a different basis. The Law of the Wild had been superseded by other qualities—qualities which, presumably, he did not possess. It was a bitter enough awakening for him to feel himself a failure. Wandering, half deliriously, in a vicious mental circle he came 232 again and again to that point. He had failed in the great test—he had failed to win the heart of the woman he truly loved. So much for all those physical attributes! They conquered women in the stone age. They might conquer women now, of a kind, but they were futile weapons to employ against a modern woman, benefiting by centuries of progress and culture, with fine mentality and inflexible will.
What then were the qualities that counted? Was it love? No, not love, for his bosom was bursting with it. Not sacrifice, for he would have died for her—and she must know it. Was it Culture? Was it Education? Chivalry?
His tortured brain could find no answer. The woman herself had faced that same inward tribunal. To her, too, the obstacle was not quite clear. But it was pride of birth. It saturated her; it subjugated all passions, all emotions. It rendered her incapable of exercising her real feelings. She had placed the man low down in the scale, and had kept him there by the mere consciousness of this accident of birth.
The man behind the sled ceased to ponder the enigma. His mind became a complete blank as 233 the shack hove into sight along the valley. He lurched from side to side as the dogs, scenting their kennel, increased their speed.
The sled hit a tree, and flung him to the ground, but the dogs went on. He raised himself to his knees, his teeth chattering in ghastly fashion. His half-blind eyes could just make out the hut in the distance, a black smudge against the pure white snow. With a great effort he began to crawl towards his refuge.... His legs felt like lead and soon refused to respond to the weakened will that moved them.
He uttered a deep groan and collapsed in the snow, his head buried in his great arms.