He and Case were early astir in the morning and stole out of the cabin softly so as not to awaken the sleepers. It was still dark, but the stars were shining like glimmering lanterns hung far above their heads and the black mass of the towering mountain rose dimly from its white carpeted base to serve them as a mighty guide post pointing out their way. By the time the two boys rounded the mountain’s base and entered the cove beyond, the dim twilight had driven the darkness to flight and they easily found the little cabin nestling up against the mountain side. Theirs was a gruesome task and they went to work at it with reluctant hands. The ground was too firmly frozen to dig a grave so they did the best they could. They carried the gruesome object up to the foot of a big wide-spread spruce and laid it down. Then they covered it with a thick layer of fragrant spruce boughs; upon this mound they leaned up some loose planks and around the whole built up a mound of stones to protect the one beneath from hunger-maddened wolves. This task done they skirted the edge of the cove, looking for any trace of other human habitation along its shore. Both had felt that their enemies might be camped in this very cove but their search pretty well convinced them that this was not so likely. “There’s no telling where they may be now,” Case said. “To look for them in this great, desolate frozen country would be like looking for a needle in a hay stack. They may be camped within a mile of us, or, again, they may be hundreds of miles away by now. Our trouble is that we do not know just when the stuff was taken and we can find no tracks that tell which way the thieves went. Better give it up. We have got a lot to do before the real winter sets in. We ought to start in tomorrow and begin our trading in earnest. We want a lot more furs and most of all we need meat, all we can get of it. It will keep all winter. We may not be fit to work later on,” he concluded significantly.
“You’re right,” Clay agreed reluctantly. “We will start out tomorrow for the next village. But all the same,” he added, “I have a feeling that those fellows are near us now just waiting for a good chance to get at Ike. One of us two must always stay behind. Two are enough to go with the team anyway. The other two, with Captain Joe on watch, had ought to take care of themselves and the boat all right. Well, we can do nothing more here. We had better get back to the Rambler before the boys get too curious and come hunting us up.”
They found a hot breakfast awaiting them and the boys finished the computing of the Rambler’s stores, a process which Ike with pencil and paper in hand, was enjoying hugely.
“This committee finds,” he announced, “that if we all eats like Alex here there is plenty of food for two months yet. If we eats only enough to live on there be food for four months, maybe. If we feed the dogs Indian fashion, just a little at a time, you understand, there will be quite a lot of salmon left for us. That is all, I think, gentlemen, except the dogs. But Alex here says he will shoot any one who touches Buck and I do the same for Captain Joe, for he helps save my life one time, you understand.”
Clay laughed. “Why, we are not near so bad off as I expected,” he said, brightly. “Almost anything can happen in two months. I’ve got a hunch boys, that everything is going to turn out all right. Let’s keep on full rations for two weeks more, then we can cut down gradually if we see we need to. We had better give the dogs their double rations while they are working and cut it down to the usual feed when they are idle. Now let’s put the stores back where they belong and wash up the dishes and then go out and cut up firewood. This fine weather is not going to last forever. There are going to be days when no one will hanker to go out in the cold and chop wood. Better get up a good pile now when we have the time.” The boys knocked off work at sunset, and after they had finished their evening meal, Clay brought out from his locker a pack of cards, a checker board, and a chess board with its queens and pawns. “Lucky I thought to bring these,” he said. “They will help to pass the time. Let’s have a game and then turn in, for Case and Ike will have to get an early start in the morning.” The boys made merry over the game that followed, but deep down in each young heart was the creeping dread of that scourge of the Northland, scurvy. Clay expressed it when he said, thoughtlessly, “We had ought to save those few potatoes for Christmas. We want to have a special feast Christmas day.”
Case and Ike were gone for three days, but they came back with a pack of fine furs and over a half of a frozen moose.
The next trip, made by Clay and Alex, was more daring. They were gone ten days and brought back all the meat the sled could carry. But their faces were grave. At Holy Cross there was not a potato—which had been their real object in making the trip. Forty were helpless with the disease and more coming down every day with it. Indians who had come down from Dawson lately, reported that their weight in gold dust was being offered for potatoes with no takers. From St. Michael’s came like reports. At Nome there were plenty, but no one could cross the heaving seas of ice floes that separate it from St. Michael’s.
That was the team’s last trip. For news of the boy traders, who paid so liberally for what they bought, spread from village to village and they did not have to seek trade. It came to them. Hardly a day passed without seeing at the Rambler’s door a sled load of meat or furs. The boys erected a scaffolding near the Rambler up above the reach of the dogs and it was soon full of frozen meat, while the packs of furs in the Rambler were fast filling up the cabin to the point of inconvenience. All the traders brought stories of the ravages of the scurvy in the villages they had come from the secret dread in the boys’ hearts grew.
One morning, after two days of steady snow, they awoke to find the earth deeply covered with white. Their thermometer hung outside, registering sixty degrees below zero, while over river and land was the quietness of death.
The Great White Silence, about which they had heard so much, had come. It seemed almost evil to speak aloud in the breathlessness of this death-like quietness. As the days passed, it bore down on the lads’ souls until they sat silent for hours at a time. But deeper than the fear of the White Silence was that deeper menace hanging over them and daily growing closer.