Connie returned to the fire as the dogs gnawed and snarled at their unexpected meal. There was plenty of coffee, now, and while the boy tossed the grounds onto the snow and refilled the pot, Waseche Bill whittled a pipe of tobacco, and stretched lazily upon his robe in the warmth of the crackling flames.
"We-all must bury him decent," he began, with a nod toward the igloo, as they sipped at the black coffee. "An' we must remembeh that name, Pete Mateese, the man he was huntin' fo'. If he's alive, he'd like to know. He was his pa'dneh, I reckon. Seems like, from what the book says, he neveh know'd about the strike." The man's eyes roved for a moment over the distant peaks, and he continued: "It's too bad we cain't dig no reg'lar grave fo' him, but it would take a good week to thaw out the ground, an' them fish ain't goin' to hold out only to the next cache. But I know anotheh way that's good, heah. The rock wall yondeh shades the igloo so it won't neveh melt; leastwise, it ain't apt to. Las' summeh's sun neveh fazed it 'cept to sog it down all the mo' solid. We'll give him a coffin of ice, an' his igloo fo' a tomb of snow. I'd a heap sooneh have it that-a-way than like them ol' king of Egyp's, that's buried in the stone pyramids out on the aidge of the desert, somewheahs. I seen one, onct, in the dime museum in Chicago. Ferry O'Tolliveh, his name was, I recollect, an' the man that run the place give a consid'able lecture about him. Seems like he was embalmed, they call it, which means he was spiced an' all wrapped up in, I think he said it was a mile an' three-quahtehs of bandages, anyhow, they was a raft of 'em, 'cause I counted mo'n a hund'ed layehs of cloth wheah they'd cut th'ough to get to his face. Which it must of be'n a heap of wo'k without they put him in a lathe; anyways, theah he was, afteh bein' dead mo'n two thousan' yeahs!
"The man said how the embalmin' of them ol' Egyp' undehtakehs is a lost aht, an' I reckon, afteh takin' a look at Mr. Ferry O'Tolliveh, fo'ks is glad it is. He looked like the bottom row of a kit of herring. The man said his mummy was theah, too, but I didn't stop fo' to look at her—I seen all I wanted of the O'Tollivehs from lookin' at Ferry, but him bein' the only king I eveh seen, I'm glad I done it, even if he hadn't kep' well.
"Now, with Carlson, heah, it will be diffe'nt. He'll be jest the same two thousan' yeahs from now as he is today, an' was the day he died. Ice is ice, an' if it don't melt it'll stay ice till the crack of doom."
The two set about the work with a will. The provisions were carried outside, the dead man's effects ranged about the base of the circular wall, and his robes spread in the centre of the igloo upon the hard-packed floor of snow. The body was wrapped in its blankets and laid upon the robes, and Connie Morgan and Waseche Bill gazed for the last time upon the face of Carlson, the intrepid man of the North who, like hundreds of others, lured by the call of gold, braved the unknown terrors of the silent land to pass for ever from the haunts of man. There was that in the strong, clean-cut features of the bearded face to make them pause. Here was a man! A man who, in the very strength and force of him, pushed beyond the barriers, defied the frozen desert, and from her ice-locked bosom tore the secret of the great white wilderness; and then, in the bigness of his heart, turned his back upon the goal of his heart's desire and faced death calmly in vain search for his absent partner.
"The boy's lips moved in prayer, the only one he had ever learned."
Instinctively, the small boy removed his cap and dropped to his knees beside the dead man, and opposite him, awkwardly, reverently, with bared head, knelt Waseche Bill. The boy's lips moved and in the cold, dead gloom of the snow igloo, his voice rang high and thin in the words of the only prayer he had ever learned:
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
"Amen."
"Amen," repeated Waseche Bill huskily, and together they left the igloo.