Connie Morgan in Alaska

by James B. Hendryx

With the coming of darkness, they camped at the fork of a frozen river where a sparse growth of stunted willow gave promise of firewood and scant shelter. They were in a new world, now—a world, trackless and unknown, for during the afternoon they had passed beyond O'Brien's farthest venture and the Irishman was as ignorant of what lay before them as were Connie and Waseche Bill, who knew only that they were in the midst of a trackless void of seething snow, with the White Indians behind them and Alaska before—and all about them, death, grim and silent, and gaunt—death that stalked close, ready on the instant to take its toll, as it had taken its toll from other men who had braved the Lillimuit and never again returned.

"She's a reg'lah blizzahd, now," remarked Waseche, as he lighted his pipe with a brand from the camp-fire. "Any otheh time, we'd lay by an' wait fo' it to weah down—but, we dastn't stop."

"The Indians will never pick up our trail when this storm quits," ventured Connie.

"No—'ceptin' they're wise that we-all tuck out this-away, havin' followed O'Brien almost this fah befo'."

"Aye—her-re, or her-re abouts," assented the Irishman, "we nade an-nyways wan mor-re day av thrailin' before we hole up, an' me'be be that toime th' star-rm will be wor-re out."

On the morning of the third day they again started in the dull grey of the dawn. Waseche, with lowered head, bored through the white smother that surrounded them like a wall of frozen fog. The dogs, still in good heart, humped bravely to the pull, and Connie and O'Brien, with hands clutching the tail-ropes of the sleds, followed blindly. On and on they plodded, halting at intervals only long enough to consult the compass, for with nothing to sight by, they held their course by the aid of the needle alone.

Suddenly Connie's sled stopped so abruptly that the boy tripped and sprawled at full length beside its canvas-covered pack, while behind him, Waseche's leaders, in charge of O'Brien, swerved sharply to avoid the savage fangs of Slasher—for the wolf-dog knew his kind—he knew that, once down, a man is meat, and the moment the boy fell helpless into the snow, the great, gaunt brute surged back in the traces, jerking old Boris and Mutt with him, and stood guard over the prostrate form of his master, where he growled defiance into the faces of the dogs of the following team. Scrambling hastily to his feet, Connie was joined by O'Brien and together they stumbled forward where McDougall's big ten-team had piled up in a growling, snapping tangle upon the very brink of a perpendicular precipice. For the leaders had leaped back from the edge so suddenly that they fouled the swing dogs which, with tooth and nail, and throaty growl, were protesting against the indignity.

"Where's Waseche!" The voice of the boy cut high and thin above the roar of the storm-choked wind, and O'Brien ceased abruptly his endeavour to straighten out the fighting malamutes. He stumbled hastily to the boy's side, but Waseche was no place to be seen, and upon the verge of the chasm, the overhanging snow-rim was gouged deep and fresh with a man-made scar.

The dogs were forgotten, and for a long moment the two stood peering over the edge, striving to penetrate the writhing whirl of snow-powder that filled the yawning abyss—but the opaque mass gave no hint of the depth or extent of the chasm. Again and again they shouted, but their voices were drowned in the bellow of the wind, and to their ears was borne no faintest answering call.