The Indian woman shook her head: "Do not say it like that," she answered, "For those were the words of my man when he, too, left to find gold. And when the river broke up in the spring he did not come back to me—for the grinding ice-cakes caught his canoe, and he was crushed to death in a rapids."
VI
For four long nights and four short days MacFarlane worked at the digging of a grave. It was a beautiful spot he chose to be the last resting place of his young wife—a high, spruce-covered promontory that jutted out into a lake. The cabin and its surroundings had grown intolerable to him, so that he worked furiously, attacking the iron-hard ground with fire, and ice-chisel, and spade. At last it was done and placing the body of his wife in the rough pole coffin, he placed it upon his sled and locking the dogs in the cabin, hauled it himself to the promontory and lowered it into the grave. Then he shoveled back the frozen earth, and erected a wooden cross upon which was burned deep her name, and returning to the cabin, slept the clock around.
If MacFarlane had been himself he would have heeded the signs of approaching storm. But he
had become obsessed with desire to leave that place with its haunting memories, where every mute object seemed to whisper to him of his loved ones. He was talking and mumbling to himself as he harnessed his dogs and headed into the North at the breaking of a day.
Three hours after MacFarlane hit the trail he left the sparsely timbered country behind and struck into a vast treeless plain whose glaring white surface was cut here and there by rugged ridges of basalt which terminated abruptly in ledges of bare rock.
At noon he made a fireless camp, ate some pilot bread, and caribou meat. The air was still—ominously dead and motionless to one who knew the North. But MacFarlane gave no heed, nor did he even notice that though there were no clouds in the sky, the low-hung sun showed dull and coppery through a steel-blue fog. He bolted his food and pressed on. Before him was no guiding landmark. He laid his course by the compass and held straight North across the treeless rock-ribbed plain. The man's lean face looked pinched and drawn. For a week he had taken his sleep in short fitful snatches, in his chair beside the cabin stove, or with his back against a tree while he waited for the fire to bite a few inches deeper into the frozen ground as he toiled at the lonely grave. On and on he mushed at the head of his dogs, his eyes, glowing feverbright, stared fixedly from between red-rimmed lids
straight into the steel blue fog bank that formed his northern horizon. And as he walked, he talked incessantly—now arguing with old Molaire, who predicted dire things, and refused to believe that there was gold in the North—now telling Margot of his hopes and planning his future—and again, telling stories to little Margot of Goldilocks and the three little bears, and of where the caribou got their horns.
The blue fog thickened. From somewhere far ahead sounded a low whispering roar—the roar of mightly wind, muffled by its burden of snow. When the first blast struck, MacFarlane tottered in his tracks, then lowering his head, leaned against it and pushed on. Following the gust was a moment of calm. Behind him the dogs whimpered uneasily. MacFarlane did not hear them, nor did he hear the roar of the onrushing wind.
Around a corner of a rock ledge a scant two hundred yards ahead of him, appeared a great grey shape, running low. The shape halted abruptly and circled wide. It was followed by other shapes—gaunt, and grey, and ugly, between whose back-curled lips white fangs gleamed. The wolf pack, forty strong, was running before the storm, heading southward for the timber. Whining with terror, MacFarlane's dogs crowded about his legs in a sudden rush. The man went down and struggled to his feet, cursing, and laying about him with clubbed rifle. Then the storm struck in all its fury. Mac