Nearer and nearer he drew, and, as the shadows came down toward him, his pace increased almost to a run. Finally the last sheltering snow bank was left behind and a low broken scrub replaced it. He breathed a deep sigh; the sigh of a man who is relieved beyond words. The gray, familiar gloom of the forest overshadowed him, and he was content. Just for a few moments he paused for breath. Then his restless spirit urged him on, and, plunging forward, the solemn twilight of the forest swallowed him up.
For quite a while he hurried on like a flitting shadow in the midst of a world of shadows. Then, finally, he paused listening. The grave-like silence was quite unbroken by any sign of life. Nothing came to him stirring the echoes of that ages-old world. He strained hard for some familiar sound that might guide him to the spot where the mysterious camp lay. But no such sound was forthcoming.
CHAPTER V
THE SHADOW OF DEATH
A deep stillness prevailed while the man stood in profound contemplation of the figure beneath the covering of furs. The silent woods suggested the calm of a shadowed sepulcher. The shrouded figure lying at his feet completed the suggestion.
Tug's eyes, if unsympathetic, were at least anxious. The sunken features of his companion filled him with a curious feeling of superstitious awe at the stealing, subtle approach of death. Death, in the abstract, had no terrors for him. The sight of a life suddenly jolted out of earthly existence would have disturbed him not at all; but this steady march, this almost imperceptible progress, stirred those feelings of superstition which underlie all human life.
He noted the hungry shadows of an unearthly blue which surrounded the sunken eyes, and filled the hollow sockets. The greenish tinge in the pallid flesh revolted him; the lips, so drawn, with all their ruddy ripeness gone, left him with a feeling of positive nausea; while the utter helplessness in the way the trunk collapsed beyond the rough pillow supporting the lolling head, left him shrinking at the thought of the speeding life whose ebb he was powerless to check.
Well enough he knew that death was hovering well within sight. Poor Charlie, the companion of his fortunes, was rapidly passing away. There was no help he could bestow, no real help. All he could do was to minister to each whim expressed in the thin, struggling voice; for the rest the march of Death must go on. For many days the end had been steadily approaching, and now the icy breath in the shadow of Death's hovering wings seemed to add a chill to the wintry air, and freeze up the heart in his own robust body.
Tug's expression was one of hopeless incompetence. He wondered, as he had wondered for days, what he could do to help the sufferer. He knew that pneumonia had laid its clutch upon the poor wretch's lungs, and all treatment for it was a riddle to which he found no answer.