Chapter XII: On the Trail

At noon Joe Pete swung the outfit into the lee of a thicket, built a fire, and brewed tea. Brent woke up and the Indian loosened the _babiche_ line that had secured him, coiled the rope carefully, and without a word, went on with his preparation of the meal. Brent staggered and stumbled about in the snow in an effort to restore circulation to his numbed arms and legs. His head ached fiercely, and when he could in a measure control his movements, he staggered to the fire. Joe Pete tendered him a cup of steaming tea. Brent smelled of the liquid with disgust: "To hell with tea!" he growled thickly, "I want hooch. I've got to have it--just one drink."

Joe Pete drank a swallow of tea, and munched unconcernedly at a piece of pilot bread.

"Give me a drink of hooch! Didn't you hear me? I need it," demanded Brent.

"Hooch no good. Tea good. Ain' got no hooch--not wan drink."

"No hooch!" cried Brent, "I tell you I've got to have it! I thought I could get away with it, this trailing without hooch--but, I can't. How far have we come?"

"Bout 'leven mile."

"Well, just as soon as you finish eating you turn that dog team around. We're going back." Brent was consumed by a torturing thirst. He drank the tea in great gulps and extended his cup for more. He drank a second and a third cup, and the Indian offered him some bread. Brent shook his head:

"I can't eat. I'm sick. Hurry up and finish, and hit the back-trail as fast as those dogs can travel."

Joe Pete finished his meal, washed the cups, and returned the cooking outfit to its appointed place on the load.

"You goin' ride?" he asked.

"No, I'll walk. Got to walk a while or I'll freeze."

The Indian produced from the pack a pair of snowshoes and helped Brent to fasten them on. Then he swung the dogs onto the trail and continued on his course.

"Here you!" cried Brent, "Pull those dogs around! We're going back to Dawson."

Joe Pete halted the dogs and walked back to where Brent stood beside the doused fire: "Mebbe-so we goin' back Dawson," he said, "But, firs' we goin' Fo't Norman. You tak hol' tail-rope, an' mush."

A great surge of anger swept Brent. His eyes, red-rimmed and swollen from liquor, and watery from the glare of the new fallen snow, fairly blazed. He took a step forward and raised his arm as though to strike the Indian: "What do you mean? Damn you! Who is running this outfit? I've changed my mind. I'm not going to Fort Norman."

Joe Pete did not even step back from the up-lifted arm. "You ain' change _my_ min' none. You droonk. I ain' hear you talk. Bye-m-bye, you git sober, Joe Pete hear you talk. You grab tail-rope now or I tie you oop agin."

Suddenly Brent realized that he was absolutely in this man's power. For the first time in his life he felt utterly helpless. The rage gave place to a nameless fear: "How far is it to Fort Norman?" he asked, in an unsteady voice.

"'Bout fi' hondre mile."

"Five hundred miles! I can't stand the trip, I tell you. I'm in no condition to stand it. I'll die!"

The Indian shrugged--a shrug that conveyed to Brent more plainly than words that Joe Pete conceded the point, and that if it so happened, his demise would be merely an incident upon the trail to Fort Norman. Brent realized the futility of argument. As well argue with one of the eternal peaks that flung skyward in the distance. For he, at least, knew Joe Pete. In the enthusiasm of his great plan for self redemption he had provided against this very contingency. He had deliberately chosen as his companion and guide the one man in all the North who, come what may, would deviate no hair's breadth from his first instructions. And now, he stood there in the snow and cursed himself for a fool. The Indian pointed to the tail-rope, and muttering curses, Brent reached down and picked it up, and the outfit started.

So far they had fairly good going. The course lay up Indian River, beyond the head reaches of which they would cross the Bonnet Plume pass, and upon the east slope of the divide, pick up one of the branches of the Gravel and follow that river to the Mackenzie. Joe Pete traveled ahead, breaking trail for the dogs, and before they had gone a mile Brent was puffing and blowing in his effort to keep up. His grip tightened on the tail-rope. The dogs were fairly pulling him along. At each step it was becoming more and more difficult to lift his feet. He stumbled and fell, dragged for a moment, and let go. He lay with his face in the snow. He did not try to rise. The snow felt good to his throbbing temples. He hoped the Indian would not miss him for a long, long time. Better lie here and freeze than endure the hell of that long snow trail. Then Joe Pete was lifting him from the snow and carrying him to the sled. He struggled feebly, and futilely he cursed, but the effort redoubled the ache in his head, and a terrible nausea seized him, from which he emerged weak and unprotesting while the Indian bound him upon the load.

At dark they camped. Brent sitting humped up beside the fire while Joe Pete set up the little tent and cooked supper. Brent drank scalding tea in gulps. Again he begged in vain for hooch--and was offered pilot bread and moose meat. He tried a piece of meat but his tortured stomach rejected it, whereupon Joe Pete brewed stronger tea, black, and bitter as gall, and with that Brent drenched his stomach and assuaged after a fashion his gnawing thirst. Wrapped in blankets he crept beneath his rabbit robe--but not to sleep. The Indian had built up the fire and thrown the tent open to its heat. For an hour Brent tossed about, bathed in cold sweat. Things crawled upon the walls of the tent, mingling with the shadows of the dancing firelight. He closed his eyes, and buried his head in his blankets, but the things were there too--twisting, writhing things, fantastic and horrible in color, and form, and unutterably loathsome in substance. And beyond the walls of the tent--out in the night--were the voices--the voices that taunted and tormented. He threw back his robe, and crawled to the fireside, where he sat wrapped in blankets. He threw on more wood from the pile the Indian had placed ready to hand, so that the circle of the firelight broadened, and showers of red sparks shot upward to mingle with the yellow stars.

But, it was of no use. The crawling, loathsome shapes writhed and twisted from the very flames--laughed and danced in the lap and the lick of the red flames of fire. Brent cowered against his treetrunk and stared, his red-rimmed eyes stretched wide with horror, while his blood seemed to freeze, and his heart turned to water within him. From the fire, from beyond the fire, and from the blackness of the forest behind him crept a _thing_--shapeless, and formless, it was, of a substance vicious and slimy. It was of no color, but an unwholesome luminosity radiated from its changing outlines--an all encompassing ever approaching thing of horror, it drew gradually nearer and nearer, engulfing him--smothering him. He could reach out now and touch it with his hands. His fingers sank deep in its slime and--with a wild shriek, Brent leaped from his blankets, and ran barefooted into the forest. Joe Pete found him a few minutes later, lying in the snow with a rapidly swelling blue lump on his forehead where he had crashed against a tree in his headlong flight. He picked him up and carried him to the tent where he wrapped him in his blankets and thrust him under the robe with a compress of snow on his head.

In the morning, Brent, babbling for whiskey, drank tea. And at the noon camp he drank much strong tea and ate a little pilot bread and a small piece of moose meat. He walked about five miles in the afternoon before he was again tied on the sled, and that night he helped Joe Pete set up the tent. For supper he drank a quart of strong bitter tea, and ate more bread and meat, and that night, after tossing restlessly till midnight, he fell asleep. The shapes came, and the voices, but they seemed less loathsome than the night before. They took definite concrete shapes, shapes of things Brent knew, but of impossible color. Cerese lizards and little pink snakes skipped lightly across the walls of the tent, and bunches of luminous angleworms writhed harmlessly in the dark corners. The skipping and writhing annoyed, disgusted, but inspired no terror, so Brent slept.

The third day he ate some breakfast, and did two stretches on snowshoes during the day that totaled sixteen or eighteen miles, and that night he devoured a hearty meal and slept the sleep of the weary.

The fourth day he did not resort to the sled at all. Nor all during the day did he once ask for a drink of hooch. Day after day they mushed eastward, and higher and higher they climbed toward the main divide of the mountains. As they progressed the way became rougher and steeper, the two alternated between breaking trail and work at the gee-pole. With the passing of the days the craving for liquor grew less and less insistent. Only in the early morning was the gnawing desire strong upon him, and to assuage this desire he drank great quantities of strong tea. The outward manifestation of this desire was an intense irritability, that caused him to burst into unreasoning rage at a frozen guy rope or a misplaced mitten, and noting this, Joe Pete was careful to see that breakfast was ready before he awakened Brent.

On the tenth day they topped the Bonnet Plume pass and began the long descent of the eastern slope. That night a furious blizzard roared down upon them from out of the North, and for two days they lay snowbound, venturing from the tent only upon short excursions for firewood. Upon the first of these days Brent shaved, a process that, by reason of a heavy beard of two months' growth, and a none too sharp razor, consumed nearly two hours. When the ordeal was over he regarded himself for a long time in the little mirror, scowling at the red, beefy cheeks, and at the little broken veins that showed blue-red at the end of his nose. He noted with approval that his eyes had cleared of the bilious yellow look, and that the network of tiny red veins were no longer visible upon the eyeballs. With approval, too, he prodded and pinched the hardening muscles in his legs and arms.

When the storm passed they pushed on, making heavy going in the loose snow. The rejuvenation of Brent was rapid now. Each evening found him less tired and in better heart, and each morning found him ready and eager for the trail.

"To hell with the hooch," he said, one evening, as he and the Indian sat upon their robes in the door of the tent and watched the red flames lick at the firewood, "I wouldn't take a drink now if I had a barrel of it!"

"Mebbe-so not now, but in de morning you tak' de beeg drink--you bet," opined the Indian solemnly.

"The hell I would!" flared Brent, and then he laughed. "There is no way of proving it, but if there were, I'd like to bet you this sack of dust against your other shirt that I wouldn't." He waited for a reply, but Joe Pete merely shrugged, and smoked on in silence.

Down on the Gravel River, with the Mackenzie only three or four days away, the outfit rounded a bend one evening and came suddenly upon a camp. Brent, who was in the lead, paused abruptly and stared at the fire that flickered cheerfully among the tree trunks a short distance back from the river. "We'll swing in just below them," he called back to Joe Pete, "It's time to camp anyway."

As they headed in toward the bank they were greeted by a rabble of barking, snarling dogs, which dispersed howling and yelping as a man stepped into their midst laying right and left about him with a long-lashed whip. The man was Johnnie Claw, and Brent noted that in the gathering darkness he had not recognized him.

"Goin' to camp?" asked Claw.

Brent answered in the affirmative, and headed his dogs up the bank toward a level spot some twenty or thirty yards below the fire.

Claw followed and stood beside the sled as they unharnessed the dogs: "Where you headin'?" he asked.

"Mackenzie River."

"Well, you ain't got fer to go. Trappin'?"

Brent shook his head: "No. Prospecting."

"Where'd you come from?"

"Dawson."

"Dawson!" exclaimed Claw, and Brent, who had purposely kept his face turned away, was conscious that the man was regarding him closely. Claw began to speak rapidly, "This Dawson, it's way over t'other side the mountains, ain't it? I heard how they'd made a strike over there--a big strike."

Brent nodded: "Yes," he answered. "Ever been there?"

"Me? No. Me an' the woman lives over on the Nahanni. I trap."

Brent laughed: "What's the matter, Claw? I'm not connected with the police. You don't need to lie to me. What have you got, a load of hooch for the Injuns?"

The man stepped close and stared for a moment into Brent's face. Then, suddenly, he stepped back: "Well, damn my soul, if it ain't you!"

He was staring at Brent in undisguised astonishment: "But, what in hell's happened to you? A month ago you was----"

"A bum," interrupted Brent, "Going to hell by the hooch route--and not much farther to go. But I'm not now, and inside of six months I will be as good a man as I ever was."

"You used to claim you always was as good a man as you ever was," grinned Claw. "Well, you was hittin' it a little too hard. I'm glad you quit. You an' me never hit it off like, what you might say, brothers. You was always handin' me a jolt, one way an' another. But, I never laid it up agin you. I allus said you played yer cards on top of the table--an' if you ever done anything to a man you done it to his face--an' that's more'n a hell of a lot of 'em does. There's the old woman hollerin' fer supper. I'll come over after you've et, an' we'll smoke a pipe 'er two." Claw disappeared and Brent and Joe Pete ate their supper in silence. Now and again during the meal Brent smiled to himself as he caught the eyes of the Indian regarding him sombrely.

After supper Claw returned and seated himself by the fire: "What you doin' over on this side," he asked, "You hain't honest to God prospectin' be you?"

"Sure I am. Everything is staked over there, and I've got to make another strike."

"They ain't no gold on this side," opined Claw.

"Who says so?"

"Me. An' I'd ort to know if anyone does. I've be'n around here goin' on twenty year, an' I spend as much time on this side as I do on t'other." Brent remembered he had heard of Claw's long journeys to the eastward--men said he went clear to the coast of the Arctic where he carried on nefarious barter with the whalers, trading Indian and Eskimo women for hooch, which he in turn traded to the Indians.

"Maybe you haven't spent much time hunting for gold," hazarded Brent.

"I'd tell a party I hain't! What's the use of huntin' fer gold where they hain't none? Over on this side a man c'n do better at somethin' else." He paused and leered knowingly at Brent.

"For instance?"

Claw laughed: "I hain't afraid to tell you what I do over here. They hain't but damn few I would tell, but I know you won't squeal. You hain't a-goin' to run to the Mounted an' spill all you know--some would--but not you. I'm peddling hooch--that's what I'm doin'. Got two sled-loads along that I brung through from Dawson. I thin it out with water an' it'll last till I git to the coast--clean over on Coronation Gulf, an' then I lay in a fresh batch from the whalers an' hit back fer Dawson. It used to be I could hit straight north from here an' connect up with the whalers near the mouth of the Mackenzie--but the Mounted got onto me, an' I had to quit. Well, it's about time to roll in." The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of liquor, "Glad you quit hooch," he grinned, "But, I don't s'pose you'd mind takin' a little drink with a friend--way out here it can't hurt you none, where you can't git no more." He removed the cork and tendered the bottle. But Brent shook his head: "No thanks, Claw," he said, "I'm off of it. And besides, I haven't got but a few real friends--and you are not one of them."

"Oh, all right, all right," laughed Claw as he tilted the bottle and allowed part of the contents to gurgle audibly down his throat, "Of course I know you don't like me none whatever, but I like you all right. No harm in offerin' a man a drink, is they?"

"None whatever," answered Brent, "And no harm in refusing one when you don't want it."

Claw laughed again: "Not none whatever--when you don't want it." And turning on his heel, he returned to his own tent, chuckling, for he had noted the flash that momentarily lighted Brent's eyes at the sight of the liquor and the sound of it gurgling down his throat.

Early in the morning Brent awoke to see Claw standing beside his fire while Joe Pete prepared breakfast. He joined the two and Claw thrust out his hand: "Well, yer breakfast's ready an' you'll be pullin' out soon. We've pulled a'ready--the old woman's mushin' ahead. So long--shake, to show they's no hard feelin's--or, better yet, have a drink." He drew the bottle from his pocket and thrust it toward Brent so abruptly that some of the liquor spilled upon Brent's bare hand. The odor of it reached his nostrils, and for a second Brent closed his eyes.

"Tea ready," said Joe Pete, gruffly.

"Damn it! Don't I know it?" snapped Brent, then his hand reached out for the bottle. "Guess one won't hurt any," he said, and raising the bottle to his lips, drank deeply.

"Sure it won't," agreed Claw, "I know'd you wasn't afraid of it. Take it, or let it alone, whichever you want to--show'd that las' night."

Instantly the liquor enveloped Brent in its warm glow. The grip of it felt good in his belly, and a feeling of vast well-being pervaded his brain. Claw turned to go.

"What do you get for a quart of that liquor over here," asked Brent.

"Two ounces," answered Claw, "An' they ain't nothin' in it at that, after packin' it over them mountains. I git two ounces fer it after it's be'n weakened--but I'll let you have it, fer two the way it is."

"I'll take a quart," said Brent, and a moment later he paid Claw two ounces "guess weight" out of the buckskin pouch, in return for a bottle that Claw produced from another pocket. And as Brent turned into the tent, Claw slipped back into the timber and joined his squaw who was breaking trail at a right angle to the river over a low divide. And as he mushed on in the trail of his sleds, Claw turned and leered evilly upon the little camp beside the frozen river.