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Page 46
"I'm good for a couple of weeks," he spoke aloud.
"Maybe three," he added, as he put the biscuits away.
Again he drew on his mittens, pulled down his ear-flaps, took the rifle,
and went out to his station on the river bank. He crouched in the snow,
himself unseen, and watched. After a few minutes of inaction, the frost
began to bite in, and he rested the rifle across his knees and beat his
hands back and forth. Then the sting in his feet became intolerable, and
he stepped back from the bank and tramped heavily up and down among the
trees. But he did not tramp long at a time. Every several minutes he
came to the edge of the bank and peered up and down the trail, as though
by sheer will he could materialise the form of a man upon it. The short
morning passed, though it had seemed century-long to him, and the trail
remained empty.
It was easier in the afternoon, watching by the bank. The temperature
rose, and soon the snow began to fall--dry and fine and crystalline.
There was no wind, and it fell straight down, in quiet monotony. He
crouched with eyes closed, his head upon his knees, keeping his watch
upon the trail with his ears. But no whining of dogs, churning of sleds,
nor cries of drivers broke the silence. With twilight he returned to the
tent, cut a supply of firewood, ate two biscuits, and crawled into his
blankets. He slept restlessly, tossing about and groaning; and at
midnight he got up and ate another biscuit.
Each day grew colder. Four biscuits could not keep up the heat of his
body, despite the quantities of hot spruce tea he drank, and he
increased his allowance, morning and evening, to three biscuits. In the
middle of the day he ate nothing, contenting himself with several cups
of excessively weak real tea. This programme became routine. In the
morning three biscuits, at noon real tea, and at night three biscuits.
In between he drank spruce tea for his scurvy. He caught himself making
larger biscuits, and after a severe struggle with himself went back to
the old size.
On the fifth day the trail returned to life. To the south a dark object
appeared, and grew larger. Morganson became alert. He worked his rifle,
ejecting a loaded cartridge from the chamber, by the same action
replacing it with another, and returning the ejected cartridge into the
magazine. He lowered the trigger to half-cock, and drew on his mitten to
keep the trigger-hand warm. As the dark object came nearer he made it
out to be a man, without dogs or sled, travelling light. He grew
nervous, cocked the trigger, then put it back to half-cock again. The
man developed into an Indian, and Morganson, with a sigh of
disappointment, dropped the rifle across his knees. The Indian went on
past and disappeared towards Minto behind the out-jutting clump of
trees.
But Morganson conceived an idea. He changed his crouching spot to a
place where cottonwood limbs projected on either side of him. Into these
with his axe he chopped two broad notches. Then in one of the notches he
rested the barrel of his rifle and glanced along the sights. He covered
the trail thoroughly in that direction. He turned about, rested the
rifle in the other notch, and, looking along the sights, swept the trail
to the clump of trees behind which it disappeared.
He never descended to the trail. A man travelling the trail could have
no knowledge of his lurking presence on the bank above. The snow surface
was unbroken. There was no place where his tracks left the main trail.
As the nights grew longer, his periods of daylight watching of the trail
grew shorter. Once a sled went by with jingling bells in the darkness,
and with sullen resentment he chewed his biscuits and listened to the
sounds. Chance conspired against him. Faithfully he had watched the
trail for ten days, suffering from the cold all the prolonged torment of
the damned, and nothing had happened. Only an Indian, travelling light,
had passed in. Now, in the night, when it was impossible for him to
watch, men and dogs and a sled loaded with life, passed out, bound south
to the sea and the sun and civilisation.
So it was that he conceived of the sled for which he waited. It was
loaded with life, his life. His life was fading, fainting, gasping away
in the tent in the snow. He was weak from lack of food, and could not
travel of himself. But on the sled for which he waited were dogs that
would drag him, food that would fan up the flame of his life, money that
would furnish sea and sun and civilisation. Sea and sun and civilisation
became terms interchangeable with life, his life, and they were loaded
there on the sled for which he waited. The idea became an obsession, and
he grew to think of himself as the rightful and deprived owner of the
sled-load of life.
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