CHAPTER VI
THE LAST STAND
Morning found the world swathed in a great blanket of white. Snow
that started as Donald made camp had fallen steadily through the
dark hours, so that now rock and windfall and back trail were
obliterated. Even the pines themselves were conical ghosts. As
though he had been dropped from the skies, McTavish stood absolutely
isolated in the trackless waste.
There was light upon the earth, but the leaden clouds diffused it
evenly, so that he could not distinguish east from west, or south
from north. If there had ever been a trail blazed here, the big
snowflakes had long since hidden the notches in the bark.
Mechanically, the man reached into his pack for the compass he
carried. A moment's search failed to reveal it, and he suddenly
stood upright again, cut through with the knowledge that it had
been taken from him.
How should he tell directions? How make progress except in fatal
circles?
Looking up at the snowy pine-tops, he scrutinized them carefully.
Their tips seemed to lean ever so slightly in one direction. Fearful
lest his eyes had deceived him, he closed them for a few moments,
and then looked again. The trees still leaned slightly to the right.
He tried others, with the same result. Good! That was east! Ever
in nature there is the unconscious longing for the life-giving sun,
and it was in yearning toward its point of rising that the trees
betrayed the secret. Here and there, tufts of shrub-growth pointed
through the snow in one direction. That, he knew, should be south,
and yet he must prove it. With his snowshoes, he dug busily at the
base of a tree until he found the roots running into the iron
ground. Circling the trunk, he at last found the growth of moss he
was hunting. He compared it with the pointing tufts of shrub-growth,
and found that his theory had been proven. For moss only grows on
the shady side of trees, and in the far northland this is the north
side, the sun rising almost directly in the south, except during
the summer months.
With the north to the left, McTavish passed his pack-strap about
his forehead, and started on the weary march. He knew that somewhere
before him was Beaver Lake, and he remembered that there were two
or three trappers along its shores. Just where they were, he could
not specify, for his private map had been taken from him at the
time his pack was made up. If they were loyal to the Company, he
had a bare chance of reaching them; if, as he supposed, they belonged
to the brotherhood—He did not finish out the thought. He was
certain they were not loyal, else his exile would have been south
instead of north.
As he toiled along, foxes whisked from his path, their splendid
brushes held straight behind them; snow-bunting and chattering
whiskey-jacks scattered at his approach. Clever rabbits, their long
ears laid flat, a dull gleam in their half-opened eyes, impersonated
snow-covered stumps under a thicket of bristling shrubs.
With every hour, Donald thanked Providence that he had not heard
the howl of a traveling wolf-pack, for a man well armed is no match
for these ham-stringing villains once they catch him away from his
fire, and a man with only two knives has his choice of starvation
in a tree, or quick death under the gleaming fangs.
A little after noon, the wanderer reached a ravine, and stopped to
make tea in its shelter. Above him, and leaning out at a precarious
angle, a pine-tree, heavily coated with snow, seemed about to plunge
downward from the weight of its white burden. Taking care to avoid
the space beneath it, the man built his little fire, and boiled
snow-water. He ate nothing now, having reduced his food to a living
ration morning and evening. Having drunk the steaming stuff, he
was about to return the tin cup to the pack when a rustling, sliding
sound aroused him. He turned in time to see a great mass of snow
from a tree higher up fall full upon the overloaded head of the
protruding pine. The latter quivered for a moment under the impact,
and then, with a loud snapping of branches and muffled tearing of
roots, fell crashing to the crusted snow beneath, leaving a gaping
wound in the earth.
McTavish looked with interest. Then, his jaw dropped, and his eyes
widened in terror, for, bursting out of the hole, frothing with
rage, came a huge bear, whose long winter nap had been thus rudely
disturbed.
For an instant, blinded by the glare of the gray day, the creature
stopped, rising on its hind legs and snarling fearfully. Donald,
petrified with surprise, stood as though rooted to the ground. A
moment later, the bear saw the man, and, without pause, started
for him.
From an infuriated bear, there is but one means of escape—speed.
In a flash, McTavish knew that he could outstrip the clumsy animal,
for the latter would constantly break through the thin crust of
the snow. But, in the same flash, he realized what escape would
mean. His pack lay open. The hungry animal would rifle it completely,
gulp down the priceless fat meat, and strew the rest of the provisions
about. Then, the bear would go back to bed; the man would starve,
and freeze to death in two or three days.
No! Running was out of the question.
Donald's doom had suddenly crystallized into a matter of minutes.
To think with him was to act. Instantly, he drew his two knives,
the long, keen hunter's blade in his right hand, the other in his
left.
And, now, the bear was but twenty feet away, and coming on all-fours,
its eyes gleaming wickedly, its mouth slavering. At ten feet, it
suddenly rose on its hind legs, and then McTavish acted. With two
swift, sliding steps forward on his snowshoes, his face was buried
in the coarse fur of the animal's chest before the creature had
fathomed the movement.
Then, the knives played wickedly. The long one in the right hand
shot to the hilt in the heart; the one in the left went deep into
the throat, and McTavish slipped downward before the great clasp
—which would have broken his back—could close upon him... Turning,
he ran as he had never run before.
But there was little need. The bear, stricken in two vital spots,
coughed hoarsely once or twice, spraying the clean snow scarlet,
and dropped on all-fours. There, it swayed a moment, suddenly turned
round and round swiftly, and fell motionless.
The victor approached cautiously. The animal was dead. The man
withdrew his two knives, and, with all haste, skinned the animal
in part, for now another danger presented itself. Although he had
pushed starvation several days away, yet the smell of the kill
would draw the wild folk, particularly the wolves. Quickly, he cut
what he could safely carry of the choicest meat, and bestowed it
in the pack, taking every precaution that no blood should drip
along his trail. Then, he slipped the strap into place across his
forehead, and sped eastward... And now, instead of the dread
companions—fear and starvation—that had dogged his footsteps, he
ran hand in hand with hope.
Morning brought him out of the forest to the open prairie, fortunately
a fairly level tract of land. This meant fast going, and McTavish,
stronger than he had been for many hours past, on account of a
hearty meal of bear meat, swung off across the crust at a kind of
loping run. He did not walk now, but went forward on long, sliding
strokes that would have kept a dog at a fast trot. Far, far in the
distance, he saw the friendly shelter of woods, and, with eyes on
the hard snow-crust beneath him, laid a course thither. Here on
the prairie, the crust was the result of the soft Chinook west
winds that came across the ranges, and melted the snow swiftly—only
to let it freeze again into a sheathing of armor-plate.
To-day, the sun rose clear in a brilliant sky, and threw its oblique
rays across the glaring snow-fields, so that they appeared to be
of burnished glass. After awhile, Donald imagined that the colors
of the rainbow were being mysteriously hurled down from heaven,
for everywhere he looked he saw purple and green and yellow patches
dancing against the white. He tried to follow them with his eyes,
but they kept just to the right or the left of vision, so that he
never got a fair look at them. Somehow, too, they blinded him, and
presently he drew the hood over his face to shut out at least a
part of the glare. But, since he was traveling fast, he soon became
almost suffocated under the heavy envelope, and for relief was
forced to throw aside the capote, and again expose himself to
the blistering sunlight. ... At noon, he could only just make out
a very dim line in the distance, which told him where were the
coveted trees of the forest. Although he was many miles nearer to
them than he had been at dawn, they seemed farther away. The fact
taught him beyond peradventure of doubt that something was wrong.
Under a new urge of fear, he pressed forward without a moment of
delay, save once for a tin cupful of tea. He realized the vital
necessity of reaching the fringe of the wood by nightfall. Else,
he would be exposed to the dangers of darkness on the open plains,
without protection of any sort. The thought goaded him to desperate
speed.
Now, black and purple and red patches joined the green and yellow
and blue that had seared his eyeballs in the morning. Once, in
making a careful detour around what he had thought to be a large
bowlder, he was surprised to discover that, after all, it was only
a small fragment of stone, over which he could very easily have
stepped. Again, it was borne in on his consciousness that something
was very wrong with him—seriously so!
By-and-by, the snow-drifts began to heave and run, like waves in
a choppy sea, and Donald found himself staggering at every stride.
Finally, to avoid falling, he was compelled to shut his eyes, for
each glint from the snow was like the stab of a dagger through his
brain... He was snow-blind.
Yet, he must reach the wood. Within its shelter lay his sole hope
of safety. So, he lurched forward with frenzied haste. The sun was
sinking low to the horizon now. He knew, though he stumbled on with
closed eyelids, for he could feel the rays on his cheek, which
served him for compass to guide his steps toward the east. In such
evil plight, with fatigue racking his body and anxiety rending his;
soul, he struggled toward his goal. Always, the pain in his eyes
was a torture. Through it all, he kept listening eagerly for the
sough of wind among branches... For the time, he had forgotten that
those branches were muted by their covering of snow.
Without any warning, Donald bumped full into a tree. The force of
the impact on his weakened frame was such that he fell floundering
on the snow. But, in an instant, he was up again, new hope surging
in his breast, for, now, he knew that he had indeed reached the
edge of the forest. Using the sense of touch to save him from other
collisions, he proceeded cautiously among the trees for a half-mile
or more, and then, at last, pitched his pitiful camp. Sightless,
he managed somehow, albeit very clumsily, to hack some fragments
of bark from the bole of the tree beneath which he had come to a
halt, and with these he made a fire, and heated the snow-water for
his tea. When he had completed his scanty meal, he made a poultice
for his eyes from the tea-leaves, and bound it in place. Then,
swathed in his blankets, he endured as best he might a night of
anguish. No sleep came to his assuaging. His brain was a chaos in
which countless suns and planets swirled madly, rushing to countless
explosions of torment. In those hours, he suffered an eternity,
for back of material agony was a spirit's despair.
In a momentary lull of pain, Donald became aware that the sun was
again risen after the ages of night, for he felt on the back of
his hand, which he experimentally exposed, the hot-and-cold mottling
from the rays. The renewed opportunity for action after the passive
misery of the night heartened him for a brief interval, and he
bestirred himself eagerly with preparations for the day. First of
all, he must have chips of bark for a fire, in order to make ready
his breakfast. He had already, the night before, exhausted the
supply within reach on the tree at hand, so another source of supply
must be sought Forthwith, on hands and knees, with bared knife in
his clutch, he crawled blindly until he found another tree. Circling
about it, with swift strokes of the knife, he quickly had an ample
store of fuel for his need. Gathering this up, he started back...
Walking forward falteringly, with the little load of bark held to
his breast, Donald realized in a shock of alarm that he must have
passed beyond the tree at the foot of which his pack was lying. In
panic anxiety, he forced his lids apart, and strove to compel sight.
It was in vain. A prismatic blur reeled before him. He could not
distinguish sky from snow, or sun from tree. Only, the pain suddenly
leaped with new life and flooded the useless eyeballs with stinging
tears. The futility of his effort sickened the man. But, by a mighty
exercise of will, he thrust down his emotion, and set himself
doggedly to the task of finding a way back. To this end, he knelt
down, and felt the smooth surface of the snow with bare fingers
for some trace of his footsteps. There was none. The firm crust
had carried him without strain. There was no least abrasion of the
frozen surface to afford him a clew to his own trail. He strove
to reason concerning the direction of his movements, but quickly
abandoned the attempt as altogether baffling. In his circling about
the tree from which he had garnered fuel, he had neglected to hold
his bearings in relation to the camp. In setting off on his return,
he might have moved in any one of the three hundred and sixty
degrees of the circle. For that matter, he could not now even find
his way back to the tree from which he had got the chips. Despite
his brave resolve, the afflicted man found himself powerless then
to devise any scheme of action to be pursued. In this inability,
he left himself exposed to utter despair, and, for the first time
in all his grisly journey, such despair took him for its own. Like
a monster that had been hungrily awaiting its opportunity with
growing fierceness, it now clutched him by the throat, shook him,
held him helpless in a gigantic terror. Where could he go? What
could he do? How could he find—anything—ever? ... His teeth were
chattering—not from the cold.
And, now, since hope was fled at last, a prophecy of the end
voiced itself in the pangs of hunger, which bit like poison
within him. The demon of starvation leaped upon him, gloating,
gluttonous of the end.
Yet, after an interval of infinite wretchedness, Donald recalled
his vigors, and shook off the lethargy that had bound his spirit.
Once again, he rallied the strength of his manhood, and set his
will to the hopeless strife. Blind, starving, he still gave battle
to the North.
So, after a weary while, the shuddering panic left him, and he set
to work with renewed calm. Following the single method that offered
any possibility of success in his quest for the camp, he spent
exhausting hours in plodding hither and yon through the mazes of
the wood, guiding his courses in what he vainly believed to be
concentric circles, endeavoring by this means to come on the tree
under which he had left his pack, through a process of elimination.
Smaller and smaller the circle grew, until in the end, he found
himself turning about on one spot in the snow. Despite this initial
failure, he repeated the maneuver bravely, only to have his toil
culminate in a second failure. A third effort was equally futile.
Worn by hunger and fatigue, and by the racking emotions of the
situation, his spirit weakened again, so that he sat on his haunches
in a huddled posture of wo, and sobbed like a child in desperation
and self-pity.
Still, though fearfully bruised by the blows of fate, the spirit
of the man was not broken. Into his consciousness, presently, came
the realization that he must not waste another instant of time in
trying to find the pack. To stay where he was until the blindness
should leave him would be to court death by starvation; to go on
would offer at least the remote possibility of encountering some
wandering trapper—though the probability would be of a swifter
ending from the wolves. But the unvarying rule of the trapper is
to go forward—always forward, whatever be the cost. That rule was
in Donald's mind now, and it spurred him to vehement obedience.
... Forward—always forward! With the awkward movements of the
newly blind, he got slowly to his feet, and went shambling onward.
And, now, the mood of abject depression in the face of catastrophe
was thrust out, never to return, whatever the issue. Fear was
swallowed up by fierce effort and fiercer resolve. All the strength
of will in the man was concentrated in an iron determination that
was steadfast, unflinching, as hour followed hour in the sickening
toil of a vague progress. The blood of his ancestors was at work
in Donald, driving him on remorselessly. Even more than that, the
strong man's instinctive love of life, the gut-string tenacity that
makes him fight off death until the last horrible second, welled
high in his heart, surged wildly in his blood, compelling him on
and on—ever on!
The afflicted man needed such scourging of impulse. And the
scourging might well have failed, had he known all the ghastly
truth as to how sorely he was beset. Had sight been granted to him
again for a minute, he might have turned readily to the expedient
suggested by the half-breed, which he had rejected so firmly—might
have drawn the keen blade of the knife across his own throat...
For, stealthily picking their way along the back trail toward Lake
Sturgeon, two Indians went swiftly, and they bore with them, divided
equally between them, the contents of the lost man's pack. From
the moment of Donald's setting forth, these two had followed him,
in order to make certain of his death. Last night, they had ventured
to camp close to him, since to their eyes of experience it was made
plain: by his actions that he was blind. In the morning, when he
lost his way, they had stolen his belongings, thereby to insure
the end. Then, wearied of their long vigil, they took the homeward
trail with glad hearts. They knew beyond any shadow of questioning
that death to the wanderer could be only a matter of a few hours
now. They could safely report to the council of the brotherhood
that the condemned had followed Death Trail to its end.
Mercifully, Donald guessed nothing of all this. So, he held to
his slow course eastward with a stolidly patient courage against
every obstacle. Very often, he verified his direction by feeling
the shoots of the shrubbery, or by the more laborious digging to
the moss that grew at the foot of the tree-trunks. Always, the cold
assaulted him, and as time passed and hunger waxed, its attacks
were more difficult to resist. The draining of his energies left
him unprotected against the piercing chill of the air. Frequently,
he was forced to halt, in order that he might gather chips for a
fire, and then crouch, shivering over the blaze for a time ere he
dared resume his march. Indeed, as the night drew down on him, he
felt himself so enfeebled, so sensitive to the icy wind, that he
feared to sleep, lest he might never wake. So, for his life's sake,
he kept moving, now by sheer stress of will-power lashing the spent
muscles to movement. From time to time, with ever shortening
intervals, he stopped to make a little fire, over which he huddled
drowsily, but with his will set firm against a moment's yielding
to that longing for a sleep which, of necessity, must merge into
one from which there could be no awakening... In such manful wise,
Donald battled with death through the dragging hours.
When he felt the coming of the sun next morning, the follower of
the Death Trail was minded to count his remaining store of matches.
There were just a score of them. It seemed, then, that, after all,
the end would come not from starvation, but from freezing, for
against the deadly cold he could summon his ally of fire only twenty
times, and without that ally his surrender must be swift. Therefore,
as he went forward now, he endured the sufferings inflicted by the
icy blasts to new limits, jealously hoarding his meager supply of
matches—which had come to, be his milestones as he drew near the
end of Death Trail... Donald gave over the reckoning of time then.
He recked nought of minutes or hours, nought of day or of night.
Subconsciously, he still paused often to make sure that the east
lay straight before him; but the activities of his mind now were
become focused on the ceaseless counting of the matches that measured
his span of life. And, as one after another served his need of
warmth in the kindling of a fire, so his high courage dwindled
steadily, until, when but a single splinter of the precious wood
was left him, he gave over the last pretense of bravery, and shook
cowardly in the clutch of fear. He continued a staggering advance
for a long time, but hope was fled. The desire for food was not so
mordant now. In its stead, a raging thirst tortured tongue and
throat. He resisted a frantic craving to devour the snow, since he
knew well that this would but multiply his torments. Yet, fatigue
and thirst and even the stabbing cold, which would at last be his
executioner, were not the things that swayed his emotions in these
final stages of the Death Trail. Somehow, the matches had come to
be his obsession. His physical agony was felt through a blessed
medium of apathy now; it was become something curiously remote,
almost impersonal. Always, his consciousness was filled with a
morbid counting of the matches, the measure of his life. So, when
there was only the one, he felt that the end was, indeed, come upon
him. He strove his mightiest, but his might was shrunken to a puny
sham. He struggled forward valiantly, but his advance was like the
progress of a snail. Then, suddenly, another step became an infinite
labor—something of which he could not even think. He lurched
forward, and fell against a tree-trunk. The concussion aroused him
to a clearer understanding. Very slowly, with a dreadful clumsiness
of movement, he hacked off fragments of the bark within his reach,
piled them in readiness, struck the match, and set it to the loose
fibers. It never occurred to him that this last match might fail.
And it did not. Its tiny flame grew in seconds to a cheery, crackling
blaze. Donald, on his knees, with hands outspread like a worshiper
in adoration before his god—as In truth he was!—felt the penetrant
vibrations of the fire with an inexpressible languor of bliss.
This was the last match—the end! But what matter? The lethargy of
utter exhaustion dulled familiar suffering. The obsession of the
match still held its mastery, and its expression was the hot flame
that breathed on him. Donald had no thought of death now, though
vaguely he knew that he was prone at the feet of death. It mattered
not. Nothing mattered any more—nothing save this luxury of warmth
that was shed upon him from the last match; this luxury of warmth,
and that other luxury of sleep, which stole upon him now so softly,
so caressingly.
