e was laughter in it, but laughter more terrible than any sadness. It was the masterful wisdom of eternity laughing at the uselessness of life. It was the frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
But there was life. Down the frozen waterway ran a string of dogs. Their fur was in frost. Their breath froze in the air. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged behind. On the sled there was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things – blankets, an axe, a coffee-pot and a frying-pan; but the long and narrow oblong box occupied the most space.
Before the dogs, on wide snowshoes, walked a man. Behind the sled walked a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose walk was over—a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten. Life is an offence to the Wild, because life is movement; and the Wild wants to destroy movement. It freezes the water; it drives the sap out of the trees; and most terribly of all it treats man—man who is the most active of life.
But before and after the dogs walked the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and leather; eyelashes, cheeks and lips were covered with the crystals from their frozen breath; so they looked like undertakers at the funeral of some ghost. But they were men, going through the land of silence, adventurers on colossal adventure.
They travelled on without speaking to save their breath. On every side was the pressing silence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It pressed all the false self-values of the human soul out of them, like juices from the grape. They felt small, having little wisdom against the great blind elements.
An hour went by, and a second hour. The light of the short sunless day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry sounded on the air and then slowly died away. There was anger and hunger in it. The front man turned his head and his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, across the narrow oblong box, they nodded to each other.
There was a second cry, somewhere behind. A third and answering cry sounded in the air.
“They’re after us, Bill,” said the man at the front.
“There’s little meat,” answered his comrade. “I haven’t seen a rabbit for days.”
They spoke no more, but listened attentively.
When it became dark they took the dogs into a cluster of trees and made a camp. The coffin served for seat and table. The dogs clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled among themselves, but didn’t go into the darkness.
“Seems to me, they’re staying remarkably close to camp,” Bill said.
His companion nodded, then took his seat on the coffin and began to eat.
“Henry, did you notice how the dogs behaved when I was feeding them?”
“They played more than usual.”
“How many dogs have we got, Henry?”
“Six.”
“Well, Henry…” Bill stopped for a moment, in order to sound more significant. “As I was saying, I took six fish out of the bag. I gave one fish to each dog, and, Henry, I was one fish short.”
“You counted wrong.”
“We’ve got six dogs. I took out six fish. One Ear didn’t get a fish. I came back to the bag afterward and got him his fish.”
“We’ve only got six dogs,” Henry said.
“Then there were seven of them that got fish.”
Henry stopped eating to count the dogs. “There’s only six now,” he said.
“I saw the other one run off. I saw seven.”
Henry looked at him and said, “I’ll be very glad when this trip is over.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that our load is getting on your nerves[1], and you’re beginning to see things[2].”
“But I saw its tracks on the snow. I can show them to you.”
Henry didn’t reply at once. He had a final cup of coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Then you think it was one of them?”
Bill nodded.
“I think you’re mistaken,” Henry said.
“Henry…” he paused. “Henry, I was thinking he was much luckier than you and me.” He pointed at the box on which they sat. “When we die, we’ll be lucky if we get enough stones over our bodies to keep the dogs off of us.”
“But we don’t have people, money and all the rest, like him. Long-distance funerals is something we can’t afford.”
“What worries me, Henry, is why a chap like this, who is a kind of lord in his own country, comes to the end of the earth.”
“Yes, he might have lived to old age if he’d stayed at home.”
Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, he pointed towards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every side. Nothing could be seen there but a pair of eyes gleaming like coals. Henry indicated with his head a second pair, and a third. A circle of the gleaming eyes was around their camp.
The unrest of the dogs was increasing. One of them came too close to the fire and yelped with pain and fright. The circle of eyes withdraw a bit, but it appeared again when the dogs became quiet.
“Henry, it’s a misfortune to be out of ammunition.”
Bill had finished his pipe and was helping his companion to spread the bed of fur and blanket.
“How many cartridges did you leave?” Henry asked.
“Three. And I wish it was three hundred!” He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and put his moccasins before the fire.
“And I wish it was not so cold” he went on. “It has been fifty below zero for two weeks now. And I wish I’d never started on this trip, Henry. I don’t like it. And I wish the trip was over, and you and I were sitting by the fire in Fort McGurry and playing cards.”
Henry grunted and crawled into bed. Then he was woken by his comrade’s voice.
“Say, Henry, that other one that came in and got a fish—why didn’t the dogs bite it? That’s what’s bothering me.”
“You’re bothering too much, Bill. Just shut up now, and go to sleep. You have a stomach ache, that’s what’s bothering you.”
The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side, under the one covering. The fire died down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer. The dogs kept together in fear. At one point their noise became so loud that Bill woke up. He got out of bed carefully and threw more wood on the fire. The circle of eyes drew back. He glanced at the dogs, then rubbed his eyes and looked at them again. Then he crawled back into the blankets.
“Henry,” he said. “Oh, Henry.”
Henry groaned, “What’s wrong now?”
“Nothing, only there’s seven of them again. I just counted.”
Henry grunted again and fell asleep.
In the morning it was he who awoke first and woke up his companion. It was still dark, though it was already six o’clock; and Henry started preparing breakfast, while Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready.
“Say, Henry,” he asked suddenly, “how many dogs did you say we had?”
“Six.”
“Wrong,” Bill said triumphantly.
“Seven again?”
“No, five; one’s gone.”
“The hell!” Henry cried in anger, left the cooking and went to count the dogs.
“You’re right, Bill,” he concluded. “Fatty’s gone. They just swallowed him alive, damn them!”
“He always was a fool dog.”
“But not fool enough to commit suicide. I bet none of the others