第39章

A week later, Smoke found himself among the jumbled ranges south of Indian River.On the divide from the Klondike he had abandoned the sled and packed his wolf-dogs.The six big huskies each carried fifty pounds, and on his own back was an equal burden.Through the soft snow he led the way, packing it down under his snow-shoes, and behind, in single file, toiled the dogs.

He loved the life, the deep arctic winter, the silent wilderness, the unending snow-surface unpressed by the foot of any man.About him towered icy peaks unnamed and uncharted.No hunter's camp- smoke, rising in the still air of the valleys, ever caught his eye.He, alone, moved through the brooding quiet of the untravelled wastes; nor was he oppressed by the solitude.He loved it all, the day's toil, the bickering wolf-dogs, the making of the camp in the long twilight, the leaping starsoverhead and the flaming pageant of the aurora borealis.

Especially he loved his camp at the end of the day, and in it he saw a picture which he ever yearned to paint and which he knew he would never forget--a beaten place in the snow, where burned his fire; his bed, a couple of rabbit-skin robes spread on fresh-chopped spruce- boughs; his shelter, a stretched strip of canvas that caught and threw back the heat of the fire; the blackened coffee-pot and pail resting on a length of log, the moccasins propped on sticks to dry, the snow-shoes up-ended in the snow; and across the fire the wolf- dogs snuggling to it for the warmth, wistful and eager, furry and frost-rimed, with bushy tails curled protectingly over their feet; and all about, pressed backward but a space, the wall of encircling darkness.

At such times San Francisco, The Billow, and O'Hara seemed very far away, lost in a remote past, shadows of dreams that had never happened.He found it hard to believe that he had known any other life than this of the wild, and harder still was it for him to reconcile himself to the fact that he had once dabbled and dawdled in the Bohemian drift of city life.Alone, with no one to talk to, he thought much, and deeply, and simply.He was appalled by the wastage of his city years, by the cheapness, now, of the philosophies of the schools and books, of the clever cynicism of the studio and editorial room, of the cant of the business men in their clubs.They knew neither food nor sleep, nor health; nor could they ever possibly know the sting of real appetite, the goodly ache of fatigue, nor the rush of mad strong blood that bit like wine through all one's body as work was done.

And all the time this fine, wise, Spartan North Land had been here, and he had never known.What puzzled him was, that, with such intrinsic fitness, he had never heard the slightest calling whisper, had not himself gone forth to seek.But this, too, he solved in time.

"Look here, Yellow-face, I've got it clear!"The dog addressed lifted first one fore-foot and then the other with quick, appeasing movements, curled his bush of a tail about them again, and laughed across the fire.

"Herbert Spencer was nearly forty before he caught the vision of hisgreatest efficiency and desire.I'm none so slow.I didn't have to wait till I was thirty to catch mine.Right here is my efficiency and desire.Almost, Yellow Face, do I wish I had been born a wolf- boy and been brother all my days to you and yours."For days he wandered through a chaos of canyons and divides which did not yield themselves to any rational topographical plan.It was as if they had been flung there by some cosmic joker.In vain he sought for a creek or feeder that flowed truly south toward the McQuestion and the Stewart.Then came a mountain storm that blew a blizzard across the riff-raff of high and shallow divides.Above timber-line, fireless, for two days, he struggled blindly to find lower levels.On the second day he came out upon the rim of an enormous palisade.So thickly drove the snow that he could not see the base of the wall, nor dared he attempt the descent.He rolled himself in his robes and huddled the dogs about him in the depths of a snow-drift, but did not permit himself to sleep.

In the morning, the storm spent, he crawled out to investigate.A quarter of a mile beneath him, beyond all mistake, lay a frozen, snow- covered lake.About it, on every side, rose jagged peaks.It answered the description.Blindly, he had found Surprise Lake.

"Well-named," he muttered, an hour later, as he came out upon its margin.A clump of aged spruce was the only woods.On his way to it, he stumbled upon three graves, snow-buried, but marked by hand- hewn head-posts and undecipherable writing.On the edge of the woods was a small ramshackle cabin.He pulled the latch and entered.In a corner, on what had once been a bed of spruce-boughs, still wrapped in mangy furs, that had rotted to fragments, lay a skeleton.The last visitor to Surprise Lake, was Smoke's conclusion, as he picked up a lump of gold as large as his doubled fist.Beside the lump was a pepper-can filled with nuggets of the size of walnuts, rough-surfaced, showing no signs of wash.

So true had the tale run, that Smoke accepted without question that the source of the gold was the lake's bottom.Under many feet of ice and inaccessible, there was nothing to be done, and at mid-day, from the rim of the palisade, he took a farewell look back and down at his find.

"It's all right, Mr Lake," he said."You just keep right on stayingthere.I'm coming back to drain you--if that hoodoo doesn't catch me.I don't know how I got here, but I'll know by the way I go out."