mpede, and got
sold--sold badly. But the two crazy whites with him--miners from
Dakotah--they were on fire about Minook. Kept on bragging they hadn't
cold feet, and swore they'd get near to the diggins as their dogs'd
take 'em. The half-breed said they might do a hundred miles more, but
probably wouldn't get beyond Anvik."
"Crazy fools! I tell you, to travel even thirty miles on the Yukon in
winter, even with a bully team and old Nick to drive 'em, and not an
extra ounce on your back--I tell you, Colonel, it's no joke."
"B'lieve you, sonny."
It wasn't thirty seconds before sonny was adding: "Did that half-breed
think it was any use our trying to get dogs?"
"Ain't to be had now for love or money."
"Lord, Colonel, if we had a team--"
"Yes, I know. We'll probably owe our lives to the fact that we
haven't."
It suddenly occurred to the Boy that, although he had just done a
pretty good tramp and felt he'd rather die than go fifty feet further,
it was the Colonel who was most tired.
"How's everybody?"
"Oh, I s'pose we might all of us be worse off."
"What's the matter?"
He was so long answering that the Boy's eyes turned to follow the
serious outward gaze of the older man, even before he lifted one hand
and swept it down the hill and out across the dim, grey prospect.
"This," said the Colonel.
Their eyes had dropped down that last stretch of the steep snow slope,
across the two miles of frozen river, and ran half round the wide
horizon-line, like creatures in a cage. Whether they liked it or
whether they didn't, for them there was no way out.
"It's the awful stillness." The Colonel arraigned the distant
ice-plains.
They sat there looking, listening, as if they hoped their protest might
bring some signal of relenting. No creature, not even a crystal-coated
willow-twig, nothing on all the ice-bound earth stirred by as much as a
hair; no mark of man past or present broke the grey monotony; no sound
but their two voices disturbed the stillness of the world. It was a
quiet that penetrated, that pricked to vague alarm. Already both knew
the sting of it well.
"It's the kind of thing that gets on a fella's nerves," said the
Colonel. "I don't know as I ever felt helpless in any part of the world
before. But a man counts for precious little up here. Do you notice how
you come to listen to the silence?"
"Oh, yes, I've noticed."
"Stop." Again he lifted his hand, and they strained their ears. "I've
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