weep before. Nor was it the smoke of the fire, for
the wood was dry wood. So I marveled at her sorrow, and thought her
woman's heart had grown soft at the darkness of the trail and the pain.

"Life is a strange thing. Much have I thought on it, and pondered long,
yet daily the strangeness of it grows not less, but more. Why this
longing for Life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil
hard, and to suffer sore, till Old Age creeps heavily upon us and we
throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to
live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps
his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes
down to the open arms of Death, stumbling, falling, with head turned
backward, fighting to the last. And Death is kind. It is only Life, and
the things of Life that hurt. Yet we love Life, and we hate Death. It
is very strange.

"We spoke little, Passuk and I, in the days which came. In the night we
lay in the snow like dead people, and in the morning we went on our way,
walking like dead people. And all things were dead. There were no
ptarmigan, no squirrels, no snowshoe rabbits,--nothing. The river made
no sound beneath its white robes. The sap was frozen in the forest. And
it became cold, as now; and in the night the stars drew near and large,
and leaped and danced; and in the day the sun-dogs mocked us till we saw
many suns, and all the air flashed and sparkled, and the snow was diamond
dust. And there was no heat, no sound, only the bitter cold and the
Silence. As I say, we walked like dead people, as in a dream, and we
kept no count of time. Only our faces were set to Salt Water, our souls
strained for Salt Water, and our feet carried us toward Salt Water. We
camped by the Tahkeena, and knew it not. Our eyes looked upon the White
Horse, but we saw it not. Our feet trod the portage of the Canyon, but
they felt it not. We felt nothing. And we fell often by the way, but we
fell, always, with our faces toward Salt Water.

"Our last grub went, and we had shared fair, Passuk and I, but she fell
more often, and at Caribou Crossing her strength left her. And in the
morning we lay beneath the one robe and did not take the trail. It was
in my mind to stay there and meet Death hand-in-hand with Passuk; for I
had grown old, and had learned the love of woman. Also, it was eighty
miles to Haines Mission, and the great Chilcoot, fa