Love of Life | Page 6

hunger awoke in him again. He was
very weak and was afflicted with a giddiness which at times blinded
him. It was no uncommon thing now for him to stumble and fall; and
stumbling once, he fell squarely into a ptarmigan nest. There were four
newly hatched chicks, a day old - little specks of pulsating life no more
than a mouthful; and he ate them ravenously, thrusting them alive into
his mouth and crunching them like egg- shells between his teeth. The
mother ptarmigan beat about him with great outcry. He used his gun as
a club with which to knock her over, but she dodged out of reach. He
threw stones at her and with one chance shot broke a wing. Then she
fluttered away, running, trailing the broken wing, with him in pursuit.
The little chicks had no more than whetted his appetite. He hopped and
bobbed clumsily along on his injured ankle, throwing stones and
screaming hoarsely at times; at other times hopping and bobbing
silently along, picking himself up grimly and patiently when he fell, or
rubbing his eyes with his hand when the giddiness threatened to
overpower him.
The chase led him across swampy ground in the bottom of the valley,
and he came upon footprints in the soggy moss. They were not his own
- he could see that. They must be Bill's. But he could not stop, for the
mother ptarmigan was running on. He would catch her first, then he
would return and investigate.
He exhausted the mother ptarmigan; but he exhausted himself. She lay
panting on her side. He lay panting on his side, a dozen feet away,
unable to crawl to her. And as he recovered she recovered, fluttering
out of reach as his hungry hand went out to her. The chase was resumed.

Night settled down and she escaped. He stumbled from weakness and
pitched head foremost on his face, cutting his cheek, his pack upon his
back. He did not move for a long while; then he rolled over on his side,
wound his watch, and lay there until morning.
Another day of fog. Half of his last blanket had gone into foot-
wrappings. He failed to pick up Bill's trail. It did not matter. His hunger
was driving him too compellingly - only - only he wondered if Bill, too,
were lost. By midday the irk of his pack became too oppressive. Again
he divided the gold, this time merely spilling half of it on the ground. In
the afternoon he threw the rest of it away, there remaining to him only
the half-blanket, the tin bucket, and the rifle.
An hallucination began to trouble him. He felt confident that one
cartridge remained to him. It was in the chamber of the rifle and he had
overlooked it. On the other hand, he knew all the time that the chamber
was empty. But the hallucination persisted. He fought it off for hours,
then threw his rifle open and was confronted with emptiness. The
disappointment was as bitter as though he had really expected to find
the cartridge.
He plodded on for half an hour, when the hallucination arose again.
Again he fought it, and still it persisted, till for very relief he opened his
rifle to unconvince himself. At times his mind wandered farther afield,
and he plodded on, a mere automaton, strange conceits and
whimsicalities gnawing at his brain like worms. But these excursions
out of the real were of brief duration, for ever the pangs of the
hunger-bite called him back. He was jerked back abruptly once from
such an excursion by a sight that caused him nearly to faint. He reeled
and swayed, doddering like a drunken man to keep from falling. Before
him stood a horse. A horse! He could not believe his eyes. A thick mist
was in them, intershot with sparkling points of light. He rubbed his
eyes savagely to clear his vision, and beheld, not a horse, but a great
brown bear. The animal was studying him with bellicose curiosity.
The man had brought his gun halfway to his shoulder before he realized.
He lowered it and drew his hunting-knife from its beaded sheath at his
hip. Before him was meat and life. He ran his thumb along the edge of

his knife. It was sharp. The point was sharp. He would fling himself
upon the bear and kill it. But his heart began its warning thump, thump,
thump. Then followed the wild upward leap and tattoo of flutters, the
pressing as of an iron band about his forehead, the creeping of the
dizziness into his brain.
His desperate courage was evicted by a great surge of fear. In his
weakness, what if the animal attacked him? He drew himself up