Luck | Page 4

cranny in his sleeping-bag. He knew where he was, yet in his brain was a sort of cold confusion. He seemed to hear Forbes speaking.
"Will ye stay here with me and rest--I'm all but blind the day--or will ye go into Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?"
"And here I am, half-way to the fort, and sleeping out with Jooney and the dogs," Desmond muttered, "but I can't remember coming."
Yet, as he turned in his sleeping bag, his knowledge of his whereabouts was exact. He was in a stony little gully beyond Fachette, where high banks cut off the wind and ground willows gave firing. The huskies were asleep and warm in deep drift under the bank, after a full meal of dried salmon.
"I'll say this for young Jooney," said Desmond, drowsily, "he's got some sense with dogs."
Lajeune was beside him, asleep in another bag. Between them was the pack of gold and the sledge harness. And the great plain, he knew, ran north and south of the very lip of the gully, silver under the stars, ridged and rippled by the wind, like white sand of the sea. The wind was now still. The earth was again a star, bright, silent, and alone, akin to her sisters of the infinite heavens.
"There ain't so much gold in a place like this here," Desmond whispered, resentfully, to the night, "but jest you wait till I get south-east again." He was filled with blind longing for red brick, asphalt, and crowded streets; even the hens and ducklings were not enough. He hungered in this splendour of desolation for the little tumults of mankind. It seemed as if the stars laughed.
"There ain't nothing my gold won't get me," said Desmond more loudly. His breath hung in little icicles on the edges of his spy-hole. It was cruelly cold. He drew his hood closer round his head, and thrust it out of the bag.
Lajeune was gone.
He did not feel afraid; only deadly cold and sick as he struggled to his feet. Under their shelter of canvas and snow he was alone; everything else was gone. He fell on his hands and knees, digging furiously in the trodden snow, like a dog.
The gold was gone also.
"My luck," whispered Desmond, stupidly. "My luck."
He was still on his knees, shaping a little rounded column of snow; suppose it might be Lajeune's throat, and he with his hands on each side of it--so. Lajeune's dark face seemed to lie beneath him, but it was not touched with fear, but with laughter. He was laughing, as the stars had laughed, at Desmond and his luck. Desmond dashed the snow away with a cry.
He scrambled out of the gully. The dog-trail was easy to read, running straight across the silvery plain. He began to run along it.
As he ran he admired Lajeune very much. With what deadly quietness and precision he must have worked! The gully and the deserted camp were a gray streak behind him, were gone. He was running in Lajeune's very footprints, and he was sure he ran at an immense speed. The glittering levels reeled away behind him. A star flared and fell, staining the world with gold. Desmond had forgotten his gold. He had forgotten food and shelter, life and death. He could think of nothing but Lajeune's brown throat with the scar across it. That throat, his own hands on each side of it, and an end for ever to the singing and the laughter.
He thought Lajeune was near at hand, laughing at him. He felt the trail, and searched. The dark face was everywhere, and the quick laughter; but silence was waiting.
Again he knelt and groped in the snow; but he could feel nothing firm and living. He tore off his mitts, and groped again, but there was only the snow, drifting in his fingers like dust. Lajeune was near at hand, yet he could not find him. He got up and began to run in circles. His feet and hands were heavy and as cold as ice, and his breath hurt; but Lajeune was alive and warm and lucky and laughing.
He fell, got up, and fell again. The third time he did not get up, for he had caught young Lajeune at last. The brown throat was under his hands, and the stricken face. He, Desmond, was doing all the laughing, for Lajeune was dead.
"My luck, Jooney, my luck," chuckled Desmond.
His head fell forward, and the dry snow was like dust in his mouth. Darkness covered the stars.
Chapter IV
IN the darkness and the shadow something moved. Desmond was in his own bunk at the shack. There seemed to be an echo of words