The Faith of Men | Page 5

his foot down and asked,
"Find hide like that on your St Elias bear?"
I shook my head. "Nor on any other creature of land or sea," I answered
candidly. The thickness of it, and the length of the hair, puzzled me.
"That," he said, and said without the slightest hint of impressiveness,
"that came from a mammoth."
"Nonsense!" I exclaimed, for I could not forbear the protest of my
unbelief. "The mammoth, my dear sir, long ago vanished from the earth.
We know it once existed by the fossil remains that we have unearthed,
and by a frozen carcase that the Siberian sun saw fit to melt from out
the bosom of a glacier; but we also know that no living specimen exists.
Our explorers--"
At this word he broke in impatiently. "Your explorers? Pish! A weakly
breed. Let us hear no more of them. But tell me, O man, what you may
know of the mammoth and his ways."
Beyond contradiction, this was leading to a yarn; so I baited my hook
by ransacking my memory for whatever data I possessed on the subject
in hand. To begin with, I emphasized that the animal was prehistoric,
and marshalled all my facts in support of this. I mentioned the Siberian
sand-bars that abounded with ancient mammoth bones; spoke of the
large quantities of fossil ivory purchased from the Innuits by the Alaska
Commercial Company; and acknowledged having myself mined six-
and eight-foot tusks from the pay gravel of the Klondike creeks. "All
fossils," I concluded, "found in the midst of debris deposited through
countless ages."

"I remember when I was a kid," Thomas Stevens sniffed (he had a most
confounded way of sniffing), "that I saw a petrified water- melon.
Hence, though mistaken persons sometimes delude themselves into
thinking that they are really raising or eating them, there are no such
things as extant water-melons?"
"But the question of food," I objected, ignoring his point, which was
puerile and without bearing. "The soil must bring forth vegetable life in
lavish abundance to support so monstrous creations. Nowhere in the
North is the soil so prolific. Ergo, the mammoth cannot exist."
"I pardon your ignorance concerning many matters of this Northland,
for you are a young man and have travelled little; but, at the same time,
I am inclined to agree with you on one thing. The mammoth no longer
exists. How do I know? I killed the last one with my own right arm."
Thus spake Nimrod, the mighty Hunter. I threw a stick of firewood at
the dogs and bade them quit their unholy howling, and waited.
Undoubtedly this liar of singular felicity would open his mouth and
requite me for my St. Elias bear.
"It was this way," he at last began, after the appropriate silence had
intervened. "I was in camp one day--"
"Where?" I interrupted.
He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the north-east, where
stretched a TERRA INCOGNITA into which vastness few men have
strayed and fewer emerged. "I was in camp one day with Klooch.
Klooch was as handsome a little KAMOOKS as ever whined betwixt
the traces or shoved nose into a camp kettle. Her father was a full-
blood Malemute from Russian Pastilik on Bering Sea, and I bred her,
and with understanding, out of a clean-legged bitch of the Hudson Bay
stock. I tell you, O man, she was a corker combination. And now, on
this day I have in mind, she was brought to pup through a pure wild
wolf of the woods--grey, and long of limb, with big lungs and no end of
staying powers. Say! Was there ever the like? It was a new breed of
dog I had started, and I could look forward to big things.

"As I have said, she was brought neatly to pup, and safely delivered. I
was squatting on my hams over the litter--seven sturdy, blind little
beggars--when from behind came a bray of trumpets and crash of brass.
There was a rush, like the wind- squall that kicks the heels of the rain,
and I was midway to my feet when knocked flat on my face. At the
same instant I heard Klooch sigh, very much as a man does when
you've planted your fist in his belly. You can stake your sack I lay quiet,
but I twisted my head around and saw a huge bulk swaying above me.
Then the blue sky flashed into view and I got to my feet. A hairy
mountain of flesh was just disappearing in the underbrush on the edge
of the open. I caught a rear-end glimpse, with a stiff tail, as big in girth
as my body, standing out straight behind. The next second only a
tremendous hole remained in the