The Rim of the Desert | Page 8

morning, I came to a rough place where his outfit had upset, and I saw his dogs were giving him trouble. There were blood stains all around on the snow. It looked like the pack had broken open, and the huskies had tried to get at the dried salmon. Tyee must have fought them off until Weatherbee was able to master them. At the end of the next day I reached a miners' cabin where he had spent the night, and the man who had helped him unhitch told me he had had to remind him to feed his dogs. He had seemed all right, only dead tired; but he had gone to bed early and, neglecting to leave a call, had slept fifteen hours. I rested my team five, and late the next morning I came upon his camp-fire burning."
Tisdale paused to draw his hand across his eyes and met Foster's look over the table. "It was there I blundered. There was a plain traveled trail from that mine down through the lowlands to Susitna, and I failed to see that his tracks left it: they were partly blotted out in a fresh fall of snow. I lost six hours there, and when I picked up his trail again, I saw he was avoiding the few way houses; he passed the settlement by; then I missed his camp-fire. It was plain he was afraid to sleep any more. But he knew the Susitna country; he kept a true course, and sometimes, in swampy places, turned back to the main thoroughfare. At last, near the crossing of the Matanuska, I was caught in the first spring thaw. It was heavy going. All the streams were out of banks; the valley became a network of small sloughs undermining the snowfields, creating innumerable ponds and lakes. The earth, bared in patches, gave and oozed like a sponge. It was impossible to follow Weatherbee's trail, but I picked it up once more, where it came into the other, along the Chugach foot-hills. Slides began to block the way; ice glazed the overflows at night; and at last a cold wave struck down from the summits; the track stiffened in an hour and it was hard as steel underfoot. The wind cut like swords. Then came snow."
Tisdale looked off with his far-sighted gaze through the open door. Every face was turned to him, but no one hurried him. It was a time when silence spoke.
"I came on Weatherbee's dogs in a small ravine," he said. "They had broken through thin ice in an overflow, and the sled had mired in muck. The cold wave set them tight; their legs were planted like posts, and I had to cut them out. Two were done for."
"You mean," exclaimed Banks, "Dave hadn't cut the traces to give his huskies a chance."
Tisdale nodded slowly. "But the instant I cut Tyee loose, he went limping off, picking up his master's trail. It was a zigzag course up the face of a ridge into a grove of spruce. Weatherbee took a course like a husky; location was a sixth sense to him; yet I found his tracks up there, winding aimlessly. It had stopped snowing then, but the first impressions were nearly filled. In a little while I noticed the spaces were shorter between the prints of the left shoe; they made a dip and blur. Then I came into a parallel trail, and these tracks were clear, made since the snowstorm, but there was the same favoring of the left foot. He was traveling in a circle. Sometimes in unsheltered places, where the wind swept through an avenue of trees, small drifts covered the impressions, but the dog found them again, still doubling that broad circle. Finally I saw a great dark blotch ahead where the ground sloped up to a narrow plateau. And in a moment I saw it was caused by a great many fresh twigs of spruce, all stuck upright in the snow and set carefully in rows, like a child's make-believe garden."
Tisdale's voice broke. He was looking off again into the night, and his face hardened; two vertical lines like clefts divided his brows. It was as though the iron in the man cropped through. The pause was breathless. Here and there a grim face worked.
"When the dog reached the spot," Hollis went on, "he gave a quick bark and ran with short yelps towards a clump of young trees a few yards off. The rim of a drift formed a partial windbreak, but he had only a low bough to cover him,--and the temperature,--along those ice-peaks--"
His voice failed. There was another speaking silence. It was as though these men, having followed all those hundreds of miles over tundra and mountains, through thaw and frost,