THE WISDOM OF THE TRAIL
by Jack London
Sitka Charley had achieved the impossible.
Other Indians might have known as much of
the wisdom of the trail as did he; but he
alone knew the white man's wisdom, the honor
of the trail, and the law. Yet these things
had not come to him in a day. The aboriginal
mind is slow to generalize, and many facts,
repeated often, are required to compass an
understanding. Sitka Charley, from boyhood,
had been thrown continually with white men,
and as a man he had elected to cast his
fortunes with them, expatriating himself,
once and for all, from his own people. Even
then, respecting, almost venerating their
power, and pondering over it, he had yet to
divine its secret essence -- the honor and
the law. And it was only by the cumulative
evidence of years that he had finally come
to understand. Being an alien, when he did
know he knew it better than the white man
himself; being an Indian, he had achieved
the impossible.
And of these things had been bred a certain
contempt for his own people, a contempt
which he had made it a habit to conceal,
but which now burst forth in a polyglot
whirlwind of curses upon the heads of
Kah-Chucte and Gowhee. They cringed before
him like a pair of snarling wolf-dogs, too
cowardly to spring, too wolfish to cover
their fangs. They were not handsome creatures;
neither was Sitka Charley. All three were
frightful-looking. There was no flesh to
their faces; their cheek bones were massed
with hideous scabs which had cracked and
frozen alternately under the intense frost,
while their eyes burned luridly with the
light which alone is born of desperation
and hunger. Men so situated, beyond the
pale of the honor and the law, are not to be
trusted. Sitka Charley knew this; and this
was why he had forced them to abandon their
rifles with the rest of the camp outfit
ten days before. His rifle and Captain
Effingwell's were the only ones that remained.
"Come, get a fire started!" he commanded,
drawing out the precious match box with its
attendant strips of dry birch-bark.
The two Indians fell sullenly to the task
of gathering dead branches and underwood.
They were weak, and paused often, catching
themselves, in the act of stooping, with
giddy motions, or staggering to the center
of operations with their knees shaking like
castanets. After each trip they rested for
a moment, as though sick and deadly weary.
At times their eyes took on the patient
stoicism of dumb suffering; and again, the
ego seemed almost bursting forth with its
wild cry, "I, I, I want to exist!" -- the one
dominant note of the whole living universe.
A light breath of air blew from the south,
nipping the exposed portions of their bodies
and driving the frost, in needles of fire,
through fur and flesh to the very bones.
So, when the fire had grown lusty and thawed
a damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka
Charley forced his reluctant comrades
to lend a hand in pitching a fly. It was
a primitive affair -- merely a blanket,
stretched parallel with the fire and to
windward of it, at an angle of perhaps
forty-five degrees. This shut out the
chill wind and threw the heat backward and
down upon those who were to huddle in its
shelter. Then a layer of green spruce-boughs
was spread, that their bodies might not
come in contact with the snow. When this
task was completed, Kah-Chucte and Gowhee
proceeded to take care of their feet. Their
ice-bound moccasins were sadly worn by much
travel, and the sharp ice of the river jams
had cut them to rags. Their Siwash-socks
were in similar condition, and when these
had been thawed and removed, the dead-white
tips of the toes, in the various stages
of mortification, told their simple tale
of the trail.
Leaving the two to the drying of their
foot-gear, Sitka Charley turned back over
the course he had come. He, too, had a
mighty longing to sit by the fire and tend
his complaining flesh, but the honor and
the law forbade. He toiled painfully over
the frozen field, each step a protest,
every muscle in revolt. Several times,
where the open water between the jams had
recently crusted, he was forced to miserably
accelerate his movements as the fragile
footing swayed and threatened beneath him.
In such places, to stop was to break through;
to break through was to die -- to die quickly
and easily. But it was not his desire to
endure no more, so he hastened.
His deepening anxiety vanished as two Indians
dragged into view round a bend in the river.
They staggered and panted like men under
heavy burdens; yet the packs on their backs
were a matter of but few pounds. He questioned
them eagerly, and their replies seemed to
relieve him. He hurried on. Next came two
white men, supporting a woman between them.
They also behaved as though drunken, and
their limbs shook with weakness. But the
woman leaned lightly upon them, choosing to
carry herself forward with her own strength.
At sight of her, a flash of joy cast its
fleeting light upon Sitka Charley's face.
He cherished a very great regard for
Mrs. Effingwell. He had seen many white
women, but this was the first to travel the
trail with him. When Captain Effingwell had
proposed the hazardous undertaking and made
him an offer for his services, he had shaken
his head gravely; for it was an unknown
journey through the dismal vastnesses of
the Northland, and he knew it to be of the
kind that tries to the uttermost the souls
of men. But when he learned that the
captain's wife was to accompany them, he
had refused flatly to have anything further
to do with it. Had it been a woman of his
own race he would have harbored no objections;
but these women of the Southland -- no, no,
they were too soft, too tender for such
enterprises. The idea was not to be entertained
for an instant.
Sitka Charley did not know this kind of
woman. Five minutes before, he did not
even dream of taking charge of the
expedition; but when she came to him with
her wonderful smile and her straight clean
English, and talked to the point, without
pleading or persuading, he had incontinently
yielded. Had there been a softness and
appeal in the eyes, a tremble to the
voice, a taking advantage of sex, he
would have stiffened to steel; instead,
her clear-searching eyes and clear-ringing
voice, her utter frankness and assertion
of equality, had robbed him of his reason.
He felt, then, that this was a new breed
of woman; and ere they had been trail-mates
for many days, he knew why the sons of
such women mastered the land and the sea,
and why the sons of his own womankind
could not prevail against them. Tender and
soft! -- day after day he watched her,
muscle-weary, exhausted, indomitable, and
the words beat upon his brain in a perennial
refrain. Tender and soft! He knew her feet
had been born to easy paths and sunny
lands, strangers to the moccasined pain
of the North, unkissed by the chill lips
of the frost, and he watched and marveled
at them twinkling ever through the weary day.
She had always a smile and a word of cheer,
from which not even the meanest packer was
excluded. As the way grew darker she seemed
to stiffen and gather greater strength, and
when Kah-Chucte and Gowhee, who had bragged
that they knew every landmark of the way as
a child did the skin-bales of the teepee,
acknowledged that they knew not where they
were, it was she who raised a forgiving voice
amid the curses of the men. She had sung to
them that night, till they felt the weariness
fall from them and were ready to face the
future with fresh hope. And when the food
failed and each scant stint was measured
jealously, she it was who rebelled against
the machinations of her husband and Sitka
Charley, and demanded and received a share
neither greater nor less than that of the
others.
Sitka Charley was proud to know this woman.
A new richness, a greater breadth had come
into his life with her presence. Hitherto
he had been his own mentor, had turned to
right or left at no man's beck; he had
molded himself according to his own dictates,
nourished his manhood regardless of all
save his own opinion. For the first time
he had felt a call from without for the
best that was in him. Just a glance of
appreciation from the clear-searching eyes,
a word of thanks from the clear-ringing
voice, just a slight wreathing of the lips
in that wonderful smile, and he felt his
reward to be greater than he deserved.
It was a new stimulant to his manhood;
for the first time he thrilled with a
conscious pride in his wisdom of the
trail; and between the twain they ever
lifted the sinking hearts of their
comrades.
The faces of the two men and the woman
brightened as they saw him, for after all
he was the staff they leaned upon. But
Sitka Charley, rigid as was his wont,
concealing pain and pleasure impartially,
asked them the welfare of the rest, told
the distance to the fire, and continued
on the back-trip. Next he met a single
Indian, unburdened, limping, lips compressed,
and eyes set with the pain of a foot in
which the quick fought a losing battle
with the dead. All possible care had
been taken of him; but in the last
extremity the weak and unfortunate must
perish, and Sitka Charley deemed his
days to be few. The man could not keep
up for long; so he gave him rough
cheering words. After that came two
more Indians, to whom he had allotted
the task of helping along Joe, the third
white man of the party. They had deserted
him. Sitka Charley saw at a glance the
lurking spring in their bodies, and knew
they had at last cast off his mastery.
So he was not taken unawares when he
ordered them back in quest of their
abandoned charge, and saw the gleam of the
hunting-knives that they drew from them
the sheaths. A pitiful spectacle, three
weak men lifting their puny strength in
the face of the mighty vastness! But the
two recoiled under the fierce rifle-blows
of the one, and returned like beaten dogs
to the leash. Two hours later, with Joe
reeling between them and Sitka Charley
bringing up the rear, they came to the
fire, where the remainder of the expedition
crouched in the shelter of the fly.
"A few words, my comrades, before we sleep,"
Sitka Charley said, after they had devoured
their slim rations of unleavened bread. He
was speaking to the Indians, in their own
tongue, having already given the import to
the whites. "A few words, my comrades, for
your own good, that perchance ye may yet
live. I shall give ye the law; on his own
head be the death of him that breaks it!
We have passed the Hills of Silence, and
we now travel the head-reaches of the Stuart.
It may be one sleep, it may be several, it
may be many sleeps, but in time we shall
come among the Men of the Yukon, who have
much grub. It were well that we look to the
law. To-day, Kah-Chucte and Gowhee, whom I
commanded to break trail, forgot they were
men, and, like frightened children, ran away.
True, they forgot; so let us forget. But
hereafter let them remember. If it should
happen they do not -- " He touched his rifle
carelessly, grimly. "To-morrow they shall
carry the flour and see that the white man
Joe lies not down by the trail. The cups
of flour are counted; should so much as an
ounce be wanting at nightfall -- Dost
understand? To-day there were others that
forgot. Moose-Head and Three-Salmon left
the white man Joe to lie in the snow. Let
them forget no more. With the light of day
shall they go forth and break trail. Ye
have heard the law. Look well, lest ye
break it."
Sitka Charley found it beyond him to keep
the line close up. From Moose-Head and
Three-Salmon, who broke trail in advance,
to Kah-Chucte, Gowhee, and Joe, it straggled
out over a mile. Each staggered, fell, or
rested, as he saw fit. The line of march
was a progression through a series of irregular
halts. Each drew upon the last remnant of
his strength and stumbled onward till it
was expended; but in some miraculous way
there was always another last remnant. Each
time a man fell, it was with the firm belief
that he would rise no more; yet he did rise,
and again, and again. The flesh yielded, the
will conquered; but each triumph was a tragedy.
The Indian with the frozen foot, no longer
erect, crawled forward on hand and knee. He
rarely rested, for he knew the penalty exacted
by the frost. Even Mrs. Effingwell's lips
were at last set, and her eyes, seeing,
saw not. Often, she stopped, pressing a
mittened hand to her heart, gasping and
dizzy.
Joe, the white man, had passed beyond the
stage of suffering. He no longer begged to
be let alone -- prayed to die; but was soothed
and content under the anodyne of delirium.
Kah-Chucte and Gowhee dragged him on roughly,
venting upon him many a savage glance or
blow. To them it seemed the acme of injustice.
Their hearts were bitter with hate, heavy
with fear. Why should they cumber their
strength with his weakness? To do so, meant
death; to not do so -- and they remembered
the law of Sitka Charley, and the rifle.
Joe, the white man, fell with greater frequency
as the daylight waned; and so hard was he to
raise that they dropped farther and farther
behind. Sometimes all three pitched into the
snow, so weak they had become. Yet on their
backs was life, and strength, and warmth.
Within the flour-sacks were all the
potentialities of existence. They could not
but think of this, and it was not strange,
that which followed. They had fallen by the
side of a great timber-jam where a thousand
cords of firewood waited the match. Near by
was an air-hole through the ice. Kah-Chucte
looked on the wood and the water, as did
Gowhee; then they looked at each other. Never
a word was spoken. Gowhee struck a fire.
Kah-Chucte filled a tin-cup with water and
heated it. Joe babbled of things in another
land, in a tongue they did not understand.
They mixed flour with the warm water till
it was a thin paste, and of this they drank
many cups. They did not offer any to Joe;
but he did not mind. He did not mind anything,
not even his moccasins, which scorched and
smoked among the coals.
A crystal mist of snow fell about them, softly,
caressingly, wrapping them in clinging robes
of white. And their feet would have yet trod
many trails had not destiny brushed the clouds
aside and cleared the air. Nay, ten minutes'
delay would have been salvation. Sitka Charley,
looking back, saw the pillared smoke of their
fire, and guessed. And he looked ahead at those
who were faithful, and at Mrs. Effingwell.
"So, my good comrades, ye have again forgotten
that ye were men? Good, very good; there will
be fewer bellies to feed." Sitka Charley re-tied
the flour as he spoke, strapping the pack to
his own back. He kicked Joe till the pain broke
through the poor devil's bliss and brought him
to his feet, doddering like a dead man. Then
he shoved him out onto the trail and started
him on his way. The two Indians attempted to
slip off.
"Hold, Gowhee! And thou, too, Kah-Chucte! Hath
the flour given such strength to thy legs that
they may outrun the swift-winged lead? Think
not to cheat the law. Be men for the last time,
and be content that ye die full-stomached.
Come, step up, back to the timber, shoulder
to shoulder!"
The two men obeyed, quietly, without fear; for
it is the future which presses upon the man,
not the present.
"Thou, Gowhee, hast a wife and children and
a deerskin lodge in the Chippewyan. What is
thy will in the matter?"
"Give thou her of the goods which are mine by
the word of the Captain -- the blankets, the
beads, the tobacco, the box which makes strange
sounds after the manner of the white men. Say
that I died on the trail, but say not how."
"And thou, Kah-Chucte, who hast nor wife nor
child?"
"Mine is a sister, the wife of the Factor at
Koshim. He beats her, and she is not happy.
Give thou her the goods which are mine by the
contract, and tell her that it were well she
go back to her own people. Shouldst thou meet
the man, and be so minded, it were a good
deed that he should die. He beats her, and
she is afraid."
"Are ye content to die by the law?"
"We are!"
"Then, good-by, my comrades! May ye sit by
the well-filled pot, in warm lodges, ere
the day is done!"
As he spoke, he raised his rifle, and many
echoes broke the silence. Hardly had they
died away, when other rifles spoke in the
distance. Sitka Charley started. There had
been more than one shot, yet there was but
one other rifle in the party. He gave one
fleeting glance at the men who lay so quietly,
smiled viciously at the wisdom of the trail,
and hurried on to meet the Men of the Yukon.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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