Bankruptcy -- Fiction; Gold mines and mining -- Alaska -- Fiction; Oakland (Calif.) -- Fiction; Western stories; Women pioneers -- Fiction
The cold snap continued. Only men of iron kept the trail at such low
temperatures, and Kama and Daylight were picked men of their races.
But Kama knew the other was the better man, and thus, at the start, he
was himself foredoomed to defeat. Not that he slackened his effort or
willingness by the slightest conscious degree, but that he was beaten
by the burden he carried in his mind. His attitude toward Daylight was
worshipful. Stoical, taciturn, proud of his physical prowess, he found
all these qualities incarnated in his white companion. Here was one
that excelled in the things worth excelling in, a man-god ready to
hand, and Kama could not but worship--withal he gave no signs of it.
No wonder the race of white men conquered, was his thought, when it
bred men like this man. What chance had the Indian against such a
dogged, enduring breed? Even the Indians did not travel at such low
temperatures, and theirs was the wisdom of thousands of generations;
yet here was this Daylight, from the soft Southland, harder than they,
laughing at their fears, and swinging along the trail ten and twelve
hours a day. And this Daylight thought that he could keep up a day's
pace of thirty-three miles for sixty days! Wait till a fresh fall of
snow came down, or they struck the unbroken trail or the rotten rim-ice
that fringed open water.
In the meantime Kama kept the pace, never grumbling, never shirking.
Sixty-five degrees below zero is very cold. Since water freezes at
thirty-two above, sixty-five below meant ninety-seven degrees below
freezing-point. Some idea of the significance of this may be gained by
conceiving of an equal difference of temperature in the opposite
direction. One hundred and twenty-nine on the thermometer constitutes
a very hot day, yet such a temperature is but ninety-seven degrees
above freezing. Double this difference, and possibly some slight
conception may be gained of the cold through which Kama and Daylight
travelled between dark and dark and through the dark.
Kama froze the skin on his cheek-bones, despite frequent rubbings, and
the flesh turned black and sore. Also he slightly froze the edges of
his lung-tissues--a dangerous thing, and the basic reason why a man
should not unduly exert himself in the open at sixty-five below. But
Kama never complained, and Daylight was a furnace of heat, sleeping as
warmly under his six pounds of rabbit skins as the other did under
twelve pounds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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