Adventure stories, American; Fiction; Short stories; Western stories
"Before we start, I talk maybe two minutes with the priest at Anvig.
Yes, there is a man with one eye who has gone by and who travels fast.
And I know that for which they look is the man with the one eye. We
leave Anvig with little grub, and travel light and fast. There are
three fresh dogs bought in Anvig, and we travel very fast. The man and
woman are like mad. We start earlier in the morning, we travel later
at night. I look sometimes to see them die, these two baby wolves, but
they will not die. They go on and on. When the dry cough take hold of
them hard, they hold their hands against their stomach and double up
in the snow, and cough, and cough, and cough. They cannot walk, they
cannot talk. Maybe for ten minutes they cough, maybe for half an hour,
and then they straighten up, the tears from the coughing frozen on
their faces, and the words they say are, 'Come, let us go on.'
"Even I, Sitka Charley, am greatly weary, and I think seven hundred
and fifty dollars is a cheap price for the labor I do. We take the big
cut-off, and the trail is fresh. The baby wolves have their noses down
to the trail, and they say, 'Hurry!' All the time do they say, 'Hurry!
Faster! Faster!' It is hard on the dogs. We have not much food and we
cannot give them enough to eat, and they grow weak. Also, they must
work hard. The woman has true sorrow for them, and often, because of
them, the tears are in her eyes. But the devil in her that drives her
on will not let her stop and rest the dogs.
"And then we come upon the man with the one eye. He is in the snow by
the trail, and his leg is broken. Because of the leg he has made a poor
camp, and has been lying on his blankets for three days and keeping a
fire going. When we find him he is swearing. He swears like hell. Never
have I heard a man swear like that man. I am glad. Now that they have
found that for which they look, we will have rest. But the woman says,
'Let us start. Hurry!'
"I am surprised. But the man with the one eye says, 'Never mind me.
Give me your grub. You will get more grub at McKeon's cabin to-morrow.
Send McKeon back for me. But do you go on.' Here is another wolf, an
old wolf, and he, too, thinks but the one thought, to go on. So we give
him our grub, which is not much, and we chop wood for his fire, and we
take his strongest dogs and go on. We left the man with one eye there
in the snow, and he died there in the snow, for McKeon never went back
for him. And who that man was, and why he came to be there, I do not
know. But I think he was greatly paid by the man and the woman, like
me, to do their work for them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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