Argosy, Vol. 120, No. 1 — page 141: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AN HOUR OF DAYLIGHT, hand, and Bardwell bethought himself that confidence and nerve instead of tatlike cun- ning, he was not in sight of the fat man’s class. | His losses were terrific-—more than he could possibly have kept his temper under if he had not already perfected a plan for ultimately recovering them. And his win- nings were so minute that the edge of wolf- ‘ish hunger was forever rasping him. Night after night his gold slipped away as through a sieve, while Lacey doled out his pittances of grub; and both men kept their thoughts, and, for different reasons, smiled. | | In Bardwell’s mind was the picture of spring days when, with sunlight in the sky, he would no longer need the company of the other to drive away his terrors. Then one skilful move would give him back all. The fat man, looking in his eyes, must have seen the flame of hate growing bright- er. No one realized better than he how the Jong night works poisonously in the minds of men hived up together, so that even the best friends of them brood and ’ nurse silly trifles into mountains that crash . down suddenly with frightful deeds. Yet as the hour-brief days flitted over the mountaintops, and the interminable nights dragged into eternity, he sat there immaculately clean, pink cheeked, cheer- ful; talking as he bet, joking as he bluffed and won, telling story after story of the great northland as he had heard them around the camp-fires of the Indians and voyageurs. Gradually ‘the shallow twilight that -miarked noon began to lengthen and to deepen. The cold tongues of the aurora took flight before it. Then, after another pair of weeks, a faint crescent of gid slashed the horizon above the hills. The following day a full inch of the sun ap- peared. In a week more it was a dlazing, life-bringing reality. All about the wild world stirred into ac- tivity. Off in the firs the kildees began to whistle. Lacey, coming in from a walk, said that he had seen'a fox and innumer- able rabbits. The following noon there was a dark shadow blotched against the snow on a near-by hillside that might have been a caribou. Spring was certainly at 13% e there was no time to lose. A sudden restlessness seemed to have at- tacked him. One afternoon after he re- turned from the fat man’s, where he had left almost the last scraping of his final sack, he set about rummaging over a heap of dunnage in a corner. One of the articles ‘was a leather suit-case in which he had laid away his temporarily useless city clothing. Into a vest-pocket he thrust two fingers, paused, swore softly. with satisfaction, and — whirled his back to the partition with its many chinks as he withdrew them. He un- folded the small packet, studied its con- tents a full minute, and put it back. The following noon, at Lacey’s sugges- tion, the two men put on snow-shoes and went hunting in the patch of timber some half mile back. _ Among the game, at least, the winter had not been one of famine. The thickets of scrub pine and the burrows behind the rocks turned out their white rabbits, the mainstay of the arctic, by the dozens. More.than one gray fox slipped into view, then vanished as mystically as he had come. Out in the center of a little barren place, protected from the wind by a gigantic rock, Lacey pointed to a cluster of broad foot- steps and murmured: “ Caribou. To-mor- row, before light, we’ll come out here and get one, if we can. Fresh meat’s the thing now—and then for the mush-on. Ought to be pulling out now, in a day or two, it’s all so fine. Think I’ll go day after to-mor- row. How long you staying?” Bardwell growled noncommittally. Later he suggested that they start on together; at least as far as Forty Mile, over the pass, where a branch of the trail forked off to the south and west, down toward Chilcat. Lacey, though not enthusiastic, agreed, and spent the day overhauling his sled and running-gear. The next morning, while the aurora still ruled the sky, they salhed out and made their kill of caribou. The huge animal was cut up and packed on the sledge. To his eight remaining dogs Lacey gave a square feed—their first in weeks— and stood over them, whip clubbed, while they gorged it down. That evening was to take place the cere- EO 1NOO (-) S CO@