PAGE 4
The White Silence
by
At last the Kid laid the pitiable thing that was once a man in the snow. But worse than his comrade’s pain was the dumb anguish in the woman’s face, the blended look of hopeful, hopeless query. Little was said; those of the Northland are early taught the futility of words and the inestimable value of deeds. With the temperature at sixty-five below zero, a man cannot lie many minutes in the snow and live. So the sled lashings were cut, and the sufferer, rolled in furs, laid on a couch of boughs. Before him roared a fire, built of the very wood which wrought the mishap. Behind and partially over him was stretched the primitive fly–a piece of canvas, which caught the radiating heat and threw it back and down upon hima trick which men may know who study physics at the fount.
And men who have shared their bed with death know when the call is sounded. Mason was terribly crushed. The most cursory examination revealed it.
His right arm, leg, and back were broken; his limbs were paralyzed from the hips; and the likelihood of internal injuries was large. An occasional moan was his only sign of life.
No hope; nothing to be done. The pitiless night crept slowly by–Ruth’s portion, the despairing stoicism of her race, and Malemute Kid adding new lines to his face of bronze.
In fact, Mason suffered least of all, for he spent his time in eastern Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountains, living over the scenes of his childhood. And most pathetic was the melody of his long-forgotten Southern vernacular, as he raved of swimming holes and coon hunts and watermelon raids. It was as Greek to Ruth, but the Kid understood and felt–felt as only one can feel who has been shut out for years from all that civilization means.
Morning brought consciousness to the stricken man, and Malemute Kid bent closer to catch his whispers.
‘You remember when we foregathered on the Tanana, four years come next ice run? I didn’t care so much for her then. It was more like she was pretty, and there was a smack of excitement about it, I think. But d’ye know, I’ve come to think a heap of her. She’s been a good wife to me, always at my shoulder in the pinch. And when it comes to trading, you know there isn’t her equal. D’ye recollect the time she shot the Moosehorn Rapids to pull you and me off that rock, the bullets whipping the water like hailstones?- and the time of the famine at Nuklukyeto?–when she raced the ice run to bring the news?
Yes, she’s been a good wife to me, better’n that other one. Didn’t know I’d been there?
Never told you, eh? Well, I tried it once, down in the States. That’s why I’m here. Been raised together, too. I came away to give her a chance for divorce. She got it.
‘But that’s got nothing to do with Ruth. I had thought of cleaning up and pulling for the Outside next year–her and I–but it’s too late. Don’t send her back to her people, Kid. It’s beastly hard for a woman to go back. Think of it!–nearly four years on our bacon and beans and flour and dried fruit, and then to go back to her fish and caribou. It’s not good for her to have tried our ways, to come to know they’re better’n her people’s, and then return to them. Take care of her, Kidwhy don’t you–but no, you always fought shy of them–and you never told me why you came to this country. Be kind to her, and send her back to the States as soon as you can. But fix it so she can come back–liable to get homesick, you know.