sore--ay, sorer than his, for we had worked with the dogs; also, we
looked to see. Long Jeff swore he would die before he hit the trail
again; so Passuk took a fur robe, and I a cooking pot and an axe, and we
made ready to go. But she looked on the man's portion, and said, 'It is
wrong to waste good food on a baby. He is better dead.' I shook my head
and said no--that a comrade once was a comrade always. Then she spoke of
the men of Forty Mile; that they were many men and good; and that they
looked to me for grub in the spring. But when I still said no, she
snatched the pistol from my belt, quick, and as our brother Bettles has
spoken, Long Jeff went to the bosom of Abraham before his time. I chided
Passuk for this; but she showed no sorrow, nor was she sorrowful. And in
my heart I knew she was right."

Sitka Charley paused and threw pieces of ice into the gold pan on the
stove. The men were silent, and their backs chilled to the sobbing cries
of the dogs as they gave tongue to their misery in the outer cold.

"And day by day we passed in the snow the sleeping-places of the two
ghosts--Passuk and I--and we knew we would be glad for such ere we made
Salt Water. Then we came to the Indian, like another ghost, with his
face set toward Pelly. They had not whacked up fair, the man and the
boy, he said, and he had had no flour for three days. Each night he
boiled pieces of his moccasins in a cup, and ate them. He did not have
much moccasins left. And he was a Coast Indian, and told us these things
through Passuk, who talked his tongue. He was a stranger in the Yukon,
and he knew not the way, but his face was set to Pelly. How far was it?
Two sleeps? ten? a hundred--he did not know, but he was going to Pelly.
It was too far to turn back; he could only keep on.

"He did not ask for grub, for he could see we, too, were hard put. Passuk
looked at the man, and at me, as though she were of two minds, like a
mother partridge whose young are in trouble. So I turned to her and
said, 'This man has been dealt unfair. Shall I give him of our grub a
portion?' I saw her eyes light, as with quick pleasure; but she looked
long at the man and at me, and her mouth drew close and hard, and she
said, 'No. The Salt Water is afar off, and Death lies in wait. Better
it is that he take this stranger man and let my man Charley pass.' So
the man went away in the Silence toward Pelly. That night she wept.
Never had I seen her