Coming down coast from the Kotzebue country they stumbled onto the little camp in the early winter, and as there was food a plenty, of its kind, whereas they had subsisted for some days on puree of seal oil and short ribs of dog, Captain and Big George decided to winter. A maxim of the north teaches to cabin by a grub-pile.
It was an odd village they beheld that first day. Instead of the clean moss-chinked log shelters men were wont to build in this land, they found the community housed like marmots in holes and burrows.
It seemed that the troop had landed, fresh from the States, a hundred and a quarter strong, hot with the lust for gold, yet shaken by the newspaper horrors of Alaska’s rigorous hardships and forbidding climate.
Debouching in the early fall, they had hastily prepared for an Associated Press-painted Arctic winter.
Had they been forced to winter in the mountains of Idaho, or among Montana’s passes, they would have prepared simply and effectively. Here, however, in a mystic land, surrounded by the unknown, they grew panic stricken and lost their wits.
Thus, when the two “old timers” came upon them in the early winter they found them in bomb-proof hovels, sunk into the muck, banked with log walls, and thatched over with dirt and sod.
“Where are your windows and ventilators?” they were asked, and collectively the camp laughed at the question. They knew how to keep snug and warm even if half-witted “sourdoughs” didn’t. They weren’t taking any chances on freezing, not on your tin-type, no outdoor work and exposure for them!
As the winter settled, they snuggled back, ate three meals and more daily of bacon, beans, and baking-powder bread; playing cribbage for an appetite. They undertook no exercise more violent than seven-up, while the wood-cutting fell as a curse upon those unfortunates who lost at the game. They giggled at Captain and the big whaler who daily, snow or blow, hit the trail or wielded pick and shovel.
However, as the two maintained their practice, the camp grew to resent their industry, and, as is possible only in utterly idle communities, there sprung up a virulence totally out of proportion, and, founded without reason, most difficult to dispel. Before they knew it, the two were disliked and distrusted; their presence ignored; their society shunned.
Captain had talked to many in the camp. “You’ll get scurvy, sure, living in these dark houses. They’re damp and dirty, and you don’t exercise. Besides, there isn’t a pound of fresh grub in camp.”
Figuratively, the camp’s nose had tilted at this, and it stated pompously that it were better to preserve its classic purity of features and pro rata of toes, than to jeopardize these adjuncts through fear of a possible blood disease.
“Blood disease, eh?” George snorted like a sea-lion. “Wait till your legs get black and you spit your teeth out like plum-pits–mebbe you’ll listen then. It’ll come, see if it don’t.”
He was right. Yet when the plague did grip the camp and men died, one in five, they failed to rise to it. Instead of fighting manfully they lapsed into a frightened, stubborn coma.
There was one, and only one, who did not. Klusky the Jew; Klusky the pariah. They said he worked just to be ornery and different from the rest, he hated them so. They enjoyed baiting him to witness his fury. It sated that taint of Roman cruelty inherent in the man of ignorance. He was all the amusement they had, for it wasn’t policy to stir up the two others–they might slop over and clean up the village. So they continued to goad him as they had done since leaving ‘Frisco. They gibed and jeered till he shunned them, living alone in the fringe of the pines, bitter and vicious, as an outcast from the pack will grow, whether human or lupine. He frequented only the house of Captain and George, because they were exiles like himself.
The partners did not relish this overmuch, for he was an odious being, avaricious, carping, and dirty.
“His face reminds me of a tool,” said George, once, “nose an’ chin shuts up like calipers. He’s got the forehead of a salmon trout, an’ his chin don’t retreat, it stampedes, plumb down ag’in his apple. Look out for that droop of the mouth. I’ve seen it before, an’ his eyes is bad, too. They’ve stirred him up an’ pickled all the good he ever had. Some day he’ll do a murder.”
“I wonder what he means by always saying he’ll have revenge before spring. It makes me creep to hear him cackle and gloat. I think he’s going crazy.”
“Can’t tell. This bunch would bust anybody’s mental tugs, an’ they make a mistake drivin’ him so. Say! How’s my gums look tonight?” George stretched his lips back, showing his teeth, while Captain made careful examination.
“All right. How are mine?”
“Red as a berry.”
Every day they searched thus for the symptoms, looking for discolouration, and anxiously watching bruises on limb or body. Men live in fear when their comrades vanish silently from their midst. Each night upon retiring they felt legs nervously, punching here and there to see that the flesh retained its resiliency.
So insidious is the malady’s approach that it may be detected only thus. A lassitude perhaps, a rheumatic laziness, or pains and swelling at the joints. Mayhap one notes a putty-like softness of the lower limbs. Where he presses, the finger mark remains, filling up sluggishly. No mental depression at first, nor fever, only a drooping ambition, fatigue, enlarging parts, now gradual, now sudden.
The grim humour of seeing grown men gravely poking their legs with rigid digits, or grinning anxiously into hand-mirrors had struck some of the tenderfeet at first, but the implacable progress of the disease; its black, merciless presence, pausing destructively here and there, had terrorized them into a hopeless fatalism till they cowered helplessly, awaiting its touch.
One night Captain announced to his partner. “I’m going over to the Frenchmen’s, I hear Menard is down.”
“What’s the use of buttin’ in where ye ain’t wanted? As fer me, them frogeaters can all die like salmon; I won’t go nigh ’em an’ I’ve told ’em so. I give ’em good advice, an’ what’d I get? What’d that daffy doctor do? Pooh-poohed at me an’ physiced them. Lord! Physic a man with scurvy–might as well bleed a patient fer amputation.” George spoke with considerable heat.
Captain pulled his parka hood well down so that the fox-tails around the edge protected his features, and stepped out into the evening. He had made several such trips in the past few months to call on men smitten with the sickness, but all to no effect. Being “chechakos” they were supreme in their conceit, and refused to heed his advice.
Returning at bed time he found his partner webbing a pair of snow-shoes by the light of a stinking “go-devil,” consisting of a string suspended in a can of molten grease. The camp had sold them grub, but refused the luxury of candles. Noting his gravity, George questioned:
“Well, how’s Menard?”
“Dead!” Captain shook himself as though at the memory. “It was awful. He died while I was talking to him.”
“Don’t say! How’s that?”
“I found him propped up in a chair. He looked bad, but said he was feeling fine–“
“That’s the way they go. I’ve seen it many a time–feelin’ fine plumb to the last.”
“He’d been telling me about a bet he had with Promont. Promont was taken last week, too, you know, same time. Menard bet him twenty dollars that he’d outlast him.”
“‘I’m getting all right,’ says he, ‘but poor Promont’s going to die. I’ll get his twenty, sure!’ I turned to josh with the boy a bit, an’ when I spoke to Menard he didn’t answer. His jaw had sagged and he’d settled in his chair. Promont saw it, too, and cackled. ‘H’I ‘ave win de bet! H’I ‘ave win de bet!’ That’s all. He just slid off. Gee! It was horrible.”
George put by his work and swore, pacing the rough pole floor.
“Oh, the cussed fools! That makes six dead from the one cabin–six from eighteen, an’ Promont’ll make seven to-morrow. Do ye mind how we begged ’em to quit that dug-out an’ build a white man’s house, an’ drink spruce tea, an’ work! They’re too
