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Chretien de Troyes - "A Romance"

Zane Grey - "The Heritage of the Desert"

Lew Wallace - "A Tale of the Christ"

Henry James - "Some Short Stories"

Love of Life And Other Stories

J >> Jack London >> Love of Life And Other Stories




"How do you know she is crying?" I interrupted. "You cannot see
her face. Perhaps she is asleep."

Sitka Charley looked at me in swift surprise, then back at the
picture. It was evident that he had not reasoned the impression.

"Perhaps she is asleep," he repeated. He studied it closely. "No,
she is not asleep. The shoulders show that she is not asleep. I
have seen the shoulders of a woman who cried. The mother is
crying. It is a very great sickness."

"And now you understand the picture," I cried.

He shook his head, and asked, "The little girl - does it die?"

It was my turn for silence.

"Does it die?" he reiterated. "You are a painter-man. Maybe you
know."

"No, I do not know," I confessed.

"It is not life," he delivered himself dogmatically. "In life
little girl die or get well. Something happen in life. In picture
nothing happen. No, I do not understand pictures."

His disappointment was patent. It was his desire to understand all
things that white men understand, and here, in this matter, he
failed. I felt, also, that there was challenge in his attitude.
He was bent upon compelling me to show him the wisdom of pictures.
Besides, he had remarkable powers of visualization. I had long
since learned this. He visualized everything. He saw life in
pictures, felt life in pictures, generalized life in pictures; and
yet he did not understand pictures when seen through other men's
eyes and expressed by those men with color and line upon canvas.

"Pictures are bits of life," I said. "We paint life as we see it.
For instance, Charley, you are coming along the trail. It is
night. You see a cabin. The window is lighted. You look through
the window for one second, or for two seconds, you see something,
and you go on your way. You saw maybe a man writing a letter. You
saw something without beginning or end. Nothing happened. Yet it
was a bit of life you saw. You remember it afterward. It is like
a picture in your memory. The window is the frame of the picture."

I could see that he was interested, and I knew that as I spoke he
had looked through the window and seen the man writing the letter.

"There is a picture you have painted that I understand," he said.
"It is a true picture. It has much meaning. It is in your cabin
at Dawson. It is a faro table. There are men playing. It is a
large game. The limit is off."

"How do you know the limit is off?" I broke in excitedly, for here
was where my work could be tried out on an unbiassed judge who knew
life only, and not art, and who was a sheer master of reality.
Also, I was very proud of that particular piece of work. I had
named it "The Last Turn," and I believed it to be one of the best
things I had ever done.

"There are no chips on the table", Sitka Charley explained. "The
men are playing with markers. That means the roof is the limit.
One man play yellow markers - maybe one yellow marker worth one
thousand dollars, maybe two thousand dollars. One man play red
markers. Maybe they are worth five hundred dollars, maybe one
thousand dollars. It is a very big game. Everybody play very
high, up to the roof. How do I know? You make the dealer with
blood little bit warm in face." (I was delighted.) "The lookout,
you make him lean forward in his chair. Why he lean forward? Why
his face very much quiet? Why his eyes very much bright? Why
dealer warm with blood a little bit in the face? Why all men very
quiet? - the man with yellow markers? the man with white markers?
the man with red markers? Why nobody talk? Because very much
money. Because last turn."

"How do you know it is the last turn?" I asked.

"The king is coppered, the seven is played open," he answered.
"Nobody bet on other cards. Other cards all gone. Everybody one
mind. Everybody play king to lose, seven to win. Maybe bank lose
twenty thousand dollars, maybe bank win. Yes, that picture I
understand."

"Yet you do not know the end!" I cried triumphantly. "It is the
last turn, but the cards are not yet turned. In the picture they
will never be turned. Nobody will ever know who wins nor who
loses."

"And the men will sit there and never talk," he said, wonder and
awe growing in his face. "And the lookout will lean forward, and
the blood will be warm in the face of the dealer. It is a strange
thing. Always will they sit there, always; and the cards will
never be turned."

"It is a picture," I said. "It is life. You have seen things like
it yourself."

He looked at me and pondered, then said, very slowly: "No, as you
say, there is no end to it. Nobody will ever know the end. Yet is
it a true thing. I have seen it. It is life."

For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial
wisdom of the white man and verifying it by the facts of life. He
nodded his head several times, and grunted once or twice. Then he
knocked the ashes from his pipe, carefully refilled it, and after a
thoughtful pause, lighted it again.

"Then have I, too, seen many pictures of life," he began; "pictures
not painted, but seen with the eyes. I have looked at them like
through the window at the man writing the letter. I have seen many
pieces of life, without beginning, without end, without
understanding."

With a sudden change of position he turned his eyes full upon me
and regarded me thoughtfully.

"Look you," he said; "you are a painter-man. How would you paint
this which I saw, a picture without beginning, the ending of which
I do not understand, a piece of life with the northern lights for a
candle and Alaska for a frame."

"It is a large canvas," I murmured.

But he ignored me, for the picture he had in mind was before his
eyes and he was seeing it.

"There are many names for this picture," he said. "But in the
picture there are many sun-dogs, and it comes into my mind to call
it 'The Sun-Dog Trail.' It was a long time ago, seven years ago,
the fall of '97, when I saw the woman first time. At Lake
Linderman I had one canoe, very good Peterborough canoe. I came
over Chilcoot Pass with two thousand letters for Dawson. I was
letter carrier. Everybody rush to Klondike at that time. Many
people on trail. Many people chop down trees and make boats. Last
water, snow in the air, snow on the ground, ice on the lake, on the
river ice in the eddies. Every day more snow, more ice. Maybe one
day, maybe three days, maybe six days, any day maybe freeze-up
come, then no more water, all ice, everybody walk, Dawson six
hundred miles, long time walk. Boat go very quick. Everybody want
to go boat. Everybody say, 'Charley, two hundred dollars you take
me in canoe,' 'Charley, three hundred dollars,' 'Charley, four
hundred dollars.' I say no, all the time I say no. I am letter
carrier.

"In morning I get to Lake Linderman. I walk all night and am much
tired. I cook breakfast, I eat, then I sleep on the beach three
hours. I wake up. It is ten o'clock. Snow is falling. There is
wind, much wind that blows fair. Also, there is a woman who sits
in the snow alongside. She is white woman, she is young, very
pretty, maybe she is twenty years old, maybe twenty-five years old.
She look at me. I look at her. She is very tired. She is no
dance-woman. I see that right away. She is good woman, and she is
very tired.

"'You are Sitka Charley,' she says. I get up quick and roll
blankets so snow does not get inside. 'I go to Dawson,' she says.
'I go in your canoe - how much?'

"I do not want anybody in my canoe. I do not like to say no. So I
say, 'One thousand dollars.' Just for fun I say it, so woman
cannot come with me, much better than say no. She look at me very
hard, then she says, 'When you start?' I say right away. Then she
says all right, she will give me one thousand dollars.

"What can I say? I do not want the woman, yet have I given my word
that for one thousand dollars she can come. I am surprised. Maybe
she make fun, too, so I say, 'Let me see thousand dollars.' And
that woman, that young woman, all alone on the trail, there in the
snow, she take out one thousand dollars, in greenbacks, and she put
them in my hand. I look at money, I look at her. What can I say?
I say, 'No, my canoe very small. There is no room for outfit.'
She laugh. She says, 'I am great traveller. This is my outfit.'
She kick one small pack in the snow. It is two fur robes, canvas
outside, some woman's clothes inside. I pick it up. Maybe thirty-
five pounds. I am surprised. She take it away from me. She says,
'Come, let us start.' She carries pack into canoe. What can I
say? I put my blankets into canoe. We start.

"And that is the way I saw the woman first time. The wind was
fair. I put up small sail. The canoe went very fast, it flew like
a bird over the high waves. The woman was much afraid. 'What for
you come Klondike much afraid?' I ask. She laugh at me, a hard
laugh, but she is still much afraid. Also is she very tired. I
run canoe through rapids to Lake Bennett. Water very bad, and
woman cry out because she is afraid. We go down Lake Bennett,
snow, ice, wind like a gale, but woman is very tired and go to
sleep.

"That night we make camp at Windy Arm. Woman sit by fire and eat
supper. I look at her. She is pretty. She fix hair. There is
much hair, and it is brown, also sometimes it is like gold in the
firelight, when she turn her head, so, and flashes come from it
like golden fire. The eyes are large and brown, sometimes warm
like a candle behind a curtain, sometimes very hard and bright like
broken ice when sun shines upon it. When she smile - how can I
say? - when she smile I know white man like to kiss her, just like
that, when she smile. She never do hard work. Her hands are soft,
like baby's hand. She is soft all over, like baby. She is not
thin, but round like baby; her arm, her leg, her muscles, all soft
and round like baby. Her waist is small, and when she stand up,
when she walk, or move her head or arm, it is - I do not know the
word - but it is nice to look at, like - maybe I say she is built
on lines like the lines of a good canoe, just like that, and when
she move she is like the movement of the good canoe sliding through
still water or leaping through water when it is white and fast and
angry. It is very good to see.

"Why does she come into Klondike, all alone, with plenty of money?
I do not know. Next day I ask her. She laugh and says: 'Sitka
Charley, that is none of your business. I give you one thousand
dollars take me to Dawson. That only is your business.' Next day
after that I ask her what is her name. She laugh, then she says,
'Mary Jones, that is my name.' I do not know her name, but I know
all the time that Mary Jones is not her name.

"It is very cold in canoe, and because of cold sometimes she not
feel good. Sometimes she feel good and she sing. Her voice is
like a silver bell, and I feel good all over like when I go into
church at Holy Cross Mission, and when she sing I feel strong and
paddle like hell. Then she laugh and says, 'You think we get to
Dawson before freeze-up, Charley?' Sometimes she sit in canoe and
is thinking far away, her eyes like that, all empty. She does not
see Sitka Charley, nor the ice, nor the snow. She is far away.
Very often she is like that, thinking far away. Sometimes, when
she is thinking far away, her face is not good to see. It looks
like a face that is angry, like the face of one man when he want to
kill another man.

"Last day to Dawson very bad. Shore-ice in all the eddies, mush-
ice in the stream. I cannot paddle. The canoe freeze to ice. I
cannot get to shore. There is much danger. All the time we go
down Yukon in the ice. That night there is much noise of ice.
Then ice stop, canoe stop, everything stop. 'Let us go to shore,'
the woman says. I say no, better wait. By and by, everything
start down-stream again. There is much snow. I cannot see. At
eleven o'clock at night, everything stop. At one o'clock
everything start again. At three o'clock everything stop. Canoe
is smashed like eggshell, but is on top of ice and cannot sink. I
hear dogs howling. We wait. We sleep. By and by morning come.
There is no more snow. It is the freeze-up, and there is Dawson.
Canoe smash and stop right at Dawson. Sitka Charley has come in
with two thousand letters on very last water.

"The woman rent a cabin on the hill, and for one week I see her no
more. Then, one day, she come to me. 'Charley,' she says, 'how do
you like to work for me? You drive dogs, make camp, travel with
me.' I say that I make too much money carrying letters. She says,
'Charley, I will pay you more money.' I tell her that pick-and-
shovel man get fifteen dollars a day in the mines. She says, 'That
is four hundred and fifty dollars a month.' And I say, 'Sitka
Charley is no pick-and-shovel man.' Then she says, 'I understand,
Charley. I will give you seven hundred and fifty dollars each
month.' It is a good price, and I go to work for her. I buy for
her dogs and sled. We travel up Klondike, up Bonanza and Eldorado,
over to Indian River, to Sulphur Creek, to Dominion, back across
divide to Gold Bottom and to Too Much Gold, and back to Dawson.
All the time she look for something, I do not know what. I am
puzzled. 'What thing you look for?' I ask. She laugh. 'You look
for gold?' I ask. She laugh. Then she says, 'That is none of your
business, Charley.' And after that I never ask any more.

"She has a small revolver which she carries in her belt.
Sometimes, on trail, she makes practice with revolver. I laugh.
'What for you laugh, Charley?' she ask. 'What for you play with
that?' I say. 'It is no good. It is too small. It is for a
child, a little plaything.' When we get back to Dawson she ask me
to buy good revolver for her. I buy a Colt's 44. It is very
heavy, but she carry it in her belt all the time.

"At Dawson comes the man. Which way he come I do not know. Only
do I know he is CHECHA-QUO - what you call tenderfoot. His hands
are soft, just like hers. He never do hard work. He is soft all
over. At first I think maybe he is her husband. But he is too
young. Also, they make two beds at night. He is maybe twenty
years old. His eyes blue, his hair yellow, he has a little
mustache which is yellow. His name is John Jones. Maybe he is her
brother. I do not know. I ask questions no more. Only I think
his name not John Jones. Other people call him Mr. Girvan. I do
not think that is his name. I do not think her name is Miss
Girvan, which other people call her. I think nobody know their
names.

"One night I am asleep at Dawson. He wake me up. He says, 'Get
the dogs ready; we start.' No more do I ask questions, so I get
the dogs ready and we start. We go down the Yukon. It is night-
time, it is November, and it is very cold - sixty-five below. She
is soft. He is soft. The cold bites. They get tired. They cry
under their breaths to themselves. By and by I say better we stop
and make camp. But they say that they will go on. Three times I
say better to make camp and rest, but each time they say they will
go on. After that I say nothing. All the time, day after day, is
it that way. They are very soft. They get stiff and sore. They
do not understand moccasins, and their feet hurt very much. They
limp, they stagger like drunken people, they cry under their
breaths; and all the time they say, 'On! on! We will go on!'

"They are like crazy people. All the time do they go on, and on.
Why do they go on? I do not know. Only do they go on. What are
they after? I do not know. They are not after gold. There is no
stampede. Besides, they spend plenty of money. But I ask
questions no more. I, too, go on and on, because I am strong on
the trail and because I am greatly paid.

"We make Circle City. That for which they look is not there. I
think now that we will rest, and rest the dogs. But we do not
rest, not for one day do we rest. 'Come,' says the woman to the
man, 'let us go on.' And we go on. We leave the Yukon. We cross
the divide to the west and swing down into the Tanana Country.
There are new diggings there. But that for which they look is not
there, and we take the back trail to Circle City.

"It is a hard journey. December is most gone. The days are short.
It is very cold. One morning it is seventy below zero. 'Better
that we don't travel to-day,' I say, 'else will the frost be
unwarmed in the breathing and bite all the edges of our lungs.
After that we will have bad cough, and maybe next spring will come
pneumonia.' But they are CHECHA-QUO. They do not understand the
trail. They are like dead people they are so tired, but they say,
'Let us go on.' We go on. The frost bites their lungs, and they
get the dry cough. They cough till the tears run down their
cheeks. When bacon is frying they must run away from the fire and
cough half an hour in the snow. They freeze their cheeks a little
bit, so that the skin turns black and is very sore. Also, the man
freezes his thumb till the end is like to come off, and he must
wear a large thumb on his mitten to keep it warm. And sometimes,
when the frost bites hard and the thumb is very cold, he must take
off the mitten and put the hand between his legs next to the skin,
so that the thumb may get warm again.

"We limp into Circle City, and even I, Sitka Charley, am tired. It
is Christmas Eve. I dance, drink, make a good time, for to-morrow
is Christmas Day and we will rest. But no. It is five o'clock in
the morning - Christmas morning. I am two hours asleep. The man
stand by my bed. 'Come, Charley,' he says, 'harness the dogs. We
start.'

"Have I not said that I ask questions no more? They pay me seven
hundred and fifty dollars each month. They are my masters. I am
their man. If they say, 'Charley, come, let us start for hell,' I
will harness the dogs, and snap the whip, and start for hell. So I
harness the dogs, and we start down the Yukon. Where do we go?
They do not say. Only do they say, 'On! on! We will go on!'

"They are very weary. They have travelled many hundreds of miles,
and they do not understand the way of the trail. Besides, their
cough is very bad - the dry cough that makes strong men swear and
weak men cry. But they go on. Every day they go on. Never do
they rest the dogs. Always do they buy new dogs. At every camp,
at every post, at every Indian village, do they cut out the tired
dogs and put in fresh dogs. They have much money, money without
end, and like water they spend it. They are crazy? Sometimes I
think so, for there is a devil in them that drives them on and on,
always on. What is it that they try to find? It is not gold.
Never do they dig in the ground. I think a long time. Then I
think it is a man they try to find. But what man? Never do we see
the man. Yet are they like wolves on the trail of the kill. But
they are funny wolves, soft wolves, baby wolves who do not
understand the way of the trail. They cry aloud in their sleep at
night. In their sleep they moan and groan with the pain of their
weariness. And in the day, as they stagger along the trail, they
cry under their breaths. They are funny wolves.

"We pass Fort Yukon. We pass Fort Hamilton. We pass Minook.
January has come and nearly gone. The days are very short. At
nine o'clock comes daylight. At three o'clock comes night. And it
is cold. And even I, Sitka Charley, am tired. Will we go on
forever this way without end? I do not know. But always do I look
along the trail for that which they try to find. There are few
people on the trail. Sometimes we travel one hundred miles and
never see a sign of life. It is very quiet. There is no sound.
Sometimes it snows, and we are like wandering ghosts. Sometimes it
is clear, and at midday the sun looks at us for a moment over the
hills to the south. The northern lights flame in the sky, and the
sun-dogs dance, and the air is filled with frost-dust.

"I am Sitka Charley, a strong man. I was born on the trail, and
all my days have I lived on the trail. And yet have these two baby
wolves made me very tired. I am lean, like a starved cat, and I am
glad of my bed at night, and in the morning am I greatly weary.
Yet ever are we hitting the trail in the dark before daylight, and
still on the trail does the dark after nightfall find us. These
two baby wolves! If I am lean like a starved cat, they are lean
like cats that have never eaten and have died. Their eyes are sunk
deep in their heads, bright sometimes as with fever, dim and cloudy
sometimes like the eyes of the dead. Their cheeks are hollow like
caves in a cliff. Also are their cheeks black and raw from many
freezings. Sometimes it is the woman in the morning who says, 'I
cannot get up. I cannot move. Let me die.' And it is the man who
stands beside her and says, 'Come, let us go on.' And they go on.
And sometimes it is the man who cannot get up, and the woman says,
'Come, let us go on.' But the one thing they do, and always do, is
to go on. Always do they go on.

"Sometimes, at the trading posts, the man and woman get letters. I
do not know what is in the letters. But it is the scent that they
follow, these letters themselves are the scent. One time an Indian
gives them a letter. I talk with him privately. He says it is a
man with one eye who gives him the letter, a man who travels fast
down the Yukon. That is all. But I know that the baby wolves are
after the man with the one eye.

"It is February, and we have travelled fifteen hundred miles. We
are getting near Bering Sea, and there are storms and blizzards.
The going is hard. We come to Anvig. I do not know, but I think
sure they get a letter at Anvig, for they are much excited, and
they say, 'Come, hurry, let us go on.' But I say we must buy grub,
and they say we must travel light and fast. Also, they say that we
can get grub at Charley McKeon's cabin. Then do I know that they
take the big cut-off, for it is there that Charley McKeon lives
where the Black Rock stands by the trail.

"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.

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