A sickness had come upon him so that he could
not leave the cabin. The wind and the snow had covered the cabin.
He had eaten his grub and died. I looked for his cache, but there
was no grub in it.
"'Let us go on,' said the woman. Her eyes were hungry, and her
hand was upon her heart, as with the hurt of something inside. She
bent back and forth like a tree in the wind as she stood there.
'Yes, let us go on,' said the man. His voice was hollow, like the
KLONK of an old raven, and he was hunger-mad. His eyes were like
live coals of fire, and as his body rocked to and fro, so rocked
his soul inside. And I, too, said, 'Let us go on.' For that one
thought, laid upon me like a lash for every mile of fifteen hundred
miles, had burned itself into my soul, and I think that I, too, was
mad. Besides, we could only go on, for there was no grub. And we
went on, giving no thought to the man with the one eye in the snow.
"There is little travel on the big cut-off. Sometimes two or three
months and nobody goes by. The snow had covered the trail, and
there was no sign that men had ever come or gone that way.
Pages:
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224