CHAPTER VIII
WASECHE BILL TO THE RESCUE
When Waseche Bill sent his dogs flying over the surface of the glacierin answer to the bell-like call of old Boris, he fully expected that theend of a half-hour would find him at the dog's side. Sound carries farin the keen northern air, and the man urged his team to its utmost. Asthe sled runners slipped smoothly over the ice and frozen snow, his mindwas filled with perplexing questions. How came old Boris into theLillimuit? Had he deserted the boy and followed the trail of his oldmaster?
"No, no!" muttered the man. "He wouldn't pull out on the kid,that-a-way--an', what's mo', if he had, he'd of catched up with me longbefo' now."
Was it possible that the boy had taken the trail? The man's browpuckered. What was it Joe said, that night in Eagle?
"S'pose he follers ye?"
"He couldn't of!" argued Waseche. "It's plumb onpossible, with themthere three ol' dawgs. An' he'd of neveh got past Eagle--Fiddle Face,an' Joe, an' Jim Sontag, they wouldn't of let him by--not fo' to go tothe Lillimuit, they wouldn't--not in a hund'ed yea's."
The dogs swerved, bringing the outfit to an abrupt halt on the brink ofa yawning fissure. Waseche Bill scowled at the delay.
"Sho' some crevasse," he growled, as he peered into the depths of thegreat ice crack fifty feet wide, which barred his path. Suddenly his eyelighted and he swung the dogs to the southward where, a quarter of amile away, a great white snow bridge spanned the chasm in a glitteringarch. Seizing his axe, he chopped two parallel trenches in the ice closeto the end of the bridge. Into these eight-inch depressions he workedthe runners of the heavily loaded sled, taking care that the blunt rearend of the runners rested firmly against the vertical ends of thetrenches. Uncoiling a long _babiche_ line, he tied one end to the tailrope of the anchored sled and, after making the other end fast about hiswaist, ventured cautiously out upon the snow bridge. Foot by foot headvanced, testing its strength. The bridge was wide and thick, andevidently quite old and firm, but Waseche Bill was a man who took nofoolish risks.
Men who seek gold learn to face danger bravely--it is part of the day'swork--for death dogs close upon the trail of the men of the North andmust be reckoned with upon short notice. Every _tillicum_ in the WhiteCountry, if he would, could tell of hairbreadth escapes, and of timeswhen a clear brain and iron nerve alone stood between him and the GreatBeyond. But of these things they rarely speak--for they know of theothers, like Sam Morgan, whose work is done, and whose names are burnedinto the little wooden crosses that dot the white snow of Aurora Land;and whose memory remains fresh in the haunts of the sourdoughs, wheretheir deeds are remembered long and respected when the flash bravado ofthe reckless tin-horn is scorned and forgotten.
Satisfying himself that the bridge would bear the weight of the outfit,Waseche Bill untied the rope and headed the dogs across at a run.
The surface of the glacier became rougher as he advanced and Waseche waskept busy at the gee-pole as the dogs threaded their way between icehummocks and made long detours to avoid cracks and fissures, so that thewinter sun was just sinking behind the mountains when the man at lastfound himself upon the edge of the glacier, at a point some distanceabove the cave where Connie Morgan had sought shelter from the storm. Helooked out over the undulating ridges of snow waste that stretched awaytoward a nearby spur of the mountains. Intently he scanned each nook andbyway of the frozen desert, but not a moving object, not a single blackdot that might by any stretch of the imagination be construed as aliving thing, rewarded his careful scrutiny. Gradually his eyes focusedupon the point where the mountains dipped toward the great ice field.
"Yonde's the mouth of the canyon I headed into befo' the blizza'd. I'dbet a blue one the old dawg's trailed me in." Filling his lungs Wasechesent call after call quavering through the still, keen air, but the onlyanswer was the hollow echoing of his own voice as it died away in themountains. A mile to the eastward he worked his outfit into the valley,following the devious windings of a half-formed lateral moraine, andheaded the dogs for the mouth of the canyon.
He searched in vain for tracks as he entered the narrow pass. The snowwas smooth and untrampled as the driving wind of the blizzard had leftit.
"Sho' is queeah," he muttered. "Sweah to goodness, I hea'd that Borisdawg--I'd know that howl if I hea'd it in Kingdom Come--an' I know it_now_! I wondeh," he mused, as the team followed the devious windings ofthe canyon, "I wondeh if this heah Lillimuit _is_ a kind of spirit landlike folks says. Did I really heah the ol' dawg howl, or has the bigNawth got me, too, like it done got Carlson, an' the rest? 'Cause ifthey was a dawg wheah's his tracks? An' if it was a ghost dawg, howcould he howl?" The sled dogs paused, sniffing excitedly at the snow,and Waseche Bill leaped forward. Before the mouth of an ice-cavern weremany tracks, and the man stared dumbfounded.
"Fo' the love of Mike!" he cried excitedly. "It's the _kid_!" He droppedto his knees and patted affectionately the impressions of the tiny_mukluks_. "Boy! Boy! Yo' li'l ol' sourdough, yo' li'l pa'dner--How'dyo' get heah? Yo' done come, jes' as Joe 'lowed yo' would--yo' doggoneli'l _tillicum_! Come all alone, too! Jes' wait 'til I catch holt ofyo'--an' McDougall's dawgs! No one in Alaska could a loaned them_malamutes_ offen Mac, 'cept yo'--theah's ol' Scah Foot, that lost twotoes in the wolf-trap!" The man leaped to the sled and cracked hiswhip.
"Mush! Mush!" he cried, and the dogs bounded forward upon the trail ofthe boy.
Waseche Bill traversed this same canyon on the day before the blizzard.He, too, had run up against the dead end, and it was while retracing hissteps that he had discovered the sheep trail, by means of which hegained the surface of the glacier a mile back from the termination ofthe gorge. He grinned broadly as his sled shot past the foot of thistrail, entirely obliterated, now, by the new-fallen snow.
"I got yo', now, _kid_," he chuckled. "Holed up like a silveh tip 'tillthe sto'm blowed by, didn't yo', pa'dner? But I got yo' back ag'in, an'from now on, me an' yo' sticks togetheh. I done the wrong thing--to go'way--but yo' so plumb li'l, I fo'got yo' was a sho' nuff man."
His soliloquy was cut short by the sudden stopping of the sled as itbumped upon the heels of the "wheel" dogs, and for the next few minutesthe man was busy with whip and _mukluks_ straightening out the tangle offighting animals. Dashing in the darkness between a huge granite blockand the wall of the glacier, they had brought up sharply against thenew-formed ice barrier that completely blocked the trail.
Slashing right and left with his heavy whip, and kicking vigorously andimpartially, he finally succeeded in subduing the fighting dogs andremoving the tangled harness. And then he stared dumbly at the greatmass of broken ice that buried the trail of the boy. In the darkness hecould form no conception of the extent of the barrier. Was it a detachedfragment? Or had the whole side of the glacier split away and crashedinto the canyon? Before his eyes rose the picture of a small bodycrushed and mangled beneath thousands of tons of ice, and for the firsttime in his life Waseche Bill gave way to his emotions. Sinking downupon the sled he buried his face in his hands and in the darkness,surrounded by the whimpering dogs, his great shoulders heaved to theviolence of his sobs.
The great mass of ice that split from the glacier's side, whilepresenting an unscalable face to the imprisoned boy, was by no means soformidable a barrier when approached from the opposite side.
Waseche Bill was not the man to remain long inactive. After a fewmoments he sprang to his feet and surveyed the huge pile of icefragments. By the feeble light of the stars he could see that the wallsof the canyon towered high above the top of the mass. Tossing his dogsan armful of frozen fish, he caught up the coil of _babiche_ rope andstepped to the foot of the obstruction.
"I cain't wait till mawnin'," he muttered, "I got to find out if the kidis safe. Reckon I c'n make it, but I sho' do wish they was mo' light."
It was not a difficult climb for a man used to the snow trails, and ahalf hour later Waseche Bill stood at the top and, with a long sigh ofrelief, gazed into the depths beyond the barrier.
"Thank the Lawd, it's only a slivah!" he exclaimed. "But, at that, itmout of catched him." With a kick he sent a small fragment of icespinning into the chasm. Almost instantly, the man heard a low growl,and his eye caught the flash of an indistinct grey shape against thesnow floor below him. Straight as an arrow the shape shot toward the icewall, and Waseche Bill heard the scratching of claws upon the flintysurface, and a low, throaty growl as the shape dropped back into thesnow. He laughed aloud.
"Oh, yo' Slashah dawg!" he cried happily, as he proceeded to make theend of his long line fast to a projecting pinnacle.
"I'll jes' slip down an' s'prise the kid," he chuckled, "he's prob'lyrolled in by now." Taking a couple of turns about his leg with the rope,he lowered himself over the edge and slid slowly downward. Suddenly, hegripped hard and checked his descent. He was ten feet from the bottom,and something struck the rope just beneath his feet, and as it struck,he heard again the low growl, and the vicious click of fang on polishedfang, and the soft thud with which the wolf-dog struck the snow.
"Hey, yo' Slashah!" he called sharply. "Go lay down! It's only me,Slashah--don't yo' know me?" For answer the dog sprang again, and theman hastily drew himself higher--for this time the long white fangsclashed together almost at his feet, and the low growl ended in a snarlas the grey body dropped back upon the snow.
"Doggone yo'! Quit yo' foolin'! Git out!" cried the exasperated man, ashe tightened his grip on the swaying line. And then, beneath him, thecanyon seemed filled with dogs--gaunt, grey shapes that sprang, andsnapped, and growled, and fell back to spring again.
"Now, what d'yo' think of that," muttered the man disgustedly, as hepeered downward into green glaring eyes and slavering jaws. "Mac'sdawg's, too! I'd sho' hate fo' this heah rope to break! Theh's ol'Boris!" he exclaimed, as the lead dog appeared at the edge of thesnarling pack. "Hello, Boris, ol' dawg! Yo' know me--don't yo', Boris?"With a short, sharp yelp of delight, the dog dashed in and leapedtoward his old master, but his activity served only to egg on theothers, and they redoubled their efforts to reach the swaying man.Waseche Bill laughed:
"Now, what d'yo' think of that! I'd sho' hate fo' thisheah rope to break!"]
"'Taint no use. Reckon I'll have to wake up the kid." And the nextmoment the walls of the canyon rang with his calls for help.
At the other end of the chasm Connie Morgan stirred uneasily and thrusthis head from under the flap of his sleeping bag. He listened drowsilyto the pandemonium of growls and yelps and snarls, from the midst ofwhich came indistinctly the sound of a voice. He became suddenlywide-awake and, wriggling from the bag, caught up his dog whip and spedswiftly up the canyon.
It was no easy task for the boy to beat the excited dogs intosubmission, but at length they slunk away before the stinging sweep ofthe lash, and Waseche Bill, his hands numb from his long gripping of therope, slid squarely into the up-reaching arms of his little partner.
"Yo' sho' saved my bacon that time, kid. Why, that theah Slashahdawg--he'd of et me alive, an' the rest w'd done likewise, onct theygot sta'ted!" Waseche Bill's tongue rattled off the words with which hesought to disguise the real emotion of his heart at finding the boy hehad learned to love, safe and sound in the great white wilderness. ButConnie Morgan was not deceived, and he smiled happily into the roughhair of his big partner's _parka_, as the man strained him to him in abearlike embrace.
That night the two sat long over the camp fire at the foot of themoraine, and the heart of the man swelled with pride as the boyrecounted his adventures on the trail.
"And now I've found you," concluded the boy, "I'm going to take youback. Pardners are pardners, you know--and tomorrow we'll hit for TenBow."
The man turned his face away and became busily engaged in arranging therobes into a bed close against the boy's sleeping bag.
"We sho' will, kid. Pa'dners _is_ pa'dners, an'--me an' yo'--somehow--Icain't jes' say it--but--anyways--Why! Doggone it! Me an' yo's mo'n jespa'dners--ain't we, kid?"
Later, as the man burrowed deep into his robes a voice sounded drowsilyfrom the depths of the sleeping bag:
"Waseche!"
"Huh?" questioned the man.
"Black Jack Demaree said to tell you--let's see--what was it he said?Oh, yes--he said when I found you to tell you that 'you can't tell bythe size of a frog how far he can jump.'"
Waseche Bill chuckled happily to himself:
"Yo' sho' cain't," he agreed. "Black Jack's right about that--troubleis, I nevah know'd much about frawgs."