Further, we gave the man always his fair share of
grub.
"Then one day we met two ghosts journeying through the Silence. They
were a man and a boy, and they were white. The ice had opened on Lake Le
Barge, and through it had gone their main outfit. One blanket each
carried about his shoulders. At night they built a fire and crouched
over it till morning. They had a little flour. This they stirred in
warm water and drank. The man showed me eight cups of flour--all they
had, and Pelly, stricken with famine, two hundred miles away. They said,
also, that there was an Indian behind; that they had whacked fair, but
that he could not keep up. I did not believe they had whacked fair, else
would the Indian have kept up. But I could give them no grub. They
strove to steal a dog--the fattest, which was very thin--but I shoved my
pistol in their faces and told them begone. And they went away, like
drunken men, through the Silence toward Pelly.
"I had three dogs now, and one sled, and the dogs were only bones and
hair. When there is little wood, the fire burns low and the cabin grows
cold. So with us.
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