I chided
Passuk for this; but she showed no sorrow, nor was she sorrowful. And in
my heart I knew she was right."
Sitka Charley paused and threw pieces of ice into the gold pan on the
stove. The men were silent, and their backs chilled to the sobbing cries
of the dogs as they gave tongue to their misery in the outer cold.
"And day by day we passed in the snow the sleeping-places of the two
ghosts--Passuk and I--and we knew we would be glad for such ere we made
Salt Water. Then we came to the Indian, like another ghost, with his
face set toward Pelly. They had not whacked up fair, the man and the
boy, he said, and he had had no flour for three days. Each night he
boiled pieces of his moccasins in a cup, and ate them. He did not have
much moccasins left. And he was a Coast Indian, and told us these things
through Passuk, who talked his tongue. He was a stranger in the Yukon,
and he knew not the way, but his face was set to Pelly. How far was it?
Two sleeps? ten? a hundred--he did not know, but he was going to Pelly.
It was too far to turn back; he could only keep on.
"He did not ask for grub, for he could see we, too, were hard put.
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