WITHIN THE CIRCLE
WITHIN THE CIRCLE
WITHIN THE CIRCLE
Bill Wilder was squatting on a boulder under cover of the stone-built fortifications. His rifle was lying in an emplacement overlooking the waterway below. His grey eyes were pre-occupied, searching the red, sandy foreshore across the river, which rose gently, baldly, sloping steadily upwards to the boulder-strewn, serrated skyline beyond.
Chilcoot was seated near by. His rifle lay in another emplacement ready for immediate use. He was chewing in the thoughtful fashion habitual to him, even under the greatest stress. He, too, was searching the far side of the river. His gaze was no less intent. It was the look of a man whose habit has become that of ceaseless watchfulness.
“I wish I hadn’t let him go now.” Wilder spoke without turning. It was almost as though he were thinking aloud. “He’s a crazy sort of hot-head who can’t sit around when ther’s a scrap to be had.”
Chilcoot spat through the loophole with great exactness.
“You don’t need to worry for Mike,” he said, with a short laugh that was not intended as an expression of mirth. “He’ll get along when he’s through. Ther’ ain’t the darn Euralian born that could chew him up. He’s spent the worst part of a rotten bad life doin’ his best to lose it by every fool play Placer could offer him—an’ failed. I guess a wild-cat’s a poor sort of circumstance in the matter of lives alongside Mike. I don’t worry a thing.”
“No.”
The break in their silence closed up at once. Chilcoot took a fresh chew and wiped the mosquitoes from the back of his neck. Wilder filled his pipe. The smell of cooking was in the air. There were others lining the fortifications at every point, and one or two men were moving about the camp fire behind them. But for all the watch at the outer walls the place suggested noonday idleness. Even the trail dogs were drowsing in the shade of the walls.
The Arctic sun shone down out of a cloud-flecked sky on a scene of barren unloveliness. Long since it had burned up such meagre foliage as the floods of spring had made possible. The whole country-side was as bald as an African sand desert. The blaze of miniature spring flowers had been swept away, and the dried grass was as brown and wiry as the sparse bristles on the back of some hoary hog. Even the lichens which flourished on the low, rock formations of which the whole country of this northern river was composed, were in little better case. Utter sterility lay in every direction. The desolation, the heat, the flies, the mosquitoes, these things made for a condition that was well nigh intolerable.
The camp was set at the far headwaters of Loon Creek. It was nominally a gold camp; in reality it had little to do with anything but defence. It was a veritable fortress built out of the millions of storm-worn boulders that littered the region. A wide, encompassing stone corral, nearly ten feet high, formed the outer defence, which, in turn, contained a stout, similarly built citadel which sheltered quarters for men and dogs, and the stores and gear of the outfit.
Bill Wilder and his men had embarked on their expedition with no greater concern than had usually been the case when the magic of gold had been the sole lure. George Raymes had despatched him to these uncharted regions with a curiosity deeply stirred, but with the gold fever burning fiercely in his veins. And Wilder had prepared for every emergency, but always with a smile of deprecation for the extent of the war-like stores which the police officer insisted were absolutely necessary. Now he was more than thankful for the foresight of the man who had some twenty-five years of police experience behind him.
He was under no illusion now after a year of this deplorable territory. None of the men with him had any illusion either. The lure of gold may have been the original inspiration with them, but from the moment of embarking upon the waters of Loon Creek it had been swept from their minds in the fight for their very existence that was swiftly forced upon them. For all they only contemplated the pursuit of a legitimate calling in their own Canadian territory they found themselves cut off by many hundreds of miles from all help in a country peopled by a race of beings who were furiously hostile.
All through the previous summer the war had been waged. It had been a heart-breaking guerilla warfare that knew no cessation. The mysterious enemy seemed to be waiting for them at every possible point along the river, and in each and every case the resulting fight was of that comparatively long range character that was more irritating than disastrous.
The Euralians were past masters in the art of challenging Wilder’s progress. They never offered a pitched battle. They attacked at a distance with rifle and soft-nosed bullet, and the pin-pricking of it was like the maddening attacks of the swarming mosquitoes. The whole thing was amazingly well-calculated. There was no respite, there was not a moment in which the creek could be adequately explored for gold. The expedition was forced to defence almost every hour of the unending daylight.
In this fashion, during the first summer, the headwaters of the creek had been reached. But they had been reached with barely time to build winter quarters before the freeze up and the long night of winter descended upon the world.
With the closing in of the Arctic night hostilities ceased as far as the human enemy was concerned. The Euralians fled before the overwhelming forces which Nature was about to turn loose. Perhaps they understood the terror which the intruders would be forced to endure on these barren lands where shelter was unknown. Perhaps they considered it sufficient. Perhaps they feared for themselves the ferocity of the Arctic night. Doubtless they were simply satisfied that their prey was held fast, a helpless prisoner within the walls of the stronghold he had set up in defence, and was powerless to operate in any of the desired directions. At any rate Wilder was left unmolested in the grip of the northern man’s natural enemy.
It had been a desperate time in which the intensity of cold was the least of many hardships. Fuel had been scarce enough, but sufficient driftwood and masses of dried lichen had been collected to make life possible. So the expedition had endured through alternating periods of snow-storm and blizzard, when the blackness of the northern night could well-nigh be felt. Then had come those brilliant intervals of starlight when the twilight grew under the splendour of a blazing aurora, and the temperature dropped, dropped till the depths of cold seemed illimitable.
It was in these extremities that the whiteman displayed his right to his position in the scheme of life. An iron discipline ruled the camp, and never for a moment was it relaxed. Never was the mind permitted to drift from the appointed labours. Storm or calm it was the same. For Bill Wilder, and Chilcoot, and even the hot-head, Red Mike knew that it was work, or the complete disintegration of the will to endure, which, in turn, would mean disruption and final disaster to the whole of their outfit.
So desperate was the interminable winter that every man of the outfit welcomed the deluge of spring with its promptly swarming flies and mosquitoes, and the reopening of hostilities with their almost unseen human enemy. Within a month summer was upon them, and the previous summer’s battle was again in full swing. So it had gone on. And now at last the wear and futility of it all was beginning to have its effect. The expedition had endured for a year under conditions almost unendurable. And during the whole of that period not one single detail of its original purpose had been achieved.
Gold? It was the last thing in their thoughts now. And as for the Euralians, with whom they had been in fighting contact for at least half the time, their identity, their personality was the same sealed book to Wilder that it had been before he had listened to their story from the lips of George Raymes. They had never yet made one single prisoner, or possessed themselves of the slain body of a single victim of their rifles. No member of the outfit had as yet more than a rifle shot view of these savages, who so skilfully avoided contact while yet prosecuting their warfare.
Chilcoot regarded his leader and friend with eyes that twinkled for all they were serious.
“No. Not for him,” he said provocatively.
Wilder lit his pipe. Then he reached out and opened the breech of his rifle to let the air pass through the fouled barrel.
“Guess that’s a qualification,” he said regarding the weapon in his hand.
“Sure,” Chilcoot again laughed shortly. “Ther’s bigger things to worry for than Red Mike—crazy as he is.”
Wilder nodded. He laid his rifle back in its place with the breech closed, and a fresh clip of cartridges in its magazine.
“The boys are worrying, an’ it ain’t good. Buck Maberley told me a bunch of stuff,” the other went on. “But it ain’t the trouble they’re liable to make. We ken fix that sort o’ junk easy—up here. No. They’ve a reas’nable grouch though. For once their fool brains are leaking something better than Placer hooch. I guess they’re askin’ each other the questions you an’ me have been askin’ ourselves without makin’ a shout of it. And they’re mostly finding the same answer we get. They’re guessing if we lie around here about another month, makin’ target practice for them crazy foreign Injuns we look like takin’ a big chance of never hitting up against Placer hooch ever again. Which is only another way o’ sayin’ winter’ll fall on us before we can get back on to the Hekor, an’ if we’ve the grub we ain’t got the guts to see it through. You see, it would be kind o’ diff’rent if we’d the colour of gold to sort of cheer us up. But what spare time those blamed Injuns leave the boys they spend in panning river dirt for the stuff it never heard about since ever the world began. An’ they’re sick to death makin’ fools of their better judgment. Curse the skitters.” Again Chilcoot brushed his hand across his blistered neck and wiped its palm on his moleskin trouser leg.
Wilder nodded as he, too, strove to rid himself of the insect attacks.
“We’ll have to beat it,” he said with a sigh of regret, but with decision. “I hate quitting,” he went on a little gloomily. “I wouldn’t say you’re right, boy, ther’s no gold on this river. But we can’t get after it right. If the stuff right down here on the river in front of us ain’t pay dirt I’m all sorts of a sucker. But it don’t matter. These cursed Euralians have got us dead set so we can’t shake a pan right. We’re beat. Plumb beat. They got us worried and guessing, which in a territory like this, means—finished. Man, I’m sick to death of the bald hummocks and the flies. Another winter up here would get me yeppin’ around like a crazy coyote.”
Chilcoot had turned back to his watch on the river. “Yep,” he agreed, relieved at his chief’s swift decision. “When’ll we pull out?”
“Right after Red Mike gets back.”
The men continued their vigil in silence for awhile. The contemplation of retreat, the acknowledgment of defeat were things that affected them deeply. Both were of a keen fighting disposition. But their inclinations were coldly tempered by the experience and wisdom which in earlier days must have been impossible.
“You know, boy,” Wilder went on presently, in the contemplative fashion of a mind groping, “these Indians have got me guessing harder than I’ve ever guessed in my life. It’s up to us handing a report to old Raymes when we get along down. Well, I guess if I was to pass him haf the stuff jangling around in my head, I’d be liable to get a laugh from oursuperiorthat ’ud make me want to commit murder. These darn neches are fighting like Prussian Junkers. They’re armed like Bolsheviks. And they’re using the soft-nosed slugs you’d reckon to find in the hands of modern Communists. Here they are thousands of miles beyond the reach of the folk who could hand ’em that stuff. Yet they’ve got it plenty, and know every darn move in the game played by European armies. Say, it wouldn’t stagger me to find our fort doused with poison gas.”
Chilcoot spat with unnecessary vigour.
“You’re guessin’ ther’s something white behind ’em?” he said sharply.
“White?” Wilder laughed. He shook his head. “Maybe though,” he said, “the thing that would best please me just now would be for that darnation Irishman to bring us in a prisoner. Say, has it hit you we’ve never got a close sight of these folks. Have you discovered that looking at results it looks like we’ve never killed one blamed rascal of ’em, and yet we reckon to carry with us some of the best artists with a rifle this darned country possesses. We’ve had hundreds of brownfaced targets for ’em, too. What does it mean? Why just this. Dead or alive these neches don’t mean us to get a close view of their men. They’re afraid for a whiteman to—recognise them. Well?” He laughed again. “Say, ther’s a big play behind this thing, and we haven’t begun to discover it. I’m not through with it. But I’m going to beat it down to the Hekor right away, and get a look into it from another angle. Raymes was right. It looks to me as if the feller who solves the riddle of these—Euralians—is doing something mighty good for a whiteman’s country. The gold’s quit worrying me a little bit. Say—”
He broke off and gazed musingly over the glittering waters of the river, which was visible for miles away to the north in the flat, barren country through which it meandered.
Chilcoot waited. His friend’s unusual burst of confidence was not a thing he desired to interrupt. Besides he had voiced much of the thing that had disturbed his less sensitive mind. So he went on chewing with his eyes glued to the opposite shore.
“You know, boy, we’d have done well to have kept touch with that dandy Kid we found at the mouth of the Caribou,” Wilder continued. “I’ve the notion that bright girl was wiser to the things up this way than that factor feller. An’ certainly wiser than George Raymes. She said she was born an’ raised on the river. I wonder. I guess I’ve been wondering ever since. You know there’s more to this play of ours than gold, an’ Euralians an’ things. There’s a ‘girl child—white.’ You remember?”
Chilcoot’s eyes were grinning into the other’s face as Wilder broke off. He nodded.
“Sure I do. She’s surely a dandy Kid,” he said.
His grin passed, and seriousness replaced it.
“But she’d got six brothers an’ sisters an’ a mother, an’ I don’t remember that Raymes said a word about them. You were feelin’ particular not to ast questions of her. Well, I guess it was a pity. Ben Needham never passed us a hint of her, either. Say, this is the queerest darn country. It hides up a whole heap of queer things. Guess it’s that gets hold of us mutts who waste precious years trying to beat it. We can locate that Kid passing down river, though. An’ maybe you’ll feel less a’mighty delicate astin’ questions.”
“Yes. I fixed to do that.”
“I guessed so. I—Say, ther’s Mike beating it for home.”
Chilcoot stood up as he spoke and leant over the hot stone parapet. He was searching the canoe which had suddenly appeared driving down the sluggish stream from the north.
Wilder, too, had risen to his feet. He was looking for the desired prisoner in the boat. He counted the occupants. There were four. Only four. And that was the number the Irishman had set out with. No. There was no prisoner. The men in the boat were all whitemen. There could be no doubt about it. Nor was there any sign of a wounded man lying in the bottom of the little craft.
“The same old story,” Wilder grumbled.
“Meaning?”
“They’re coming back empty—Gee!”
A shot rang out. It was followed by another and another. The men at the fort saw the water splash about the canoe where the bullets took effect. But the boat came on through the sudden hail, and the men at the paddles remained unscathed.
“That’s Indian shooting,” Chilcoot exclaimed contemptuously. Then in a tone of deep regret. “If those guys would only give our boys such a target.”
“That’s so.” Bill stood with his rifle ready, waiting for a sign of the lurking enemy. “That boat would never make the bank if it was full of Euralians. It makes you think they aren’t yearning to kill. Only to worry. Come on. Let’s go down and get Mike’s news.”
Wilder’s outfit was lying moored and camped at the mouth of Loon Creek where its waters debouched on the broad course of the Hekor. The barrens were left far behind, and these men had come again to a country where shade from the blistering sunlight was to be found in occasional bluffs of forest, and where there was complete rest from the curiously unnerving warfare they had so long endured.
The camp was pitched on a great spit of land supporting a dwarfed, windswept bluff of forest trees. The shade from the burning sun was more than welcome for all the haunting mosquitoes made it their camping ground too. Great smudge fires of dank vegetation and lichen had been lit, and, for the moment, even insect hostilities had ceased. The canoes had been safely stowed for the night, and the men sat around in the drifting smoke after their supper, while the trail dogs prowled in search of any refuse which the meal of their human masters provided.
For all it was night, and rest and sleep lay ahead, the sun had only changed its position in the sky and daylight was unabated. It might have been high noon from the unshadowed brilliance of the world about them. As Red Mike had once said in his graphic complaining: “God A’mighty created the summer sun, but the Divil set it afire to burn everlastin’ north of 60 degrees.”
The three leaders were squatting on their outspread blankets in the shade cast by a small clump of storm-driven spruce. They were luxuriating in the smoke of three smudge fires set triangularly about them. Each was clad as lightly as circumstances would permit. Cotton shirts and hard moleskin trousers belted about their waists was all and more than sufficient. Their arms and chests were bare. Each man was smoking a reeking pipe, and a curiously fascinating, somnolent atmosphere prevailed over the camp. It was the quiet of physical repose after heavy labour, intensified by the Nature sounds which are never absent in the northern wilderness.
Red Mike chuckled in his irrepressible fashion, and Wilder and Chilcoot turned their reflective eyes inquiringly on his grinning countenance.
“Say, it’s a night—if you can call it night with hell’s own sun burning blisters on the water—for rejoicin’,” he said. “Is it a drop o’ the stuff you’re goin’ to open, Bill Wilder? Or has the water wagon got you still tied to its tail? Man, I could drink the worst home-brew ever came out of a prohibition State.”
Wilder hunched himself up with his hands locked about his knees, and a faint smile of derision lit his steady eyes. “Rejoicing?” he said. “I don’t get you, Mike.”
The Irishman’s blue eyes widened good-humouredly. “Ther’s folks never made to rec’nize the time for rejoicin’, ’less it’s set for ’em by politician-made law. It seems to me I remember the time when Bill Wilder didn’t need the other feller to learn him that way. Say, we come down that mud-bottomed creek nigh two-hundred an’ fifty mile without a shot fired. From the moment we broke that crazy camp we set up to hold our place on the map of this fool country them Euralians quit us cold. Guess they said, ‘The gophers are on the run, let ’em beat it. They’re quittin’, an’ we ain’t got time worritin’ with quitters.’ So they handed us an elegant sort o’ Sunday School picnic passin’ down stream, makin’ twenty-five a day without puttin’ the weight of a fly on the paddles. Well? Ain’t it time fer rejoicin’? Here we are right back in a territory that looks almost good to me after those blazin’ barrens we left behind. We’re right back with whole skins by courtesy of a bunch of dirty neches.” He laughed again. “It’s sure time to—celebrate.”
It was Chilcoot who replied to him. And his retort came in the sharp tones of a man unable to appreciate the raillery of the Irishman.
“We ain’t quittin’ them neches,” he said, his deep-set eyes snapping. “Guess our work’s only started. But you’re right. It’s time to rejoicewhen we quit, which won’t be this side of winter. If you’d hoss sense you’d know we’re out-fitted for—three years. Guess Bill here ain’t openin’ any old corks till we’re through.”
Mike sobered on the instant. He turned to Wilder.
“What comes next, boss?” he asked shortly.
Wilder nodded his head towards the great hills in the west.
“The Hekor, Mike,” he said seriously. “Ther’s no home run yet. There’s nearly four months to the freeze up, an’ we pull out of here, west, after we’ve slept. We’re making west to the headwaters, an’ to get a look at the hill country. Ther’s gold around somewhere, and there are those neches—as you choose to call ’em. We aren’t ‘quitting’ till we know more about both.”
It was a scene which years before other eyes had gazed upon. It was the canyon of the Grand Falls where the Hekor fell off the highlands of the Alaskan hills. Wilder and his men were ashore at the only landing available, and again it was a landing which had been used by another years before.
The gold man and his fellows were fascinated by the tremendous grandeur of the canyon, with the dull roar of great waters coming back to them out of the dense clouds of spray which enveloped the far distance of the straight hewn rift down which the surge of dark waters rushed.
“We can’t make that stuff,” Chilcoot demurred, his eyes on the turbulent race of water which the canyon disgorged.
“We aren’t going to attempt it.” Wilder shrugged. He turned to Mike who stood gazing out into the far distance absorbed by the magnificence which so deeply appealed to his Gallic imagination.
“We got to see the thing lying back of those Falls,” he said pointing. “Will you make it, Mike? Will you make it with Chilcoot and me? We can leave camp to Buck Maberley. He can handle the boys good, and you can put it up to him. I guess it means a portage up there. Then—Well, who knows? Maybe we’ll be back here in two weeks. Maybe two months. I’ve got a notion, and I’ve got to put it through. That territory out there is Alaskan, and I want to get a look. Are you falling for it? I want the answer right now. I’m guessing all the time. I don’t know a thing. But I’ve got to get a look back of those Falls. Well?”
Mike’s gaze remained on the distance. The fascination of it refused to release him. He replied without turning.
“Sure boss,” he said simply. Then he added whimsically “I’ll fall for water—like that.”
And Chilcoot laughed. Even he found the frank admission of the red-headed creature’s weakness irresistible.