THE SILENT CABIN

THE TRAIL WAS ROUGH, THE CRUEL ARCTIC WINTER WAS ALREADY CLOSING IN, AND THE SETTLEMENTS WERE STILL FAR AWAY. THERE WAS EVERY NEED FOR HASTE. AND THEN THEY CAME, THE OLD-TIMER AND THE CHECHAKO, TO THE SILENT CABIN BESIDE THE TRAIL.

Farrell knew that he was a dying man. There remained in his mind not the shadow of a doubt on that score.

Sitting at the present moment in the open doorway of his cabin, he gazed out over the frost-colored forests which for five years now had been a part of his life. A very close and integral part. He loved the forests, and especially did he love them in the flaming beauty of the fall garb which cloaked them at this time. His only regret, now that he knew he was leaving it all for good, was that he hadn’t come up here sooner in his life.

Well, he reflected, he had nothing to complain about, by and large. His life had on the whole been an eventful and satisfying one, and even the touch of tragedy that had sent him north no longer caused him the inward pain which it had at first.

Yes, taken as a whole, his had been a happy life, as lives go. He was sure of that. And if he had erred here and there—and he knew, of course, that such had been the case—he had, by the same token, now and again gone out of his way to do things that had caused others happiness. At the present moment this was a comforting and reassuring thought. Somehow he felt strangely at peace with the world.

Nor did the conviction that he was soon to die alone and unattended up here in the wilderness appall him. He found himself looking forward to it, rather, with a certain contented resignation, as do men who have an abiding faith that the next world is one step better than the present plane.

At any rate he had no regrets as he sat now in his doorway, smoking his pipe and gazing out over the gold and crimson forests which he loved so well. That is, he had no regrets save one. One thing did trouble him, it is true. It had been troubling him for some days past.

Dying alone as he knew he would, it would be hard to attend to, and there was furthermore no certainty that anyone would pass this way for some months to come.

He pondered for some time upon this, turning it over in his mind, seeking a solution and gradually as he puffed upon his pipe a way out occurred to him. He nodded his head as if in approval.

“Yes, I guess that’s the best, Farrell,” he mused presently, “I’ll do that. Sort of let it rest that way.”

And rising and going slowly to the table, he took up a piece of dry birchbark and proceeded to write thereon his last request.

Winter had laid hold of the Fairbanks country. Snow bowed the limbs of the spruces. The strong Alaskan cold had come to stay.

Two men were making their way over the Chena trail from Nation to Fairbanks, where rumor had it high wages were being paid in the mines. Over the welcomed noonday fire, while the dogs rested, the younger of the two men remarked, among other things, “If this trail doesn’t improve, Miller, we won’t get through to Fairbanks for another three days.”

Miller shrugged his shoulders and helped himself to another cup of the black coffee to top off the meal they had already finished. “With my luck,” he observed, “I’m thinkin’ we’ll be lucky if we get through at all. Confound such luck! And the chances are there won’t be a job left, time I get through, anyway. My luck always was rotten.”

The younger man smiled. “You make it so by talking that way,” he reasoned.

The other snorted. “Dry up with that kid philosophy of yours, Steel,” he said. “I’m gettin’ fed up on it.”

“Yes, but it’s so all the same,” the younger man argued. “Every time you talk that way, old man, you’re just putting in an advance order for hard luck.”

And in the silence that followed, he studied the other man’s face, round, heavily bearded, bearing marks of dissipation about the eyes.

Steel was young, twenty-five, and he had come north solely in a spirit of adventure. To him good luck and hard luck were all a part of the game. Miller, on the other hand, was nearer forty, and whatever spirit of adventure he once might have possessed had long since been lost in his life of hard reality. He made life hard. He had ceased to have visions. Among men he had earned the name of “Hardrock” Miller because of an incident that occurred one fall down on the— But no matter. That is another story.

To get back to Steel: he was, at the present moment, beginning to regret his accompanying the older man on the trip through to Fairbanks. Miller was proving himself far from the best of company. And the young man reflected that he might better have waited until someone else was going through. But there, no use grumbling. The trip would soon be over. In the future, however, he assured himself, he would pick his trail partners with considerable more care.

“Well, let’s be movin’,” Miller remarked shortly, rising from the log he had been sitting on. “Suppose you take a turn breakin’ trail, kid.”

“Sure,” said Steel willingly, “I was just going to suggest that.” And he took his snowshoes which he had stuck upright in the snow behind him, and proceeded to put them on. He added, as he did so, “Here’s hoping the drifts aren’t so bad up ahead. Likely they won’t be.”

“Oh, they will be,” the other corrected, stepping to the handlebars of the sled. “The devil knows when I’m comin’ along and sprinkles the stuff heavy along the trail.”

Steel chuckled, and in another moment, at a word from the man behind the sleigh, they started forward. The sun, which had put in a brief half-hour’s appearance, had now gone down amid a bank of purple mist, and the world which a while ago had sparkled like a carpet of diamonds was now a dull, cheerless gray. The long Arctic night was closing in. Too, it was growing steadily colder.

After perhaps half a mile had been covered, Steel observed, “Hello! There’s a cabin up there on the left.” He pointed a mittened hand. “Could just as well have stopped there for dinner, if we’d known.”

“Wasn’t there six years ago,” Miller replied. “That was the last time I mushed this trail.”

Steel, who had been studying the small cabin that stood on the wind swept crest of a hardwood knoll, now remarked, “There’s no smoke coming from the chimney. Must be deserted—hello!” he interrupted himself, “what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That on the door. Looks like something white’s been nailed there. Perhaps we’d better take a look. Wait, I’ll run up.” But Miller, from behind, said disapprovingly, “We ain’t got time to waste foolin’ around. Keep goin’.”

“But something might be wrong,” Steel reasoned. “I think we ought to take a look.”

Miller emitted a snort. “Well, if you’re set on it, go on. But make it fast. I didn’t agree to take you on a sight-seein’ trip.”

“It won’t take a minute,” Steel assured him, and he swung up the slope on his snowshoes. A moment later he called down to the waiting man, “Say, come up here!”

“What for?”

“Read this!”

Miller joined him presently and Steel pointed to the piece of birchbark that was nailed to the door. The writing on it made any words on the younger man’s part unnecessary. It read:

I will be dead when you find this. My name doesn’t matter. I leave nothing of value and I have no living relatives and no particular friends who interest me, or who would be interested in my death. But I have a simple request to make. The past five years have been the happiest in my life. And the happiest hours in those years were spent right in front of my door, where I could look out over the woods at sunset. It is my wish that I lie there.

It was signed merely, “Stranger.”

Miller gave his characteristic snort and tried the door. But the melting snows of early fall had frozen about the sill and the door wouldn’t move. He thrust his great shoulders against the thick panels, but still the door held fast. And he said, “No use. Can’t budge her. I’ll go down and fetch the ax.” There was in his voice a somewhat eager note. Steel understood why, and he disliked the man for it.

Presently the other was back with the implement and after hacking the ice away around the bottom, finally got the door loose. With a shove of his shoulders it flew open. He went in. Steel entered behind him.

It was a simple cabin, equipped with homemade furniture of rude yet serviceable design. On the one bunk that was built in against the wall opposite the door, the writer of the note lay, stiff with the cold. Steel went over and looked down upon the figure. He shook his head slowly.

“Too bad you had to die all alone that way,” he said, “It must have been pretty lonely for you during those last hours, old-timer.”

He heard Miller, who was standing behind him, give that snort of his, and somehow the sound got on Steel’s nerves, as any characteristic substitute for words will do if repeated often enough. Steel said, “Pretty tough, just the same, to pass out that way.” He turned and faced Miller. The bigger man had a rifle in his hands, eyeing it critically and working the breech.

“Little rusty,” Miller observed, “but she ain’t half bad. Better’n mine, anyhow. And—say, here’s something!”

The speaker went quickly to where a pair of Indian-made moccasins of finest moosehide stood on the floor near the long-neglected stove. They were, Steel saw, covered with glittering beads that were woven into strange, fantastic patterns. He had never seen a pair of moccasins like them, and he guessed that they must be rare.

Miller had picked one up. He now measured it against the sole of one of his own boots. “Say,” he exclaimed, “they’ll just fit me, and I’m here to say gear like them ain’t found every day.”

Steel watched him with growing disapproval. Under ordinary circumstances he himself might have been tempted to take some of the dead man’s belongings, particularly those moccasins which had caught Miller’s eye. They would, if left, only fall to pieces and rot. But somehow the very eagerness with which the big man had seized upon the property of the dead man created in him a distaste for the proceedings.

He came to dislike Miller in this moment, and inasmuch as he felt this way, he disliked also the man’s actions, disliked the way he fondled those moccasins which the dead man once had worn. Oh, he was probably a fool, no doubt, he reasoned, feeling this way.

He shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing. And if Miller noted the young man’s unspoken distaste, he too said nothing. He suggested finally, though, “Say, ain’t you goin’ to knuckle onto some of this truck? Might as well,” he pointed out.

Steel smiled. Then slowly the smile hardened. “You seem to have taken about everything for yourself,” he said.

Miller snorted. Steel felt like hitting him.

“Well, kid,” the other said, “up in this land, you’ve got to look out for yourself. If you wanted them moccasins, why didn’t you take ’em? Judgin’ by the way you act, you’d done well to brought your nurse along when you come north.”

Steel took a step forward, then swallowed hard and choked down his growing wrath. He said, meeting Miller’s eyes, “I’ll overlook that this time. Next time, be careful though.”

Miller continued to meet the younger man’s eyes for several long seconds in a challenging way. He said truculently, “Well, if you ain’t goin’ to take anythin’, come on! We’ve got to be movin’. Been wastin’ enough time as it is.”

Steel, looking squarely at the other, shook his head. “You can go along if you want to,” he said. “I’m staying here.”

“What?” Miller stared at him.

“I’m staying here,” Steel repeated in the same tones, and Miller laughed.

“Say, you gone crazy?” he asked.

“No,” said Steel.

“What are you gonna stay here for?”

“To do what he asked,” was Steel’s reply.

Miller snorted. “Well, you damn’ fool!” he said. “That’s all I can say for you.”

“That’s all you have to say, Miller. Goodby. The door’s open.”

Miller went toward the entrance, the newly acquired moccasins and rifle in his hand. He picked up the ax where he had stood it against the door-jamb a few moments before. Turning, he said, “You needn’t think I’m goin’ to wait for you. I can get through them damned trails alone, without your help.”

“I hope you can,” said Steel. “I’m not asking you to wait for me. In fact, the sooner I see that back of yours, Miller, the happier I’ll be.”

Still Miller hesitated in the doorway, as if realizing that starting on alone would more than double the task of getting through to Fairbanks. “Well, it’s your funeral, but you’d better think it over,” he said. “Stay here, and you’ll be up against it.”

“Don’t worry about me, Miller. Don’t concern yourself. There’s food enough here in the cabin to last till spring, if something else doesn’t turn up. I’ll make out all right.”

Again Miller shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, and without another word went down the drifted slope to where the sled waited. A moment later the jingling bells of the departing team drifted back through the still, frosty air to the young man.

For two days Steel worked. The frozen ground was indeed like solid concrete. Even the pick which he had found in the shed adjoining the rear of the cabin failed to make much impression. That six-foot-by-three hole seemed to include the universe. His back by the end of the second day seemed to be on fire, and the muscles of his arms and shoulders throbbed from the ceaseless jarring of steel on unyielding ground. And still he was only down a foot and a half. Scarcely that.

He leaned on the pick at the end of the second day, and surveyed the pitiable results of his labor. And he was a little ashamed of himself for thinking now that maybe he had been a fool, as Miller said. What did it matter, he asked himself, whether a man were buried or not? Out here in the wilderness what difference did it make? It all amounted to the same thing. Death was a stern, inexorable thing, and graves meant nothing.

But even more than this, he was appalled by the thought that now, without dogs, he must remain here throughout the long, lonely winter, at least ninety miles from the nearest point of civilization. That is, unless some traveler happened along who would be willing to take him out. But there was no counting on that. The trails were bad, there wouldn’t be much traveling over them. And he couldn’t help wondering about Miller, half wishing he had gone on with the man. But there. The thing was done now. No use thinking of it.

Again he fell to work. And suddenly he pitched forward on his face. The pick, instead of coming to the usual shocking halt on the frozen ground, had sunk deep and had thrown him off his balance.

Amazed, he extracted it. For a moment he stood looking wonderingly down at the round black hole it had made. Then he fell to work with eager excitement. And in another moment, from a box that was half-filled with small leather bags, he had taken a note and was reading.

Dear Stranger:

I have no relatives and no friends. This ten thousand in gold dust is yours. Anyone who is white enough to do what you have done is worthy of it. Many thanks, Stranger. And good luck.