The weeks that followed were a testing-time for Angela. Her resolutions wavered and died, confronted as she was by the terrible isolation and loneliness. Stoicism was easy enough in theory but most difficult in practice. The unchanging icy vista and the eternal silence drove her to desperation. She tried work as an antidote, and found it dulled the edge of her despair.

They were fortunate enough to find a fish-trap in the outhouse. Jim regarded this discovery with great satisfaction. He chopped a hole in the river ice and, baiting the trap with a canned herring, managed to entice a “two-pounder” into the wicker basket. Angela’s attempt to cook it was not entirely a failure, and the repast was a pleasant change from the eternal beans and pork.

Thereafter Angela took over the piscatorial 199 department. It meant going to the river each morning and breaking the newly formed ice over the fish-hole—a task that called forth all her physical energy. At times the fish were scarce and the journeys without result, but they were not entirely wasted. She found that her body glowed with the exercise and her soft arms began to develop muscle.

Each day Jim took the sled and the dogs, and explored the creek in the neighborhood. Farther and farther afield he went, staying away at nights and leaving Angela to the melancholia of her soul. The shack seemed full of a strange presence, a ghostly kind of ego that made itself felt. Then along the valley came the bloodcurdling howl of a wolf, to add to her terror and misery.

The icehole froze up on one bitter night, and all the efforts of Jim could not reach water again. He eventually gave up the task as hopeless.

“Frozen right down to the river bed,” he explained.

The great loneliness took deeper hold of her. The eternal gloom began to affect her mentally. She became the victim of prolonged fits of depression; 200 Jim, tired and heavy-hearted with his arduous wanderings, noticed the change in her. It caused him acute mental agony, and not a little self-reproach. At nights he pondered the problem. Was he subjecting her to unjustifiable misery? Had he a right to do this? He knew he had not, but he was hoping—hoping vainly that she might abandon that spirit of antagonism, manifest in her every movement, and speak and act as one human being to another. He grew sick to realize that her will was no less strong than his own. What was there left to do but take her back and acknowledge defeat?

Defeat! The word aroused all his innate stubbornness. Never had he acknowledged defeat before. He had won through by sticking to the task at hand. Was he to give in now—to let this frozen-hearted woman beat him all round? How Featherstone would purr with pleasure when he knew! How all those high-browed aristocrats would congratulate this ill-treated wife on disposing of her unfortunate husband!

The old grievance still rankled, and his refusal to forget it reacted upon himself. This wilderness of great cold and hardship could not break 201 his endeavor, but a woman was slowly and surely doing so. All his dreams evolved around her—maddening dreams in which he was grasping and missing her....

The climax was to come, and it came in a way that was totally unexpected. It came with such crushing relentless weight that it left him a mere wreck of a man.

For three days Angela had spoken no word. When he arrived back at the shack after the usual vain hunt for gold, she gave him but a quick glance, sufficient enough to convey to her that he had failed for the hundredth time. On the third night, instead of handing him his meal from the stove she sat down and burst into passionate sobs.

Instinctively he put out his hand to clasp her trembling fingers. She pushed it away fiercely and stood up, shaking with emotion.

“You’ve got to let me go!” she cried.

“When the spring comes.”

“No, now. I can’t wait until the spring. This is killing me—killing me. Can’t you see that it will be too late then?”

“Angela, we came for a set purpose. If I fail 202 when the spring comes, we’ll go back to the life you want.”

“I’m going now,” she said grimly. “To-night!”

His mouth tightened.

“Be reasonable!”

“Reasonable! You talk of reason—you who brought me here to live like a dog, to treat as a dog——”

He sighed as he remembered her aversion to any attempted acts of kindness on his part. In every instance she had made it clear that she wanted nothing from him—that she refused kindnesses, sacrifices, on her behalf.

“I ain’t treated you in any way different to that in which a husband would treat his wife.”

“Wife—you call me that?”

“What do you call it, then?”

“Prisoner—slave!”

His face hardened.

“And if I did, ain’t there some justification? If our deal had been a love deal I guess the arrangement would have been canceled long ago. But it wasn’t. It was commercial transaction to which you gave your approval. It may 203 be morally wrong to keep you, but the whole darned frame-up was morally wrong. So morals don’t come into it—savvy? Legally I got a claim to my—goods, and you’re asking me to forgo that claim. But you don’t show much regret at taking a hand in that dirty business——”

“I told you I was sorry.”

“Yep—sorry, because it’s hurting you.”

She knew this was true, and the fact that he knew it too stung her. She sunk her head in her hands and remained for some time in silence. When she raised it again her face was full of a new determination.

“You are only bringing pain upon yourself,” she said tensely.

“I can bear it.”

“Can you?—I wanted to spare you—but you are forcing me to this—forcing me to tell you something that is going to hurt you.”

The tragic tone of her voice caused him to stand as though petrified.

“I said I should go now—to-night; and I am going.”

“So!” he stammered, feeling an awful pang of fear at his heart. 204

“You have hitherto considered no one but yourself. How far will you carry your desire for vengeance?”

“I don’t get you——”

“Wait! I told you it was killing me up here. That didn’t seem to influence you much—but suppose there is someone else to be considered——”

“What are you saying?”

“Are you blind? Can’t you guess? The other person is as yet unborn.”

His eyes were blind with pain. He gripped a chair and swayed dizzily. His mouth moved, but uttered no sound. When at last he spoke the words came as though forced from a clutched throat.

“Not that!—God, you don’t mean that? Tell me you don’t mean that—Angela——”

She sank her head on her bosom and a sob escaped her. The next moment her head was jerked up and she was gazing into his steely fixed eyes.

“Was it—that man—D’Arcy?”

Another sob convinced him. He flung her arm aside and walked to the door. He had encountered 205 hardships, disappointments, physical and mental pain, but nothing like this devastating destroyer that was gripping him. He stumbled out of the shack like a terribly sick man.

“Oh God!” he groaned. “And I loved her!”

She had won—won by means so foul that he would have died rather than that truth should have become known to him. All life was rotten, rotten to the core! Heaven was uprooted and legions of devils usurped the throne of the Almighty. He unlatched the outhouse and feverishly harnessed six of the dogs to the sled.

Trembling and ill, he crept into the shack to find her vanished to the inner room. He divided up the food in two equal portions, placed half his small financial funds inside a flour-sack, where he knew she would find it, and piled the things onto the sled. Then he called her in a low, almost inaudible, voice. She came from the inner room, closely swathed in furs and with her head sunk.

“The sled’s outside.... You can mush the dogs.... They’re the tamest six.... Fort Yukon is down the river, and the weather’s good....” 206

She nodded and walked through the door. The Arctic moon, shedding a queer blue radiance over the snow hung high in the black vault. Directly overhead the Great Bear gleamed like hanging lamps, with magnificent Vega blazing like a rich jewel. She turned to him once.

“Jim!”

“Go! Go! Follow the river.... Good—good-bye!”

A choking response came back. The whip cracked and the dogs moved forward. In a few minutes she was a black blur against the scintillating snow. With a groan he turned about and went inside.

For him it was a night of unparalleled agony. Hour after hour saw him there, at the small window, gazing fixedly up the valley, until a slight increase in the light brought him to full consciousness, to realize that a new day was born.

He prepared a meal and, despite his lack of appetite, managed to consume it. Then he took the ax and the rip-saw and made for a bunch of trees higher up the hill. All day the noise of chopping and sawing broke the silence. By the 207 evening, after a day of feverish and unremitting toil, he had fashioned a satisfactory sled.

Sleep came to him then—the deep dreamless sleep of exhaustion. But he awakened early, and began to pack the sled with sufficient food for the long journey. The six fierce brutes that remained were fed and harnessed, and he again ran over the details of his load to assure himself that nothing was missing. At the last moment he remembered the washing-pan and shovel, and placed them with the other miscellaneous articles.

He had no dog-whip, but calculated he could mush the dogs without that. He gave one glance at the shack, emitted a fierce torrent of oaths, and pushed the sled into action.

They went down the incline at a terrific rate and bumped on to the river. Yonder lay Dawson and D’Arcy. Whatever happened, he meant to get D’Arcy, if it meant taking the Pole en route. Out of this anticipation he derived some grain of pleasure—and he needed it to leaven the misery in his soul. His hand moved to the revolver in the pocket of the big bearskin coat, only to be withdrawn before he touched it.

“Nope—not that way,” he muttered grimly, “but with my two hands.”