Chapter XXIII: Hunger

Nature! They were to discover during the days that followed that she was no mean antagonist. At first everything went delightfully; the sun warmed and cheered them by day; the stars whispered at night. The moon was swallowed up in the dawn now. On the shortest night of the year there was scarcely any darkness; then the nights began to lengthen imperceptibly. They rode and spelled and rode again. They built great fires. The character of the country never changed. The sea of green grass seemed to be limitless.

On the third day the horse that Conacher rode sickened mysteriously. On the following morning it was incapable of bearing him. Loseis shook her head ominously.

“It is a sort of distemper that attacks them in the summer,” she said. “He will be sick for weeks. We might as well leave him. The others may catch it from him.”

So Conacher was obliged to set out on foot. The sick horse screamed piteously upon being left behind; and attempted to follow; but fell down in the grass, where he lay struggling feebly and watching them with raised head until they passed out of sight. They could not now hope to make more than thirty or forty miles a day, though all took turns in riding. And still there was no suggestion of their approach to a great river. The prairie rolled on as before. As far as Conacher could tell they had not yet even passed the crown of the watershed. They all had their sickening moments of doubt. Suppose there was no river?

Loseis’ worst prognostications were fulfilled. The other two horses sickened. By the sixth day they were all on foot. Mary-Lou’s moccasins wore through; and they had nothing out of which to make new ones. Fortunately both Loseis and Conacher wore boots. The prairie which looked so smooth made rough walking for humans, and their progress was cut down, Conacher figured, to between twenty and twenty-miles [missing or incorrect word] a day. The eighth day passed without any sign of the river of promise. Conacher estimated that they had covered nearly three hundred miles.

They had met with no game on the prairie except the ubiquitous chickens. Conacher was averse to wasting his precious bullets on such small fowl—it is very easy to miss a prairie chicken with a rifle; consequently they had depended on the meat and fish brought by Mary-Lou. On the seventh day it was exhausted, and they ate chicken. On that miserable eighth day some bad fairy waved a wand, and the chicken disappeared from the prairie. During the entire day Conacher did not obtain a shot. Consequently they went supperless to bed.

He was up at sunrise, ranging the prairie while the girls slept. But with no luck. There was nothing living in sight except the gophers who gained the shelter of their burrows ere he could come close enough to hope to hit them with his clumsy gun. In desperation he did shoot at gophers at last, only to plug the earth. When he returned to camp, the girls, having heard the sound of his gun, awaited him with anticipatory smiles, and he had the bitterness of showing them his empty hands. There was no breakfast.

On this first morning it was easy to turn it into a joke.

“Anyway, I’m sick of meat,” said Loseis.

“My people lak go ’ongry for awhile,” said Mary-Lou. “Mak’ the big feed taste better bam-bye.”

“Well, it’ll save a lot of time,” said Conacher with a sheepish grin. He felt responsible for their plight.

They set forth briskly enough; but were very glad to rest when mid-morning came. All of them were now feeling very painful gnawings, but they concealed it from each other. Conacher prowled over the prairie in vain. They listlessly resumed their march.

During the course of the afternoon they came unexpectedly to the lip of a deep coulee with a trickle of water in the bottom. To Conacher’s dismay it proved to be flowing in a southerly direction. This was exactly opposite to what he expected. It was against all the theories as to the lay of this unexplored land, and he was ready to despair. However, there was nothing to do but to keep on the way they were going.

An hour later they crossed it again. The water was now flowing north, and Conacher’s mind was somewhat relieved. Upon this second crossing they found more water than before in the streamlet, and a fringe of spruce trees, the first grown trees they had seen since leaving Blackburn’s River. They also found, what was more important to them, berry-bushes, and a patch of wild strawberries. Only the strawberries were ripe. Before eating any, they carefully collected them in their little cooking pot, and scrupulously divided them. There was about a cupful apiece.

The berries were deliciously refreshing; but they seemed to have the effect of still further sharpening the pangs of hunger. They searched far up and down the coulee for more, but in vain. It was an isolated patch of trees and bushes.

“Let us get on,” Conacher kept urging the girls. “We must reach a game country before our strength fails.”

They wearily climbed the steep side of the coulee to the endless rolling prairie again, that they now hated. On this day they suffered a keener pain from hunger than during the days that followed. All three became tight-lipped and silent. Their limbs were leaden; and progress was painfully slow. Twice more they crossed the coulee. No more trees or berries. It was now evident that the general course of the little stream was northwest, which was in line with Conacher’s calculations. It was undoubtedly a tributary of the big river they were seeking: but whether the river were ten miles or a hundred miles further, it was impossible to tell. It was exasperating in their fatigued condition to climb in and out of the steep coulee so many times: but even so they made better time than they could have done by following it throughout its crazy windings.

Seeing more spruce trees, they descended into it to spend the night, but found no berries here. They heaped a great fire and made themselves soft beds of spruce boughs: but their empty stomachs refused to be assuaged by these luxuries. Mary-Lou cut three small strips from the top of one of her worn-out moccasins, and boiled them, and handed them around.

“Chew,” she said. “It will stop the pains anyhow.”

Afterwards a curious false strength seemed to come to them. They felt no desire to sleep, but sat up for hours around their fire under the spruces, talking animatedly with flushed faces and bright eyes.

“When I was a kid,” said Conacher, “I had a grand-uncle in New York, who was a great old high-liver. Never thought about anything but eats. He knew all the best restaurants in the city, and what was the proper thing to order in each place. He took me out to dinner a couple of times when I was a boy. Once we went to Delmonico’s. I have never forgotten what we ate that day. First oysters. I suppose you don’t know oysters, Loseis. Well, they are the best eating there is. Slip down your throat like velvet. Then a thick soup that was called potage Mongole. God knows what was in it. It was a combination of all the most delicious flavors you ever knew. Then there was something that was called Tournedos Henri Quatre. It was like beef, but it was the sauce that made all the difference. The French are wizards for sauces. We ended up with mince pie; good old American mince pie; and there’s nothing better! Oh, what a feed that was!”

“The best thing I ever tasted,” said Loseis vivaciously, “was roast pig. Three years ago Jim Cornwall came through from the Crossing with dogs, and brought my father a little frozen pig on his sled for Christmas. We thawed him out and roasted him until his hide crackled. Oh, my dear! the smell alone would drive you crazy; and the taste was better than anything in the world. I can taste him now! Do you member, Mary-Lou?”

“I remember,” said Mary-Lou, closing her eyes. “I did taste that pig meat. It was sweeter than young porcupine; it was sweeter than moose-nose or the back-fat of caribou; it was sweeter than all meat.”

“And do you remember?” asked Loseis, “when they stuck the knife into him how a little stream of juicy fat ran down?”

“We soaked it up with bread,” said Mary-Lou.

The subject was inexhaustible. They discussed it with anxious, drawn, eager faces. It never occurred to them to laugh at each other or at themselves. When they finally slept they dreamed of feasting.

Another day of misery followed no different from the day before, except that the pangs of hunger were less sharp and more enervating. It was hard to keep walking. It nearly broke Conacher’s heart to see the boyish Loseis pressing on with set face, quite unconscious of how she was staggering in her tracks. He took the second gun from her. She fought like a little spitfire to regain it, weeping out of anger and weakness. Her anger smoldered all the rest of the day, making the way even more bitter. Mary-Lou stood starvation better than either of the whites. They found another tantalizing patch of berries; and wasted hours looking for more. As on the night before, their supper consisted of a small strip of boiled hide apiece.

On the third day of starvation it seemed a wonder that they were able to move at all. Nevertheless they staggered on for a few miles. To add to their miseries it rained copiously; and their blankets soaked up some additional pounds of water. All day a division existed between Conacher and Loseis that was harder to bear than starvation. It was due to nothing in the world but compassion. It made each tender heart rage to behold the misery of the other. Especially Conacher’s, because he told himself that no woman ought to be subjected to such an ordeal. He supposed from Loseis’ black looks that she was blaming him for having led her into this, and he was ready to blow his brains out.

The little stream having received a tributary from the south, flowed with increased speed and volume. It now held a fairly straight course for the northwest; and it became evident that the whole country was sloping gently in that direction. The walls of the coulee gradually became higher; in the bottom it was now continuously wooded; but they felt too weak to climb down for a few berries. These changes in the country suggested that they were approaching the bottom of the watershed, and at midday from a rise in the prairie, Conacher at last beheld a blue shadow athwart the westerly horizon which indicated the valley of a considerable river. It seemed like a mockery now. It was a good twenty-five miles distant, and in their weakened state that was half a world away.

At the end of the day they made a detour from the coulee to visit a small slough and a poplar bluff that they had marked from a rise. It was a likely place to find bear. There was no bear, but the water of the slough was sweet, and they determined to spend the night in that spot. Will it be our last camp? Conacher thought with dread in his heart. The sky was still threatening, and he constructed an inclined thatch of poplar leaves, with a fire in front for the girls. They chewed their strips of boiled hide. This finished one moccasin, except for the ragged lower part, that Mary-Lou had bound round her foot. Afterwards, when Loseis, with a cold face, turned to seek her blanket, Conacher felt that he could bear no more.

“Loseis . . . !” he murmured heart-brokenly.

Mary-Lou vanished away amongst the little trees.

“What is it?” asked Loseis coldly.

“I cannot bear it . . . !”

“What?”

“Your look! . . . Forgive me!”

“For what must I forgive you?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is that I have done that angers you. For getting you into this scrape.”

Her face looked very small and pinched. It worked curiously with anger. Her voice came unnaturally sharp: “Forgive you! What sort of talk is this? Are you trying to make me feel worse than I feel already? Aren’t you satisfied with doing most of the work, and walking twice as far to hunt, and carrying a double load, but you must make me feel what a burden I am by asking me to forgive you!”

He only dimly understood the torment of this proud nature. “But Loseis . . . !” he protested, staring, “this is foolishness . . . !”

“Of course! of course! of course! I am a fool! That is well understood!”

“Listen to me,” he said doggedly. “You say I carry too heavy a burden. Why add to it with your cold and angry looks? The weight of two guns is nothing to me. It is your hard eyes that break me down.”

Loseis’ reply was to burst into tears.

He took her in his arms. “Don’t you love me any more?” he whispered.

She crept within his arms, but she abused him still. “You fool! it is because I love you so, that I am always angry. It drives me wild to think that I should spoil the life of a man like you!”

“But that’s nonsense!” said Conacher. “I am nothing in particular. A man only has one life. How could he spend it better? We shall go together. What else matters . . . Don’t you feel better now?”

“A little bit,” she admitted. “But to-morrow I shall be angry with you again. You are too good and patient. If you turned hateful I should feel better. It would even things up a little.”

“You’re a funny one!” he murmured.

However, the air _was_ cleared; and they rolled up in their blankets with a bit of comfort at their hearts.

When Conacher awoke next morning a light rain was drifting down. He pulled his blanket closer around him. Lying there like that one did not suffer; it was warm; the pangs of hunger did not make themselves felt; a comfortable numbness filled the frame. But the thought of getting up was hideous. For a long time he lay struggling with it. Useless for him to tell himself that he was the head of the party; the girls were dependent on him; it was up to him to find them food; he felt that he _could not_ get up; the effort was too great.

In the end he had to get up. The first few moments were the worst. He stood in the rain, swaying and nauseated, a black mist swimming before his eyes. Each morning it was much worse. If he could conquer this first weakness, he could go on through the day—but to-morrow morning! He shook that thought away. He forced himself to walk up and down, supporting himself by the little trees. After awhile he felt better. Picking up his gun, he started on his hopeless circuit of the bluff.

He paused in front of the little shelter he had constructed for the girls. They slept. Loseis was lying with her head pillowed on Mary-Lou’s shoulder like a child. In her weakness she looked entirely the child, the sick child. At the sight of those transparent cheeks and bluish eyelids, Conacher’s breast was wrung with agony. The worst of overcoming the physical weakness was, that one then began to think again, with horrible clearness. How could he ask this exhausted child to go on any further? She was dearer to him than his life. Would it not be kinder to end her sufferings while she slept? She opened her eyes, and smiled at him enchantingly. That smile capped his agony. Swallowing the groan that was forced up by his breast, he smiled back, and staggered on.

Like all the prairie sloughs, this one lay in a dish-like depression surrounded by a shallow rim of grass. Conacher had made half his round of the bluff, when over this rim at a distance of about a hundred yards appeared a lumbering black body of an astonishing bigness. For an instant he thought his senses were failing him; he began to tremble violently; but he quickly realized that it was a veritable bear. A bear’s eye-sight is not very keen, and the animal had not seen him. He drew back amongst the little trees, struggling to control his excitement. You _can not_ miss him! he kept telling himself.

The bear was evidently making for the bluff to breakfast off poplar bark. Conacher realized with a pang that he was directly in the wind of the animal. The bear was in no hurry. He turned aside to snuff and scratch at the roots of a clump of roses. He was the largest black bear that Conacher had ever seen. The big head was dwarfed by his mighty rump. His black pelt was grayed with moisture. The man’s mouth watered ridiculously. The bear turned towards him, and his heart began to thump. Then the animal changed his mind, and sauntered around the rim of the bench. Conacher, stepping with infinite care, kept pace with him amongst the little trees.

The bear disappeared over the edge of the rim, and Conacher’s heart almost broke. Should I go after him? he asked himself. No! he is bound to come to the bluff and the slough. The animal reappeared and hope flared up anew. He was heading towards the bluff again. He was no longer directly in Conacher’s wind, consequently the chance of getting him was better. But the deliberation of the beast well-nigh maddened the man. Bruin stood gazing off to the east as if he were debating the choice between this and some other feeding ground. He sat up on his haunches, and licked his paws. Finally he came lumbering towards the trees in a businesslike manner. Conacher raised his gun.

Before the bear had made half the distance that separated them, though Conacher had not moved, the animal’s mysterious instinct warned him of the presence of danger. He stopped with a woof! of alarm, and turning in his tracks, galloped back for the shelter of the rim. Conacher fired. The bear’s broad beam offered him a goodly mark, and he knew by the tremor that went through the animal that he had hit him: but it was not in a vulnerable spot. He galloped on without a pause. He disappeared over the encircling rim of grass. A voice seemed to cry inside Conacher: “You have lost your last chance!”

He found strength to run as if he had not been starved for four days. As he topped the rise, he saw the bear lying in the grass a hundred feet away; and a great, calm thankfulness filled his breast. It was all right! The animal was not dead, but disabled in his hind quarters. He lay with his head between his paws awaiting the end. Conacher dispatched him with a bullet through the brain.

Crying out: “A bear! I’ve got him!” Conacher dropped to his knees, and started instanter to skin his prey. Presently Mary-Lou who was more skillful at this job than he, relieved him. Loseis stood looking on like a happy little ghost. They could not wait to skin the bear entire; but cut off a piece of meat, and ran back to the fire with it.

Conacher kept saying over and over like an old woman: “Mind! Mind! Only a little piece at first, or it will make you sick!”

“If there is meat, why not eat?” grumbled Mary-Lou.

Nevertheless she obeyed; and at first only three tiny pieces were set upon pointed sticks to roast over the fire. It may be guessed that they were not _very_ well cooked before they were eaten. Conacher and Loseis nibbled them to make them go as far as possible. Mary-Lou saw no sense at all in this proceeding, but loyally followed their example.

“Is that all?” said Loseis wistfully.

“Mary-Lou could put some small pieces in the pot and boil them,” suggested Conacher. “The soup would be good for you.”

“Soup!” said Loseis, making a face.

“Well, by and by we will roast another little piece. To-morrow, if you feel all right, you can eat all you want.”

There was no question of moving on that day. They ate a little more; slept; and ate again. Conacher and Loseis sat happily side by side under the shelter of the leaves, watching Mary-Lou cut off thin slabs of the meat, and hang them in the smoke of the fire. The Indian girl also contrived moccasins for herself out of squares of the hide.

Next morning they awoke with bounding pulses as if they had never known what it was to starve. At breakfast time they feasted without stint. Their cheeks seemed to have filled out over night; their eyes were bright; their teeth gleaming. There was something so comical in the sight of this abrupt transformation, that they continually burst out laughing with their mouths full at the sight of each other’s joy.

They set out again laden with as much meat as they could carry.