Chapter V

Cheechako slept within the cabin that winter, stretched out before the fire and soaking the heat into his body with the luxurious enjoyment that only a dog can compass. There was no need for the discipline that before had made his chaining necessary. Holliday’s training had had better results than Carson’s. Cheechako was a well-mannered dog, now, who listened soberly when Holliday talked to him.

And Holliday talked often. Loneliness in the wilds is quite different from loneliness anywhere else. With the snow piled in monster drifts about the cabin, so that there was an actual tunnel a good part of the way from the door to the wood-pile, he was utterly isolated from the world. He had to talk. He told Cheechako confidentially just what the girl Outside meant to him. He would not have said it to any living man, but the dog listened soberly. Sometimes Holliday grew morose. Sometimes he called himself a fool for not bringing her with him—and then gave thanks that he did not. And he had moments of passionate jealousy and doubt, wondering if she were waiting for him and believing in him through all the months when no word from either could reach the other.

He read her last letter into tiny fragments, long after he could recite it word for word. He read strange meanings into it, as that she began to feel her loyalty wavering and in honesty wished to place it beyond recall. And then he read them out again and was bitterly ashamed that such things had entered his mind at all. All this was during the days of storm when he could not even build monster fires and thaw out gravel to be shifted where the first waters of spring would wash out its infinitesimal proportion of gold for him.

But Dugan appeared at the cabin in December.

He came on snowshoes and had conquered his first surprise before he shouted outside the cabin door. Dugan had come over in hopes of finding some stray reading-matter, anything to break the monotony of his own cabin some four miles or more away. The smoke warned him that someone was within and no more than a flicker of his eyelids expressed surprise that Holliday was the occupant.

Holliday greeted him with a feverish cordiality, pressed tobacco upon him, bade him remain and eat, presented Cheechako and they talked interminably. Dugan was jollity itself. He was soon assured that Holliday had no suspicion of him. He had left no clue after the murder and Cheechako—who might have gamboled about him—had been trained by Holliday into the perfection of canine manners. Cheechako remembered, yes, but he did not associate Dugan with the death of his former master. And in any event he was a dog, and there was but one master in the world for him. Injuries done to a past owner would not arouse Cheechako now, though he would fight to the last drop of his blood for Holliday. Dugan had every reason in the world to feel secure.

He was secure. In his gratitude for having someone to talk to, Holliday would have welcomed the devil himself. When Dugan finally left for his own cabin, Holliday was more nearly normal than for months.

And it may be that Dugan’s presence kept Holliday sane that winter. He was surely used to loneliness, but no such loneliness as possessed him now. No man is lonely who can keep his brain busy with the things of the moment and the place he is in, but Holliday could not do that. A picture of the girl who waited for him was always at hand. His presence and his desperate work was due to her. He could not help thinking and dreaming of her, and that thinking and dreaming made the solitude into a corroding horror.

Dugan changed all that. He was someone to talk to. Holliday even told him about the girl. He talked for hours about her, while Cheechako lay at one side of the cabin floor and watched gravely, his ears alert and his eyes somber. Often he watched Dugan, and vague memories crept disturbingly about his mind. Here, in this same cabin——

Dugan knew about the murder, too, how Holliday had come joyously to the cabin—and found his best friend murdered and his happiness destroyed in the one instant. Sam Carson had been the keeper of most of Holliday’s possessions, and they had been stolen by the murderer.

It was probably his own feigned sympathy and secret sardonic amusement that suggested a duplication of his former feat to Dugan. Dugan’s own claim was rich—how rich he could not tell until spring. But Holliday’s claim was little worse. Carson had skimmed the cream, but the rest was worth taking, if it could be done without risk.

And Dugan, who had not nerve enough to shoot a man in cold blood, and was too cowardly to pick a fight, grinned obscurely to himself. He fingered his own pokes, which would be bulging when spring came. He thought of Holliday’s. And then he began to whittle out a little contrivance of wood and leathern thongs, which looked very much like a trap, but was much more deadly. It was a clever little idea of his own. Perfectly safe, and absolutely no risk. Suddenly, he stooped and listened. It seemed as if some noise to which his ears were unconsciously attuned had suddenly ceased.

Maybe the mill had stopped again.