face set toward Pelly. They had not whacked up fair, the man and the
boy, he said, and he had had no flour for three days. Each night he
boiled pieces of his moccasins in a cup, and ate them. He did not have
much moccasins left. And he was a Coast Indian, and told us these things
through Passuk, who talked his tongue. He was a stranger in the Yukon,
and he knew not the way, but his face was set to Pelly. How far was it?
Two sleeps? ten? a hundred--he did not know, but he was going to Pelly.
It was too far to turn back; he could only keep on.

"He did not ask for grub, for he could see we, too, were hard put. Passuk
looked at the man, and at me, as though she were of two minds, like a
mother partridge whose young are in trouble. So I turned to her and
said, 'This man has been dealt unfair. Shall I give him of our grub a
portion?' I saw her eyes light, as with quick pleasure; but she looked
long at the man and at me, and her mouth drew close and hard, and she
said, 'No. The Salt Water is afar off, and Death lies in wait. Better
it is that he take this stranger man and let my man Charley pass.' So
the man went away in the Silence toward Pelly. That night she wept.
Never had I seen her weep before. Nor was it the smoke of the fire, for
the wood was dry wood. So I marveled at her sorrow, and thought her
woman's heart had grown soft at the darkness of the trail and the pain.

"Life is a strange thing. Much have I thought on it, and pondered long,
yet daily the strangeness of it grows not less, but more. Why this
longing for Life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil
hard, and to suffer sore, till Old Age creeps heavily upon us and we
throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to
live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps
his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes
down to the open arms of Death, stumbling, falling, with head turned