X

THE PENALTY


For some reason Micmac John could not sleep. A little while he lay
awake voluntarily, trying to contrive a plan to follow should he be
found out. If, after he returned to the tilt for the pelts, there
should not be sufficient snow to cover his trail, for instance, before
the searching party came to look for Bob--and it surely would come,
headed by Dick Blake--he would be in grave danger of being discovered.
Why had he not thought of all this before? He was afraid of Dick
Blake, and Dick was the one man in the world, perhaps, that he was
afraid of. Would Dick shoot him? he asked himself. Probably. If he
were found he would have to die.

Life is sweet to a strong, healthy man brought face to face with the
reality of death. In his more than half savage existence Micmac John
had faced death frequently, and sometimes daily, and had never shrunk
from it or felt a tremour of fear. He had held neither his own nor the
life of other men as a thing of much value. The fact was that never
before had he given one serious thought to what it meant to die. Like
the foxes and the wolves, he had been an animal of prey and had looked
upon life and death with hardly more consideration than they, and with
the stoical indifference of his savage Indian ancestors.

But for some inexplicable reason this night the white half of his
nature had been awakened and he found himself thinking of what it
meant to die--to cease to be, with the world going on and on
afterwards just as though nothing had happened. Then the teachings of