The Son of the Wolf - Jack London (great novels of all time txt) 📗

each day saw the river dwindling to a slushy thread. Save him who has done the like, no man may know what she endured in traveling a hundred miles on the rim-ice; nor may they understand the toil and hardship of breaking the two hundred miles of packed ice which remained after the river froze for good. But Madeline was an Indian woman, so she did these things, and one night there came a knock at Malemute Kid’s door. Thereat he fed a team of starving dogs, put a healthy youngster to bed, and turned his attention to an exhausted woman. He removed her icebound moccasins while he listened to her tale, and stuck the point of his knife into her feet that he might see how far they were frozen.

Despite his tremendous virility, Malemute Kid was possessed of a softer, womanly element, which could win the confidence of a snarling wolf-dog or draw confessions from the most wintry heart. Nor did he seek them. Hearts opened to him as spontaneously as flowers to the sun. Even the priest, Father Roubeau, had been known to confess to him, while the men and women of the Northland were ever knocking at his door⁠—a door from which the latchstring hung always out. To Madeline, he could do no wrong, make no mistake. She had known him from the time she first cast her lot among the people of her father’s race; and to her half-barbaric mind it seemed that in him was centered the wisdom of the ages, that between his vision and the future there could be no intervening veil.

There were false ideals in the land. The social strictures of Dawson were not synonymous with those of the previous era, and the swift maturity of the Northland involved much wrong. Malemute Kid was aware of this, and he had Cal Galbraith’s measure accurately. He knew a hasty word was the father of much evil; besides, he was minded to teach a great lesson and bring shame upon the man. So Stanley Prince, the young mining expert, was called into the conference the following night as was also Lucky Jack Harrington and his violin. That same night, Bettles, who owed a great debt to Malemute Kid, harnessed up Cal Galbraith’s dogs, lashed Cal Galbraith, Junior, to the sled, and slipped away in the dark for Stuart River.

II

“So; one⁠—two⁠—three, one⁠—two⁠—three. Now reverse! No, no! Start up again, Jack. See⁠—this way.” Prince executed the movement as one should who has led the cotillion.

“Now; one⁠—two⁠—three, one⁠—two⁠—three. Reverse! Ah! that’s better. Try it again. I say, you know, you mustn’t look at your feet. One⁠—two⁠—three, one⁠—two⁠—three. Shorter steps! You are not hanging to the gee pole just now. Try it over. There! that’s the way. One⁠—two⁠—three, one⁠—two⁠—three.”

Round and round went Prince and Madeline in an interminable waltz. The table and stools had been shoved over against the wall to increase the room. Malemute Kid sat on the bunk, chin to knees, greatly interested. Jack Harrington sat beside him, scraping away on his violin and following the dancers.

It was a unique situation, the undertaking of these three men with the woman. The most pathetic part, perhaps, was the businesslike way in which they went about it. No athlete was ever trained more rigidly for a coming contest, nor wolf-dog for the harness, than was she. But they had good material, for Madeline, unlike most women of her race, in her childhood had escaped the carrying of heavy burdens and the toil of the trail. Besides, she was a clean-limbed, willowy creature, possessed of much grace which had not hitherto been realized. It was this grace which the men strove to bring out and knock into shape.

“Trouble with her she learned to dance all wrong,” Prince remarked to the bunk after having deposited his breathless pupil on the table. “She’s quick at picking up; yet I could do better had she never danced a step. But say, Kid, I can’t understand this.” Prince imitated a peculiar movement of the shoulders and head⁠—a weakness Madeline suffered from in walking.

“Lucky for her she was raised in the Mission,” Malemute Kid answered. “Packing, you know⁠—the head-strap. Other Indian women have it bad, but she didn’t do any packing till after she married, and then only at first. Saw hard lines with that husband of hers. They went through the Forty-Mile famine together.”

“But can we break it?”

“Don’t know. Perhaps long walks with her trainers will make the riffle. Anyway, they’ll take it out some, won’t they, Madeline?”

The girl nodded assent. If Malemute Kid, who knew all things, said so, why it was so. That was all there was about it.

She had come over to them, anxious to begin again. Harrington surveyed her in quest of her points much in the same manner men usually do horses. It certainly was not disappointing, for he asked with sudden interest, “What did that beggarly uncle of yours get anyway?”

“One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of hooch. Rifle broke.” She said this last scornfully, as though disgusted at how low her maiden-value had been rated.

She spoke fair English, with many peculiarities of her husband’s speech, but there was still perceptible the Indian accent, the traditional groping after strange gutturals. Even this her instructors had taken in hand, and with no small success, too.

At the next intermission, Prince discovered a new predicament.

“I say, Kid,” he said, “we’re wrong, all wrong. She can’t learn in moccasins. Put her feet into slippers, and then onto that waxed floor⁠—phew!”

Madeline raised a foot and regarded her shapeless house-moccasins dubiously. In previous winters, both at Circle City and Forty-Mile, she had danced many a night away with similar footgear, and there had been nothing the matter. But now⁠—well, if there was anything wrong it was for Malemute Kid to know what it was.

But Malemute Kid did know, and he had a good eye for measures; so he put on his cap and mittens and went down the hill