Roy Norton

“ I picked him up, laid him on the sled, slashed off a piece of pack rope and thereafter, with it across my shoulder pulled to assist the dogs—nothing more than a dying dog myself, feeling an awful kinship with the brutes.
The trail led upward over what appeared to be the frozen bed of a tiny stream that wound through great high hills and was bordered by cliffs so abrupt that it would have been impossible to scale them. After a time it abruptly passed through mountain gates into a valley. And there, to my bewilderment, I saw an Indian village different from any I had ever seen before. ”

“ The time has come when we've got to have a straight talk. We've been together some years now—you and I—Jim, and I don't think I've ever given you reason to think that I couldn't stand the gaft when things came to the worst. Well, they must be about there now.”
I could not at that moment answer. I was weak, hungry, nearly whipped. Outside a famished dog moaned and whimpered to the cold, merciless stars.
“Jim,” he said, sitting up on the blankets and staring at me with those pitifully blinded eyes as if he could see through the red veil, “tell me the truth. ”

“ I demanded of my partner when all my preparations to start had been made.
“I can't help myself,” he muttered. “You are mad! Clean mad! What do you intend to do with me?”
“If you'll promise to walk, I'll loosen your feet and tether your hands to the handlebars of the sled so you can run behind. If you won't do that, I'll throw you on top of the blankets on the sled, tie you there, and go on.” ”

“ They stared from beneath eye brows heavier than I have ever seen in any Indian of the North. The nose might have been that of a great Sioux chieftain; a warrior's nose; the nose of a fierce and relentless conqueror. ”

“ The most beautiful of all—enduring, unrusting, maintaining its dignified luster though buried beneath the clean, unbroken earth, or recovered after long handling from the muck heaps of human cesspools. ”

“ Because its dominion has been for so many ages undisputed; because the hunger for it has betrayed souls; because myriads of men and women have throughout all time gambled blood, lives, and honor for its possession, none of these has made me either detest it or bow head and knee in reverence. ”

“ Dogs most dead. You most dead. This man—him already dead? No, think not; for then why haul on sled? Come. We help.”
I dropped my rifle and then in soft and decisive gutturals he addressed his followers. Babbling like children released from authority, some of them drove the village dogs away while others, with hands on the sides of the birch rails, pushed the sled forward at a run. Our dogs ran lightly with unstretched harness. Peluk, after another look into my face, patted me on the back and said, “Not far now. Me understan'. You not strong. ”

“ To-night or wherever we paused when spent, one of them must die, be murdered, that we and his team mates might try for one day more. To-morrow, if we survived the day, another dog must die and the sled, which the others would not have sufficient strength to pull, be abandoned. ”

“ I suppose that there is a point where human endurance reaches mental rather than physical break, that sanity may go first leaving behind but an animal entity fighting to the last for self-preservation. ”

“ It cannot be conferred by potentate, autocrat, or king. It is an endowment of respect rather than election, bestowed upon those who, wise in the lore, history, or accomplishments of a tribe of men are given due and merited deference. The quality of the service depends upon the ideals of the tribe. Gibbon, the historian, was a shaman to those of the English-speaking race. Napoleon, but for his fall, might have become a shaman to the French. Cæsar was shaman to his own. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were American shamen in their day. ”