Theodore Seixas Solomons

“ Yet you knew, Madge, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said steadily.
“Well, think of that bedeviled weakling out there. A sick whelp with a small jack knife and the clothes on his back. He had nothing to offer the frowning gods of the wild—nothing but hate and his oath. Yet they saw him through—they and his father. I’m here——” he struck the sod. “Alive on the good earth, not moldering upon it. And now, would you have me false—a traitor to it all?”
Harold had learned the ways of the gods of earth, but not of the goddesses that hover half on, half over it. Of these was Madge. ”

“ Dalton might be there. To approach him openly was, of course, simply to be shot, for after deserting Harold, Dalton must know he was guilty of intent to murder and that he must either kill the younger man, be killed by him, or go ultimately to the penitentiary.
Harold could see no signs of life in the little valley, but, as he had surmised, it had been the guide’s haven for the night. From the base of the rocky slope the tracks led him to a grove at the meadow’s edge, and here was the camp. He was racked; exhausted; he felt himself to be just hollow, aching bones strung together. ”

“ But on the theory of murder for theft—a more likely explanation, he felt—Dalton would have no intention of returning, either with or without an alibi; and he would be striking out for another part of North America—Alaska or the Yukon, it would be. Sure of the death of the weakling by starvation in the camp in which he had left him, he would travel north and west, hunting and fishing, riding along between times, whistling those old-fashioned, loutish tunes of his—the man was a moral idiot! He would almost forget that Harold Hazeltine had ever existed. ”

“ Bill Dalton, as big as Hazeltine, somewhat older in years and very much older in experience, quiet, and pithily spoken, had many of the earmarks of the genial philosopher of the great outdoors. But the test of true philosophy is its staying powers, and each passing day of their outward bound had drawn more and more heavily upon the guide’s reserve of patience and forbearance. Though he had doubtless been admonished to regard the youth as unfit, it was likely that Dalton had expected a certain amount of help from Hazeltine as soon as the latter should learn the rudiments of camp craft. ”

“ Life is a nuisance. I decided that long ago. My body’s no good, and just now it’s all in, anyway. So hadn’t we just better say, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish—body, world, the whole thing!’”
There were numerous passages in point in the “Poetry of Pessimism.” His hand left his forehead and groped toward the little leather-covered volume in his coat pocket. He was about to take it out, when suddenly his thought swerved to the surviving member of the expedition—to Billy Dalton, smirking his satisfaction at every tree and rock and purling stream. ”

“ It was good that he was, for he would move over the country slowly, never suspecting that a Nemesis was plodding in his wake!
The boy turned now to the problem of prolonging his life—this swift, clear, seeing, feeling, moving life that, in spite of starvation—because of it, had Harold only known—had opened to him. This new existence was a novelty; and novelty, to pampered, sated Harold was a rare thing. Well, it would give life zest, and zest in turn would aid him in the struggle to prolong life till his master object, vengeance, was accomplished. ”

“ In spite of these successes, however, there were hunger times when he lived on gritty hate and water!
At first he had longed for a gun. A little later, when he managed to procure food without it, he still longed for a gun—to use on Billy Dalton. All that was in the days of his weakness. He did not want a gun now. He wanted only his hands. But since a cowardly murderer like Dalton would shoot him the moment he saw him and realized his crime had failed, Harold planned to come upon the guide in the night, remove the guns to a safe distance, and wake and grapple with him man to man. ”

“ Harold cursed most feelingly.
On the far side of the meadow the fire was still burning brightly; a small coffepot was on the coals—nearly dry; and a piece of bacon with some slices cut from it lay near by on a rock. Evidently the decamping had been precipitate—there was some satisfaction in that! The guilty devil was afraid of what might have scared his mule—afraid of visitors—afraid of his own shadow.
“Well, better luck next time,” muttered the disappointed sleuthhound. “And in the meantime—bacon and coffee!” Harold ate the bacon raw—every scrap of it. ”

“ But hunger asserted itself and he glowered at the cold beans, the cold tea and soda biscuits, and the golden mess of apricots. Then he sighed, cast a vengeful glance at the recumbent guide and set to work to mend the fire. When it brightened he searched the pack bags for dainties, selected several highly indigestible articles and both washed and skidded them down with warmed-up, concentrated tea and bacon grease. Then he got into his eiderdown quilts, read a few pungent verses of the “Poetry of Pessimism,” switched off his electric lamp and sank into his nightly torpor. ”

“ He wondered which soul would triumph, and while he wondered, the legs of the starving youth carried him to the edge of the meadow where, as his wise stomach knew, the cur had probably gone to empty the dishpan.
And sure enough. Clinging stickily to the sedges, balanced on their bowed blades, borne up in the chalices of closely branching tufts, were gray-dyed rinds, pale shreds of prunes, a crust or two of sodden biscuit, and a few beans—blessed beans! ”

“ The toilet equipment produced, the young patrician of the north woods proceeded to his elaborate afternoon ablution, a process which seldom consumed less than an hour, while the harried guide fell to cutting wood, getting water, building the fire and preparing the inevitable beans; these and many incidental duties being thinly sandwiched between foot races after the discontented animals.
His self-attentions at the creek being ended for the time, Harold sauntered heavily into the camp and surveyed its arrangements with abysmal disfavor. ”

“ It came to him:
“Odds Bodkins!” said Harold—a mysterious resurrection of some old literary memory. Somehow it fitted, and many times thereafter he uttered it—very whimsically, toward the last.
“It’s grub,” he added. “That’s my whole problem. The fool guide leaves scraps, and there’s things to eat all round me. I’m going to eat: Everything else will take care of itself.” ”

“ Air alone is not enough, nor change of climate; you ought to be on the move. Now let us arrange it for you——” The doctor warmed to his work:
“A good horse for you to ride—plenty of comforts carried along—very slowly at first, you know—easy stages—rest as you need to, or choose to—all that sort of thing. Now, please, Harold, for your mother’s sake; for your own sake——”
He paused as Harold arose and looked wistfully at Madge.
“Oh, very well, then,” decided the young giant lazily. “For all your sakes. But spare me the details, my dear Doctor Stein—the bugs and worms and sunburn and cold water. ”

“ The ‘good man’ business is more impertinence than I could hand you back if I tried. And as to airing my opinion of ‘us,’ please notice I’m not saying anything against your people, although I might add that whoever it was that dropped you onto me does not call for my gratitude. But my opinion is, that if they had tanned your hide good while you were a small boy you would probably be a better big one now. What in Sam Hill ails you, anyway?” inquired the guide with a pleasantly contemptuous inflection.
At this question, deeply probing Harold’s interest in life, his self-control collapsed. ”

“ The outfit, due to Harold’s insistence, was ridiculously bulky and hard to handle; the horses and mules required a good deal of attention—always the case during the first part of such an expedition; and the routine labors of camping and traveling when thrown upon one man, no matter how husky and expert he might be, were exceedingly arduous. But Harold rendered them doubly arduous. The six horses and mules, spirited though they were and requiring constant attention, at least ate and slept without assistance, but it was not so with the spiritless seventh animal in the care of Dalton. ”

“ Dalton, presumably with the most obedient of intentions, threw a bucket of quietus upon the fire, from which ashes immediately arose and a few flakes threatened the immaculate person of his employer, whose sigh and upraised face dumbly called Heaven to witness his martyrdom. And Billy started a new fire in another place, moved the whole outfit, and patiently resumed his cooking. Somewhere in his overalls pocket were Harold’s copied recipes for prune shortcake, minced ham omelet—à la evaporated eggs—and canned corn fritters glacé. ”

“ Harold threw a not unamiable glance at his dissentient relative and resumed:
“But get it off your mind, doctor, whatever the new gruel is that you and the mater have cooked up for me. To oblige you both I’ll do it, you know; that is, if it’s not too oppressive.”
“It need not be, even from the first,” replied Doctor Stein, plunging to his task. “It’ll be exhilarating—stimulating—possibly just what you need. It’s simply to live in the open air—go camping—on a journey.”
Harold leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and groaned. ”

“ He reasoned that the incarnate devil of a guide had schemed the desertion some time before; that the quarrel had merely served the fellow as a personal pretext for precipitating a well-matured villainy. A cool and calculating miscreant—his perfect woodcraft showed him to be that—he had without doubt carefully prepared an “alibi.” Harold was willing to wager that that long letter the man had mailed at the half-breed’s camp was a first step in such an alibi. ”

“ He sauntered along the trail the pack animals had made to where it turned upon a rocky area and was lost—to his inexperienced eye. So he sat down on the ground with his back against a bowlder and nursed his knees and his grievances. Very soon he felt the gnawing that simulated hunger in his abused alimentary tract.
“That fellow’s got to come, and come mighty quick,” said Harold to himself. But nothing at all happened in obedience to this imperative. An hour passed. The creek murmured somewhere down the rocky slope, and two jay birds screamed discordantly at him. ”

“ For as his strength and craft had grown, his hate, if it had not in creased, had at least not diminished. That hate, his sustainer and teacher, should sustain and teach him to the end, and he would overtake and kill the fiend unless he himself perished in the effort.
He believed he would have overtaken him long ago had he not been obliged to spend so much time hunting his food. For the leavings of the guide and the berries and edible roots he found had very early in the game proved far too little for his needs, and partial starvation had goaded him to find ways of capturing meat. ”

“ For the invalid, in spite of his general languor, his indifference to the beauties of the way, to the life or death that might chance upon the journey, was a most perniciously positive person upon any matter affecting his comfort or his whims, his indifference manifesting itself here only with regard to the comfort and welfare of the other members of the party—the two-legged and four-legged appendages, as it were, of the expedition. ”

“ You’re H. Hazeltine, that’s who you are; the son of two others of the same name. I had just as many parents myself—Daltons. And you’re a useless carcass taking up space on the earth where perfectly good grass might grow. That’s what you are.”
Something came to the wealthy invalid’s rescue. He laughed raucously.
“Positively,” he assured the spruce trees, “it is worth the annoyance of this silly trip to have had such an experience. Conceive of it!” And he laughed again.
“Say,” said Dalton, pointing his finger at Harold, “you’re funnier than the experience. ”

“ He can’t really see anything around him, don’t know he’s alive, don’t seem to care whether he is or not and, unless all signs fail, won’t be very long. You said you folks and the doctor had done all sorts of things, and a simple life with air and exercise was the only thing left.
But you can’t make a man live that kind of a life simply by sending him off into the north woods with plenty of animals and grub and a comfortable camp chair if he’s the boss and don’t want to. ”