“The next morning I divided all the grub, which was little, into three portions.  And I told Long Jeff that he could keep up with us, or not, as he saw fit; for we were going to travel light and fast.  But he raised his voice and cried over his sore feet and his troubles, and said harsh things against comradeship.  Passuk’s feet were sore, and my feet were sore—­ay, sorer than his, for we had worked with the dogs; also, we looked to see.  Long Jeff swore he would die before he hit the trail again; so Passuk took a fur robe, and I a cooking pot and an axe, and we made ready to go.  But she looked on the man’s portion, and said, ’It is wrong to waste good food on a baby.  He is better dead.’  I shook my head and said no—­that a comrade once was a comrade always.  Then she spoke of the men of Forty Mile; that they were many men and good; and that they looked to me for grub in the spring.  But when I still said no, she snatched the pistol from my belt, quick, and as our brother Bettles has spoken, Long Jeff went to the bosom of Abraham before his time.  I chided Passuk for this; but she showed no sorrow, nor was she sorrowful.  And in my heart I knew she was right.”

Sitka Charley paused and threw pieces of ice into the gold pan on the stove.  The men were silent, and their backs chilled to the sobbing cries of the dogs as they gave tongue to their misery in the outer cold.

“And day by day we passed in the snow the sleeping-places of the two ghosts—­Passuk and I—­and we knew we would be glad for such ere we made Salt Water.  Then we came to the Indian, like another ghost, with his 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.