Ridgwell Cullum - The Way of the Strong

He raised the flap of the tent and passed within, letting the curtain fall behind him.

Not a sound broke the stillness outside. The dogs stirred without sound. Their ease was passing. It was almost as if they knew that the law of club and trace was soon to claim them again.

In a few moments Leo reappeared. A fresh change had come over him. His work was in full progress, and now the light in his eyes was less straining, less passionate. Now he was once more the man of purpose, keen, swift-thinking, ready. The passionate obsession that was his was once more under control, its desire having been satisfied in the acquisition of the bag of gold he now hugged in his arms. The keenest essence of his thought was at work. Possibility after possibility opened out in a series of pictures before his mind's eye, and, with swift slashes, like the progress of the surgeon's knife, his brain cut them about, extracting every detail of importance, assimilating the living, the vital points.

Though powerless to resist the temptation held out to him, he knew full well its meaning. He knew what possible consequences hovered on the horizon of his future. The morality of his act concerned him not at all, but those other considerations demanded his closest attention. All his plans must be reorganized. Now there was no need to return for laborious years on Sixty-mile Creek, and a great joy flooded his heart at the thought. He could take up his plans where they had been broken by the disaster in the storm. But there must be a difference. There must be considerable modification. He thought of Audie, and at once the necessary modifications unrolled before the keen pressure of thought he was laboring under.

Audie and the Indian could still go on, he thought, as his eyes surveyed the five great husky dogs with satisfaction All that had been arranged for her could remain – for the present. She was still to remain a part of his life. He had given his promise, and he was more than satisfied to fulfill it when the time in his affairs came for such fulfillment. Then there was Tug. Tug must be provided for; and as the thought came to him a grim, half smile twisted the corners of his compressed lips. Yes, he would leave him written instructions, which, if he knew the man, would not be ignored.

These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind in the midst of action. He saw the whole situation as plainly and simply as though Providence itself had ordained the whole scheme. There was only one thing that could upset it – Tug's premature return. But he set the thought aside. He would not contemplate it. That must take care of itself. He would deal with it when it occurred.

Reluctantly enough he bestowed Tug's store of gold upon the sled, lashing it doubly secure after his disastrous experiences. Then he stored bedding and food upon the vehicle. He provided a sufficient but light enough load, for he knew he must travel fast and reach the coast long before those others. Si-wash was behind him, and Si-wash knew every inch of the trail, whereas he only had a vague knowledge which might fail him at any moment.

Within half an hour the pack on the sled was complete, and the great dogs stood in their harness ready to do the behests of their new master as willingly as those of the old. But the last item of his program still remained to be attended to. Leo searched his pockets and found the stub of a pencil, but no paper rewarded his efforts. For a moment he was at a loss. Then he bethought him of the tent, and passed beneath the flap. In a few moments he returned with a sheet of waterproof paper, such as is used to line biscuit boxes, and he sat down on his pack and began to write. And all the time he was writing the grim twist of his lips remained. He seemed to find some sort of warped humor in what he was doing.

His writing finished he secured the paper on the front of the tent where it must easily be seen. Then he stood off to read it.

"My Dear Tug;

"I find it necessary to commandeer your gold. Mine is at the bottom of a precipice ten miles back, if you care to make the exchange. Si-wash will tell you where. I suggest you either wait here till they come along, or go back to my camp in the woods, beyond the broken hill, and join Si-wash there. Anyway you can travel down with him. They have dogs and camp outfit, and I have left here sufficient food, etc., for your needs. I have found you a better friend than I ever hoped to. So long. Good luck.

"Leo."

Leo read his note over with evident satisfaction. He had no scruples whatever. He saw in one direction only. Straight ahead of him, his eyes turning neither to the right nor to the left of the path of life he had marked out for himself. He believed that the battle must always go to the strong; sentimentality, pity, were feelings he did not acknowledge. He knew of their existence, and deplored them as the undermining germ responsible for the disease of decadence which has wrought the destruction of more than half the great empires in the world's history. And what the world's history had not taught him he had gleaned from the lives of great men, as he saw greatness. Greatness to him meant conquest, and the world's conquerors had been men utterly devoid of all the tenderer feelings of humanity. They had embarked upon their careers thrilling with the lust of the ancient savage, or the ruthless courage of the animal kingdom, qualities which he regarded as the essence of life, as Nature had intended it. So he gave himself up to a similar course. He would rather be a king by savage conquest, than the hereditary monarch of a race whose vitality is slowly being sapped by the vampire of sentimentality.

He picked up Tug's gee-pole, and gave one swift final glance over the camp. Then, stooping, he covered the staring face of the dead man with a blanket and turned to the dogs.

A sharp command and the traces were drawn taut. Another, and the journey had begun. The dogs, fresh from their week of idleness, strained at their breast harness, and the sled moved slowly, heavily over the dry bed of the forest. But it soon gained impetus, and the twilit shadows of the primordial forest quickly swallowed it up.

As the scrunch of the pine-cones under the steel runners died away the calm of ages once more settled upon the woods. The dying fire burned lower and lower, and the deathly stillness was unbroken even by a crackle of sputtering flame. The solitude was profound and full of melancholy.

The minutes crept on. They lengthened into an hour. Then far in the distance, it seemed, came the soft pad as of some prowling forest beast. But the pad quickly changed to the soft scrunch of moccasined feet, and, presently, a man, bearing a great load of wood upon his broad back, came on through the dusky aisles of the forest.

Tug did most things with a smile; but it was never the happy smile of a pleasant nature. Nor was it even a mask. It was an expression of his attitude toward the world, toward all mankind. His eyes conveyed insolent contempt; and his smile was one of the irritating irony and cynicism which permeated all his thoughts and feelings.

But his smile was for those looking on. There were times when another man looked out of the same eyes; a man whose cold heart loomed up ugly and threatening out of those deeper recesses of feeling which the shrewd might guess at, but were rarely admitted to.

Tug was a man whose selfish desire was above and before all things. He was of that temper which saw injustice and wrong in every condition of life obtaining, in every established institution of man, even in the very edicts of Nature. It was impossible for him to see anything but through the jaundiced light of his own utter selfishness. Every condition over which he had no control contained a threat, which, in his view of things, was directed against the fulfillment of his desires. He wanted the world and all its possibilities for comfort, pleasure, profit, for his own, without the effort of making it so; and had he obtained it he would undoubtedly have grumbled that there was no fence set up as a bar to all trespassers upon his property.