North — Key Ideas to Explore

eneral celebration at Christmas--no looking forward in anticipation of a grand hurrah. But the spirit of Christmas was in the air. And each sourdough, independent of his neighbor, harnessed his dogs and silently hit the trail, knowing instinctively that at the end of the trail he would find his neighbor. For man is by instinct gregarious, and he will travel far to answer the primordial call of his kind. For a month, a year--longer, he may remain alone. But the passive act of remaining is a distinct effort of will, a continued and continuous throttling of desire, until at last the time comes when desire may no longer be throttled. A man may remake himself, may completely change the sequence of act, the sequence of thought, that has differentiated him from other men, he may thus change what men are pleased to call his nature. But, the fundamental law that has decreed him a social animal he cannot change--and remain a man. The fugitive from justice, though he know himself to be beyond thought of capture in some far fastness of the wilderness will, when the time comes, count prison bars, and even the hangman’s noose, as naught, and will deliberately risk capture in seeking the society of his kind. And the man of the far North will brave the hardships of the long trail, will laugh at the strong cold, will bore through the blinding blizzard, will risk thin ice, and uncomplaining accept the gruelling labor of the snow-trail for no other thing than that he may intermingle with his own kind. It is the law. Men have broken the law and have paid the fullness of its fearsome penalty. The brain that makes man man explodes, and the man of a moment before is a raving insentient brute which in a fume of unreasoning fury seeks only to destroy until in a final paroxysm of malignity he destroys himself. Or, the dissolution of the brain may come gently and the breaker of the law of kind, maundering, and prattling, and babbling, may live on, and on, and on.

A short distance above the mouth of a dry wash that emptied into the wide valley of Bonanza, Burr MacShane threw the last shovelful of gravel onto his dump and methodically kindled his fire on the iron-hard gravel at the bottom of his shallow shaft. An enormous malamute turned with a sneeze of disgust from his contemplation of the shaft as the acrid smoke filled his nostrils, and MacShane laughed: “Surprised as hell, ain’t you, Highball, that fire gives off smoke? Every day you stand there an’ get a noseful, an’ then down goes your tail an’ you sneeze out the smoke. You act like a fool pup--an’ you the best trail dog in the North!” At the words the tail of the great dog snapped erect, and rearing upward he placed two large forefeet upon the man’s chest. The ensuing tussle during which each tried to put the other in the snow was interrupted by the tiny tinkle of bells. Man and dog paused to watch an outfit pass the mouth of the wash far out on the trail. MacShane grinned: “Headin’ for Dawson,” he confided to the dog, “That’s the sixth one in three days, an’ the Lord knows how many that we didn’t see. An’ in a week or so they’ll be headin’ out again. Ain’t men fools, Highball? They ought to stay with the gravel.”

That afternoon MacShane cut cordwood and from the vantage point of the rim saw three more outfits pull by. When it was too dark to see he descended to the cabin, built a roaring fire in the stove and proceeded to fill a tin boiler that had originally been a petrol can, with ice.

“Kind of like to hear how the rest of ’em are makin’ it,” he muttered to himself while the ice melted. “I’d kind of like to know if any of ’em have struck bed rock. That’s what’s goin’ to tell the story of this strike: What’s on bed rock? This shallow gravel is sure shot full, but the real stuff will lay where it can’t work down any farther.”