The Stampede Page #5

"The Stampede" by Rex Ellingwood Beach is an adventure novel set against the backdrop of the Alaskan gold rush. The story follows a group of prospectors and adventurers who embark on a perilous journey in search of fortune and glory amidst the harsh and unforgiving wilderness. As they confront the challenges of nature, rivalries, and their own ambitions, the characters reveal their true natures and the complexities of human desire. With vivid descriptions and a gripping plot, Beach's narrative explores themes of hope, greed, and the relentless pursuit of dreams in a rapidly changing world.

• Short story

								

is difficult. So to avoid frequent fordings they followed the high
ground, going devious, confusing miles. The snows were largely gone,
though the nights were cruel, and thus they traveled.

At last, when they had worked through to the Yukon spurs, one morning on
a talus high above Buck spied the flapping forms of a flock of ravens.
They fluttered ceaselessly among the rocks, rising noisily, only to
settle again.

These are the gleaming, baleful vultures of the North, and often they
attain a considerable size and ferocity.

The men gazed at them with apathy. Was it worth while to spend the steps
to see what drew them? By following their course they would pass far to
the right.

"I hate the dam' things," said Crowley, crossly. "I seen 'em, oncet,
hangin' to a caribou calf with a broken leg, tryin' to pick his eyes
out. Let's see what it is."

He veered to the left, scrambling up among the boulders. The birds rose
fretfully, perching near by, but the men saw nothing. As they rested
momentarily the birds again swooped downward, reassured.

Then, partly hidden among the detritus, they spied that which made
Crowley cry out in horror, while the sound of Buck's voice was like the
choking of a woman. As they started, one of the ebony scavengers dipped
fiercely, picking at a ragged object. A human arm slowly arose and
blindly beat it off, but the raven's mate settled also, and, sinking its
beak into the object, tore hungrily.

With a shout they stumbled forward, lacerated by the jagged slide rock,
only to pause aghast and shaking.

Sully lay crouched against a boulder where he had crawled for the sun
heat. Rags of clothing hung upon his gaunt frame, through which the
sharp bones strove to pierce; also at sight of his hands and feet they
shuddered. With the former he had covered his eyes from the ravens, but
his cheeks and head were bloody and shredded. He muttered constantly,
like the thick whirring of machinery run down.

"Oh, my God!" Buck whispered.

Crowley had mastered himself and knelt beside the figure. He looked up
and tears lay on his cheeks.

"Look at them hands and feet! That was done by fire and frost together.
He must have fell in his own camp-fires after he went crazy."

The garments were burned off to elbow and knee, while the flesh was
black and raw.

Tenderly they carried the gabbing creature down to the timber and laid
him on a bed of boughs. His condition told the grim tale of his
wanderings, crazed with hunger and hardship.

Heating water, they poured it into him, dressing his wounds with strips
from their underclothes. Of stimulants they had none, but fed him the
last pinch of flour, together with the final rasher of salt pork,
although they knew that these things are not good for starving men. For
many days they had traveled on less than quarter rations themselves.

"What will we do?"

"It ain't over twenty miles to the niggers'. He'll die before we can get
help back. D'ye reckon we can carry him?"

It was not sympathy which prompted Crowley, for he sympathized with his
boyish companion, whose sufferings it hurt him sorely to augment. It was
not pity; he pitied himself, and his own deplorable condition; nor did
mercy enter into his processes, for the man had mercilessly planned to
kill him, and he likewise had nursed a bitter hatred against him, which
misfortune could only dim. It was not these things which moved him, but
a vaguer, wilder quality; an elemental, unspoken, indefinable feeling of
brotherhood throughout the length of the North, teaching subtly, yet
absolutely and without appeal, that no man shall be left in his
extremity to the cruel harshness of this forbidding land.

"Carry him?" Buck cried. "No! You're crazy! What's the use? He'll die,
anyhow--and so'll we if we don't get grub soon." Buck was new to the
country, and he was a boy.

"No, he won't. He lived hard and he'll die hard, for he's a hellion--he
is. We've got to pack him in!"

"By God! I won't risk my life for a corpse--'specially one like him."
The lad broke out in hysterical panic, for he had lived on the raggedest
edge of his nerve these many days. Now his every muscle was dead and
numbed with pain. Only his mind was clear, caused by the effort to force
movement into his limbs. When he stopped walking he fell into a
half-slumber which was acutely painful. When he arose to redrive his
weary body it became freakish, so that he fell or collided with trees.
He was bloody and bruised and cut. Carry a dead man? It was madness,
and, besides, he felt an utter giving away at every joint.

He was too tired to make his reasoning plain; his tongue was thick, and
Crowley's brain too calloused to grasp argument, therefore he squatted
beside the muttering creature and wept impotently. He was asleep, with
tears in his stubbly beard, when his partner finished the rude litter,
yet he took up his end of the burden, as Crowley knew he would.

"You'll kill us both, damn ye!" he groaned.

"Probably so, but we can't leave him to them things." The other nodded
at the vampires perched observantly in the surrounding firs.

Then began their great trial and temptation. For hours on end the birds
fluttered from tree to tree, always in sight and hoarsely complaining
till the sick fancies of the men distorted them into foul, gibing
creatures of the Pit screaming with devilish glee at their anguish.
Blindly they staggered through the forest while the limbs reached forth
to block them, thrusting sharp needles into their eyes or whipping back
viciously. Vines writhed up their legs, straining to delay their march,
and the dank moss curled ankle-deep, slyly tripping their dragging,
swollen feet. Nature hindered them sullenly, with all her heart-breaking
implacability. They reeled constantly under their burden and grew to
hate the ragged-barked trees that smote them so cruelly and so roughly
tore their flesh. Ofttimes they fell, rolling the maniac limply from his
couch, but they dragged him back and strained forward to the hideous
racket of his mumblings, which grew louder as his delirium increased.
They were forced to tie him to the poles, but could not stop his ghastly
shriekings. At every pause the dismal ravens croaked and leered evilly
from the shadows, till Buck shuddered and hid his face while Crowley
gnashed his teeth. From time to time other birds joined them in
anticipation of the feast, till they were ringed about, and the sight of
this ever-growing, grisly, clamorous flock of watchers became awful to
the men. They felt the horny talons searching their flesh and the hungry
beaks tearing at their eyeballs.

A dog-sled and birch-bark practice covering both banks of the Yukon for
two hundred miles yielded Doc Lewis sufficient revenue to grub-stake a
Swede. Thus he slept warm, kept his feet dry, and was still a miner. He
did not believe in hardship, and eschewed stampedes. Yet when he had
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