CHAPTER I - THE TRAIL OF THE
       MEAT

    Dark spruce forest
          frowned on either
              side the frozen waterway.

    The trees
        had been
              stripped by a recent wind
                   of their white
                  covering of frost,
           and they
            seemed to lean
                   towards each other,
         black and ominous,
           in the fading light.

    A vast silence
        reigned over the land.

    The land itself
        was a desolation,
           lifeless,
         without movement,
           so lone and cold
             that the spirit of it
                was not
             even that of sadness.

    There was a hint
           in it of laughter,
         but of
               a laughter more terrible
             than any sadness -
                   a laughter
             that was mirthless
                   as the smile
                       of the sphinx,
         a laughter cold
               as the frost and
              partaking of
                   the grimness of infallibility.

    It was the masterful
           and incommunicable wisdom of eternity
          laughing at the futility
               of life
             and the effort of life.

    It was the Wild,
           the savage,
         frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

    But there WAS life,
           abroad in
               the land and defiant.

    Down the frozen waterway
        toiled a string
               of wolfish dogs.

    Their bristly fur
        was rimed with frost.

    Their breath
        froze in the air
               as it
              left their mouths,
           spouting forth
               in spumes of vapour
             that settled
                   upon the hair
                       of their bodies and
                  formed into crystals of frost.

    Leather harness
        was on the dogs,
           and leather traces
               attached them to a sled
              which dragged along behind.

    The sled was without runners.

    It was
          made of stout birch-bark,
           and its full surface
              rested on the snow.

    The front end
           of the sled
        was turned up,
           like a scroll,
         in order
              to force
                   down and
                 under the bore
                       of soft snow
             that surged
                  like a wave before it.

    On the sled,
           securely lashed,
         was a long
               and narrow oblong box.

    There were other things
           on the sled - blankets,
         an axe,
         and a coffee-pot and frying-pan;
        but prominent,
           occupying most of the space,
         was the long
               and narrow oblong box.

    In advance of the dogs,
           on wide snowshoes,
         toiled a man.

    At the rear
           of the sled
        toiled a second man.

    On the sled,
           in the box,
         lay a third man
             whose toil was over,
           - a man
              whom the Wild
            had conquered and beaten down
             until he
                would never move
                      nor struggle again.

    It is
           not the way
               of the Wild
          to like movement.

    Life is an offence
           to it,
         for life is movement;
        and the Wild aims always
              to destroy movement.

    It freezes the water
          to prevent it
              running to the sea;
        it drives the sap
               out of the trees
             till they
                are frozen
                       to their mighty hearts;
        and most ferociously
               and terribly of all
            does the Wild harry
                   and crush
                 into submission man - man
             who is the
                   most restless of life,
           ever in revolt
               against the dictum
             that all movement
                must in the end
                      come to
                           the cessation of movement.

    But at front and rear,
           unawed and indomitable,
         toiled the two men
             who were not yet dead.

    Their bodies
        were covered
               with fur and soft-tanned leather.

    Eyelashes and cheeks and lips
        were so
              coated with the crystals
                   from their frozen breath
         that their faces
            were not discernible.

    This gave
           them the seeming
               of ghostly masques,
           undertakers in a spectral world
               at the funeral
                   of some ghost.

    But under it all