When we camped early, the best hunter of the crew usually wentto the woods for a deer, and Stickeen was sure to be at his heels,provided I had not gone out. For, strange to say, though I nevercarried a gun, he always followed me, forsaking the hunter andeven his master to share my wonderings. The days that were toostormy for sailing I spent in the woods, or on the adjacent mountains,wherever my studies called me; and Stickeen always insisted ongoing with me, however wild the weather, gliding like a fox throughdripping huckleberry bushes and thorny tangles of panaxand rubus,scarce stirring their rain-laden leaves; wading and wallowingthrough snow, swimming icy streams, skipping over logs and rocksand the crevasses of glaciers with the patience and enduranceof a determined mountaineer, never tiring or getting discouraged.Once he followed me over a glacier the surface of which was socrusty and rough that it cut his feet until every step was markedwith blood; but he trotted on with Indian fortitude until I noticedhis red track, and, taking pity on him, made him a set of moccasinsout of a handkerchief. However great his troubles he never askedhelp or made any complaint, as if, like a philosopher, he hadlearned that without hard work and suffering there could be nopleasure worth having.
Yet none of us was able to make out what Stickeen was really goodfor. He seemed to meet danger and hardships without anything likereason, insisted on having his own way, never obeyed an order,and the hunter could never set him on anything, or make him fetchthe birds he shot. His equanimity was so steady it seemed dueto want of feeling; ordinary storms were pleasures to him, andas for mere rain, he flourished in it like a vegetable. No matterwhat advances you might make, scarce a glance or a tail-wag wouldyou get for your pains. But though he was apparently as cold asa glacier and about as impervious to fun, I tried hard to makehis acquaintance, guessing there must be something worth whilehidden beneath so much courage, endurance, and love of wild-weatheryadventure. No superannuated mastiff or bulldog grown old in officesurpassed this fluffy midget in stoic dignity. He sometimes remindedme of a small, squat, unshakable desert cactus. For he never displayeda single trace of the merry, tricksy, elfish fun of the terriersand collies that we all know, nor of their touching affectionand devotion. Like children, most small dogs beg to be loved andallowed to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking onlyto be let alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the eventenor of his hidden life with the silence and serenity of nature.His strength of character lay in his eyes. They looked as oldas the hills, and as young, and as wild. I never tired of lookinginto them: it was like looking into a landscape; but they weresmall and rather deep-set, and had no explaining lines aroundthem to give out particulars. I was accustomed to look into thefaces of plants and animals, and I watched the little sphinx moreand more keenly as an interesting study. But there is no estimatingthe wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our lower fellow mortalsuntil made manifest by profound experiences; for it is throughsuffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.
Lynne Spears Through The Storm Pdf Download
Mr. Young and the Indian were asleep, and so, I hoped, was Stickeen;but I had not gone a dozen rods before he left his bed in thetent and came boring through the blast after me. That a man shouldwelcome storms for their exhilarating music and motion, and goforth to see God making landscapes, is reasonable enough; butwhat fascination could there be in such tremendous weather fora dog? Surely nothing akin to human enthusiasm for scenery orgeology. Anyhow, on he came, breakfastless, through the chokingblast. I stopped and did my best to turn him back. "Now don't,"I said, shouting to make myself heard in the storm. "nowdon't, Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle now? Youmust be daft. This wild day has nothing for you. There is no gameabroad, nothing but weather. Go back to camp and keep warm, geta good breakfast with your master, and be sensible for once. Ican't carry you all day or feed you, and this storm will killyou."
The level flood, driving hard in our faces, thrashed and washedus wildly until we got into the shelter of a grove on the eastside of the glacier near the front, where we stopped awhile forbreath and to listen and look out. The exploration of the glacierwas my main object, but the wind was too high to allow excursionsover its open surface, where one might be dangerously shoved whilebalancing for a jump on the brink of a crevasse. In the mean timethe storm was a fine study. There the end of the glacier, descendingan abrupt swell of resisting rock about five hundred feet high,leans forward and falls in ice-cascades. And as the storm camedown the glacier from the north, Stickeen and I were beneath themain current of the blast, while favorably located to see andhear it. What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh thesmell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the stillsmall voices of the storm! Detached wafts and swirls were comingthrough the woods, with music from the leaves and branches andfurrowed boles, and even from the splintered rocks and ice-cragsoverhead, many of the tones soft and low and flute-like, as ifeach leaf and tree, crag and spire were a tuned reed. A broadtorrent, draining the side of the glacier, now swollen by scoresof new streams from the mountains, was rolling boulders alongits rocky channel, with thudding, bumping, muffled sounds, rushingtoward the bay with tremendous energy, as if in haste to get outof the mountains; the winters above and beneath calling to eachother, and all to the ocean, their home.
Thus encouraged, I at last pushed out for the other side; forNature can make us do anything she likes. At first we made rapidprogress, and the sky was not very threatening, while I took bearingsoccasionally with a pocket compass to enable me to find my wayback more surely in case the storm should become blinding; butthe structure lines of the glacier were my main guide. Towardthe west side we came to a closely crevassed section in whichwe had to make long, narrow tacksand doublings, tracing the edgesof tremendous traverse and longitudinal crevasses, many of whichwere from twenty to thirty feet wide, and perhaps a thousand feetdeep--beautiful and awful. In working a way through them I wasseverely cautious, but Stickeen came on as unhesitating as theflying clouds. The widest crevasse that I could jump he wouldleap without so much as halting to take a look at it. The weatherwas now making quick changes, scattering bits of dazzling brightnessthrough the wintry gloom at rare intervals, when the sun brokeforth wholly free, the glacier was seen from shore to shore witha bright array of encompassing mountains partly revealed, wearingthe clouds as garments, while the prairie bloomed and sparkledwith irised light from myriads of washed crystals. Then suddenlyall the glorious show would be darkened and blotted out.
Many a mile we thus traveled,mostly up and down, making but little real headway in crossing,running instead of walking most of the time as the danger of beingcompelled to spend the night on the glacier became threatening.Stickeen seemed able for anything. Doubtless we could have weatheredthe storm for one night, dancing on a flat spot to keep from freezing,and I faced the threat without feeling anything like despair;but we were hungry and wet, and the wind from the mountains wasstill thick with snow and bitterly cold, so of course that nightwould have seemed a very long one. I could not see far enoughthrough the blurring snow to judge in which general directionthe least dangerous route lay, while the few dim, momentary glimpsesI caught of mountains through rifts in the flying clouds werefar from encouraging either as weather signs or as guides. I hadsimply to grope my way from crevasse to crevasse, holding a generaldirection by the ice-structure, which was not to be seen everywhere,and partly by the wind. Again and again I was put to my mettle,but Stickeen followed easily, his nerve apparently growing moreunflinching as the danger increased. So it always is with mountaineerswhen hard beset. Running hard and jumping, holding every minuteof the remaining daylight, poor as it was, precious, we doggedlypersevered and tried to hope that every difficult crevasse weovercame would prove to be the last of its kind. But on the contrary,as we advanced they became more deadly trying.
Retracing my devious path in imagination as if it were drawn ona chart, I saw that I was recrossing the glacier a mile or twofarther up stream than the course pursued in the morning, andthat I was now entangled in a section I had not before seen. ShouldI risk this dangerous jump, or try to regain the woods on thewest shore, make a fire, and have only hunger to endure whilewaiting for a new day! I had already crossed so broad a stretchof dangerous ice that I saw it would be difficult to get backto the woods through the storm, before dark, and the attempt wouldmost likely result in a dismal night-dance on the glacier; whilejust beyond the present barrier the surface seemed more promising,and the east shore was now perhaps about as near as the west.I was therefore eager to go on. But this wide jump was a dreadfulobstacle.
When I gained the other side, he screamed louder than ever,and after running back and forth in vain search for a way of escape,he would return to the brink of the crevasse above the bridge,moaning and wailing as if in the bitterness of death. Could thisbe the silent, philosophic Stickeen? I shouted encouragement,telling him the bridge was not so bad as it looked, that I hadleft it flat and safe for his feet, and he could walk it easily.But he was afraid to try. Strange so small an animal should becapable of such big, wise fears. I called again and again in areassuring tone to come on and fear nothing; that he could comeif he would only try. He would hush for a moment, look down againat the bridge, and shout his unshakable conviction that he couldnever, never come that way; then lie back in despair, as if howling,"O-o-oh! what a place! No-o-o, I can never go-o-o down there!"His natural composure and courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuousstorm of fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would haveseemed ridiculous. But in this dismal, merciless abyss lay theshadow of death, and his heart-rending cries might well have calledHeaven to his help. Perhaps they did. So hidden before, he wasnow transparent, and one could see the workings of his heart andmind like the movements of a clock out of its case. His voiceand gestures, hopes and fears, were so perfectly human that nonecould mistake them; while he seemed to understand every word ofmine. I was troubled at the thought of having to leave him outall night, and of the danger of not finding him in the morning.It seemed impossible to get him to venture. To compel him to trythrough fear of being abandoned, I started off as if leaving himto his fate, and disappeared back of a hummock; but this did nogood; he only lay down and moaned ill utter hopeless misery. So,after hiding a few minutes, I went back to the brink of the crevasseand in a severe tone of voice shouted across to him that now Imust certainly leave him, I could wait no longer, and that, ifhe would not come, all I could promise was that I would returnto seek him next day. I warned him that if he went back to thewoods the wolves would kill him, and finished by urging him oncemore by words and gestures to come on, come on. 2ff7e9595c
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