Jack London
Wonder of Woman (1)

“Just the same, I notice you ain’t tumbled over yourself to get married,” Shorty remarked, continuing a conversation that had lapsed some few minutes before.

Smoke, sitting on the edge of the sleeping-robe and examining the feet of a dog he had rolled snarling on its back in the snow, did not answer. And Shorty, turning a steaming moccasin propped on a stick before the fire, studied his partner’s face keenly.

“Cock your eye up at that there aurora borealis,” Shorty went on. “Some frivolous, eh? Just like any shilly-shallyin’, shirt-dancing woman. The best of them is frivolous, when they ain’t foolish. And they’s cats, all of ’em, the littlest an’ the biggest, the nicest and the otherwise. They’re sure devourin’ lions an’ roarin’ hyenas when they get on the trail of a man they’ve cottoned to.”

Again the monologue languished. Smoke cuffed the dog when it attempted to snap his hand, and went on examining its bruised and bleeding pads.

“Huh!” pursued Shorty. “Mebbe I couldn’t ’a’ married if I’d a mind to! An’ mebbe I wouldn’t ’a’ been married without a mind to, if I hadn’t hiked for tall timber. Smoke, d’you want to know what saved me? I’ll tell you. My wind. I just kept a-runnin’. I’d like to see any skirt run me outa breath.”

Smoke released the animal and turned his own steaming, stick-propped moccasins. “We’ve got to rest over to-morrow and make moccasins,” he vouchsafed. “That little crust is playing the devil with their feet.”

“We oughta keep goin’ somehow,” Shorty objected. “We ain’t got grub enough to turn back with, and we gotta strike that run of caribou or them white Indians almighty soon or we’ll be eatin’ the dogs, sore feet an’ all. Now who ever seen them white Indians anyway? Nothin’ but hearsay. An’ how can a Indian be white? A black white man’d be as natural. Smoke, we just oughta travel to-morrow. The country’s plumb dead of game. We ain’t seen even a rabbit-track in a week, you know that. An’ we gotta get out of this dead streak into somewhere that meat’s runnin’.”

“They’ll travel all the better with a day’s rest for their feet and moccasins all around,” Smoke counseled. “If you get a chance at any low divide, take a peep over at the country beyond. We’re likely to strike open rolling country any time now. That’s what La Perle told us to look for.”

“Huh! By his own story, it was ten years ago that La Perle come through this section, an’ he was that loco from hunger he couldn’t know what he did see. Remember what he said of whoppin’ big flags floatin’ from the tops of the mountains? That shows how loco HE was. An’ he said himself he never seen any white Indians—that was Anton’s yarn. An’, besides, Anton kicked the bucket two years before you an’ me come to Alaska. But I’ll take a look to-morrow. An’ mebbe I might pick up a moose. What d’ you say we turn in?”