The yapping foxes knew
more of him than men. They knew him for a hundred miles up and down that
white finger of desolation; they knew the peril of his baits and his
deadfalls; they snarled and barked their hatred and defiance at the glow
of his lights on dark nights; they watched for him, sniffed for signs of
him, and walked into his clever deathpits.
The foxes and Peter God! That was what this white world was made up
of--foxes and Peter God. It was a world of strife between them. Peter God
was killing--but the foxes were winning. Slowly but surely they were
breaking him down--they and the terrible loneliness. Loneliness Peter God
might have stood for many more years. But the foxes were driving him mad.
More and more he had come to dread their yapping at night. That was the
deadly combination--night and the yapping. In the day-time he laughed at
himself for his fears; nights he sweated, and sometimes wanted to scream.
What manner of man Peter God was or might have been, and of the
strangeness of the life that was lived in the maddening loneliness of
that mystery-cabin in the edge of the Barren, only one other man knew.
That was Philip Curtis.
Two thousand miles south, Philip Curtis sat at a small table in a
brilliantly lighted and fashionable cafe. It was early June, and Philip
had been down from the North scarcely a month, the deep tan was still in
his face, and tiny wind and snow lines crinkled at the corners of his
eyes.
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