The Son of the Wolf : Complete

Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them.He has no conception of the subtle atmosphere exhaled by the sex feminine, so long as he bathes init; but let it be withdrawn, and an ever-growing void begins to manifest itself in his existence, and hebecomes hungry, in a vague sort of way, for a something so indefinite that he cannot characterize it.If his comrades have no more experience than himself, they will shake their heads dubiously anddose him with strong physic.

But the hunger will continue and become stronger; he will lose interestin the things of his everyday life and wax morbid; and one day, when the emptiness has becomeunbearable, a revelation will dawn upon him.In the Yukon country, when this comes to pass, the man usually provisions a poling boat, if it issummer, and if winter, harnesses his dogs, and heads for the Southland.

A few months later,supposing him to be possessed of a faith in the country, he returns with a wife to share with him inthat faith, and incidentally in his hardships.

This but serves to show the innate selfishness of man.

Italso brings us to the trouble of 'Scruff' Mackenzie, which occurred in the old days, before thecountry was stampeded and staked by a tidal-wave of the che-cha-quas, and when the Klondike'sonly claim to notice was its salmon fisheries.'Scruff' Mackenzie bore the earmarks of a frontier birth and a frontier life.His face was stamped with twenty-five years of incessant struggle with Nature in her wildestmoods,-the last two, the wildest and hardest of all, having been spent in groping for the goldwhich lies in the shadow of the Arctic Circle.

When the yearning sickness came upon him, he wasnot surprised, for he was a practical man and had seen other men thus stricken.

But he showed nosign of his malady, save that he worked harder.

All summer he fought mosquitoes and washed thesure-thing bars of the Stuart River for a double grubstake.

Then he floated a raft of houselogs downthe Yukon to Forty Mile, and put together as comfortable a cabin as any the camp could boast of.

Infact, it showed such cozy promise that many men elected to be his partner and to come and live withhim.

But he crushed their aspirations with rough speech, peculiar for its strength and brevity, andbought a double supply of grub from the trading-post.