The major portion he fed to Elijah, reserving for himself the tougher parts and the bones.
But such is the chemistry of life, that this small creature, this trifle of meat that moved, by being eaten, transmuted to the meat of the men the same power to move.
No longer did the squirrel run up spruce trees, leap from branch to branch, or cling chattering to giddy perches.
Instead, the same energy that had done these things flowed into the wasted muscles and reeling wills of the men, making them move—nay, moving them—till they tottered the several intervening miles to the cached boat, underneath which they fell together and lay motionless a long time.
Light as the task would have been for a strong man to lower the small boat to the ground, it took Daylight hours.
And many hours more, day by day, he dragged himself around it, lying on his side to calk the gaping seams with moss.
Yet, when this was done, the river still held.
Its ice had risen many feet, but would not start down-stream.
And one more task waited, the launching of the boat when the river ran water to receive it.
Vainly Daylight staggered and stumbled and fell and crept through the snow that was wet with thaw, or across it when the night's frost still crusted it beyond the weight of a man, searching for one more squirrel, striving to achieve one more transmutation of furry leap and scolding chatter into the lifts and tugs of a man's body that would hoist the boat over the rim of shore-ice and slide it down into the stream.
Not till the twentieth of May did the river break.
The down-stream movement began at five in the morning, and already were the days so long that Daylight sat up and watched the ice-run.
Elijah was too far gone to be interested in the spectacle.
Though vaguely conscious, he lay without movement while the ice tore by, great cakes of it caroming against the bank, uprooting trees, and gouging out earth by hundreds of tons.
All about them the land shook and reeled from the shock of these tremendous collisions.
At the end of an hour the run stopped. Somewhere below it was blocked by a jam.
Then the river began to rise, lifting the ice on its breast till it was higher than the bank.
From behind ever more water bore down, and ever more millions of tons of ice added their weight to the congestion.
The pressures and stresses became terrific. Huge cakes of ice were squeezed out till they popped into the air like melon seeds squeezed from between the thumb and forefinger of a child, while all along the banks a wall of ice was forced up.
When the jam broke, the noise of grinding and smashing redoubled.
For another hour the run continued.
The river fell rapidly.
But the wall of ice on top the bank, and extending down into the falling water, remained.
The tail of the ice-run passed, and for the first time in six months Daylight saw open water.
He knew that the ice had not yet passed out from the upper reaches of the Stewart, that it lay in packs and jams in those upper reaches, and that it might break loose and come down in a second run any time; but the need was too desperate for him to linger.
Elijah was so far gone that he might pass at any moment. As for himself, he was not sure that enough strength remained in his wasted muscles to launch the boat.
It was all a gamble.
If he waited for the second ice-run, Elijah would surely die, and most probably himself.
If he succeeded in launching the boat, if he kept ahead of the second ice-run, if he did not get caught by some of the runs from the upper Yukon; if luck favored in all these essential particulars, as well as in a score of minor ones, they would reach Sixty Mile and be saved, if—and again the if—he had strength enough to land the boat at Sixty Mile and not go by.
He set to work.
The wall of ice was five feet above the ground on which the boat rested.
First prospecting for the best launching-place, he found where a huge cake of ice shelved upward from the river that ran fifteen feet below to the top of the wall.
This was a score of feet away, and at the end of an hour he had managed to get the boat that far.
He was sick with nausea from his exertions, and at times it seemed that blindness smote him, for he could not see, his eyes vexed with spots and points of light that were as excruciating as diamond-dust, his heart pounding up in his throat and suffocating him.
Elijah betrayed no interest, did not move nor open his eyes; and Daylight fought out his battle alone.
At last, falling on his knees from the shock of exertion, he got the boat poised on a secure balance on top the wall. Crawling on hands and knees, he placed in the boat his rabbit-skin robe, the rifle, and the pail.
He did not bother with the ax.
It meant an additional crawl of twenty feet and back, and if the need for it should arise he well knew he would be past all need.
Elijah proved a bigger task than he had anticipated.
A few inches at a time, resting in between, he dragged him over the ground and up a broken rubble of ice to the side of the boat.
But into the boat he could not get him.
Elijah's limp body was far more difficult to lift and handle than an equal weight of like dimensions but rigid.
Daylight failed to hoist him, for the body collapsed at the middle like a part-empty sack of corn.
Getting into the boat, Daylight tried vainly to drag his comrade in after him.
The best he could do was to get Elijah's head and shoulders on top the gunwale.
When he released his hold, to heave from farther down the body, Elijah promptly gave at the middle and came down on the ice.
In despair, Daylight changed his tactics.
He struck the other in the face.
"God Almighty, ain't you-all a man?" he cried.
"There! damn you-all! there!"