Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Amazing Stories November 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
COLD GHOST
by Chester S. Geier
All Hager had to do was slow the dogsled to a walk, and hispartner died. A perfect crime—no chance to get caught!
n the valley, with the sheltering hills now behind them, the bitterlycold wind drove at the sled with unchecked ferocity. Gusts of snowcame with the wind, thick and dry, the separate particles of itstinging on contact.
The dogs made slow progress through the deep drifts. Hager'ssmoldering irritation blazed into abrupt rage. From his position atthe rear of the sled, he lashed out with the driver's whip that heheld in one heavily mittened hand, shouting behind the wool scarfcovering the lower half of his face. The dogs lunged in their traces,whining. A couple floundered in the powdery footing and wereimmediately snapped at by their companions behind them.
Hager huddled before the fire, trembling with cold thatfilled him with terror.The snow was falling swiftly and with a sinister steadiness. It seemedto hang like a vast white curtain over the valley, obscuring the hillsand the fanged outline of mountains beyond. The wind seized portionsof the curtain and twisted it into fantastic shapes—the shapes ofdemons, Hager thought suddenly. For the scene through which he movedwas a kind of hell, a white and frozen hell, with the howl of the windlike the despairing shrieks of tormented souls.
Hager pictured himself as one of them. And Cahill, huddled in furs onthe sled, another. He cursed behind the scarf as he thought of Cahill.This was Cahill's fault, their being out here in the storm. If itweren't for Cahill, he would be back at the cabin, snug and warm, logsblazing cheerfully in the fireplace.
It was a rotten time for Cahill to have taken sick, Hager fumed. Butit had happened. And it had left him with nothing else to do but packtheir catch of furs, harness up the sled, and start out with Cahillfor the doctor in Moose Gulch.
He almost regretted having taken the furs. With Cahill an added burdenon the sled, it was too large a load for the dogs to pull with thenecessary speed and endurance. But he hadn't dared to leave the entireseason's catch unguarded at the cabin. If some wanderer appeared inhis and Cahill's absence, the furs would be an irresistibletemptation.
Fearing, thus, to leave the furs behind, and now endangered by theirweight, Hager found the situation maddening. And the storm was makingmatters worse. It was near the end of winter, but the climate hadchosen this moment to be at its most unco-operative.
Hager muttered blackly against the storm, wondering why he had allowedhis trapper's dream of wealth to lure him to this far northern cornerof Alaska. It was a cold, bleak and hostile country. Tiny settlements,like Moose