He raised up his haggard face and nodded, but he did not look at him squarely. Granger, having made up the fire, laid himself down.
When he awoke, he found that the room was in darkness; it must have been night for several hours. It was the coldness which had aroused him, for the fire had gone out.
He supposed that Spurling must be sleeping, so he called to him, "Spurling, Spurling, are you there?"
There was no answer. He listened for his breathing, but could hear nothing. Getting upon his feet as swiftly as the stiffness of his muscles would allow, he groped his way over to the corner where he had last seen him. He was not there. Then he lit the lamp, and saw that the room was empty.
His first thought was that, in his despair, he had gone outside and shot himself. Recalling his uncanny horror of the bend, he fancied that he could trace madness in all his recent actions; but then he remembered that his fear of the bend had been shared. He became possessed of a new and more personal dread. What if in giving him the warrant and showing him the portrait, he had told him too much--more than his courage and honesty could bear? He rushed to the door of the shack, and out to where the sleds and huskies had been left. One of the sleds was gone; his own outfit lay scattered on the snow and the gold had been taken. But he made a yet worse discovery, for of the eight huskies, only two remained; Spurling's four gray dogs and the two best of his own team were missing. He looked wildly round on the great emptiness. The night pressed down on the earth, as though to imprison it; the forest closed in on the river, menacing and silent; and the river ran on, a level, untravelled roadway, from the west. He shouted, and cursed, and called down God's vengeance on Spurling. Then, for a moment he was quiet, and heard his own voice coming back to him as an echo from the bend. His voice had tried to escape and was returning to him because it could find no way out.
Crazily turning his face down-river, he shouted, "Hey, Strangeways, may God damn Spurling."
Muffled, as if the dead man were answering him from underground, the cry came back, "Hey, Strangeways, may God damn Spurling."
He covered his face with his hands and sat down in the snow laughing. It was all a cruel jest. "Oh, the hypocrite! The hypocrite!" he shrieked. "He came here hunted and I helped him with my life. He has taken everything, and given me death."