The White Death calls to the lonely trapper, the man on the trail. In this case, it called from the pages of a cowboy magazine…
James Beardsley Hendryx (1880-1963) was a champion of the North-West. An American journalist turned story and novel writer, he lived to hunt and fish but wrote millions of words set in the North. Born in Sauk Center, Minnesotta, he was the best friend of the older brother of Sinclair Lewis, Claude Lewis. When asked the difference between his writing and Sinclair ”Red” Lewis’s: “The difference,” Jim said, “is that Red gets a dollar a word, and I get a penny a word.” And many pennies it was, making between $40,000 and $50,000 a year as a Pulpster. “He also loved kids, horses, dogs, poker and cribbage, good bourbon whiskey, and his family – not necessarily in that order. He hit the bottle pretty hard in his younger days — went on a three-day binge once with Jack London – but he swore off one day and never took another drink the rest of his life.” He served as editor for Popular Western, Ranch Romances, The Rio Kid Western, Texas Rangers and Triple Western in the 1950s and 60s.
Hendryx had three long, interconnected series: the Corporal Downey stories, the Black John sagas and the Halfaday Creek tales. These and many more stories were set in Canada, Montana and Alaska. As a Pulp writer he did not have the time to research everything thoroughly but he usually did better than most. He once complained about his Canadian readers: “But I never yet wrote a story of Canada without getting a letter from some constable up on Hudson’s Bay or Great Slave Lake saying, ‘I liked your story but where the villain sets fire to the teepee and the beautiful Indian girl in the second chapter, the Mackenzie River runs northeast instead of northwest.’ Those fellows are hell on their geography.” He also wrote the popular boys’ series about Connie Morgan.
“White Death Trail” (Western Story, May 14, 1938) deviates from the usual Corporal Downey stories in that it has a weird element. The trail begins with Downey headed to Good Luck camp. The weather is a bitter minus sixty and Downey feels faint and disconnected. This is known as the White Death. Some believe in the supernatural idea that there is a point at which the cold bewitches a man and makes him stop caring, allowing himself to die. In this case, it makes Downey let his lead dog Topek have his head. The dog takes him into a box cannon where there is a pole and mud cabin.
Inside the cabin he finds a dead man, a bullet hole in his right temple and a revolver on the floor. The longer Downey looks at the evidence the surer he comes to the conclusion that something is wrong. There is ammo for a rifle but not a revolver. There is a pair of muluks in the corner, one covered in dust, the other not. He finds leather for making gold dust bags but no bags. And lastly, there is a good supply of food and dynamite in the cabin. The final bit of evidence, one that he feels the dead man is trying to show him, is a match clutched in his right hand. How could he shoot himself in the right temple with a match in his right hand?
Downey leaves the next day, taking a small ration of food for his dogs. He heads to the bar in Good Luck to talk with Camillo Bill and the old-timer Beetles. Downey quickly learns some things. One, an old miner named Tom Whipple lived in the box canyon. Whipple refused to pan for gold but always searched the hills for the Mother Lode. Whipple did not drink or carouse. He didn’t even own dogs anymore, having sold them two years ago. Two, he never owned a revolver but an old rifle with a fixed stock. Three, there was a long cold spell without snow two weeks back. Four, in that time a chechacko (Northern for greenhorn newcomer) named Braddock had arrived. The man has frozen his toes and needs to have them removed. He pays for his whiskey with gold. Downey examines the gold he gives the bartender. It is not placer gold, that taken from a creek or river, but rough gold.
Downey is ready to arrest the man. Before he does he mentions the White Death to Camillo Bill and Beetles. The bartender joshes him for believing that old wives’ tale. Downey isn’t so sure, remembering the feeling and how the dog Topek acted. Beetles laughs, asking him where he got the dog. “Down in Dawson” admits Downey. Beetles says, “I know that dog. He’s Topek. Old Tom Whipple raised him from a pup.”
In the best Northern tradition, the supernatural is dispelled and reason reigns. Like the legend of the heavenly voice, the Arctic also has its legend of the deadly call of the White Death. It isn’t hard to figure where that came from. The symptoms of hypothermia include clumsiness, low energy and confusion. Anyone who had been saved from this dire condition would tell stories of “the dangerous brain lethargy that had gripped him”.
One interesting fact about “White Death Trail” is that it didn’t appear in Dorothy McIlwraith’s Short Stories, where most of Hendryx Northerns do. It was published in Western Story, a cowboy magazine. In the 1930s, the Northern had not become separated from all Western fiction. Readers enjoyed all tales of the wilderness, from Alaska to Mexico. James B. Hendryx wrote many of the best of these.
