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diff --git a/old/10736-h/10736-h.htm b/old/10736-h/10736-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f4fe4cb --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10736-h/10736-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5863 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Children of the Frost, by Jack London</title> + <style type="text/css"> + <!-- + * { font-family: Times;} + P { text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: .75em; + font-size: 14pt; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + margin-left: 8% ; + margin-right: 8%; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; } + HR { width: 33%; } + hr.full { width: 100%; } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + // --> + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Children of the Frost, by Jack London</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a> + +Title: Children of the Frost + +Author: Jack London + +Release Date: January 17, 2004 [eBook #10736] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: iso-8859-1 + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE FROST*** + + +</pre> +<center><h3>E-text prepared by Wilelmina Mallière<br> + and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</h3></center> +<br> +<hr class="full"> +<center> +<img src="images/001.png" alt=""And the girl, Kasaan, crept in, +very timid and quiet, and dropped a little bag upon the things for my journey."" +width="60%"> +</center> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<br> +<h1>CHILDREN OF THE FROST</h1> +<h1 style="font-weight: normal;">BY JACK LONDON</h1> +<br> +<p style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><small>1902</small></p> + +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<br> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<br> +<p><a href="#IN_THE_FORESTS_OF_THE_NORTH">IN THE FORESTS OF THE NORTH</a></p> +<p><a href="#THE_LAW_OF_LIFE">THE LAW OF LIFE</a></p> +<p><a href="#NAM-BOK_THE_UNVERACIOUS">NAM-BOK THE UNVERACIOUS</a></p> +<p><a href="#THE_MASTER_OF_MYSTERY">THE MASTER OF MYSTERY</a></p> +<p><a href="#THE_SUNLANDERS">THE SUNLANDERS</a></p> +<p><a href="#THE_SICKNESS_OF_LONE_CHIEF">THE SICKNESS OF LONE CHIEF</a></p> +<p><a href="#KEESH,_THE_SON_OF_KEESH">KEESH, THE SON OF KEESH</a></p> +<p><a href="#THE_DEATH_OF_LIGOUN">THE DEATH OF LIGOUN</a></p> +<p><a href="#LI_WAN,_THE_FAIR">LI WAN, THE FAIR</a></p> +<p><a href="#THE_LEAGUE_OF_THE_OLD_MEN">THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN</a></p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="IN_THE_FORESTS_OF_THE_NORTH"></a> +<h2>IN THE FORESTS OF THE NORTH</h2> +<br> +<p>A weary journey beyond the last scrub timber and straggling copses, +into +the heart of the Barrens where the niggard North is supposed to deny +the +Earth, are to be found great sweeps of forests and stretches of smiling +land. But this the world is just beginning to know. The world's +explorers have known it, from time to time, but hitherto they have +never +returned to tell the world.</p> +<p>The Barrens—well, they are the Barrens, the bad lands of the Arctic, +the deserts of the Circle, the bleak and bitter home of the musk-ox +and the lean plains wolf. So Avery Van Brunt found them, treeless and +cheerless, sparsely clothed with moss and lichens, and altogether +uninviting. At least so he found them till he penetrated to the white +blank spaces on the map, and came upon undreamed-of rich spruce forests +and unrecorded Eskimo tribes. It had been his intention, (and his bid +for fame), to break up these white blank spaces and diversify them with +the black markings of mountain-chains, sinks and basins, and sinuous +river courses; and it was with added delight that he came to speculate +upon the possibilities of timber belts and native villages.</p> +<p>Avery Van Brunt, or, in full distinction, Professor A. Van Brunt of +the +Geological Survey, was second in command of the expedition, and first +in +command of the sub-expedition which he had led on a side tour of some +half a thousand miles up one of the branches of the Thelon and which he +was now leading into one of his unrecorded villages. At his back +plodded +eight men, two of them French-Canadian <i>voyageurs</i>, and the +remainder strapping Crees from Manitoba-way. He, alone, was +full-blooded +Saxon, and his blood was pounding fiercely through his veins to the +traditions of his race. Clive and Hastings, Drake and Raleigh, Hengest +and Horsa, walked with him. First of all men of his breed was he to +enter this lone Northland village, and at the thought an exultancy came +upon him, an exaltation, and his followers noted that his leg-weariness +fell from him and that he insensibly quickened the pace.</p> +<p>The village emptied itself, and a motley crowd trooped out to meet +him, +men in the forefront, with bows and spears clutched menacingly, and +women and children faltering timidly in the rear. Van Brunt lifted his +right arm and made the universal peace sign, a sign which all peoples +know, and the villagers answered in peace. But to his chagrin, a +skin-clad man ran forward and thrust out his hand with a familiar +"Hello." He was a bearded man, with cheeks and brow bronzed to +copper-brown, and in him Van Brunt knew his kind.</p> +<p>"Who are you?" he asked, gripping the extended hand. "Andrée?"</p> +<p>"Who's Andrée?" the man asked back.</p> +<p>Van Brunt looked at him more sharply. "By George, you've been here +some +time."</p> +<p>"Five years," the man answered, a dim flicker of pride in his eyes. +"But +come on, let's talk."</p> +<p>"Let them camp alongside of me," he answered Van Brunt's glance at +his +party. "Old Tantlatch will take care of them. Come on."</p> +<p>He swung off in a long stride, Van Brunt following at his heels +through +the village. In irregular fashion, wherever the ground favored, the +lodges of moose hide were pitched. Van Brunt ran his practised eye over +them and calculated.</p> +<p>"Two hundred, not counting the young ones," he summed up.</p> +<p>The man nodded. "Pretty close to it. But here's where I live, out of +the +thick of it, you know—more privacy and all that. Sit down. I'll eat +with you when your men get something cooked up. I've forgotten what +tea tastes like.... Five years and never a taste or smell.... Any +tobacco?... Ah, thanks, and a pipe? Good. Now for a fire-stick and +we'll +see if the weed has lost its cunning."</p> +<p>He scratched the match with the painstaking care of the woodsman, +cherished its young flame as though there were never another in all +the world, and drew in the first mouthful of smoke. This he retained +meditatively for a time, and blew out through his pursed lips slowly +and +caressingly. Then his face seemed to soften as he leaned back, and +a soft blur to film his eyes. He sighed heavily, happily, with +immeasurable content, and then said suddenly:</p> +<p>"God! But that tastes good!"</p> +<p>Van Brunt nodded sympathetically. "Five years, you say?"</p> +<p>"Five years." The man sighed again. "And you, I presume, wish to +know +about it, being naturally curious, and this a sufficiently strange +situation, and all that. But it's not much. I came in from Edmonton +after musk-ox, and like Pike and the rest of them, had my mischances, +only I lost my party and outfit. Starvation, hardship, the regular +tale, +you know, sole survivor and all that, till I crawled into Tantlatch's, +here, on hand and knee."</p> +<p>"Five years," Van Brunt murmured retrospectively, as though turning +things over in his mind.</p> +<p>"Five years on February last. I crossed the Great Slave early in +May—"</p> +<p>"And you are ... Fairfax?" Van Brunt interjected.</p> +<p>The man nodded.</p> +<p>"Let me see ... John, I think it is, John Fairfax."</p> +<p>"How did you know?" Fairfax queried lazily, half-absorbed in curling +smoke-spirals upward in the quiet air.</p> +<p>"The papers were full of it at the time. Prevanche—"</p> +<p>"Prevanche!" Fairfax sat up, suddenly alert. "He was lost in the +Smoke +Mountains."</p> +<p>"Yes, but he pulled through and came out."</p> +<p>Fairfax settled back again and resumed his smoke-spirals. "I am glad +to +hear it," he remarked reflectively. "Prevanche was a bully fellow if +he <i>did</i> have ideas about head-straps, the beggar. And he pulled +through? Well, I'm glad."</p> +<p>Five years ... the phrase drifted recurrently through Van Brunt's +thought, and somehow the face of Emily Southwaithe seemed to rise up +and +take form before him. Five years ... A wedge of wild-fowl honked low +overhead and at sight of the encampment veered swiftly to the north +into +the smouldering sun. Van Brunt could not follow them. He pulled out +his watch. It was an hour past midnight. The northward clouds flushed +bloodily, and rays of sombre-red shot southward, firing the gloomy +woods +with a lurid radiance. The air was in breathless calm, not a needle +quivered, and the least sounds of the camp were distinct and clear as +trumpet calls. The Crees and <i>voyageurs</i> felt the spirit of it +and +mumbled in dreamy undertones, and the cook unconsciously subdued the +clatter of pot and pan. Somewhere a child was crying, and from the +depths of the forest, like a silver thread, rose a woman's voice +in mournful chant: "O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ha-aa-a-a, +O-o-o-o-o-o-a-ha-a-ha-a."</p> +<p>Van Brunt shivered and rubbed the backs of his hands briskly.</p> +<p>"And they gave me up for dead?" his companion asked slowly.</p> +<p>"Well, you never came back, so your friends—"</p> +<p>"Promptly forgot." Fairfax laughed harshly, defiantly.</p> +<p>"Why didn't you come out?"</p> +<p>"Partly disinclination, I suppose, and partly because of +circumstances +over which I had no control. You see, Tantlatch, here, was down with a +broken leg when I made his acquaintance,—a nasty fracture,—and I +set it for him and got him into shape. I stayed some time, getting my +strength back. I was the first white man he had seen, and of course I +seemed very wise and showed his people no end of things. Coached them +up +in military tactics, among other things, so that they conquered the +four +other tribal villages, (which you have not yet seen), and came to rule +the land. And they naturally grew to think a good deal of me, so much +so that when I was ready to go they wouldn't hear of it. Were most +hospitable, in fact. Put a couple of guards over me and watched me day +and night. And then Tantlatch offered me inducements,—in a sense, +inducements,—so to say, and as it didn't matter much one way or the +other, I reconciled myself to remaining."</p> +<p>"I knew your brother at Freiburg. I am Van Brunt."</p> +<p>Fairfax reached forward impulsively and shook his hand. "You were +Billy's friend, eh? Poor Billy! He spoke of you often."</p> +<p>"Rum meeting place, though," he added, casting an embracing glance +over +the primordial landscape and listening for a moment to the woman's +mournful notes. "Her man was clawed by a bear, and she's taking it +hard."</p> +<p>"Beastly life!" Van Brunt grimaced his disgust. "I suppose, after +five +years of it, civilization will be sweet? What do you say?"</p> +<p>Fairfax's face took on a stolid expression. "Oh, I don't know. At +least +they're honest folk and live according to their lights. And then they +are amazingly simple. No complexity about them, no thousand and one +subtle ramifications to every single emotion they experience. They +love, fear, hate, are angered, or made happy, in common, ordinary, and +unmistakable terms. It may be a beastly life, but at least it is easy +to +live. No philandering, no dallying. If a woman likes you, she'll not be +backward in telling you so. If she hates you, she'll tell you so, and +then, if you feel inclined, you can beat her, but the thing is, she +knows precisely what you mean, and you know precisely what she means. +No +mistakes, no misunderstandings. It has its charm, after civilization's +fitful fever. Comprehend?"</p> +<p>"No, it's a pretty good life," he continued, after a pause; "good +enough +for me, and I intend to stay with it."</p> +<p>Van Brunt lowered his head in a musing manner, and an imperceptible +smile played on his mouth. No philandering, no dallying, no +misunderstanding. Fairfax also was taking it hard, he thought, just +because Emily Southwaithe had been mistakenly clawed by a bear. And not +a bad sort of a bear, either, was Carlton Southwaithe.</p> +<p>"But you are coming along with me," Van Brunt said deliberately.</p> +<p>"No, I'm not."</p> +<p>"Yes, you are."</p> +<p>"Life's too easy here, I tell you." Fairfax spoke with decision. "I +understand everything, and I am understood. Summer and winter alternate +like the sun flashing through the palings of a fence, the seasons are a +blur of light and shade, and time slips by, and life slips by, and then +... a wailing in the forest, and the dark. Listen!"</p> +<p>He held up his hand, and the silver thread of the woman's sorrow +rose +through the silence and the calm. Fairfax joined in softly.</p> +<p>"O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ha-aa-a-a, O-o-o-o-o-o-a-ha-a-ha-a," he +sang. +"Can't you hear it? Can't you see it? The women mourning? the funeral +chant? my hair white-locked and patriarchal? my skins wrapped in rude +splendor about me? my hunting-spear by my side? And who shall say it is +not well?"</p> +<p>Van Brunt looked at him coolly. "Fairfax, you are a damned fool. +Five +years of this is enough to knock any man, and you are in an unhealthy, +morbid condition. Further, Carlton Southwaithe is dead."</p> +<p>Van Brunt filled his pipe and lighted it, the while watching slyly +and with almost professional interest. Fairfax's eyes flashed on the +instant, his fists clenched, he half rose up, then his muscles relaxed +and he seemed to brood. Michael, the cook, signalled that the meal was +ready, but Van Brunt motioned back to delay. The silence hung heavy, +and +he fell to analyzing the forest scents, the odors of mould and rotting +vegetation, the resiny smells of pine cones and needles, the aromatic +savors of many camp-smokes. Twice Fairfax looked up, but said nothing, +and then:</p> +<p>"And ... Emily ...?"</p> +<p>"Three years a widow; still a widow."</p> +<p>Another long silence settled down, to be broken by Fairfax finally +with +a naïve smile. "I guess you're right, Van Brunt. I'll go along."</p> +<p>"I knew you would." Van Brunt laid his hand on Fairfax's shoulder. +"Of +course, one cannot know, but I imagine—for one in her position—she has +had offers—"</p> +<p>"When do you start?" Fairfax interrupted.</p> +<p>"After the men have had some sleep. Which reminds me, Michael is +getting +angry, so come and eat."</p> +<p>After supper, when the Crees and <i>voyageurs</i> had rolled into +their +blankets, snoring, the two men lingered by the dying fire. There was +much to talk about,—wars and politics and explorations, the doings +of men and the happening of things, mutual friends, marriages, +deaths,—five years of history for which Fairfax clamored.</p> +<p>"So the Spanish fleet was bottled up in Santiago," Van Brunt was +saying, +when a young woman stepped lightly before him and stood by Fairfax's +side. She looked swiftly into his face, then turned a troubled gaze +upon +Van Brunt.</p> +<p>"Chief Tantlatch's daughter, sort of princess," Fairfax explained, +with +an honest flush. "One of the inducements, in short, to make me stay. +Thom, this is Van Brunt, friend of mine."</p> +<p>Van Brunt held out his hand, but the woman maintained a rigid repose +quite in keeping with her general appearance. Not a line of her face +softened, not a feature unbent. She looked him straight in the eyes, +her +own piercing, questioning, searching.</p> +<p>"Precious lot she understands," Fairfax laughed. "Her first +introduction, you know. But as you were saying, with the Spanish fleet +bottled up in Santiago?"</p> +<p>Thom crouched down by her husband's side, motionless as a bronze +statue, +only her eyes flashing from face to face in ceaseless search. And Avery +Van Brunt, as he talked on and on, felt a nervousness under the dumb +gaze. In the midst of his most graphic battle descriptions, he would +become suddenly conscious of the black eyes burning into him, and would +stumble and flounder till he could catch the gait and go again. +Fairfax, +hands clasped round knees, pipe out, absorbed, spurred him on when he +lagged, and repictured the world he thought he had forgotten.</p> +<p>One hour passed, and two, and Fairfax rose reluctantly to his feet. +"And +Cronje was cornered, eh? Well, just wait a moment till I run over to +Tantlatch. He'll be expecting you, and I'll arrange for you to see him +after breakfast. That will be all right, won't it?"</p> +<p>He went off between the pines, and Van Brunt found himself staring +into +Thom's warm eyes. Five years, he mused, and she can't be more than +twenty now. A most remarkable creature. Being Eskimo, she should have a +little flat excuse for a nose, and lo, it is neither broad nor flat, +but +aquiline, with nostrils delicately and sensitively formed as any fine +lady's of a whiter breed—the Indian strain somewhere, be assured, Avery +Van Brunt. And, Avery Van Brunt, don't be nervous, she won't eat you; +she's only a woman, and not a bad-looking one at that. Oriental rather +than aborigine. Eyes large and fairly wide apart, with just the +faintest +hint of Mongol obliquity. Thom, you're an anomaly. You're out of place +here among these Eskimos, even if your father is one. Where did your +mother come from? or your grandmother? And Thom, my dear, you're a +beauty, a frigid, frozen little beauty with Alaskan lava in your blood, +and please don't look at me that way.</p> +<p>He laughed and stood up. Her insistent stare disconcerted him. A dog +was +prowling among the grub-sacks. He would drive it away and place them +into safety against Fairfax's return. But Thom stretched out a +detaining +hand and stood up, facing him.</p> +<p>"You?" she said, in the Arctic tongue which differs little from +Greenland to Point Barrow. "You?"</p> +<p>And the swift expression of her face demanded all for which "you" +stood, +his reason for existence, his presence there, his relation to her +husband—everything.</p> +<p>"Brother," he answered in the same tongue, with a sweeping gesture +to +the south. "Brothers we be, your man and I."</p> +<p>She shook her head. "It is not good that you be here."</p> +<p>"After one sleep I go."</p> +<p>"And my man?" she demanded, with tremulous eagerness.</p> +<p>Van Brunt shrugged his shoulders. He was aware of a certain secret +shame, of an impersonal sort of shame, and an anger against Fairfax. +And +he felt the warm blood in his face as he regarded the young savage. She +was just a woman. That was all—a woman. The whole sordid story over +again, over and over again, as old as Eve and young as the last new +love-light.</p> +<p>"My man! My man! My man!" she was reiterating vehemently, her face +passionately dark, and the ruthless tenderness of the Eternal Woman, +the +Mate-Woman, looking out at him from her eyes.</p> +<p>"Thom," he said gravely, in English, "you were born in the Northland +forest, and you have eaten fish and meat, and fought with frost and +famine, and lived simply all the days of your life. And there are many +things, indeed not simple, which you do not know and cannot come to +understand. You do not know what it is to long for the fleshpots afar, +you cannot understand what it is to yearn for a fair woman's face. And +the woman is fair, Thom, the woman is nobly fair. You have been woman +to +this man, and you have been your all, but your all is very little, very +simple. Too little and too simple, and he is an alien man. Him you have +never known, you can never know. It is so ordained. You held him in +your +arms, but you never held his heart, this man with his blurring seasons +and his dreams of a barbaric end. Dreams and dream-dust, that is what +he +has been to you. You clutched at form and gripped shadow, gave yourself +to a man and bedded with the wraith of a man. In such manner, of old, +did the daughters of men whom the gods found fair. And, Thom, Thom, I +should not like to be John Fairfax in the night-watches of the years to +come, in the night-watches, when his eyes shall see, not the +sun-gloried +hair of the woman by his side, but the dark tresses of a mate forsaken +in the forests of the North."</p> +<p>Though she did not understand, she had listened with intense +attention, +as though life hung on his speech. But she caught at her husband's name +and cried out in Eskimo:—</p> +<p>"Yes! Yes! Fairfax! My man!"</p> +<p>"Poor little fool, how could he be your man?"</p> +<p>But she could not understand his English tongue, and deemed that she +was +being trifled with. The dumb, insensate anger of the Mate-Woman flamed +in her face, and it almost seemed to the man as though she crouched +panther-like for the spring.</p> +<p>He cursed softly to himself and watched the fire fade from her face +and the soft luminous glow of the appealing woman spring up, of the +appealing woman who foregoes strength and panoplies herself wisely in +her weakness.</p> +<p>"He is my man," she said gently. "Never have I known other. It +cannot be +that I should ever know other. Nor can it be that he should go from me."</p> +<p>"Who has said he shall go from thee?" he demanded sharply, half in +exasperation, half in impotence.</p> +<p>"It is for thee to say he shall not go from me," she answered +softly, a +half-sob in her throat.</p> +<p>Van Brunt kicked the embers of the fire savagely and sat down.</p> +<p>"It is for thee to say. He is my man. Before all women he is my man. +Thou art big, thou art strong, and behold, I am very weak. See, I am at +thy feet. It is for thee to deal with me. It is for thee."</p> +<p>"Get up!" He jerked her roughly erect and stood up himself. "Thou +art +a woman. Wherefore the dirt is no place for thee, nor the feet of any +man."</p> +<p>"He is my man."</p> +<p>"Then Jesus forgive all men!" Van Brunt cried out passionately.</p> +<p>"He is my man," she repeated monotonously, beseechingly.</p> +<p>"He is my brother," he answered.</p> +<p>"My father is Chief Tantlatch. He is a power over five villages. I +will +see that the five villages be searched for thy choice of all maidens, +that thou mayest stay here by thy brother, and dwell in comfort."</p> +<p>"After one sleep I go."</p> +<p>"And my man?"</p> +<p>"Thy man comes now. Behold!"</p> +<p>From among the gloomy spruces came the light carolling of Fairfax's +voice.</p> +<p>As the day is quenched by a sea of fog, so his song smote the light +out +of her face. "It is the tongue of his own people," she said; "the +tongue +of his own people."</p> +<p>She turned, with the free movement of a lithe young animal, and made +off +into the forest.</p> +<p>"It's all fixed," Fairfax called as he came up. "His regal highness +will +receive you after breakfast."</p> +<p>"Have you told him?" Van Brunt asked.</p> +<p>"No. Nor shall I tell him till we're ready to pull out."</p> +<p>Van Brunt looked with moody affection over the sleeping forms of his +men.</p> +<p>"I shall be glad when we are a hundred leagues upon our way," he +said.</p> +<br> +<hr style="width: 45%;"><br> +<p>Thom raised the skin-flap of her father's lodge. Two men sat with +him, +and the three looked at her with swift interest. But her face betokened +nothing as she entered and took seat quietly, without speech. Tantlatch +drummed with his knuckles on a spear-heft across his knees, and gazed +idly along the path of a sun-ray which pierced a lacing-hole and flung +a +glittering track across the murky atmosphere of the lodge. To his +right, +at his shoulder, crouched Chugungatte, the shaman. Both were old men, +and the weariness of many years brooded in their eyes. But opposite +them +sat Keen, a young man and chief favorite in the tribe. He was quick +and alert of movement, and his black eyes flashed from face to face in +ceaseless scrutiny and challenge.</p> +<p>Silence reigned in the place. Now and again camp noises penetrated, +and +from the distance, faint and far, like the shadows of voices, came the +wrangling of boys in thin shrill tones. A dog thrust his head into the +entrance and blinked wolfishly at them for a space, the slaver dripping +from his ivory-white fangs. After a time he growled tentatively, and +then, awed by the immobility of the human figures, lowered his head +and grovelled away backward. Tantlatch glanced apathetically at his +daughter.</p> +<p>"And thy man, how is it with him and thee?"</p> +<p>"He sings strange songs," Thom made answer, "and there is a new look +on +his face."</p> +<p>"So? He hath spoken?"</p> +<p>"Nay, but there is a new look on his face, a new light in his eyes, +and +with the New-Comer he sits by the fire, and they talk and talk, and the +talk is without end."</p> +<p>Chugungatte whispered in his master's ear, and Keen leaned forward +from +his hips.</p> +<p>"There be something calling him from afar," she went on, "and he +seems +to sit and listen, and to answer, singing, in his own people's tongue."</p> +<p>Again Chugungatte whispered and Keen leaned forward, and Thom held +her +speech till her father nodded his head that she might proceed.</p> +<p>"It be known to thee, O Tantlatch, that the wild goose and the swan +and +the little ringed duck be born here in the low-lying lands. It be known +that they go away before the face of the frost to unknown places. And +it +be known, likewise, that always do they return when the sun is in the +land and the waterways are free. Always do they return to where they +were born, that new life may go forth. The land calls to them and they +come. And now there is another land that calls, and it is calling to my +man,—the land where he was born,—and he hath it in mind to answer the +call. Yet is he my man. Before all women is he my man."</p> +<p>"Is it well, Tantlatch? Is it well?" Chugungatte demanded, with the +hint +of menace in his voice.</p> +<p>"Ay, it is well!" Keen cried boldly. "The land calls to its +children, +and all lands call their children home again. As the wild goose and the +swan and the little ringed duck are called, so is called this Stranger +Man who has lingered with us and who now must go. Also there be the +call +of kind. The goose mates with the goose, nor does the swan mate with +the +little ringed duck. It is not well that the swan should mate with the +little ringed duck. Nor is it well that stranger men should mate with +the women of our villages. Wherefore I say the man should go, to his +own +kind, in his own land."</p> +<p>"He is my own man," Thom answered, "and he is a great man."</p> +<p>"Ay, he is a great man." Chugungatte lifted his head with a faint +recrudescence of youthful vigor. "He is a great man, and he put +strength +in thy arm, O Tantlatch, and gave thee power, and made thy name to be +feared in the land, to be feared and to be respected. He is very wise, +and there be much profit in his wisdom. To him are we beholden for many +things,—for the cunning in war and the secrets of the defence of a +village and a rush in the forest, for the discussion in council and the +undoing of enemies by word of mouth and the hard-sworn promise, for the +gathering of game and the making of traps and the preserving of food, +for the curing of sickness and mending of hurts of trail and fight. +Thou, Tantlatch, wert a lame old man this day, were it not that the +Stranger Man came into our midst and attended on thee. And ever, when +in +doubt on strange questions, have we gone to him, that out of his wisdom +he might make things clear, and ever has he made things clear. And +there +be questions yet to arise, and needs upon his wisdom yet to come, and +we +cannot bear to let him go. It is not well that we should let him go."</p> +<p>Tantlatch continued to drum on the spear-haft, and gave no sign that +he had heard. Thom studied his face in vain, and Chugungatte seemed to +shrink together and droop down as the weight of years descended upon +him +again.</p> +<p>"No man makes my kill." Keen smote his breast a valorous blow. "I +make +my own kill. I am glad to live when I make my own kill. When I creep +through the snow upon the great moose, I am glad. And when I draw the +bow, so, with my full strength, and drive the arrow fierce and swift +and +to the heart, I am glad. And the meat of no man's kill tastes as sweet +as the meat of my kill. I am glad to live, glad in my own cunning and +strength, glad that I am a doer of things, a doer of things for myself. +Of what other reason to live than that? Why should I live if I delight +not in myself and the things I do? And it is because I delight and am +glad that I go forth to hunt and fish, and it is because I go forth to +hunt and fish that I grow cunning and strong. The man who stays in the +lodge by the fire grows not cunning and strong. He is not made happy in +the eating of my kill, nor is living to him a delight. He does not +live. +And so I say it is well this Stranger Man should go. His wisdom does +not +make us wise. If he be cunning, there is no need that we be cunning. If +need arise, we go to him for his cunning. We eat the meat of his kill, +and it tastes unsweet. We merit by his strength, and in it there is no +delight. We do not live when he does our living for us. We grow fat and +like women, and we are afraid to work, and we forget how to do things +for ourselves. Let the man go, O Tantlatch, that we may be men! I am +Keen, a man, and I make my own kill!"</p> +<p>Tantlatch turned a gaze upon him in which seemed the vacancy of +eternity. Keen waited the decision expectantly; but the lips did not +move, and the old chief turned toward his daughter.</p> +<p>"That which be given cannot be taken away," she burst forth. "I was +but +a girl when this Stranger Man, who is my man, came among us. And I knew +not men, or the ways of men, and my heart was in the play of girls, +when +thou, Tantlatch, thou and none other, didst call me to thee and press +me +into the arms of the Stranger Man. Thou and none other, Tantlatch; and +as thou didst give me to the man, so didst thou give the man to me. +He is my man. In my arms has he slept, and from my arms he cannot be +taken."</p> +<p>"It were well, O Tantlatch," Keen followed quickly, with a +significant +glance at Thom, "it were well to remember that that which be given +cannot be taken away."</p> +<p>Chugungatte straightened up. "Out of thy youth, Keen, come the words +of thy mouth. As for ourselves, O Tantlatch, we be old men and we +understand. We, too, have looked into the eyes of women and felt our +blood go hot with strange desires. But the years have chilled us, and +we +have learned the wisdom of the council, the shrewdness of the cool head +and hand, and we know that the warm heart be over-warm and prone to +rashness. We know that Keen found favor in thy eyes. We know that Thom +was promised him in the old days when she was yet a child. And we know +that the new days came, and the Stranger Man, and that out of our +wisdom +and desire for welfare was Thom lost to Keen and the promise broken."</p> +<p>The old shaman paused, and looked directly at the young man.</p> +<p>"And be it known that I, Chugungatte, did advise that the promise be +broken."</p> +<p>"Nor have I taken other woman to my bed," Keen broke in. "And I have +builded my own fire, and cooked my own food, and ground my teeth in my +loneliness."</p> +<p>Chugungatte waved his hand that he had not finished. "I am an old +man +and I speak from understanding. It be good to be strong and grasp for +power. It be better to forego power that good come out of it. In the +old +days I sat at thy shoulder, Tantlatch, and my voice was heard over all +in the council, and my advice taken in affairs of moment. And I was +strong and held power. Under Tantlatch I was the greatest man. Then +came +the Stranger Man, and I saw that he was cunning and wise and great. +And in that he was wiser and greater than I, it was plain that greater +profit should arise from him than from me. And I had thy ear, +Tantlatch, +and thou didst listen to my words, and the Stranger Man was given power +and place and thy daughter, Thom. And the tribe prospered under the +new laws in the new days, and so shall it continue to prosper with the +Stranger Man in our midst. We be old men, we two, O Tantlatch, thou and +I, and this be an affair of head, not heart. Hear my words, Tantlatch! +Hear my words! The man remains!"</p> +<p>There was a long silence. The old chief pondered with the massive +certitude of God, and Chugungatte seemed to wrap himself in the mists +of +a great antiquity. Keen looked with yearning upon the woman, and she, +unnoting, held her eyes steadfastly upon her father's face. The +wolf-dog +shoved the flap aside again, and plucking courage at the quiet, wormed +forward on his belly. He sniffed curiously at Thom's listless hand, +cocked ears challengingly at Chugungatte, and hunched down upon his +haunches before Tantlatch. The spear rattled to the ground, and the +dog, +with a frightened yell, sprang sideways, snapping in mid-air, and on +the +second leap cleared the entrance.</p> +<p>Tantlatch looked from face to face, pondering each one long and +carefully. Then he raised his head, with rude royalty, and gave +judgment +in cold and even tones: "The man remains. Let the hunters be called +together. Send a runner to the next village with word to bring on the +fighting men. I shall not see the New-Comer. Do thou, Chugungatte, have +talk with him. Tell him he may go at once, if he would go in peace. And +if fight there be, kill, kill, kill, to the last man; but let my word +go forth that no harm befall our man,—the man whom my daughter hath +wedded. It is well."</p> +<p>Chugungatte rose and tottered out; Thom followed; but as Keen +stooped to +the entrance the voice of Tantlatch stopped him.</p> +<p>"Keen, it were well to hearken to my word. The man remains. Let no +harm +befall him."</p> +<p>Because of Fairfax's instructions in the art of war, the tribesmen +did +not hurl themselves forward boldly and with clamor. Instead, there was +great restraint and self-control, and they were content to advance +silently, creeping and crawling from shelter to shelter. By the river +bank, and partly protected by a narrow open space, crouched the Crees +and <i>voyageurs</i>. Their eyes could see nothing, and only in vague +ways did their ears hear, but they felt the thrill of life which ran +through the forest, the indistinct, indefinable movement of an +advancing +host.</p> +<p>"Damn them," Fairfax muttered. "They've never faced powder, but I +taught +them the trick."</p> +<p>Avery Van Brunt laughed, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put +it +carefully away with the pouch, and loosened the hunting-knife in its +sheath at his hip.</p> +<p>"Wait," he said. "We'll wither the face of the charge and break +their +hearts."</p> +<p>"They'll rush scattered if they remember my teaching."</p> +<p>"Let them. Magazine rifles were made to pump. We'll—good! First +blood! +Extra tobacco, Loon!"</p> +<p>Loon, a Cree, had spotted an exposed shoulder and with a stinging +bullet +apprised its owner of his discovery.</p> +<p>"If we can tease them into breaking forward," Fairfax muttered,—"if +we +can only tease them into breaking forward."</p> +<p>Van Brunt saw a head peer from behind a distant tree, and with a +quick +shot sent the man sprawling to the ground in a death struggle. Michael +potted a third, and Fairfax and the rest took a hand, firing at every +exposure and into each clump of agitated brush. In crossing one little +swale out of cover, five of the tribesmen remained on their faces, and +to the left, where the covering was sparse, a dozen men were struck. +But +they took the punishment with sullen steadiness, coming on cautiously, +deliberately, without haste and without lagging.</p> +<p>Ten minutes later, when they were quite close, all movement was +suspended, the advance ceased abruptly, and the quietness that followed +was portentous, threatening. Only could be seen the green and gold of +the woods, and undergrowth, shivering and trembling to the first faint +puffs of the day-wind. The wan white morning sun mottled the earth with +long shadows and streaks of light. A wounded man lifted his head and +crawled painfully out of the swale, Michael following him with his +rifle +but forbearing to shoot. A whistle ran along the invisible line from +left to right, and a flight of arrows arched through the air.</p> +<p>"Get ready," Van Brunt commanded, a new metallic note in his voice. +"Now!"</p> +<p>They broke cover simultaneously. The forest heaved into sudden life. +A +great yell went up, and the rifles barked back sharp defiance. +Tribesmen +knew their deaths in mid-leap, and as they fell, their brothers surged +over them in a roaring, irresistible wave. In the forefront of the +rush, +hair flying and arms swinging free, flashing past the tree-trunks, and +leaping the obstructing logs, came Thom. Fairfax sighted on her and +almost pulled trigger ere he knew her.</p> +<p>"The woman! Don't shoot!" he cried. "See! She is unarmed!"</p> +<p>The Crees never heard, nor Michael and his brother <i>voyageur</i>, +nor +Van Brunt, who was keeping one shell continuously in the air. But Thom +bore straight on, unharmed, at the heels of a skin-clad hunter who had +veered in before her from the side. Fairfax emptied his magazine into +the men to right and left of her, and swung his rifle to meet the big +hunter. But the man, seeming to recognize him, swerved suddenly aside +and plunged his spear into the body of Michael. On the moment Thom had +one arm passed around her husband's neck, and twisting half about, with +voice and gesture was splitting the mass of charging warriors. A score +of men hurled past on either side, and Fairfax, for a brief instant's +space, stood looking upon her and her bronze beauty, thrilling, +exulting, stirred to unknown deeps, visioning strange things, dreaming, +immortally dreaming. Snatches and scraps of old-world philosophies +and new-world ethics floated through his mind, and things wonderfully +concrete and woefully incongruous—hunting scenes, stretches of sombre +forest, vastnesses of silent snow, the glittering of ballroom lights, +great galleries and lecture halls, a fleeting shimmer of glistening +test-tubes, long rows of book-lined shelves, the throb of machinery and +the roar of traffic, a fragment of forgotten song, faces of dear women +and old chums, a lonely watercourse amid upstanding peaks, a shattered +boat on a pebbly strand, quiet moonlit fields, fat vales, the smell of +hay....</p> +<p>A hunter, struck between the eyes with a rifle-ball, pitched forward +lifeless, and with the momentum of his charge slid along the ground. +Fairfax came back to himself. His comrades, those that lived, had been +swept far back among the trees beyond. He could hear the fierce "Hia! +Hia!" of the hunters as they closed in and cut and thrust with their +weapons of bone and ivory. The cries of the stricken men smote him like +blows. He knew the fight was over, the cause was lost, but all his race +traditions and race loyalty impelled him into the welter that he might +die at least with his kind.</p> +<p>"My man! My man!" Thom cried. "Thou art safe!"</p> +<p>He tried to struggle on, but her dead weight clogged his steps.</p> +<p>"There is no need! They are dead, and life be good!"</p> +<p>She held him close around the neck and twined her limbs about his +till +he tripped and stumbled, reeled violently to recover footing, tripped +again, and fell backward to the ground. His head struck a jutting root, +and he was half-stunned and could struggle but feebly. In the fall she +had heard the feathered swish of an arrow darting past, and she covered +his body with hers, as with a shield, her arms holding him tightly, her +face and lips pressed upon his neck.</p> +<p>Then it was that Keen rose up from a tangled thicket a score of feet +away. He looked about him with care. The fight had swept on and the cry +of the last man was dying away. There was no one to see. He fitted an +arrow to the string and glanced at the man and woman. Between her +breast +and arm the flesh of the man's side showed white. Keen bent the bow +and drew back the arrow to its head. Twice he did so, calmly and for +certainty, and then drove the bone-barbed missile straight home to the +white flesh, gleaming yet more white in the dark-armed, dark-breasted +embrace.</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="THE_LAW_OF_LIFE"></a> +<h2>THE LAW OF LIFE</h2> +<br> +<p>Old Koskoosh listened greedily. Though his sight had long since +faded, +his hearing was still acute, and the slightest sound penetrated to the +glimmering intelligence which yet abode behind the withered forehead, +but which no longer gazed forth upon the things of the world. Ah! that +was Sit-cum-to-ha, shrilly anathematizing the dogs as she cuffed and +beat them into the harnesses. Sit-cum-to-ha was his daughter's +daughter, +but she was too busy to waste a thought upon her broken grandfather, +sitting alone there in the snow, forlorn and helpless. Camp must be +broken. The long trail waited while the short day refused to linger. +Life called her, and the duties of life, not death. And he was very +close to death now.</p> +<p>The thought made the old man panicky for the moment, and he +stretched +forth a palsied hand which wandered tremblingly over the small heap +of dry wood beside him. Reassured that it was indeed there, his hand +returned to the shelter of his mangy furs, and he again fell to +listening. The sulky crackling of half-frozen hides told him that the +chief's moose-skin lodge had been struck, and even then was being +rammed +and jammed into portable compass. The chief was his son, stalwart and +strong, head man of the tribesmen, and a mighty hunter. As the women +toiled with the camp luggage, his voice rose, chiding them for their +slowness. Old Koskoosh strained his ears. It was the last time he would +hear that voice. There went Geehow's lodge! And Tusken's! Seven, eight, +nine; only the shaman's could be still standing. There! They were at +work upon it now. He could hear the shaman grunt as he piled it on the +sled. A child whimpered, and a woman soothed it with soft, crooning +gutturals. Little Koo-tee, the old man thought, a fretful child, and +not overstrong. It would die soon, perhaps, and they would burn a hole +through the frozen tundra and pile rocks above to keep the wolverines +away. Well, what did it matter? A few years at best, and as many an +empty belly as a full one. And in the end, Death waited, ever-hungry +and +hungriest of them all.</p> +<p>What was that? Oh, the men lashing the sleds and drawing tight the +thongs. He listened, who would listen no more. The whip-lashes snarled +and bit among the dogs. Hear them whine! How they hated the work and +the trail! They were off! Sled after sled churned slowly away into the +silence. They were gone. They had passed out of his life, and he faced +the last bitter hour alone. No. The snow crunched beneath a moccasin; a +man stood beside him; upon his head a hand rested gently. His son was +good to do this thing. He remembered other old men whose sons had not +waited after the tribe. But his son had. He wandered away into the +past, +till the young man's voice brought him back.</p> +<p>"Is it well with you?" he asked.</p> +<p>And the old man answered, "It is well."</p> +<p>"There be wood beside you," the younger man continued, "and the fire +burns bright. The morning is gray, and the cold has broken. It will +snow +presently. Even now is it snowing."</p> +<p>"Ay, even now is it snowing."</p> +<p>"The tribesmen hurry. Their bales are heavy, and their bellies flat +with +lack of feasting. The trail is long and they travel fast. I go now. It +is well?"</p> +<p>"It is well. I am as a last year's leaf, clinging lightly to the +stem. +The first breath that blows, and I fall. My voice is become like an old +woman's. My eyes no longer show me the way of my feet, and my feet are +heavy, and I am tired. It is well."</p> +<p>He bowed his head in content till the last noise of the complaining +snow +had died away, and he knew his son was beyond recall. Then his hand +crept out in haste to the wood. It alone stood between him and the +eternity that yawned in upon him. At last the measure of his life was a +handful of fagots. One by one they would go to feed the fire, and just +so, step by step, death would creep upon him. When the last stick had +surrendered up its heat, the frost would begin to gather strength. +First +his feet would yield, then his hands; and the numbness would travel, +slowly, from the extremities to the body. His head would fall forward +upon his knees, and he would rest. It was easy. All men must die.</p> +<p>He did not complain. It was the way of life, and it was just. He had +been born close to the earth, close to the earth had he lived, and the +law thereof was not new to him. It was the law of all flesh. Nature was +not kindly to the flesh. She had no concern for that concrete thing +called the individual. Her interest lay in the species, the race. This +was the deepest abstraction old Koskoosh's barbaric mind was capable +of, +but he grasped it firmly. He saw it exemplified in all life. The rise +of the sap, the bursting greenness of the willow bud, the fall of the +yellow leaf—in this alone was told the whole history. But one task +did Nature set the individual. Did he not perform it, he died. Did he +perform it, it was all the same, he died. Nature did not care; there +were plenty who were obedient, and it was only the obedience in this +matter, not the obedient, which lived and lived always. The tribe of +Koskoosh was very old. The old men he had known when a boy, had known +old men before them. Therefore it was true that the tribe lived, that +it +stood for the obedience of all its members, way down into the forgotten +past, whose very resting-places were unremembered. They did not count; +they were episodes. They had passed away like clouds from a summer sky. +He also was an episode, and would pass away. Nature did not care. To +life she set one task, gave one law. To perpetuate was the task of +life, its law was death. A maiden was a good creature to look upon, +full-breasted and strong, with spring to her step and light in her +eyes. +But her task was yet before her. The light in her eyes brightened, her +step quickened, she was now bold with the young men, now timid, and she +gave them of her own unrest. And ever she grew fairer and yet fairer to +look upon, till some hunter, able no longer to withhold himself, took +her to his lodge to cook and toil for him and to become the mother of +his children. And with the coming of her offspring her looks left her. +Her limbs dragged and shuffled, her eyes dimmed and bleared, and only +the little children found joy against the withered cheek of the old +squaw by the fire. Her task was done. But a little while, on the first +pinch of famine or the first long trail, and she would be left, even as +he had been left, in the snow, with a little pile of wood. Such was the +law.</p> +<p>He placed a stick carefully upon the fire and resumed his +meditations. +It was the same everywhere, with all things. The mosquitoes vanished +with the first frost. The little tree-squirrel crawled away to die. +When age settled upon the rabbit it became slow and heavy, and could no +longer outfoot its enemies. Even the big bald-face grew clumsy and +blind +and quarrelsome, in the end to be dragged down by a handful of yelping +huskies. He remembered how he had abandoned his own father on an upper +reach of the Klondike one winter, the winter before the missionary came +with his talk-books and his box of medicines. Many a time had Koskoosh +smacked his lips over the recollection of that box, though now his +mouth +refused to moisten. The "painkiller" had been especially good. But the +missionary was a bother after all, for he brought no meat into the +camp, +and he ate heartily, and the hunters grumbled. But he chilled his lungs +on the divide by the Mayo, and the dogs afterwards nosed the stones +away +and fought over his bones.</p> +<p>Koskoosh placed another stick on the fire and harked back deeper +into +the past. There was the time of the Great Famine, when the old men +crouched empty-bellied to the fire, and let fall from their lips dim +traditions of the ancient day when the Yukon ran wide open for three +winters, and then lay frozen for three summers. He had lost his mother +in that famine. In the summer the salmon run had failed, and the tribe +looked forward to the winter and the coming of the caribou. Then the +winter came, but with it there were no caribou. Never had the like been +known, not even in the lives of the old men. But the caribou did not +come, and it was the seventh year, and the rabbits had not replenished, +and the dogs were naught but bundles of bones. And through the long +darkness the children wailed and died, and the women, and the old men; +and not one in ten of the tribe lived to meet the sun when it came back +in the spring. That <i>was</i> a famine!</p> +<p>But he had seen times of plenty, too, when the meat spoiled on their +hands, and the dogs were fat and worthless with overeating—times when +they let the game go unkilled, and the women were fertile, and the +lodges were cluttered with sprawling men-children and women-children. +Then it was the men became high-stomached, and revived ancient +quarrels, +and crossed the divides to the south to kill the Pellys, and to the +west +that they might sit by the dead fires of the Tananas. He remembered, +when a boy, during a time of plenty, when he saw a moose pulled down by +the wolves. Zing-ha lay with him in the snow and watched—Zing-ha, who +later became the craftiest of hunters, and who, in the end, fell +through +an air-hole on the Yukon. They found him, a month afterward, just as he +had crawled halfway out and frozen stiff to the ice.</p> +<p>But the moose. Zing-ha and he had gone out that day to play at +hunting +after the manner of their fathers. On the bed of the creek they struck +the fresh track of a moose, and with it the tracks of many wolves. "An +old one," Zing-ha, who was quicker at reading the sign, said—"an old +one who cannot keep up with the herd. The wolves have cut him out from +his brothers, and they will never leave him." And it was so. It was +their way. By day and by night, never resting, snarling on his heels, +snapping at his nose, they would stay by him to the end. How Zing-ha +and +he felt the blood-lust quicken! The finish would be a sight to see!</p> +<p>Eager-footed, they took the trail, and even he, Koskoosh, slow of +sight +and an unversed tracker, could have followed it blind, it was so wide. +Hot were they on the heels of the chase, reading the grim tragedy, +fresh-written, at every step. Now they came to where the moose had made +a stand. Thrice the length of a grown man's body, in every direction, +had the snow been stamped about and uptossed. In the midst were the +deep +impressions of the splay-hoofed game, and all about, everywhere, were +the lighter footmarks of the wolves. Some, while their brothers harried +the kill, had lain to one side and rested. The full-stretched impress +of their bodies in the snow was as perfect as though made the moment +before. One wolf had been caught in a wild lunge of the maddened victim +and trampled to death. A few bones, well picked, bore witness.</p> +<p>Again, they ceased the uplift of their snowshoes at a second stand. +Here +the great animal had fought desperately. Twice had he been dragged +down, +as the snow attested, and twice had he shaken his assailants clear and +gained footing once more. He had done his task long since, but none the +less was life dear to him. Zing-ha said it was a strange thing, a moose +once down to get free again; but this one certainly had. The shaman +would see signs and wonders in this when they told him.</p> +<p>And yet again, they come to where the moose had made to mount the +bank +and gain the timber. But his foes had laid on from behind, till he +reared and fell back upon them, crushing two deep into the snow. It was +plain the kill was at hand, for their brothers had left them untouched. +Two more stands were hurried past, brief in time-length and very close +together. The trail was red now, and the clean stride of the great +beast +had grown short and slovenly. Then they heard the first sounds of the +battle—not the full-throated chorus of the chase, but the short, snappy +bark which spoke of close quarters and teeth to flesh. Crawling up +the wind, Zing-ha bellied it through the snow, and with him crept he, +Koskoosh, who was to be chief of the tribesmen in the years to come. +Together they shoved aside the under branches of a young spruce and +peered forth. It was the end they saw.</p> +<p>The picture, like all of youth's impressions, was still strong with +him, and his dim eyes watched the end played out as vividly as in +that far-off time. Koskoosh marvelled at this, for in the days which +followed, when he was a leader of men and a head of councillors, he had +done great deeds and made his name a curse in the mouths of the Pellys, +to say naught of the strange white man he had killed, knife to knife, +in +open fight.</p> +<p>For long he pondered on the days of his youth, till the fire died +down +and the frost bit deeper. He replenished it with two sticks this time, +and gauged his grip on life by what remained. If Sit-cum-to-ha had only +remembered her grandfather, and gathered a larger armful, his hours +would have been longer. It would have been easy. But she was ever a +careless child, and honored not her ancestors from the time the Beaver, +son of the son of Zing-ha, first cast eyes upon her. Well, what +mattered +it? Had he not done likewise in his own quick youth? For a while he +listened to the silence. Perhaps the heart of his son might soften, and +he would come back with the dogs to take his old father on with the +tribe to where the caribou ran thick and the fat hung heavy upon them.</p> +<p>He strained his ears, his restless brain for the moment stilled. Not +a +stir, nothing. He alone took breath in the midst of the great silence. +It was very lonely. Hark! What was that? A chill passed over his body. +The familiar, long-drawn howl broke the void, and it was close at hand. +Then on his darkened eyes was projected the vision of the moose—the old +bull moose—the torn flanks and bloody sides, the riddled mane, and the +great branching horns, down low and tossing to the last. He saw the +flashing forms of gray, the gleaming eyes, the lolling tongues, the +slavered fangs. And he saw the inexorable circle close in till it +became +a dark point in the midst of the stamped snow.</p> +<p>A cold muzzle thrust against his cheek, and at its touch his soul +leaped +back to the present. His hand shot into the fire and dragged out a +burning faggot. Overcome for the nonce by his hereditary fear of man, +the brute retreated, raising a prolonged call to his brothers; and +greedily they answered, till a ring of crouching, jaw-slobbered gray +was +stretched round about. The old man listened to the drawing in of this +circle. He waved his brand wildly, and sniffs turned to snarls; but the +panting brutes refused to scatter. Now one wormed his chest forward, +dragging his haunches after, now a second, now a third; but never a +one drew back. Why should he cling to life? he asked, and dropped the +blazing stick into the snow. It sizzled and went out. The circle +grunted +uneasily, but held its own. Again he saw the last stand of the old bull +moose, and Koskoosh dropped his head wearily upon his knees. What did +it +matter after all? Was it not the law of life?</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="NAM-BOK_THE_UNVERACIOUS"></a> +<h2>NAM-BOK THE UNVERACIOUS</h2> +<br> +<p>"A bidarka, is it not so? Look! a bidarka, and one man who drives +clumsily with a paddle!"</p> +<p>Old Bask-Wah-Wan rose to her knees, trembling with weakness and +eagerness, and gazed out over the sea.</p> +<p>"Nam-Bok was ever clumsy at the paddle," she maundered +reminiscently, +shading the sun from her eyes and staring across the silver-spilled +water. "Nam-Bok was ever clumsy. I remember...."</p> +<p>But the women and children laughed loudly, and there was a gentle +mockery in their laughter, and her voice dwindled till her lips moved +without sound.</p> +<p>Koogah lifted his grizzled head from his bone-carving and followed +the path of her eyes. Except when wide yaws took it off its course, a +bidarka was heading in for the beach. Its occupant was paddling with +more strength than dexterity, and made his approach along the zigzag +line of most resistance. Koogah's head dropped to his work again, and +on +the ivory tusk between his knees he scratched the dorsal fin of a fish +the like of which never swam in the sea.</p> +<p>"It is doubtless the man from the next village," he said finally, +"come +to consult with me about the marking of things on bone. And the man is +a +clumsy man. He will never know how."</p> +<p>"It is Nam-Bok," old Bask-Wah-Wan repeated. "Should I not know my +son?" +she demanded shrilly. "I say, and I say again, it is Nam-Bok."</p> +<p>"And so thou hast said these many summers," one of the women chided +softly. "Ever when the ice passed out of the sea hast thou sat and +watched through the long day, saying at each chance canoe, 'This is +Nam-Bok.' Nam-Bok is dead, O Bask-Wah-Wan, and the dead do not come +back. It cannot be that the dead come back."</p> +<p>"Nam-Bok!" the old woman cried, so loud and clear that the whole +village +was startled and looked at her.</p> +<p>She struggled to her feet and tottered down the sand. She stumbled +over +a baby lying in the sun, and the mother hushed its crying and hurled +harsh words after the old woman, who took no notice. The children ran +down the beach in advance of her, and as the man in the bidarka drew +closer, nearly capsizing with one of his ill-directed strokes, the +women +followed. Koogah dropped his walrus tusk and went also, leaning heavily +upon his staff, and after him loitered the men in twos and threes.</p> +<p>The bidarka turned broadside and the ripple of surf threatened to +swamp +it, only a naked boy ran into the water and pulled the bow high up on +the sand. The man stood up and sent a questing glance along the line +of villagers. A rainbow sweater, dirty and the worse for wear, clung +loosely to his broad shoulders, and a red cotton handkerchief was +knotted in sailor fashion about his throat. A fisherman's +tam-o'-shanter +on his close-clipped head, and dungaree trousers and heavy brogans, +completed his outfit.</p> +<p>But he was none the less a striking personage to these simple +fisherfolk +of the great Yukon Delta, who, all their lives, had stared out on +Bering +Sea and in that time seen but two white men,—the census enumerator and +a lost Jesuit priest. They were a poor people, with neither gold in the +ground nor valuable furs in hand, so the whites had passed them afar. +Also, the Yukon, through the thousands of years, had shoaled that +portion of the sea with the detritus of Alaska till vessels grounded +out +of sight of land. So the sodden coast, with its long inside reaches and +huge mud-land archipelagoes, was avoided by the ships of men, and the +fisherfolk knew not that such things were.</p> +<p>Koogah, the Bone-Scratcher, retreated backward in sudden haste, +tripping +over his staff and falling to the ground. "Nam-Bok!" he cried, as he +scrambled wildly for footing. "Nam-Bok, who was blown off to sea, come +back!"</p> +<p>The men and women shrank away, and the children scuttled off between +their legs. Only Opee-Kwan was brave, as befitted the head man of +the village. He strode forward and gazed long and earnestly at the +new-comer.</p> +<p>"It <i>is</i> Nam-Bok," he said at last, and at the conviction in +his +voice the women wailed apprehensively and drew farther away.</p> +<p>The lips of the stranger moved indecisively, and his brown throat +writhed and wrestled with unspoken words.</p> +<p>"La la, it is Nam-Bok," Bask-Wah-Wan croaked, peering up into his +face. +"Ever did I say Nam-Bok would come back."</p> +<p>"Ay, it is Nam-Bok come back." This time it was Nam-Bok himself who +spoke, putting a leg over the side of the bidarka and standing with one +foot afloat and one ashore. Again his throat writhed and wrestled as he +grappled after forgotten words. And when the words came forth they +were strange of sound and a spluttering of the lips accompanied the +gutturals. "Greeting, O brothers," he said, "brothers of old time +before +I went away with the off-shore wind."</p> +<p>He stepped out with both feet on the sand, and Opee-Kwan waved him +back.</p> +<p>"Thou art dead, Nam-Bok," he said.</p> +<p>Nam-Bok laughed. "I am fat."</p> +<p>"Dead men are not fat," Opee-Kwan confessed. "Thou hast fared well, +but +it is strange. No man may mate with the off-shore wind and come back on +the heels of the years."</p> +<p>"I have come back," Nam-Bok answered simply.</p> +<p>"Mayhap thou art a shadow, then, a passing shadow of the Nam-Bok +that +was. Shadows come back."</p> +<p>"I am hungry. Shadows do not eat."</p> +<p>But Opee-Kwan doubted, and brushed his hand across his brow in sore +puzzlement. Nam-Bok was likewise puzzled, and as he looked up and down +the line found no welcome in the eyes of the fisherfolk. The men and +women whispered together. The children stole timidly back among their +elders, and bristling dogs fawned up to him and sniffed suspiciously.</p> +<p>"I bore thee, Nam-Bok, and I gave thee suck when thou wast little," +Bask-Wah-Wan whimpered, drawing closer; "and shadow though thou be, or +no shadow, I will give thee to eat now."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok made to come to her, but a growl of fear and menace warned +him +back. He said something in a strange tongue which sounded like +"Goddam," +and added, "No shadow am I, but a man."</p> +<p>"Who may know concerning the things of mystery?" Opee-Kwan demanded, +half of himself and half of his tribespeople. "We are, and in a breath +we are not. If the man may become shadow, may not the shadow become +man? +Nam-Bok was, but is not. This we know, but we do not know if this be +Nam-Bok or the shadow of Nam-Bok."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok cleared his throat and made answer. "In the old time long +ago, +thy father's father, Opee-Kwan, went away and came back on the heels of +the years. Nor was a place by the fire denied him. It is said ..." He +paused significantly, and they hung on his utterance. "It is said," he +repeated, driving his point home with deliberation, "that Sipsip, his +<i>klooch</i>, bore him two sons after he came back."</p> +<p>"But he had no doings with the off-shore wind," Opee-Kwan retorted. +"He +went away into the heart of the land, and it is in the nature of things +that a man may go on and on into the land."</p> +<p>"And likewise the sea. But that is neither here nor there. It is +said +... that thy father's father told strange tales of the things he saw."</p> +<p>"Ay, strange tales he told."</p> +<p>"I, too, have strange tales to tell," Nam-Bok stated insidiously. +And, +as they wavered, "And presents likewise."</p> +<p>He pulled from the bidarka a shawl, marvellous of texture and color, +and +flung it about his mother's shoulders. The women voiced a collective +sigh of admiration, and old Bask-Wah-Wan ruffled the gay material and +patted it and crooned in childish joy.</p> +<p>"He has tales to tell," Koogah muttered. "And presents," a woman +seconded.</p> +<p>And Opee-Kwan knew that his people were eager, and further, he was +aware +himself of an itching curiosity concerning those untold tales. "The +fishing has been good," he said judiciously, "and we have oil in +plenty. +So come, Nam-Bok, let us feast."</p> +<p>Two of the men hoisted the bidarka on their shoulders and carried it +up +to the fire. Nam-Bok walked by the side of Opee-Kwan, and the villagers +followed after, save those of the women who lingered a moment to lay +caressing fingers on the shawl.</p> +<p>There was little talk while the feast went on, though many and +curious +were the glances stolen at the son of Bask-Wah-Wan. This embarrassed +him—not because he was modest of spirit, however, but for the fact that +the stench of the seal-oil had robbed him of his appetite, and that he +keenly desired to conceal his feelings on the subject.</p> +<p>"Eat; thou art hungry," Opee-Kwan commanded, and Nam-Bok shut both +his +eyes and shoved his fist into the big pot of putrid fish.</p> +<p>"La la, be not ashamed. The seal were many this year, and strong men +are +ever hungry." And Bask-Wah-Wan sopped a particularly offensive chunk of +salmon into the oil and passed it fondly and dripping to her son.</p> +<p>In despair, when premonitory symptoms warned him that his stomach +was +not so strong as of old, he filled his pipe and struck up a smoke. The +people fed on noisily and watched. Few of them could boast of intimate +acquaintance with the precious weed, though now and again small +quantities and abominable qualities were obtained in trade from the +Eskimos to the northward. Koogah, sitting next to him, indicated that +he +was not averse to taking a draw, and between two mouthfuls, with the +oil +thick on his lips, sucked away at the amber stem. And thereupon Nam-Bok +held his stomach with a shaky hand and declined the proffered return. +Koogah could keep the pipe, he said, for he had intended so to honor +him +from the first. And the people licked their fingers and approved of his +liberality.</p> +<p>Opee-Kwan rose to his feet "And now, O Nam-Bok, the feast is ended, +and +we would listen concerning the strange things you have seen."</p> +<p>The fisherfolk applauded with their hands, and gathering about them +their work, prepared to listen. The men were busy fashioning spears and +carving on ivory, while the women scraped the fat from the hides of the +hair seal and made them pliable or sewed muclucs with threads of sinew. +Nam-Bok's eyes roved over the scene, but there was not the charm about +it that his recollection had warranted him to expect. During the years +of his wandering he had looked forward to just this scene, and now that +it had come he was disappointed. It was a bare and meagre life, he +deemed, and not to be compared to the one to which he had become used. +Still, he would open their eyes a bit, and his own eyes sparkled at the +thought.</p> +<p>"Brothers," he began, with the smug complacency of a man about to +relate +the big things he has done, "it was late summer of many summers back, +with much such weather as this promises to be, when I went away. You +all +remember the day, when the gulls flew low, and the wind blew strong +from the land, and I could not hold my bidarka against it. I tied the +covering of the bidarka about me so that no water could get in, and all +of the night I fought with the storm. And in the morning there was no +land,—only the sea,—and the off-shore wind held me close in its arms +and bore me along. Three such nights whitened into dawn and showed me +no +land, and the off-shore wind would not let me go.</p> +<p>"And when the fourth day came, I was as a madman. I could not dip my +paddle for want of food; and my head went round and round, what of the +thirst that was upon me. But the sea was no longer angry, and the soft +south wind was blowing, and as I looked about me I saw a sight that +made +me think I was indeed mad."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok paused to pick away a sliver of salmon lodged between his +teeth, +and the men and women, with idle hands and heads craned forward, waited.</p> +<p>"It was a canoe, a big canoe. If all the canoes I have ever seen +were +made into one canoe, it would not be so large."</p> +<p>There were exclamations of doubt, and Koogah, whose years were many, +shook his head.</p> +<p>"If each bidarka were as a grain of sand," Nam-Bok defiantly +continued, +"and if there were as many bidarkas as there be grains of sand in this +beach, still would they not make so big a canoe as this I saw on the +morning of the fourth day. It was a very big canoe, and it was called a +<i>schooner</i>. I saw this thing of wonder, this great schooner, +coming +after me, and on it I saw men—"</p> +<p>"Hold, O Nam-Bok!" Opee-Kwan broke in. "What manner of men were +they?—big men?"</p> +<p>"Nay, mere men like you and me."</p> +<p>"Did the big canoe come fast?"</p> +<p>"Ay."</p> +<p>"The sides were tall, the men short." Opee-Kwan stated the premises +with +conviction. "And did these men dip with long paddles?"</p> +<p>Nam-Bok grinned. "There were no paddles," he said.</p> +<p>Mouths remained open, and a long silence dropped down. Opee-Kwan +borrowed Koogah's pipe for a couple of contemplative sucks. One of the +younger women giggled nervously and drew upon herself angry eyes.</p> +<p>"There were no paddles?" Opee-Kwan asked softly, returning the pipe.</p> +<p>"The south wind was behind," Nam-Bok explained.</p> +<p>"But the wind-drift is slow."</p> +<p>"The schooner had wings—thus." He sketched a diagram of masts and +sails +in the sand, and the men crowded around and studied it. The wind was +blowing briskly, and for more graphic elucidation he seized the corners +of his mother's shawl and spread them out till it bellied like a sail. +Bask-Wah-Wan scolded and struggled, but was blown down the beach for a +score of feet and left breathless and stranded in a heap of driftwood. +The men uttered sage grunts of comprehension, but Koogah suddenly +tossed +back his hoary head.</p> +<p>"Ho! Ho!" he laughed. "A foolish thing, this big canoe! A most +foolish +thing! The plaything of the wind! Wheresoever the wind goes, it goes +too. No man who journeys therein may name the landing beach, for always +he goes with the wind, and the wind goes everywhere, but no man knows +where."</p> +<p>"It is so," Opee-Kwan supplemented gravely. "With the wind the going +is +easy, but against the wind a man striveth hard; and for that they had +no +paddles these men on the big canoe did not strive at all."</p> +<p>"Small need to strive," Nam-Bok cried angrily. "The schooner went +likewise against the wind."</p> +<p>"And what said you made the sch—sch—schooner go?" Koogah asked, +tripping craftily over the strange word.</p> +<p>"The wind," was the impatient response.</p> +<p>"Then the wind made the sch—sch—schooner go against the wind." Old +Koogah dropped an open leer to Opee-Kwan, and, the laughter growing +around him, continued: "The wind blows from the south and blows the +schooner south. The wind blows against the wind. The wind blows one +way and the other at the same time. It is very simple. We understand, +Nam-Bok. We clearly understand."</p> +<p>"Thou art a fool!"</p> +<p>"Truth falls from thy lips," Koogah answered meekly. "I was +over-long in +understanding, and the thing was simple."</p> +<p>But Nam-Bok's face was dark, and he said rapid words which they had +never heard before. Bone-scratching and skin-scraping were resumed, but +he shut his lips tightly on the tongue that could not be believed.</p> +<p>"This sch—sch—schooner," Koogah imperturbably asked; "it was made of +a +big tree?"</p> +<p>"It was made of many trees," Nam-Bok snapped shortly. "It was very +big."</p> +<p>He lapsed into sullen silence again, and Opee-Kwan nudged Koogah, +who +shook his head with slow amazement and murmured, "It is very strange."</p> +<p>Nam-bok took the bait. "That is nothing," he said airily; "you +should +see the <i>steamer</i>. As the grain of sand is to the bidarka, as the +bidarka is to the schooner, so the schooner is to the steamer. Further, +the steamer is made of iron. It is all iron."</p> +<p>"Nay, nay, Nam-Bok," cried the head man; "how can that be? Always +iron +goes to the bottom. For behold, I received an iron knife in trade from +the head man of the next village, and yesterday the iron knife slipped +from my fingers and went down, down, into the sea. To all things there +be law. Never was there one thing outside the law. This we know. And, +moreover, we know that things of a kind have the one law, and that all +iron has the one law. So unsay thy words, Nam-Bok, that we may yet +honor +thee."</p> +<p>"It is so," Nam-Bok persisted. "The steamer is all iron and does not +sink."</p> +<p>"Nay, nay; this cannot be."</p> +<p>"With my own eyes I saw it."</p> +<p>"It is not in the nature of things."</p> +<p>"But tell me, Nam-Bok," Koogah interrupted, for fear the tale would +go +no farther, "tell me the manner of these men in finding their way +across +the sea when there is no land by which to steer."</p> +<p>"The sun points out the path."</p> +<p>"But how?"</p> +<p>"At midday the head man of the schooner takes a thing through which +his +eye looks at the sun, and then he makes the sun climb down out of the +sky to the edge of the earth."</p> +<p>"Now this be evil medicine!" cried Opee-Kwan, aghast at the +sacrilege. +The men held up their hands in horror, and the women moaned. "This be +evil medicine. It is not good to misdirect the great sun which drives +away the night and gives us the seal, the salmon, and warm weather."</p> +<p>"What if it be evil medicine?" Nam-Bok demanded truculently. "I, +too, +have looked through the thing at the sun and made the sun climb down +out +of the sky."</p> +<p>Those who were nearest drew away from him hurriedly, and a woman +covered +the face of a child at her breast so that his eye might not fall upon +it.</p> +<p>"But on the morning of the fourth day, O Nam-Bok," Koogah suggested; +"on +the morning of the fourth day when the sch—sch—schooner came after +thee?"</p> +<p>"I had little strength left in me and could not run away. So I was +taken +on board and water was poured down my throat and good food given me. +Twice, my brothers, you have seen a white man. These men were all white +and as many as have I fingers and toes. And when I saw they were full +of +kindness, I took heart, and I resolved to bring away with me report of +all that I saw. And they taught me the work they did, and gave me good +food and a place to sleep.</p> +<p>"And day after day we went over the sea, and each day the head man +drew +the sun down out of the sky and made it tell where we were. And when +the +waves were kind, we hunted the fur seal and I marvelled much, for +always +did they fling the meat and the fat away and save only the skin."</p> +<p>Opee-Kwan's mouth was twitching violently, and he was about to make +denunciation of such waste when Koogah kicked him to be still.</p> +<p>"After a weary time, when the sun was gone and the bite of the frost +come into the air, the head man pointed the nose of the schooner south. +South and east we travelled for days upon days, with never the land in +sight, and we were near to the village from which hailed the men—"</p> +<p>"How did they know they were near?" Opee-Kwan, unable to contain +himself +longer, demanded. "There was no land to see."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok glowered on him wrathfully. "Did I not say the head man +brought +the sun down out of the sky?"</p> +<p>Koogah interposed, and Nam-Bok went on.</p> +<p>"As I say, when we were near to that village a great storm blew up, +and +in the night we were helpless and knew not where we were—"</p> +<p>"Thou hast just said the head man knew—"</p> +<p>"Oh, peace, Opee-Kwan! Thou art a fool and cannot understand. As I +say, +we were helpless in the night, when I heard, above the roar of the +storm, the sound of the sea on the beach. And next we struck with a +mighty crash and I was in the water, swimming. It was a rock-bound +coast, with one patch of beach in many miles, and the law was that I +should dig my hands into the sand and draw myself clear of the surf. +The +other men must have pounded against the rocks, for none of them came +ashore but the head man, and him I knew only by the ring on his finger.</p> +<p>"When day came, there being nothing of the schooner, I turned my +face to +the land and journeyed into it that I might get food and look upon the +faces of the people. And when I came to a house I was taken in and +given +to eat, for I had learned their speech, and the white men are ever +kindly. And it was a house bigger than all the houses built by us and +our fathers before us."</p> +<p>"It was a mighty house," Koogah said, masking his unbelief with +wonder.</p> +<p>"And many trees went into the making of such a house," Opee-Kwan +added, +taking the cue.</p> +<p>"That is nothing." Nam-Bok shrugged his shoulders in belittling +fashion. +"As our houses are to that house, so that house was to the houses I was +yet to see."</p> +<p>"And they are not big men?"</p> +<p>"Nay; mere men like you and me," Nam-Bok answered. "I had cut a +stick +that I might walk in comfort, and remembering that I was to bring +report +to you, my brothers, I cut a notch in the stick for each person who +lived in that house. And I stayed there many days, and worked, for +which +they gave me <i>money</i>—a thing of which you know nothing, but which +is very good.</p> +<p>"And one day I departed from that place to go farther into the land. +And +as I walked I met many people, and I cut smaller notches in the stick, +that there might be room for all. Then I came upon a strange thing. On +the ground before me was a bar of iron, as big in thickness as my arm, +and a long step away was another bar of iron—"</p> +<p>"Then wert thou a rich man," Opee-Kwan asserted; "for iron be worth +more +than anything else in the world. It would have made many knives."</p> +<p>"Nay, it was not mine."</p> +<p>"It was a find, and a find be lawful."</p> +<p>"Not so; the white men had placed it there And further, these bars +were +so long that no man could carry them away—so long that as far as I +could see there was no end to them."</p> +<p>"Nam-Bok, that is very much iron," Opee-Kwan cautioned.</p> +<p>"Ay, it was hard to believe with my own eyes upon it; but I could +not +gainsay my eyes. And as I looked I heard...." He turned abruptly upon +the head man. "Opee-Kwan, thou hast heard the sea-lion bellow in his +anger. Make it plain in thy mind of as many sea-lions as there be waves +to the sea, and make it plain that all these sea-lions be made into one +sea-lion, and as that one sea-lion would bellow so bellowed the thing I +heard."</p> +<p>The fisherfolk cried aloud in astonishment, and Opee-Kwan's jaw +lowered +and remained lowered.</p> +<p>"And in the distance I saw a monster like unto a thousand whales. It +was +one-eyed, and vomited smoke, and it snorted with exceeding loudness. I +was afraid and ran with shaking legs along the path between the bars. +But it came with the speed of the wind, this monster, and I leaped the +iron bars with its breath hot on my face...."</p> +<p>Opee-Kwan gained control of his jaw again. "And—and then, O Nam-Bok?"</p> +<p>"Then it came by on the bars, and harmed me not; and when my legs +could +hold me up again it was gone from sight. And it is a very common thing +in that country. Even the women and children are not afraid. Men make +them to do work, these monsters."</p> +<p>"As we make our dogs do work?" Koogah asked, with sceptic twinkle in +his +eye.</p> +<p>"Ay, as we make our dogs do work."</p> +<p>"And how do they breed these—these things?" Opee-Kwan questioned.</p> +<p>"They breed not at all. Men fashion them cunningly of iron, and feed +them with stone, and give them water to drink. The stone becomes fire, +and the water becomes steam, and the steam of the water is the breath +of +their nostrils, and—"</p> +<p>"There, there, O Nam-Bok," Opee-Kwan interrupted. "Tell us of other +wonders. We grow tired of this which we may not understand."</p> +<p>"You do not understand?" Nam-Bok asked despairingly.</p> +<p>"Nay, we do not understand," the men and women wailed back. "We +cannot +understand."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok thought of a combined harvester, and of the machines wherein +visions of living men were to be seen, and of the machines from which +came the voices of men, and he knew his people could never understand.</p> +<p>"Dare I say I rode this iron monster through the land?" he asked +bitterly.</p> +<p>Opee-Kwan threw up his hands, palms outward, in open incredulity. +"Say +on; say anything. We listen."</p> +<p>"Then did I ride the iron monster, for which I gave money—"</p> +<p>"Thou saidst it was fed with stone."</p> +<p>"And likewise, thou fool, I said money was a thing of which you know +nothing. As I say, I rode the monster through the land, and through +many +villages, until I came to a big village on a salt arm of the sea. And +the houses shoved their roofs among the stars in the sky, and the +clouds +drifted by them, and everywhere was much smoke. And the roar of that +village was like the roar of the sea in storm, and the people were so +many that I flung away my stick and no longer remembered the notches +upon it."</p> +<p>"Hadst thou made small notches," Koogah reproved, "thou mightst have +brought report."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok whirled upon him in anger. "Had I made small notches! +Listen, +Koogah, thou scratcher of bone! If I had made small notches, neither +the stick, nor twenty sticks, could have borne them—nay, not all the +driftwood of all the beaches between this village and the next. And if +all of you, the women and children as well, were twenty times as many, +and if you had twenty hands each, and in each hand a stick and a knife, +still the notches could not be cut for the people I saw, so many were +they and so fast did they come and go."</p> +<p>"There cannot be so many people in all the world," Opee-Kwan +objected, +for he was stunned and his mind could not grasp such magnitude of +numbers.</p> +<p>"What dost thou know of all the world and how large it is?" Nam-Bok +demanded.</p> +<p>"But there cannot be so many people in one place."</p> +<p>"Who art thou to say what can be and what cannot be?"</p> +<p>"It stands to reason there cannot be so many people in one place. +Their +canoes would clutter the sea till there was no room. And they could +empty the sea each day of its fish, and they would not all be fed."</p> +<p>"So it would seem," Nam-Bok made final answer; "yet it was so. With +my +own eyes I saw, and flung my stick away." He yawned heavily and rose to +his feet. "I have paddled far. The day has been long, and I am tired. +Now I will sleep, and to-morrow we will have further talk upon the +things I have seen."</p> +<p>Bask-Wah-Wan, hobbling fearfully in advance, proud indeed, yet awed +by +her wonderful son, led him to her igloo and stowed him away among the +greasy, ill-smelling furs. But the men lingered by the fire, and a +council was held wherein was there much whispering and low-voiced +discussion.</p> +<p>An hour passed, and a second, and Nam-Bok slept, and the talk went +on. +The evening sun dipped toward the northwest, and at eleven at night was +nearly due north. Then it was that the head man and the bone-scratcher +separated themselves from the council and aroused Nam-Bok. He blinked +up into their faces and turned on his side to sleep again. Opee-Kwan +gripped him by the arm and kindly but firmly shook his senses back into +him.</p> +<p>"Come, Nam-Bok, arise!" he commanded. "It be time."</p> +<p>"Another feast?" Nam-Bok cried. "Nay, I am not hungry. Go on with +the +eating and let me sleep."</p> +<p>"Time to be gone!" Koogah thundered.</p> +<p>But Opee-Kwan spoke more softly. "Thou wast bidarka-mate with me +when +we were boys," he said. "Together we first chased the seal and drew the +salmon from the traps. And thou didst drag me back to life, Nam-Bok, +when the sea closed over me and I was sucked down to the black rocks. +Together we hungered and bore the chill of the frost, and together we +crawled beneath the one fur and lay close to each other. And because of +these things, and the kindness in which I stood to thee, it grieves +me sore that thou shouldst return such a remarkable liar. We cannot +understand, and our heads be dizzy with the things thou hast spoken. It +is not good, and there has been much talk in the council. Wherefore we +send thee away, that our heads may remain clear and strong and be not +troubled by the unaccountable things."</p> +<p>"These things thou speakest of be shadows," Koogah took up the +strain. +"From the shadow-world thou hast brought them, and to the shadow-world +thou must return them. Thy bidarka be ready, and the tribespeople wait. +They may not sleep until thou art gone."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok was perplexed, but hearkened to the voice of the head man.</p> +<p>"If thou art Nam-Bok," Opee-Kwan was saying, "thou art a fearful and +most wonderful liar; if thou art the shadow of Nam-Bok, then thou +speakest of shadows, concerning which it is not good that living men +have knowledge. This great village thou hast spoken of we deem the +village of shadows. Therein flutter the souls of the dead; for the dead +be many and the living few. The dead do not come back. Never have the +dead come back—save thou with thy wonder-tales. It is not meet that +the dead come back, and should we permit it, great trouble may be our +portion."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok knew his people well and was aware that the voice of the +council +was supreme. So he allowed himself to be led down to the water's edge, +where he was put aboard his bidarka and a paddle thrust into his hand. +A +stray wild-fowl honked somewhere to seaward, and the surf broke limply +and hollowly on the sand. A dim twilight brooded over land and water, +and in the north the sun smouldered, vague and troubled, and draped +about with blood-red mists. The gulls were flying low. The off-shore +wind blew keen and chill, and the black-massed clouds behind it gave +promise of bitter weather.</p> +<p>"Out of the sea thou earnest," Opee-Kwan chanted oracularly, "and +back +into the sea thou goest. Thus is balance achieved and all things +brought +to law."</p> +<p>Bask-Wah-Wan limped to the froth-mark and cried, "I bless thee, +Nam-Bok, +for that thou remembered me."</p> +<p>But Koogah, shoving Nam-Bok clear of the beach, tore the shawl from +her +shoulders and flung it into the bidarka.</p> +<p>"It is cold in the long nights," she wailed; "and the frost is prone +to +nip old bones."</p> +<p>"The thing is a shadow," the bone-scratcher answered, "and shadows +cannot keep thee warm."</p> +<p>Nam-Bok stood up that his voice might carry. "O Bask-Wah-Wan, mother +that bore me!" he called. "Listen to the words of Nam-Bok, thy son. +There be room in his bidarka for two, and he would that thou camest +with +him. For his journey is to where there are fish and oil in plenty. +There +the frost comes not, and life is easy, and the things of iron do the +work of men. Wilt thou come, O Bask-Wah-Wan?"</p> +<p>She debated a moment, while the bidarka drifted swiftly from her, +then +raised her voice to a quavering treble. "I am old, Nam-Bok, and soon I +shall pass down among the shadows. But I have no wish to go before my +time. I am old, Nam-Bok, and I am afraid."</p> +<p>A shaft of light shot across the dim-lit sea and wrapped boat and +man in +a splendor of red and gold. Then a hush fell upon the fisherfolk, and +only was heard the moan of the off-shore wind and the cries of the +gulls +flying low in the air.</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="THE_MASTER_OF_MYSTERY"></a> +<h2>THE MASTER OF MYSTERY</h2> +<br> +<p>There was complaint in the village. The women chattered together +with +shrill, high-pitched voices. The men were glum and doubtful of aspect, +and the very dogs wandered dubiously about, alarmed in vague ways by +the +unrest of the camp, and ready to take to the woods on the first +outbreak +of trouble. The air was filled with suspicion. No man was sure of his +neighbor, and each was conscious that he stood in like unsureness with +his fellows. Even the children were oppressed and solemn, and little Di +Ya, the cause of it all, had been soundly thrashed, first by Hooniah, +his mother, and then by his father, Bawn, and was now whimpering and +looking pessimistically out upon the world from the shelter of the big +overturned canoe on the beach.</p> +<p>And to make the matter worse, Scundoo, the shaman, was in disgrace, +and +his known magic could not be called upon to seek out the evil-doer. +Forsooth, a month gone, he had promised a fair south wind so that the +tribe might journey to the <i>potlatch</i> at Tonkin, where Taku Jim +was +giving away the savings of twenty years; and when the day came, lo, +a grievous north wind blew, and of the first three canoes to venture +forth, one was swamped in the big seas, and two were pounded to pieces +on the rocks, and a child was drowned. He had pulled the string of the +wrong bag, he explained,—a mistake. But the people refused to listen; +the offerings of meat and fish and fur ceased to come to his door; +and he sulked within—so they thought, fasting in bitter penance; in +reality, eating generously from his well-stored cache and meditating +upon the fickleness of the mob.</p> +<p>The blankets of Hooniah were missing. They were good blankets, of +most +marvellous thickness and warmth, and her pride in them was greatened in +that they had been come by so cheaply. Ty-Kwan, of the next village but +one, was a fool to have so easily parted with them. But then, she did +not know they were the blankets of the murdered Englishman, because of +whose take-off the United States cutter nosed along the coast for a +time, while its launches puffed and snorted among the secret inlets. +And +not knowing that Ty-Kwan had disposed of them in haste so that his own +people might not have to render account to the Government, Hooniah's +pride was unshaken. And because the women envied her, her pride was +without end and boundless, till it filled the village and spilled over +along the Alaskan shore from Dutch Harbor to St. Mary's. Her totem had +become justly celebrated, and her name known on the lips of men +wherever +men fished and feasted, what of the blankets and their marvellous +thickness and warmth. It was a most mysterious happening, the manner of +their going.</p> +<p>"I but stretched them up in the sun by the side-wall of the house," +Hooniah disclaimed for the thousandth time to her Thlinget sisters. "I +but stretched them up and turned my back; for Di Ya, dough-thief +and eater of raw flour that he is, with head into the big iron pot, +overturned and stuck there, his legs waving like the branches of a +forest tree in the wind. And I did but drag him out and twice knock his +head against the door for riper understanding, and behold, the blankets +were not!"</p> +<p>"The blankets were not!" the women repeated in awed whispers.</p> +<p>"A great loss," one added. A second, "Never were there such +blankets." +And a third, "We be sorry, Hooniah, for thy loss." Yet each woman of +them was glad in her heart that the odious, dissension-breeding +blankets +were gone. "I but stretched them up in the sun," Hooniah began for the +thousand and first time.</p> +<p>"Yea, yea," Bawn spoke up, wearied. "But there were no gossips in +the +village from other places. Wherefore it be plain that some of our own +tribespeople have laid unlawful hand upon the blankets."</p> +<p>"How can that be, O Bawn?" the women chorussed indignantly. "Who +should +there be?"</p> +<p>"Then has there been witchcraft," Bawn continued stolidly enough, +though +he stole a sly glance at their faces.</p> +<p>"<i>Witchcraft!</i>" And at the dread word their voices hushed and +each +looked fearfully at each.</p> +<p>"Ay," Hooniah affirmed, the latent malignancy of her nature flashing +into a moment's exultation. "And word has been sent to Klok-No-Ton, and +strong paddles. Truly shall he be here with the afternoon tide."</p> +<p>The little groups broke up, and fear descended upon the village. Of +all +misfortune, witchcraft was the most appalling. With the intangible and +unseen things only the shamans could cope, and neither man, woman, nor +child could know, until the moment of ordeal, whether devils possessed +their souls or not. And of all shamans, Klok-No-Ton, who dwelt in the +next village, was the most terrible. None found more evil spirits than +he, none visited his victims with more frightful tortures. Even had he +found, once, a devil residing within the body of a three-months babe—a +most obstinate devil which could only be driven out when the babe had +lain for a week on thorns and briers. The body was thrown into the sea +after that, but the waves tossed it back again and again as a curse +upon +the village, nor did it finally go away till two strong men were staked +out at low tide and drowned.</p> +<p>And Hooniah had sent for this Klok-No-Ton. Better had it been if +Scundoo, their own shaman, were undisgraced. For he had ever a gentler +way, and he had been known to drive forth two devils from a man who +afterward begat seven healthy children. But Klok-No-Ton! They shuddered +with dire foreboding at thought of him, and each one felt himself the +centre of accusing eyes, and looked accusingly upon his fellows—each +one and all, save Sime, and Sime was a scoffer whose evil end was +destined with a certitude his successes could not shake.</p> +<p>"Hoh! Hoh!" he laughed. "Devils and Klok-No-Ton!—than whom no +greater +devil can be found in Thlinket Land."</p> +<p>"Thou fool! Even now he cometh with witcheries and sorceries; so +beware +thy tongue, lest evil befall thee and thy days be short in the land!"</p> +<p>So spoke La-lah, otherwise the Cheater, and Sime laughed scornfully.</p> +<p>"I am Sime, unused to fear, unafraid of the dark. I am a strong man, +as +my father before me, and my head is clear. Nor you nor I have seen with +our eyes the unseen evil things—"</p> +<p>"But Scundoo hath," La-lah made answer. "And likewise Klok-No-Ton. +This +we know."</p> +<p>"How dost thou know, son of a fool?" Sime thundered, the choleric +blood +darkening his thick bull neck.</p> +<p>"By the word of their mouths—even so."</p> +<p>Sime snorted. "A shaman is only a man. May not his words be crooked, +even as thine and mine? Bah! Bah! And once more, bah! And this for thy +shamans and thy shamans' devils! and this! and this!"</p> +<p>And snapping his fingers to right and left, Sime strode through the +on-lookers, who made over-zealous and fearsome way for him.</p> +<p>"A good fisher and strong hunter, but an evil man," said one.</p> +<p>"Yet does he flourish," speculated another.</p> +<p>"Wherefore be thou evil and flourish," Sime retorted over his +shoulder. +"And were all evil, there would be no need for shamans. Bah! You +children-afraid-of-the-dark!"</p> +<p>And when Klok-No-Ton arrived on the afternoon tide, Sime's defiant +laugh +was unabated; nor did he forbear to make a joke when the shaman tripped +on the sand in the landing. Klok-No-Ton looked at him sourly, and +without greeting stalked straight through their midst to the house of +Scundoo.</p> +<p>Of the meeting with Scundoo none of the tribespeople might know, for +they clustered reverently in the distance and spoke in whispers while +the masters of mystery were together.</p> +<p>"Greeting, O Scundoo!" Klok-No-Ton rumbled, wavering perceptibly +from +doubt of his reception.</p> +<p>He was a giant in stature, and towered massively above little +Scundoo, +whose thin voice floated upward like the faint far rasping of a cricket.</p> +<p>"Greeting, Klok-No-Ton," he returned. "The day is fair with thy +coming."</p> +<p>"Yet it would seem ..." Klok-No-Ton hesitated.</p> +<p>"Yea, yea," the little shaman put in impatiently, "that I have +fallen on +ill days, else would I not stand in gratitude to you in that you do my +work."</p> +<p>"It grieves me, friend Scundoo ..."</p> +<p>"Nay, I am made glad, Klok-No-Ton."</p> +<p>"But will I give thee half of that which be given me."</p> +<p>"Not so, good Klok-No-Ton," murmured Scundoo, with a deprecatory +wave of +the hand. "It is I who am thy slave, and my days shall be filled with +desire to befriend thee."</p> +<p>"As I—"</p> +<p>"As thou now befriendest me."</p> +<p>"That being so, it is then a bad business, these blankets of the +woman +Hooniah?"</p> +<p>The big shaman blundered tentatively in his quest, and Scundoo +smiled a +wan, gray smile, for he was used to reading men, and all men seemed +very +small to him.</p> +<p>"Ever hast thou dealt in strong medicine," he said. "Doubtless the +evil-doer will be briefly known to thee."</p> +<p>"Ay, briefly known when I set eyes upon him." Again Klok-No-Ton +hesitated. "Have there been gossips from other places?" he asked.</p> +<p>Scundoo shook his head. "Behold! Is this not a most excellent +mucluc?"</p> +<p>He held up the foot-covering of sealskin and walrus hide, and his +visitor examined it with secret interest.</p> +<p>"It did come to me by a close-driven bargain."</p> +<p>Klok-No-Ton nodded attentively.</p> +<p>"I got it from the man La-lah. He is a remarkable man, and often +have I +thought ..."</p> +<p>"So?" Klok-No-Ton ventured impatiently.</p> +<p>"Often have I thought," Scundoo concluded, his voice falling as he +came to a full pause. "It is a fair day, and thy medicine be strong, +Klok-No-Ton."</p> +<p>Klok-No-Ton's face brightened. "Thou art a great man, Scundoo, a +shaman +of shamans. I go now. I shall remember thee always. And the man La-lah, +as you say, is a remarkable man."</p> +<p>Scundoo smiled yet more wan and gray, closed the door on the heels +of +his departing visitor, and barred and double-barred it.</p> +<p>Sime was mending his canoe when Klok-No-Ton came down the beach, and +he broke off from his work only long enough to ostentatiously load his +rifle and place it near him.</p> +<p>The shaman noted the action and called out: "Let all the people come +together on this spot! It is the word of Klok-No-Ton, devil-seeker and +driver of devils!"</p> +<p>He had been minded to assemble them at Hooniah's house, but it was +necessary that all should be present, and he was doubtful of Sime's +obedience and did not wish trouble. Sime was a good man to let alone, +his judgment ran, and withal, a bad one for the health of any shaman.</p> +<p>"Let the woman Hooniah be brought," Klok-No-Ton commanded, glaring +ferociously about the circle and sending chills up and down the spines +of those he looked upon.</p> +<p>Hooniah waddled forward, head bent and gaze averted.</p> +<p>"Where be thy blankets?"</p> +<p>"I but stretched them up in the sun, and behold, they were not!" she +whined.</p> +<p>"So?"</p> +<p>"It was because of Di Ya."</p> +<p>"So?"</p> +<p>"Him have I beaten sore, and he shall yet be beaten, for that he +brought +trouble upon us who be poor people."</p> +<p>"The blankets!" Klok-No-Ton bellowed hoarsely, foreseeing her desire +to +lower the price to be paid. "The blankets, woman! Thy wealth is known."</p> +<p>"I but stretched them up in the sun," she sniffled, "and we be poor +people and have nothing."</p> +<p>He stiffened suddenly, with a hideous distortion of the face, and +Hooniah shrank back. But so swiftly did he spring forward, with +in-turned eyeballs and loosened jaw, that she stumbled and fell down +grovelling at his feet. He waved his arms about, wildly flagellating +the +air, his body writhing and twisting in torment. An epilepsy seemed +to come upon him. A white froth flecked his lips, and his body was +convulsed with shiverings and tremblings.</p> +<p>The women broke into a wailing chant, swaying backward and forward +in +abandonment, while one by one the men succumbed to the excitement till +only Sime remained. He, perched upon his canoe, looked on in mockery; +yet the ancestors whose seed he bore pressed heavily upon him, and he +swore his strongest oaths that his courage might be cheered. +Klok-No-Ton +was horrible to behold. He had cast off his blanket and torn his +clothes +from him, so that he was quite naked, save for a girdle of eagle-claws +about his thighs. Shrieking and yelling, his long black hair flying +like +a blot of night, he leaped frantically about the circle. A certain rude +rhythm characterized his frenzy, and when all were under its sway, +swinging their bodies in accord with his and venting their cries in +unison, he sat bolt upright, with arm outstretched and long, talon-like +finger extended. A low moaning, as of the dead, greeted this, and the +people cowered with shaking knees as the dread finger passed them +slowly +by. For death went with it, and life remained with those who watched it +go; and being rejected, they watched with eager intentness.</p> +<p>Finally, with a tremendous cry, the fateful finger rested upon +La-lah. +He shook like an aspen, seeing himself already dead, his household +goods +divided, and his widow married to his brother. He strove to speak, to +deny, but his tongue clove to his mouth and his throat was sanded with +an intolerable thirst. Klok-No-Ton seemed to half swoon away, now that +his work was done; but he waited, with closed eyes, listening for the +great blood-cry to go up—the great blood-cry, familiar to his ear from +a thousand conjurations, when the tribespeople flung themselves like +wolves upon the trembling victim. But only was there silence, then a +low +tittering, from nowhere in particular, which spread and spread until a +vast laughter welled up to the sky.</p> +<p>"Wherefore?" he cried.</p> +<p>"Na! Na!" the people laughed. "Thy medicine be ill, O Klok-No-Ton!"</p> +<p>"It be known to all," La-lah stuttered. "For eight weary months have +I +been gone afar with the Siwash sealers, and but this day am I come back +to find the blankets of Hooniah gone ere I came!"</p> +<p>"It be true!" they cried with one accord. "The blankets of Hooniah +were +gone ere he came!"</p> +<p>"And thou shalt be paid nothing for thy medicine which is of no +avail," +announced Hooniah, on her feet once more and smarting from a sense of +ridiculousness.</p> +<p>But Klok-No-Ton saw only the face of Scundoo and its wan, gray +smile, +heard only the faint far cricket's rasping. "I got it from the man +La-lah, and often have I thought," and, "It is a fair day and thy +medicine be strong."</p> +<p>He brushed by Hooniah, and the circle instinctively gave way for him +to +pass. Sime flung a jeer from the top of the canoe, the women snickered +in his face, cries of derision rose in his wake, but he took no notice, +pressing onward to the house of Scundoo. He hammered on the door, beat +it with his fists, and howled vile imprecations. Yet there was no +response, save that in the lulls Scundoo's voice rose eerily in +incantation. Klok-No-Ton raged about like a madman, but when he +attempted to break in the door with a huge stone, murmurs arose from +the men and women. And he, Klok-No-Ton, knew that he stood shorn of his +strength and authority before an alien people. He saw a man stoop for a +stone, and a second, and a bodily fear ran through him.</p> +<p>"Harm not Scundoo, who is a master!" a woman cried out.</p> +<p>"Better you return to your own village," a man advised menacingly.</p> +<p>Klok-No-Ton turned on his heel and went down among them to the +beach, a +bitter rage at his heart, and in his head a just apprehension for +his defenceless back. But no stones were cast. The children swarmed +mockingly about his feet, and the air was wild with laughter and +derision, but that was all. Yet he did not breathe freely until the +canoe was well out upon the water, when he rose up and laid a futile +curse upon the village and its people, not forgetting to particularly +specify Scundoo who had made a mock of him.</p> +<p>Ashore there was a clamor for Scundoo, and the whole population +crowded +his door, entreating and imploring in confused babel till he came forth +and raised his hand.</p> +<p>"In that ye are my children I pardon freely," he said. "But never +again. +For the last time thy foolishness goes unpunished. That which ye wish +shall be granted, and it be already known to me. This night, when the +moon has gone behind the world to look upon the mighty dead, let all +the +people gather in the blackness before the house of Hooniah. Then shall +the evil-doer stand forth and take his merited reward. I have spoken."</p> +<p>"It shall be death!" Bawn vociferated, "for that it hath brought +worry +upon us, and shame."</p> +<p>"So be it," Scundoo replied, and shut his door.</p> +<p>"Now shall all be made clear and plain, and content rest upon us +once +again," La-lah declaimed oracularly.</p> +<p>"Because of Scundoo, the little man," Sime sneered.</p> +<p>"Because of the medicine of Scundoo, the little man," La-lah +corrected.</p> +<p>"Children of foolishness, these Thlinket people!" Sime smote his +thigh a +resounding blow. "It passeth understanding that grown women and strong +men should get down in the dirt to dream-things and wonder tales."</p> +<p>"I am a travelled man," La-lah answered. "I have journeyed on the +deep +seas and seen signs and wonders, and I know that these things be so. +I am +La-lah—"</p> +<p>"The Cheater—"</p> +<p>"So called, but the Far-Journeyer right-named."</p> +<p>"I am not so great a traveller—" Sime began.</p> +<p>"Then hold thy tongue," Bawn cut in, and they separated in anger.</p> +<p>When the last silver moonlight had vanished beyond the world, +Scundoo +came among the people huddled about the house of Hooniah. He walked +with +a quick, alert step, and those who saw him in the light of Hooniah's +slush-lamp noticed that he came empty-handed, without rattles, masks, +or +shaman's paraphernalia, save for a great sleepy raven carried under one +arm.</p> +<p>"Is there wood gathered for a fire, so that all may see when the +work be +done?" he demanded.</p> +<p>"Yea," Bawn answered. "There be wood in plenty."</p> +<p>"Then let all listen, for my words be few. With me have I brought +Jelchs, the Raven, diviner of mystery and seer of things. Him, in his +blackness, shall I place under the big black pot of Hooniah, in the +blackest corner of her house. The slush-lamp shall cease to burn, and +all remain in outer darkness. It is very simple. One by one shall ye go +into the house, lay hand upon the pot for the space of one long intake +of the breath, and withdraw again. Doubtless Jelchs will make outcry +when the hand of the evil-doer is nigh him. Or who knows but otherwise +he may manifest his wisdom. Are ye ready?"</p> +<p>"We be ready," came the multi-voiced response.</p> +<p>"Then will I call the name aloud, each in his turn and hers, till +all +are called."</p> +<p>Thereat La-lah was first chosen, and he passed in at once. Every ear +strained, and through the silence they could hear his footsteps +creaking +across the rickety floor. But that was all. Jelchs made no outcry, gave +no sign. Bawn was next chosen, for it well might be that a man should +steal his own blankets with intent to cast shame upon his neighbors. +Hooniah followed, and other women and children, but without result.</p> +<p>"Sime!" Scundoo called out.</p> +<p>"Sime!" he repeated.</p> +<p>But Sime did not stir.</p> +<p>"Art thou afraid of the dark?" La-lah, his own integrity being +proved, +demanded fiercely.</p> +<p>Sime chuckled. "I laugh at it all, for it is a great foolishness. +Yet will I go in, not in belief in wonders, but in token that I am +unafraid."</p> +<p>And he passed in boldly, and came out still mocking.</p> +<p>"Some day shalt thou die with great suddenness," La-lah whispered, +righteously indignant.</p> +<p>"I doubt not," the scoffer answered airily. "Few men of us die in +our +beds, what of the shamans and the deep sea."</p> +<p>When half the villagers had safely undergone the ordeal, the +excitement, +because of its repression, was painfully intense. When two-thirds had +gone through, a young woman, close on her first child-bed, broke down +and in nervous shrieks and laughter gave form to her terror.</p> +<p>Finally the turn came for the last of all to go in, and nothing had +happened. And Di Ya was the last of all. It must surely be he. Hooniah +let out a lament to the stars, while the rest drew back from the +luckless lad. He was half-dead from fright, and his legs gave under him +so that he staggered on the threshold and nearly fell. Scundoo shoved +him inside and closed the door. A long time went by, during which could +be heard only the boy's weeping. Then, very slowly, came the creak of +his steps to the far corner, a pause, and the creaking of his return. +The door opened and he came forth. Nothing had happened, and he was the +last.</p> +<p>"Let the fire be lighted," Scundoo commanded.</p> +<p>The bright flames rushed upward, revealing faces yet marked with +vanishing fear, but also clouded with doubt.</p> +<p>"Surely the thing has failed," Hooniah whispered hoarsely.</p> +<p>"Yea," Bawn answered complacently. "Scundoo groweth old, and we +stand in +need of a new shaman."</p> +<p>"Where now is the wisdom of Jelchs?" Sime snickered in La-lah's ear.</p> +<p>La-lah brushed his brow in a puzzled manner and said nothing.</p> +<p>Sime threw his chest out arrogantly and strutted up to the little +shaman. "Hoh! Hoh! As I said, nothing has come of it!"</p> +<p>"So it would seem, so it would seem," Scundoo answered meekly. "And +it +would seem strange to those unskilled in the affairs of mystery."</p> +<p>"As thou?" Sime queried audaciously.</p> +<p>"Mayhap even as I." Scundoo spoke quite softly, his eyelids +drooping, +slowly drooping, down, down, till his eyes were all but hidden. "So I +am minded of another test. Let every man, woman, and child, now and at +once, hold their hands well up above their heads!"</p> +<p>So unexpected was the order, and so imperatively was it given, that +it +was obeyed without question. Every hand was in the air.</p> +<p>"Let each look on the other's hands, and let all look," Scundoo +commanded, "so that—"</p> +<p>But a noise of laughter, which was more of wrath, drowned his voice. +All +eyes had come to rest upon Sime. Every hand but his was black with +soot, +and his was guiltless of the smirch of Hooniah's pot.</p> +<p>A stone hurtled through the air and struck him on the cheek.</p> +<p>"It is a lie!" he yelled. "A lie! I know naught of Hooniah's +blankets!"</p> +<p>A second stone gashed his brow, a third whistled past his head, the +great blood-cry went up, and everywhere were people groping on the +ground for missiles. He staggered and half sank down.</p> +<p>"It was a joke! Only a joke!" he shrieked. "I but took them for a +joke!"</p> +<p>"Where hast thou hidden them?" Scundoo's shrill, sharp voice cut +through +the tumult like a knife.</p> +<p>"In the large skin-bale in my house, the one slung by the +ridge-pole," +came the answer. "But it was a joke, I say, only—"</p> +<p>Scundoo nodded his head, and the air went thick with flying stones. +Sime's wife was crying silently, her head upon her knees; but his +little +boy, with shrieks and laughter, was flinging stones with the rest.</p> +<p>Hooniah came waddling back with the precious blankets. Scundoo +stopped +her.</p> +<p>"We be poor people and have little," she whimpered. "So be not hard +upon +us, O Scundoo."</p> +<p>The people ceased from the quivering stone-pile they had builded, +and +looked on.</p> +<p>"Nay, it was never my way, good Hooniah," Scundoo made answer, +reaching +for the blankets. "In token that I am not hard, these only shall I +take."</p> +<p>"Am I not wise, my children?" he demanded.</p> +<p>"Thou art indeed wise, O Scundoo!" they cried in one voice.</p> +<p>And he went away into the darkness, the blankets around him, and +Jelchs +nodding sleepily under his arm.</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="THE_SUNLANDERS"></a> +<h2>THE SUNLANDERS</h2> +<br> +<p>Mandell is an obscure village on the rim of the polar sea. It is not +large, and the people are peaceable, more peaceable even than those +of the adjacent tribes. There are few men in Mandell, and many women; +wherefore a wholesome and necessary polygamy is in practice; the women +bear children with ardor, and the birth of a man-child is hailed with +acclamation. Then there is Aab-Waak, whose head rests always on one +shoulder, as though at some time the neck had become very tired and +refused forevermore its wonted duty.</p> +<p>The cause of all these things,—the peaceableness, and the polygamy, +and +the tired neck of Aab-Waak,—goes back among the years to the time when +the schooner <i>Search</i> dropped anchor in Mandell Bay, and when +Tyee, +chief man of the tribe, conceived a scheme of sudden wealth. To this +day +the story of things that happened is remembered and spoken of with +bated +breath by the people of Mandell, who are cousins to the Hungry Folk who +live in the west. Children draw closer when the tale is told, and +marvel +sagely to themselves at the madness of those who might have been their +forebears had they not provoked the Sunlanders and come to bitter ends.</p> +<p>It began to happen when six men came ashore from the <i>Search</i>, +with +heavy outfits, as though they had come to stay, and quartered +themselves +in Neegah's igloo. Not but that they paid well in flour and sugar for +the lodging, but Neegah was aggrieved because Mesahchie, his daughter, +elected to cast her fortunes and seek food and blanket with Bill-Man, +who was leader of the party of white men.</p> +<p>"She is worth a price," Neegah complained to the gathering by the +council-fire, when the six white men were asleep. "She is worth a +price, +for we have more men than women, and the men be bidding high. The +hunter +Ounenk offered me a kayak, new-made, and a gun which he got in trade +from the Hungry Folk. This was I offered, and behold, now she is gone +and I have nothing!"</p> +<p>"I, too, did bid for Mesahchie," grumbled a voice, in tones not +altogether joyless, and Peelo shoved his broad-cheeked, jovial face for +a moment into the light.</p> +<p>"Thou, too," Neegah affirmed. "And there were others. Why is there +such +a restlessness upon the Sunlanders?" he demanded petulantly. "Why do +they not stay at home? The Snow People do not wander to the lands of +the +Sunlanders."</p> +<p>"Better were it to ask why they come," cried a voice from the +darkness, +and Aab-Waak pushed his way to the front.</p> +<p>"Ay! Why they come!" clamored many voices, and Aab-Waak waved his +hand +for silence.</p> +<p>"Men do not dig in the ground for nothing," he began. "And I have it +in mind of the Whale People, who are likewise Sunlanders, and who lost +their ship in the ice. You all remember the Whale People, who came to +us +in their broken boats, and who went away into the south with dogs +and sleds when the frost arrived and snow covered the land. And you +remember, while they waited for the frost, that one man of them dug in +the ground, and then two men and three, and then all men of them, with +great excitement and much disturbance. What they dug out of the ground +we do not know, for they drove us away so we could not see. But +afterward, when they were gone, we looked and found nothing. Yet there +be much ground and they did not dig it all."</p> +<p>"Ay, Aab-Waak! Ay!" cried the people in admiration.</p> +<p>"Wherefore I have it in mind," he concluded, "that one Sunlander +tells +another, and that these Sunlanders have been so told and are come to +dig +in the ground."</p> +<p>"But how can it be that Bill-Man speaks our tongue?" demanded a +little +weazened old hunter,—"Bill-Man, upon whom never before our eyes have +rested?"</p> +<p>"Bill-Man has been other times in the Snow Lands," Aab-Waak +answered, +"else would he not speak the speech of the Bear People, which is like +the speech of the Hungry Folk, which is very like the speech of the +Mandells. For there have been many Sunlanders among the Bear People, +few among the Hungry Folk, and none at all among the Mandells, save the +Whale People and those who sleep now in the igloo of Neegah."</p> +<p>"Their sugar is very good," Neegah commented, "and their flour."</p> +<p>"They have great wealth," Ounenk added. "Yesterday I was to their +ship, +and beheld most cunning tools of iron, and knives, and guns, and flour, +and sugar, and strange foods without end."</p> +<p>"It is so, brothers!" Tyee stood up and exulted inwardly at the +respect and silence his people accorded him. "They be very rich, these +Sunlanders. Also, they be fools. For behold! They come among us boldly, +blindly, and without thought for all of their great wealth. Even now +they snore, and we are many and unafraid."</p> +<p>"Mayhap they, too, are unafraid, being great fighters," the weazened +little old hunter objected.</p> +<p>But Tyee scowled upon him. "Nay, it would not seem so. They live to +the +south, under the path of the sun, and are soft as their dogs are soft. +You remember the dog of the Whale People? Our dogs ate him the second +day, for he was soft and could not fight. The sun is warm and life easy +in the Sun Lands, and the men are as women, and the women as children."</p> +<p>Heads nodded in approval, and the women craned their necks to listen.</p> +<p>"It is said they are good to their women, who do little work," +tittered +Likeeta, a broad-hipped, healthy young woman, daughter to Tyee himself.</p> +<p>"Thou wouldst follow the feet of Mesahchie, eh?" he cried angrily. +Then +he turned swiftly to the tribesmen. "Look you, brothers, this is the +way +of the Sunlanders! They have eyes for our women, and take them one +by one. As Mesahchie has gone, cheating Neegah of her price, so will +Likeeta go, so will they all go, and we be cheated. I have talked with +a +hunter from the Bear People, and I know. There be Hungry Folk among us; +let them speak if my words be true."</p> +<p>The six hunters of the Hungry Folk attested the truth and fell each +to telling his neighbor of the Sunlanders and their ways. There were +mutterings from the younger men, who had wives to seek, and from the +older men, who had daughters to fetch prices, and a low hum of rage +rose +higher and clearer.</p> +<p>"They are very rich, and have cunning tools of iron, and knives, and +guns without end," Tyee suggested craftily, his dream of sudden wealth +beginning to take shape.</p> +<p>"I shall take the gun of Bill-Man for myself," Aab-Waak suddenly +proclaimed.</p> +<p>"Nay, it shall be mine!" shouted Neegah; "for there is the price of +Mesahchie to be reckoned."</p> +<p>"Peace! O brothers!" Tyee swept the assembly with his hands. "Let +the +women and children go to their igloos. This is the talk of men; let it +be for the ears of men."</p> +<p>"There be guns in plenty for all," he said when the women had +unwillingly withdrawn. "I doubt not there will be two guns for each +man, +without thought of the flour and sugar and other things. And it is +easy. +The six Sunlanders in Neegah's igloo will we kill to-night while they +sleep. To-morrow will we go in peace to the ship to trade, and there, +when the time favors, kill all their brothers. And to-morrow night +there +shall be feasting and merriment and division of wealth. And the least +man shall possess more than did ever the greatest before. Is it wise, +that which I have spoken, brothers?"</p> +<p>A low growl of approval answered him, and preparation for the attack +was +begun. The six Hungry Folk, as became members of a wealthier tribe, +were +armed with rifles and plenteously supplied with ammunition. But it was +only here and there that a Mandell possessed a gun, many of which were +broken, and there was a general slackness of powder and shells. This +poverty of war weapons, however, was relieved by myriads of bone-headed +arrows and casting-spears for work at a distance, and for close +quarters +steel knives of Russian and Yankee make.</p> +<p>"Let there be no noise," Tyee finally instructed; "but be there many +on +every side of the igloo, and close, so that the Sunlanders may not +break +through. Then do you, Neegah, with six of the young men behind, crawl +in to where they sleep. Take no guns, which be prone to go off at +unexpected times, but put the strength of your arms into the knives."</p> +<p>"And be it understood that no harm befall Mesahchie, who is worth a +price," Neegah whispered hoarsely.</p> +<p>Flat upon the ground, the small army concentred on the igloo, and +behind, deliciously expectant, crouched many women and children, come +out to witness the murder. The brief August night was passing, and in +the gray of dawn could be dimly discerned the creeping forms of Neegah +and the young men. Without pause, on hands and knees, they entered the +long passageway and disappeared. Tyee rose up and rubbed his hands. All +was going well. Head after head in the big circle lifted and waited. +Each man pictured the scene according to his nature—the sleeping men, +the plunge of the knives, and the sudden death in the dark.</p> +<p>A loud hail, in the voice of a Sunlander, rent the silence, and a +shot rang out. Then an uproar broke loose inside the igloo. Without +premeditation, the circle swept forward into the passageway. On the +inside, half a dozen repeating rifles began to chatter, and the +Mandells, jammed in the confined space, were powerless. Those at the +front strove madly to retreat from the fire-spitting guns in their very +faces, and those in the rear pressed as madly forward to the attack. +The +bullets from the big 45:90's drove through half a dozen men at a +shot, and the passageway, gorged with surging, helpless men, became a +shambles. The rifles, pumped without aim into the mass, withered it +away +like a machine gun, and against that steady stream of death no man +could +advance.</p> +<p>"Never was there the like!" panted one of the Hungry Folk. "I did +but +look in, and the dead were piled like seals on the ice after a killing!"</p> +<p>"Did I not say, mayhap, they were fighters?" cackled the weazened +old +hunter.</p> +<p>"It was to be expected," Aab-Waak answered stoutly. "We fought in a +trap +of our making."</p> +<p>"O ye fools!" Tyee chided. "Ye sons of fools! It was not planned, +this +thing ye have done. To Neegah and the six young men only was it given +to +go inside. My cunning is superior to the cunning of the Sunlanders, but +ye take away its edge, and rob me of its strength, and make it worse +than no cunning at all!"</p> +<p>No one made reply, and all eyes centred on the igloo, which loomed +vague +and monstrous against the clear northeast sky. Through a hole in the +roof the smoke from the rifles curled slowly upward in the pulseless +air, and now and again a wounded man crawled painfully through the gray.</p> +<p>"Let each ask of his neighbor for Neegah and the six young men," +Tyee +commanded.</p> +<p>And after a time the answer came back, "Neegah and the six young men +are +not."</p> +<p>"And many more are not!" wailed a woman to the rear.</p> +<p>"The more wealth for those who are left," Tyee grimly consoled. +Then, +turning to Aab-Waak, he said: "Go thou, and gather together many +sealskins filled with oil. Let the hunters empty them on the outside +wood of the igloo and of the passage. And let them put fire to it ere +the Sunlanders make holes in the igloo for their guns."</p> +<p>Even as he spoke a hole appeared in the dirt plastered between the +logs, +a rifle muzzle protruded, and one of the Hungry Folk clapped hand to +his +side and leaped in the air. A second shot, through the lungs, brought +him to the ground. Tyee and the rest scattered to either side, out of +direct range, and Aab-Waak hastened the men forward with the skins of +oil. Avoiding the loopholes, which were making on every side of the +igloo, they emptied the skins on the dry drift-logs brought down by the +Mandell River from the tree-lands to the south. Ounenk ran forward with +a blazing brand, and the flames leaped upward. Many minutes passed, +without sign, and they held their weapons ready as the fire gained +headway.</p> +<p>Tyee rubbed his hands gleefully as the dry structure burned and +crackled. "Now we have them, brothers! In the trap!"</p> +<p>"And no one may gainsay me the gun of Bill-Man," Aab-Waak announced.</p> +<p>"Save Bill-Man," squeaked the old hunter. "For behold, he cometh +now!"</p> +<p>Covered with a singed and blackened blanket, the big white man +leaped +out of the blazing entrance, and on his heels, likewise shielded, came +Mesahchie, and the five other Sunlanders. The Hungry Folk tried to +check +the rush with an ill-directed volley, while the Mandells hurled in +a cloud of spears and arrows. But the Sunlanders cast their flaming +blankets from them as they ran, and it was seen that each bore on his +shoulders a small pack of ammunition. Of all their possessions, they +had +chosen to save that. Running swiftly and with purpose, they broke the +circle and headed directly for the great cliff, which towered blackly +in +the brightening day a half-mile to the rear of the village.</p> +<p>But Tyee knelt on one knee and lined the sights of his rifle on the +rearmost Sunlander. A great shout went up when he pulled the trigger +and the man fell forward, struggled partly up, and fell again. Without +regard for the rain of arrows, another Sunlander ran back, bent over +him, and lifted him across his shoulders. But the Mandell spearmen were +crowding up into closer range, and a strong cast transfixed the wounded +man. He cried out and became swiftly limp as his comrade lowered him to +the ground. In the meanwhile, Bill-Man and the three others had made a +stand and were driving a leaden hail into the advancing spearmen. The +fifth Sunlander bent over his stricken fellow, felt the heart, and then +coolly cut the straps of the pack and stood up with the ammunition and +extra gun.</p> +<p>"Now is he a fool!" cried Tyee, leaping high, as he ran forward, to +clear the squirming body of one of the Hungry Folk.</p> +<p>His own rifle was clogged so that he could not use it, and he called +out +for some one to spear the Sunlander, who had turned and was running for +safety under the protecting fire. The little old hunter poised his +spear +on the throwing-stick, swept his arm back as he ran, and delivered the +cast.</p> +<p>"By the body of the Wolf, say I, it was a good throw!" Tyee praised, +as +the fleeing man pitched forward, the spear standing upright between his +shoulders and swaying slowly forward and back.</p> +<p>The little weazened old man coughed and sat down. A streak of red +showed +on his lips and welled into a thick stream. He coughed again, and a +strange whistling came and went with his breath.</p> +<p>"They, too, are unafraid, being great fighters," he wheezed, pawing +aimlessly with his hands. "And behold! Bill-Man comes now!"</p> +<p>Tyee glanced up. Four Mandells and one of the Hungry Folk had rushed +upon the fallen man and were spearing him from his knees back to the +earth. In the twinkling of an eye, Tyee saw four of them cut down by +the bullets of the Sunlanders. The fifth, as yet unhurt, seized the two +rifles, but as he stood up to make off he was whirled almost completely +around by the impact of a bullet in the arm, steadied by a second, and +overthrown by the shock of a third. A moment later and Bill-Man was on +the spot, cutting the pack-straps and picking up the guns.</p> +<p>This Tyee saw, and his own people falling as they straggled forward, +and +he was aware of a quick doubt, and resolved to lie where he was and +see more. For some unaccountable reason, Mesahchie was running back to +Bill-Man; but before she could reach him, Tyee saw Peelo run out and +throw arms about her. He essayed to sling her across his shoulder, but +she grappled with him, tearing and scratching at his face. Then she +tripped him, and the pair fell heavily. When they regained their feet, +Peelo had shifted his grip so that one arm was passed under her chin, +the wrist pressing into her throat and strangling her. He buried his +face in her breast, taking the blows of her hands on his thick mat +of hair, and began slowly to force her off the field. Then it was, +retreating with the weapons of his fallen comrades, that Bill-Man came +upon them. As Mesahchie saw him, she twirled the victim around and held +him steady. Bill-Man swung the rifle in his right hand, and hardly +easing his stride, delivered the blow. Tyee saw Peelo drive to the +earth +as smote by a falling star, and the Sunlander and Neegah's daughter +fleeing side by side.</p> +<p>A bunch of Mandells, led by one of the Hungry Folk, made a futile +rush +which melted away into the earth before the scorching fire.</p> +<p>Tyee caught his breath and murmured, "Like the young frost in the +morning sun."</p> +<p>"As I say, they are great fighters," the old hunter whispered +weakly, +far gone in hemorrhage. "I know. I have heard. They be sea-robbers and +hunters of seals; and they shoot quick and true, for it is their way of +life and the work of their hands."</p> +<p>"Like the young frost in the morning sun," Tyee repeated, crouching +for +shelter behind the dying man and peering at intervals about him.</p> +<p>It was no longer a fight, for no Mandell man dared venture forward, +and +as it was, they were too close to the Sunlanders to go back. Three +tried +it, scattering and scurrying like rabbits; but one came down with a +broken leg, another was shot through the body, and the third, twisting +and dodging, fell on the edge of the village. So the tribesmen crouched +in the hollow places and burrowed into the dirt in the open, while the +Sunlanders' bullets searched the plain.</p> +<p>"Move not," Tyee pleaded, as Aab-Waak came worming over the ground +to +him. "Move not, good Aab-Waak, else you bring death upon us."</p> +<p>"Death sits upon many," Aab-Waak laughed; "wherefore, as you say, +there +will be much wealth in division. My father breathes fast and short +behind the big rock yon, and beyond, twisted like in a knot, lieth my +brother. But their share shall be my share, and it is well."</p> +<p>"As you say, good Aab-Waak, and as I have said; but before division +must +come that which we may divide, and the Sunlanders be not yet dead."</p> +<p>A bullet glanced from a rock before them, and singing shrilly, rose +low +over their heads on its second flight. Tyee ducked and shivered, but +Aab-Waak grinned and sought vainly to follow it with his eyes.</p> +<p>"So swiftly they go, one may not see them," he observed.</p> +<p>"But many be dead of us," Tyee went on.</p> +<p>"And many be left," was the reply. "And they hug close to the earth, +for they have become wise in the fashion of righting. Further, they are +angered. Moreover, when we have killed the Sunlanders on the ship, +there +will remain but four on the land. These may take long to kill, but in +the end it will happen."</p> +<p>"How may we go down to the ship when we cannot go this way or that?" +Tyee questioned.</p> +<p>"It is a bad place where lie Bill-Man and his brothers," Aab-Waak +explained. "We may come upon them from every side, which is not good. +So they aim to get their backs against the cliff and wait until their +brothers of the ship come to give them aid."</p> +<p>"Never shall they come from the ship, their brothers! I have said +it."</p> +<p>Tyee was gathering courage again, and when the Sunlanders verified +the +prediction by retreating to the cliff, he was light-hearted as ever.</p> +<p>"There be only three of us!" complained one of the Hungry Folk as +they +came together for council.</p> +<p>"Therefore, instead of two, shall you have four guns each," was +Tyee's +rejoinder.</p> +<p>"We did good fighting."</p> +<p>"Ay; and if it should happen that two of you be left, then will you +have +six guns each. Therefore, fight well."</p> +<p>"And if there be none of them left?" Aab-Waak whispered slyly.</p> +<p>"Then will <i>we</i> have the guns, you and I," Tyee whispered back.</p> +<p>However, to propitiate the Hungry Folk, he made one of them leader +of the ship expedition. This party comprised fully two-thirds of the +tribesmen, and departed for the coast, a dozen miles away, laden with +skins and things to trade. The remaining men were disposed in a large +half-circle about the breastwork which Bill-Man and his Sunlanders had +begun to throw up. Tyee was quick to note the virtues of things, and at +once set his men to digging shallow trenches.</p> +<p>"The time will go before they are aware," he explained to Aab-Waak; +"and +their minds being busy, they will not think overmuch of the dead that +are, nor gather trouble to themselves. And in the dark of night they +may creep closer, so that when the Sunlanders look forth in the morning +light they will find us very near."</p> +<p>In the midday heat the men ceased from their work and made a meal of +dried fish and seal oil which the women brought up. There was some +clamor for the food of the Sunlanders in the igloo of Neegah, but Tyee +refused to divide it until the return of the ship party. Speculations +upon the outcome became rife, but in the midst of it a dull boom +drifted +up over the land from the sea. The keen-eyed ones made out a dense +cloud +of smoke, which quickly disappeared, and which they averred was +directly +over the ship of the Sunlanders. Tyee was of the opinion that it was a +big gun. Aab-Waak did not know, but thought it might be a signal of +some +sort. Anyway, he said, it was time something happened.</p> +<p>Five or six hours afterward a solitary man was descried coming +across +the wide flat from the sea, and the women and children poured out upon +him in a body. It was Ounenk, naked, winded, and wounded. The blood +still trickled down his face from a gash on the forehead. His left arm, +frightfully mangled, hung helpless at his side. But most significant of +all, there was a wild gleam in his eyes which betokened the women knew +not what.</p> +<p>"Where be Peshack?" an old squaw queried sharply.</p> +<p>"And Olitlie?" "And Polak?" "And Mah-Kook?" the voices took up the +cry.</p> +<p>But he said nothing, brushing his way through the clamorous mass and +directing his staggering steps toward Tyee. The old squaw raised the +wail, and one by one the women joined her as they swung in behind. The +men crawled out of their trenches and ran back to gather about Tyee, +and +it was noticed that the Sunlanders climbed upon their barricade to see.</p> +<p>Ounenk halted, swept the blood from his eyes, and looked about. He +strove to speak, but his dry lips were glued together. Likeeta fetched +him water, and he grunted and drank again.</p> +<p>"Was it a fight?" Tyee demanded finally,—"a good fight?"</p> +<p>"Ho! ho! ho!" So suddenly and so fiercely did Ounenk laugh that +every +voice hushed. "Never was there such a fight! So I say, I, Ounenk, +fighter beforetime of beasts and men. And ere I forget, let me speak +fat +words and wise. By fighting will the Sunlanders teach us Mandell Folk +how to fight. And if we fight long enough, we shall be great fighters, +even as the Sunlanders, or else we shall be—dead. Ho! ho! ho! It was a +fight!"</p> +<p>"Where be thy brothers?" Tyee shook him till he shrieked from the +pain +of his hurts.</p> +<p>Ounenk sobered. "My brothers? They are not."</p> +<p>"And Pome-Lee?" cried one of the two Hungry Folk; "Pome-Lee, the son +of +my mother?"</p> +<p>"Pome-Lee is not," Ounenk answered in a monotonous voice.</p> +<p>"And the Sunlanders?" from Aab-Waak.</p> +<p>"The Sunlanders are not."</p> +<p>"Then the ship of the Sunlanders, and the wealth and guns and +things?" +Tyee demanded.</p> +<p>"Neither the ship of the Sunlanders, nor the wealth and guns and +things," was the unvarying response. "All are not. Nothing is. I only +am."</p> +<p>"And thou art a fool."</p> +<p>"It may be so," Ounenk answered, unruffled.</p> +<p>"I have seen that which would well make me a fool."</p> +<p>Tyee held his tongue, and all waited till it should please Ounenk to +tell the story in his own way.</p> +<p>"We took no guns, O Tyee," he at last began; "no guns, my +brothers—only +knives and hunting bows and spears. And in twos and threes, in our +kayaks, we came to the ship. They were glad to see us, the Sunlanders, +and we spread our skins and they brought out their articles of trade, +and everything was well. And Pome-Lee waited—waited till the sun was +well overhead and they sat at meat, when he gave the cry and we fell +upon them. Never was there such a fight, and never such fighters. Half +did we kill in the quickness of surprise, but the half that was left +became as devils, and they multiplied themselves, and everywhere they +fought like devils. Three put their backs against the mast of the ship, +and we ringed them with our dead before they died. And some got guns +and +shot with both eyes wide open, and very quick and sure. And one got a +big gun, from which at one time he shot many small bullets. And so, +behold!"</p> +<p>Ounenk pointed to his ear, neatly pierced by a buckshot.</p> +<p>"But I, Ounenk, drove my spear through his back from behind. And in +such +fashion, one way and another, did we kill them all—all save the head +man. And him we were about, many of us, and he was alone, when he made +a +great cry and broke through us, five or six dragging upon him, and ran +down inside the ship. And then, when the wealth of the ship was ours, +and only the head man down below whom we would kill presently, why then +there was a sound as of all the guns in the world—a mighty sound! And +like a bird I rose up in the air, and the living Mandell Folk, and +the dead Sunlanders, the little kayaks, the big ship, the guns, the +wealth—everything rose up in the air. So I say, I, Ounenk, who tell the +tale, am the only one left."</p> +<p>A great silence fell upon the assemblage. Tyee looked at Aab-Waak +with +awe-struck eyes, but forbore to speak. Even the women were too stunned +to wail the dead.</p> +<p>Ounenk looked about him with pride. "I, only, am left," he repeated.</p> +<p>But at that instant a rifle cracked from Bill-Man's barricade, and +there +was a sharp spat and thud on the chest of Ounenk. He swayed backward +and +came forward again, a look of startled surprise on his face. He gasped, +and his lips writhed in a grim smile. There was a shrinking together of +the shoulders and a bending of the knees. He shook himself, as might a +drowsing man, and straightened up. But the shrinking and bending began +again, and he sank down slowly, quite slowly, to the ground.</p> +<p>It was a clean mile from the pit of the Sunlanders, and death had +spanned it. A great cry of rage went up, and in it there was much of +blood-vengeance, much of the unreasoned ferocity of the brute. Tyee and +Aab-Waak tried to hold the Mandell Folk back, were thrust aside, and +could only turn and watch the mad charge. But no shots came from the +Sunlanders, and ere half the distance was covered, many, affrighted by +the mysterious silence of the pit, halted and waited. The wilder +spirits +bore on, and when they had cut the remaining distance in half, the pit +still showed no sign of life. At two hundred yards they slowed down and +bunched; at one hundred, they stopped, a score of them, suspicious, and +conferred together.</p> +<p>Then a wreath of smoke crowned the barricade, and they scattered +like a +handful of pebbles thrown at random. Four went down, and four more, and +they continued swiftly to fall, one and two at a time, till but one +remained, and he in full flight with death singing about his ears. It +was Nok, a young hunter, long-legged and tall, and he ran as never +before. He skimmed across the naked open like a bird, and soared and +sailed and curved from side to side. The rifles in the pit rang out in +solid volley; they flut-flut-flut-flutted in ragged sequence; and still +Nok rose and dipped and rose again unharmed. There was a lull in the +firing, as though the Sunlanders had given over, and Nok curved less +and +less in his flight till he darted straight forward at every leap. And +then, as he leaped cleanly and well, one lone rifle barked from the +pit, +and he doubled up in mid-air, struck the ground in a ball, and like a +ball bounced from the impact, and came down in a broken heap.</p> +<p>"Who so swift as the swift-winged lead?" Aab-Waak pondered.</p> +<p>Tyee grunted and turned away. The incident was closed and there was +more +pressing matter at hand. One Hungry Man and forty fighters, some of +them +hurt, remained; and there were four Sunlanders yet to reckon with.</p> +<p>"We will keep them in their hole by the cliff," he said, "and when +famine has gripped them hard we will slay them like children."</p> +<p>"But of what matter to fight?" queried Oloof, one of the younger +men. +"The wealth of the Sunlanders is not; only remains that in the igloo of +Neegah, a paltry quantity—"</p> +<p>He broke off hastily as the air by his ear split sharply to the +passage +of a bullet.</p> +<p>Tyee laughed scornfully. "Let that be thy answer. What else may we +do +with this mad breed of Sunlanders which will not die?"</p> +<p>"What a thing is foolishness!" Oloof protested, his ears furtively +alert +for the coming of other bullets. "It is not right that they should +fight +so, these Sunlanders. Why will they not die easily? They are fools not +to know that they are dead men, and they give us much trouble."</p> +<p>"We fought before for great wealth; we fight now that we may live," +Aab-Waak summed up succinctly.</p> +<p>That night there was a clash in the trenches, and shots exchanged. +And +in the morning the igloo of Neegah was found empty of the Sunlanders' +possessions. These they themselves had taken, for the signs of their +trail were visible to the sun. Oloof climbed to the brow of the cliff +to hurl great stones down into the pit, but the cliff overhung, and he +hurled down abuse and insult instead, and promised bitter torture to +them in the end. Bill-Man mocked him back in the tongue of the Bear +Folk, and Tyee, lifting his head from a trench to see, had his shoulder +scratched deeply by a bullet.</p> +<p>And in the dreary days that followed, and in the wild nights when +they +pushed the trenches closer, there was much discussion as to the wisdom +of letting the Sunlanders go. But of this they were afraid, and the +women raised a cry always at the thought This much they had seen of the +Sunlanders; they cared to see no more. All the time the whistle and +blub-blub of bullets filled the air, and all the time the death-list +grew. In the golden sunrise came the faint, far crack of a rifle, and +a stricken woman would throw up her hands on the distant edge of the +village; in the noonday heat, men in the trenches heard the shrill +sing-song and knew their deaths; or in the gray afterglow of evening, +the dirt kicked up in puffs by the winking fires. And through the +nights +the long "Wah-hoo-ha-a wah-hoo-ha-a!" of mourning women held dolorous +sway.</p> +<p>As Tyee had promised, in the end famine gripped the Sunlanders. And +once, when an early fall gale blew, one of them crawled through the +darkness past the trenches and stole many dried fish.</p> +<p>But he could not get back with them, and the sun found him vainly +hiding +in the village. So he fought the great fight by himself, and in a +narrow +ring of Mandell Folk shot four with his revolver, and ere they could +lay +hands on him for the torture, turned it on himself and died.</p> +<p>This threw a gloom upon the people. Oloof put the question, "If one +man +die so hard, how hard will die the three who yet are left?"</p> +<p>Then Mesahchie stood up on the barricade and called in by name three +dogs which had wandered close,—meat and life,—which set back the day +of reckoning and put despair in the hearts of the Mandell Folk. And on +the head of Mesahchie were showered the curses of a generation.</p> +<p>The days dragged by. The sun hurried south, the nights grew long and +longer, and there was a touch of frost in the air. And still the +Sunlanders held the pit. Hearts were breaking under the unending +strain, +and Tyee thought hard and deep. Then he sent forth word that all the +skins and hides of all the tribe be collected. These he had made into +huge cylindrical bales, and behind each bale he placed a man.</p> +<p>When the word was given the brief day was almost spent, and it was +slow +work and tedious, rolling the big bales forward foot by foot The +bullets +of the Sunlanders blub-blubbed and thudded against them, but could not +go through, and the men howled their delight But the dark was at hand, +and Tyee, secure of success, called the bales back to the trenches.</p> +<p>In the morning, in the face of an unearthly silence from the pit, +the +real advance began. At first with large intervals between, the bales +slowly converged as the circle drew in. At a hundred yards they were +quite close together, so that Tyee's order to halt was passed along in +whispers. The pit showed no sign of life. They watched long and +sharply, +but nothing stirred. The advance was taken up and the manoeuvre +repeated +at fifty yards. Still no sign nor sound. Tyee shook his head, and even +Aab-Waak was dubious. But the order was given to go on, and go on they +did, till bale touched bale and a solid rampart of skin and hide bowed +out from the cliff about the pit and back to the cliff again.</p> +<p>Tyee looked back and saw the women and children clustering blackly +in +the deserted trenches. He looked ahead at the silent pit. The men were +wriggling nervously, and he ordered every second bale forward. This +double line advanced till bale touched bale as before. Then Aab-Waak, +of his own will, pushed one bale forward alone. When it touched the +barricade, he waited a long while. After that he tossed unresponsive +rocks over into the pit, and finally, with great care, stood up and +peered in. A carpet of empty cartridges, a few white-picked dog bones, +and a soggy place where water dripped from a crevice, met his eyes. +That +was all. The Sunlanders were gone.</p> +<p>There were murmurings of witchcraft, vague complaints, dark looks +which +foreshadowed to Tyee dread things which yet might come to pass, and he +breathed easier when Aab-Waak took up the trail along the base of the +cliff.</p> +<p>"The cave!" Tyee cried. "They foresaw my wisdom of the skin-bales +and +fled away into the cave!"</p> +<p>The cliff was honey-combed with a labyrinth of subterranean passages +which found vent in an opening midway between the pit and where the +trench tapped the wall. Thither, and with many exclamations, the +tribesmen followed Aab-Waak, and, arrived, they saw plainly where the +Sunlanders had climbed to the mouth, twenty and odd feet above.</p> +<p>"Now the thing is done," Tyee said, rubbing his hands. "Let word go +forth that rejoicing be made, for they are in the trap now, these +Sunlanders, in the trap. The young men shall climb up, and the mouth of +the cave be filled with stones, so that Bill-Man and his brothers and +Mesahchie shall by famine be pinched to shadows and die cursing in the +silence and dark."</p> +<p>Cries of delight and relief greeted this, and Howgah, the last of +the +Hungry Folk, swarmed up the steep slant and drew himself, crouching, +upon the lip of the opening. But as he crouched, a muffled report +rushed +forth, and as he clung desperately to the slippery edge, a second. His +grip loosed with reluctant weakness, and he pitched down at the feet of +Tyee, quivered for a moment like some monstrous jelly, and was still.</p> +<p>"How should I know they were great fighters and unafraid?" Tyee +demanded, spurred to defence by recollection of the dark looks and +vague +complaints.</p> +<p>"We were many and happy," one of the men stated baldly. Another +fingered +his spear with a prurient hand.</p> +<p>But Oloof cried them cease. "Give ear, my brothers! There be another +way! As a boy I chanced upon it playing along the steep. It is hidden +by +the rocks, and there is no reason that a man should go there; wherefore +it is secret, and no man knows. It is very small, and you crawl on your +belly a long way, and then you are in the cave. To-night we will so +crawl, without noise, on our bellies, and come upon the Sunlanders from +behind. And to-morrow we will be at peace, and never again will we +quarrel with the Sunlanders in the years to come."</p> +<p>"Never again!" chorussed the weary men. "Never again!" And Tyee +joined +with them.</p> +<p>That night, with the memory of their dead in their hearts, and in +their +hands stones and spears and knives, the horde of women and children +collected about the known mouth of the cave. Down the twenty and odd +precarious feet to the ground no Sunlander could hope to pass and live. +In the village remained only the wounded men, while every able man—and +there were thirty of them—followed Oloof to the secret opening. A +hundred feet of broken ledges and insecurely heaped rocks were between +it and the earth, and because of the rocks, which might be displaced by +the touch of hand or foot, but one man climbed at a time. Oloof went up +first, called softly for the next to come on, and disappeared inside. A +man followed, a second, and a third, and so on, till only Tyee +remained. +He received the call of the last man, but a quick doubt assailed him +and +he stayed to ponder. Half an hour later he swung up to the opening and +peered in. He could feel the narrowness of the passage, and the +darkness +before him took on solidity. The fear of the walled-in earth chilled +him and he could not venture. All the men who had died, from Neegah the +first of the Mandells, to Howgah the last of the Hungry Folk, came and +sat with him, but he chose the terror of their company rather than face +the horror which he felt to lurk in the thick blackness. He had been +sitting long when something soft and cold fluttered lightly on his +cheek, and he knew the first winter's snow was falling. The dim dawn +came, and after that the bright day, when he heard a low guttural +sobbing, which came and went at intervals along the passage and which +drew closer each time and more distinct He slipped over the edge, +dropped his feet to the first ledge, and waited.</p> +<p>That which sobbed made slow progress, but at last, after many halts, +it +reached him, and he was sure no Sunlander made the noise. So he reached +a hand inside, and where there should have been a head felt the +shoulders of a man uplifted on bent arms. The head he found later, not +erect, but hanging straight down so that the crown rested on the floor +of the passage.</p> +<p>"Is it you, Tyee?" the head said. "For it is I, Aab-Waak, who am +helpless and broken as a rough-flung spear. My head is in the dirt, and +I may not climb down unaided."</p> +<p>Tyee clambered in, dragged him up with his back against the wall, +but +the head hung down on the chest and sobbed and wailed.</p> +<p>"Ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!" it went "Oloof forgot, for Mesahchie likewise +knew +the secret and showed the Sunlanders, else they would not have waited +at the end of the narrow way. Wherefore, I am a broken man, and +helpless—ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!"</p> +<p>"And did they die, the cursed Sunlanders, at the end of the narrow +way?" +Tyee demanded.</p> +<p>"How should I know they waited?" Aab-Waak gurgled. "For my brothers +had gone before, many of them, and there was no sound of struggle. How +should I know why there should be no sound of struggle? And ere I knew, +two hands were about my neck so that I could not cry out and warn my +brothers yet to come. And then there were two hands more on my head, +and +two more on my feet. In this fashion the three Sunlanders had me. And +while the hands held my head in the one place, the hands on my feet +swung my body around, and as we wring the neck of a duck in the marsh, +so my week was wrung.</p> +<p>"But it was not given that I should die," he went on, a remnant of +pride +yet glimmering. "I, only, am left. Oloof and the rest lie on their +backs +in a row, and their faces turn this way and that, and the faces of some +be underneath where the backs of their heads should be. It is not good +to look upon; for when life returned to me I saw them all by the light +of a torch which the Sunlanders left, and I had been laid with them in +the row."</p> +<p>"So? So?" Tyee mused, too stunned for speech.</p> +<p>He started suddenly, and shivered, for the voice of Bill-Man shot +out at +him from the passage.</p> +<p>"It is well," it said. "I look for the man who crawls with the +broken +neck, and lo, do I find Tyee. Throw down thy gun, Tyee, so that I may +hear it strike among the rocks."</p> +<p>Tyee obeyed passively, and Bill-Man crawled forward into the light. +Tyee +looked at him curiously. He was gaunt and worn and dirty, and his eyes +burned like twin coals in their cavernous sockets.</p> +<p>"I am hungry, Tyee," he said. "Very hungry."</p> +<p>"And I am dirt at thy feet," Tyee responded.</p> +<p>"Thy word is my law. Further, I commanded my people not to withstand +thee. I counselled—"</p> +<p>But Bill-Man had turned and was calling back into the passage. "Hey! +Charley! Jim! Fetch the woman along and come on!"</p> +<p>"We go now to eat," he said, when his comrades and Mesahchie had +joined +him.</p> +<p>Tyee rubbed his hands deprecatingly. "We have little, but it is +thine."</p> +<p>"After that we go south on the snow," Bill-Man continued.</p> +<p>"May you go without hardship and the trail be easy."</p> +<p>"It is a long way. We will need dogs and food—much!"</p> +<p>"Thine the pick of our dogs and the food they may carry."</p> +<p>Bill-Man slipped over the edge of the opening and prepared to +descend. +"But we come again, Tyee. We come again, and our days shall be long in +the land."</p> +<p>And so they departed into the trackless south, Bill-Man, his +brothers, +and Mesahchie. And when the next year came, the <i>Search Number Two</i> +rode at anchor in Mandell Bay. The few Mandell men, who survived +because +their wounds had prevented their crawling into the cave, went to work +at +the best of the Sunlanders and dug in the ground. They hunt and fish +no more, but receive a daily wage, with which they buy flour, sugar, +calico, and such things which the <i>Search Number Two</i> brings on +her +yearly trip from the Sunlands.</p> +<p>And this mine is worked in secret, as many Northland mines have been +worked; and no white man outside the Company, which is Bill-Man, Jim, +and Charley, knows the whereabouts of Mandell on the rim of the polar +sea. Aab-Waak still carries his head on one shoulder, is become an +oracle, and preaches peace to the younger generation, for which he +receives a pension from the Company. Tyee is foreman of the mine. But +he +has achieved a new theory concerning the Sunlanders.</p> +<p>"They that live under the path of the sun are not soft," he says, +smoking his pipe and watching the day-shift take itself off and the +night-shift go on. "For the sun enters into their blood and burns them +with a great fire till they are filled with lusts and passions. They +burn always, so that they may not know when they are beaten. Further, +there is an unrest in them, which is a devil, and they are flung out +over the earth to toil and suffer and fight without end. I know. I am +Tyee."</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="THE_SICKNESS_OF_LONE_CHIEF"></a> +<h2>THE SICKNESS OF LONE CHIEF</h2> +<br> +<p>This is a tale that was told to me by two old men. We sat in the +smoke +of a mosquito-smudge, in the cool of the day, which was midnight; and +ever and anon, throughout the telling, we smote lustily and with +purpose +at such of the winged pests as braved the smoke for a snack at our +hides. To the right, beneath us, twenty feet down the crumbling bank, +the Yukon gurgled lazily. To the left, on the rose-leaf rim of the +low-lying hills, smouldered the sleepy sun, which saw no sleep that +night nor was destined to see sleep for many nights to come.</p> +<p>The old men who sat with me and valorously slew mosquitoes were +Lone Chief and Mutsak, erstwhile comrades in arms, and now withered +repositories of tradition and ancient happening. They were the last of +their generation and without honor among the younger set which had +grown up on the farthest fringe of a mining civilization. Who cared +for tradition in these days, when spirits could be evoked from black +bottles, and black bottles could be evoked from the complaisant white +men for a few hours' sweat or a mangy fur? Of what potency the fearful +rites and masked mysteries of shamanism, when daily that living wonder, +the steamboat, coughed and spluttered up and down the Yukon in defiance +of all law, a veritable fire-breathing monster? And of what value was +hereditary prestige, when he who now chopped the most wood, or best +conned a stern-wheeler through the island mazes, attained the chiefest +consideration of his fellows?</p> +<p>Of a truth, having lived too long, they had fallen on evil days, +these +two old men, Lone Chief and Mutsak, and in the new order they were +without honor or place. So they waited drearily for death, and the +while +their hearts warmed to the strange white man who shared with them the +torments of the mosquito-smudge and lent ready ear to their tales of +old +time before the steamboat came.</p> +<p>"So a girl was chosen for me," Lone Chief was saying. His voice, +shrill +and piping, ever and again dropped plummet-like into a hoarse and +rattling bass, and, just as one became accustomed to it, soaring +upward into the thin treble—alternate cricket chirpings and bullfrog +croakings, as it were.</p> +<p>"So a girl was chosen for me," he was saying. "For my father, who +was +Kask-ta-ka, the Otter, was angered because I looked not with a needful +eye upon women. He was an old man, and chief of his tribe. I was the +last of his sons to be alive, and through me, only, could he look to +see +his blood go down among those to come after and as yet unborn. But +know, +O White Man, that I was very sick; and when neither the hunting nor the +fishing delighted me, and by meat my belly was not made warm, how +should +I look with favor upon women? or prepare for the feast of marriage? or +look forward to the prattle and troubles of little children?"</p> +<p>"Ay," Mutsak interrupted. "For had not Lone Chief fought in the arms +of +a great bear till his head was cracked and blood ran from out his ears?"</p> +<p>Lone Chief nodded vigorously. "Mutsak speaks true. In the time that +followed, my head was well, and it was not well. For though the flesh +healed and the sore went away, yet was I sick inside. When I walked, +my legs shook under me, and when I looked at the light, my eyes became +filled with tears. And when I opened my eyes, the world outside went +around and around, and when I closed my eyes, my head inside went +around +and around, and all the things I had ever seen went around and around +inside my head. And above my eyes there was a great pain, as though +something heavy rested always upon me, or like a band that is drawn +tight and gives much hurt. And speech was slow to me, and I waited long +for each right word to come to my tongue. And when I waited not long, +all manner of words crowded in, and my tongue spoke foolishness. I was +very sick, and when my father, the Otter, brought the girl Kasaan +before +me—"</p> +<p>"Who was a young girl, and strong, my sister's child," Mutsak broke +in. +"Strong-hipped for children was Kasaan, and straight-legged and quick +of +foot. She made better moccasins than any of all the young girls, and +the +bark-rope she braided was the stoutest. And she had a smile in her +eyes, +and a laugh on her lips; and her temper was not hasty, nor was she +unmindful that men give the law and women ever obey."</p> +<p>"As I say, I was very sick," Lone Chief went on. "And when my +father, +the Otter, brought the girl Kasaan before me, I said rather should they +make me ready for burial than for marriage. Whereat the face of my +father went black with anger, and he said that I should be served +according to my wish, and that I who was yet alive should be made ready +for death as one already dead—"</p> +<p>"Which be not the way of our people, O White Man," spoke up Mutsak. +"For +know that these things that were done to Lone Chief it was our custom +to +do only to dead men. But the Otter was very angry."</p> +<p>"Ay," said Lone Chief. "My father, the Otter, was a man short of +speech +and swift of deed. And he commanded the people to gather before the +lodge wherein I lay. And when they were gathered, he commanded them to +mourn for his son who was dead—"</p> +<p>"And before the lodge they sang the +death-song—<i>O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ich-klu-kuk-ich-klu-kuk</i>," +wailed Mutsak, in so excellent an imitation that all the tendrils of my +spine crawled and curved in sympathy.</p> +<p>"And inside the lodge," continued Lone Chief, "my mother blackened +her +face with soot, and flung ashes upon her head, and mourned for me as +one +already dead; for so had my father commanded. So Okiakuta, my mother, +mourned with much noise, and beat her breasts and tore her hair; and +likewise Hooniak, my sister, and Seenatah, my mother's sister; and the +noise they made caused a great ache in my head, and I felt that I would +surely and immediately die.</p> +<p>"And the elders of the tribe gathered about me where I lay and +discussed +the journey my soul must take. One spoke of the thick and endless +forests where lost souls wandered crying, and where I, too, might +chance +to wander and never see the end. And another spoke of the big rivers, +rapid with bad water, where evil spirits shrieked and lifted up their +formless arms to drag one down by the hair. For these rivers, all said +together, a canoe must be provided me. And yet another spoke of the +storms, such as no live man ever saw, when the stars rained down out of +the sky, and the earth gaped wide in many cracks, and all the rivers in +the heart of the earth rushed out and in. Whereupon they that sat by +me flung up their arms and wailed loudly; and those outside heard, and +wailed more loudly. And as to them I was as dead, so was I to my own +mind dead. I did not know when, or how, yet did I know that I had +surely +died.</p> +<p>"And Okiakuta, my mother, laid beside me my squirrel-skin parka. +Also +she laid beside me my parka of caribou hide, and my rain coat of seal +gut, and my wet-weather muclucs, that my soul should be warm and dry on +its long journey. Further, there was mention made of a steep hill, +thick +with briers and devil's-club, and she fetched heavy moccasins to make +the way easy for my feet.</p> +<p>"And when the elders spoke of the great beasts I should have to +slay, +the young men laid beside me my strongest bow and straightest arrows, +my throwing-stick, my spear and knife. And when the elders spoke of the +darkness and silence of the great spaces my soul must wander through, +my +mother wailed yet more loudly and flung yet more ashes upon her head.</p> +<p>"And the girl, Kasaan, crept in, very timid and quiet, and dropped a +little bag upon the things for my journey. And in the little bag, I +knew, were the flint and steel and the well-dried tinder for the fires +my soul must build. And the blankets were chosen which were to be +wrapped around me. Also were the slaves selected that were to be killed +that my soul might have company. There were seven of these slaves, for +my father was rich and powerful, and it was fit that I, his son, should +have proper burial. These slaves we had got in war from the Mukumuks, +who live down the Yukon. On the morrow, Skolka, the shaman, would kill +them, one by one, so that their souls should go questing with mine +through the Unknown. Among other things, they would carry my canoe till +we came to the big river, rapid with bad water. And there being no +room, +and their work being done, they would come no farther, but remain and +howl forever in the dark and endless forest.</p> +<p>"And as I looked on my fine warm clothes, and my blankets and +weapons of +war, and as I thought of the seven slaves to be slain, I felt proud of +my burial and knew that I must be the envy of many men. And all the +while my father, the Otter, sat silent and black. And all that day and +night the people sang my death-song and beat the drums, till it seemed +that I had surely died a thousand times.</p> +<p>"But in the morning my father arose and made talk. He had been a +fighting man all his days, he said, as the people knew. Also the people +knew that it were a greater honor to die fighting in battle than on the +soft skins by the fire. And since I was to die anyway, it were well +that +I should go against the Mukumuks and be slain. Thus would I attain +honor +and chieftainship in the final abode of the dead, and thus would honor +remain to my father, who was the Otter. Wherefore he gave command that +a +war party be made ready to go down the river. And that when we came +upon +the Mukumuks I was to go forth alone from my party, giving semblance of +battle, and so be slain."</p> +<p>"Nay, but hear, O White Man!" cried Mutsak, unable longer to contain +himself. "Skolka, the shaman, whispered long that night in the ear of +the Otter, and it was his doing that Lone Chief should be sent forth +to die. For the Otter being old, and Lone Chief the last of his sons, +Skolka had it in mind to become chief himself over the people. And when +the people had made great noise for a day and a night and Lone Chief +was +yet alive, Skolka was become afraid that he would not die. So it was +the counsel of Skolka, with fine words of honor and deeds, that spoke +through the mouth of the Otter.</p> +<p>"Ay," replied Lone Chief. "Well did I know it was the doing of +Skolka, +but I was unmindful, being very sick. I had no heart for anger, nor +belly for stout words, and I cared little, one way or the other, only I +cared to die and have done with it all. So, O White Man, the war party +was made ready. No tried fighters were there, nor elders, crafty and +wise—naught but five score of young men who had seen little fighting. +And all the village gathered together above the bank of the river to +see +us depart. And we departed amid great rejoicing and the singing of my +praises. Even thou, O White Man, wouldst rejoice at sight of a young +man +going forth to battle, even though doomed to die.</p> +<p>"So we went forth, the five score young men, and Mutsak came also, +for +he was likewise young and untried. And by command of my father, the +Otter, my canoe was lashed on either side to the canoe of Mutsak and +the +canoe of Kannakut. Thus was my strength saved me from the work of the +paddles, so that, for all of my sickness, I might make a brave show at +the end. And thus we went down the river.</p> +<p>"Nor will I weary thee with the tale of the journey, which was not +long. +And not far above the village of the Mukumuks we came upon two of +their fighting men in canoes, that fled at the sight of us. And then, +according to the command of my father, my canoe was cast loose and I +was +left to drift down all alone. Also, according to his command, were the +young men to see me die, so that they might return and tell the manner +of my death. Upon this, my father, the Otter, and Skolka, the shaman, +had been very clear, with stern promises of punishment in case they +were +not obeyed.</p> +<p>"I dipped my paddle and shouted words of scorn after the fleeing +warriors. And the vile things I shouted made them turn their heads in +anger, when they beheld that the young men held back, and that I came +on +alone. Whereupon, when they had made a safe distance, the two warriors +drew their canoes somewhat apart and waited side by side for me to come +between. And I came between, spear in hand, and singing the war-song +of my people. Each flung a spear, but I bent my body, and the spears +whistled over me, and I was unhurt. Then, and we were all together, we +three, I cast my spear at the one to the right, and it drove into his +throat and he pitched backward into the water.</p> +<p>"Great was my surprise thereat, for I had killed a man. I turned to +the +one on the left and drove strong with my paddle, to meet Death face to +face; but the man's second spear, which was his last, but bit into the +flesh of my shoulder. Then was I upon him, making no cast, but pressing +the point into his breast and working it through him with both my +hands. +And while I worked, pressing with all my strength, he smote me upon my +head, once and twice, with the broad of his paddle.</p> +<p>"Even as the point of the spear sprang out beyond his back, he smote +me +upon the head. There was a flash, as of bright light, and inside my +head +I felt something give, with a snap—just like that, with a snap. And the +weight that pressed above my eyes so long was lifted, and the band that +bound my brows so tight was broken. And a great gladness came upon me, +and my heart sang with joy.</p> +<p>"This be death, I thought; wherefore I thought that death was very +good. +And then I saw the two empty canoes, and I knew that I was not dead, +but +well again. The blows of the man upon my head had made me well. I knew +that I had killed, and the taste of the blood made me fierce, and I +drove my paddle into the breast of the Yukon and urged my canoe toward +the village of the Mukumuks. The young men behind me gave a great cry. +I looked over my shoulder and saw the water foaming white from their +paddles—"</p> +<p>"Ay, it foamed white from our paddles," said Mutsak. "For we +remembered +the command of the Otter, and of Skolka, that we behold with our own +eyes the manner of Lone Chief's death. A young man of the Mukumuks, on +his way to a salmon trap, beheld the coming of Lone Chief, and of the +five score men behind him. And the young man fled in his canoe, +straight +for the village, that alarm might be given and preparation made. But +Lone Chief hurried after him, and we hurried after Lone Chief to behold +the manner of his death. Only, in the face of the village, as the young +man leaped to the shore, Lone Chief rose up in his canoe and made a +mighty cast. And the spear entered the body of the young man above the +hips, and the young man fell upon his face.</p> +<p>"Whereupon Lone Chief leaped up the bank war-club in hand and a +great +war-cry on his lips, and dashed into the village. The first man he met +was Itwilie, chief over the Mukumuks, and him Lone Chief smote upon the +head with his war-club, so that he fell dead upon the ground. And for +fear we might not behold the manner of his death, we too, the five +score +young men, leaped to the shore and followed Lone Chief into the +village. +Only the Mukumuks did not understand, and thought we had come to fight; +so their bow-thongs sang and their arrows whistled among us. Whereat we +forgot our errand, and fell upon them with our spears and clubs; and +they being unprepared, there was great slaughter—"</p> +<p>"With my own hands I slew their shaman," proclaimed Lone Chief, his +withered face a-work with memory of that old-time day. "With my own +hands I slew him, who was a greater shaman than Skolka, our own shaman. +And each time I faced a man, I thought, 'Now cometh Death; and each +time +I slew the man, and Death came not. It seemed the breath of life was +strong in my nostrils and I could not die—"</p> +<p>"And we followed Lone Chief the length of the village and back +again," +continued Mutsak. "Like a pack of wolves we followed him, back and +forth, and here and there, till there were no more Mukumuks left to +fight. Then we gathered together five score men-slaves, and double as +many women, and countless children, and we set fire and burned all the +houses and lodges, and departed. And that was the last of the Mukumuks."</p> +<p>"And that was the last of the Mukumuks," Lone Chief repeated +exultantly. +"And when we came to our own village, the people were amazed at our +burden of wealth and slaves, and in that I was still alive they were +more amazed. And my father, the Otter, came trembling with gladness at +the things I had done. For he was an old man, and I the last of his +sons. And all the tried fighting men came, and the crafty and wise, +till +all the people were gathered together. And then I arose, and with a +voice like thunder, commanded Skolka, the shaman, to stand forth—"</p> +<p>"Ay, O White Man," exclaimed Mutsak. "With a voice like thunder, +that +made the people shake at the knees and become afraid."</p> +<p>"And when Skolka had stood forth," Lone Chief went on, "I said that +I +was not minded to die. Also, I said it were not well that +disappointment +come to the evil spirits that wait beyond the grave. Wherefore I deemed +it fit that the soul of Skolka fare forth into the Unknown, where +doubtless it would howl forever in the dark and endless forest. And +then +I slew him, as he stood there, in the face of all the people. Even I, +Lone Chief, with my own hands, slew Skolka, the shaman, in the face of +all the people. And when a murmuring arose, I cried aloud—"</p> +<p>"With a voice like thunder," prompted Mutsak.</p> +<p>"Ay, with a voice like thunder I cried aloud: 'Behold, O ye people! +I am +Lone Chief, slayer of Skolka, the false shaman! Alone among men, have I +passed down through the gateway of Death and returned again. Mine eyes +have looked upon the unseen things. Mine ears have heard the unspoken +words. Greater am I than Skolka, the shaman. Greater than all shamans +am +I. Likewise am I a greater chief than my father, the Otter. All his +days +did he fight with the Mukumuks, and lo, in one day have I destroyed +them +all. As with the breathing of a breath have I destroyed them. +Wherefore, +my father, the Otter, being old, and Skolka, the shaman, being dead, I +shall be both chief and shaman. Henceforth shall I be both chief and +shaman to you, O my people. And if any man dispute my word, let that +man +stand forth!'</p> +<p>"I waited, but no man stood forth. Then I cried: 'Hoh! I have tasted +blood! Now bring meat, for I am hungry. Break open the caches, tear +down +the fish-racks, and let the feast be big. Let there be merriment, and +songs, not of burial, but marriage. And last of all, let the girl +Kasaan +be brought. The girl Kasaan, who is to be the mother of the children of +Lone Chief!'</p> +<p>"And at my words, and because that he was very old, my father, the +Otter, wept like a woman, and put his arms about my knees. And from +that +day I was both chief and shaman. And great honor was mine, and all men +yielded me obedience."</p> +<p>"Until the steamboat came," Mutsak prompted.</p> +<p>"Ay," said Lone Chief. "Until the steamboat came."</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="KEESH,_THE_SON_OF_KEESH"></a> +<h2>KEESH, THE SON OF KEESH</h2> +<br> +<p>"Thus will I give six blankets, warm and double; six files, large +and +hard; six Hudson Bay knives, keen-edged and long; two canoes, the work +of Mogum, The Maker of Things; ten dogs, heavy-shouldered and strong in +the harness; and three guns—the trigger of one be broken, but it is a +good gun and can doubtless be mended."</p> +<p>Keesh paused and swept his eyes over the circle of intent faces. It +was +the time of the Great Fishing, and he was bidding to Gnob for Su-Su his +daughter. The place was the St. George Mission by the Yukon, and the +tribes had gathered for many a hundred miles. From north, south, east, +and west they had come, even from Tozikakat and far Tana-naw.</p> +<p>"And further, O Gnob, thou art chief of the Tana-naw; and I, Keesh, +the +son of Keesh, am chief of the Thlunget. Wherefore, when my seed springs +from the loins of thy daughter, there shall be a friendship between the +tribes, a great friendship, and Tana-naw and Thlunget shall be brothers +of the blood in the time to come. What I have said I will do, that will +I do. And how is it with you, O Gnob, in this matter?"</p> +<p>Gnob nodded his head gravely, his gnarled and age-twisted face +inscrutably masking the soul that dwelt behind. His narrow eyes +burned like twin coals through their narrow slits, as he piped in a +high-cracked voice, "But that is not all."</p> +<p>"What more?" Keesh demanded. "Have I not offered full measure? Was +there +ever yet a Tana-naw maiden who fetched so great a price? Then name her!"</p> +<p>An open snicker passed round the circle, and Keesh knew that he +stood in +shame before these people.</p> +<p>"Nay, nay, good Keesh, thou dost not understand." Gnob made a soft, +stroking gesture. "The price is fair. It is a good price. Nor do I +question the broken trigger. But that is not all. What of the man?"</p> +<p>"Ay, what of the man?" the circle snarled.</p> +<p>"It is said," Gnob's shrill voice piped, "it is said that Keesh does +not +walk in the way of his fathers. It is said that he has wandered into +the +dark, after strange gods, and that he is become afraid."</p> +<p>The face of Keesh went dark. "It is a lie!" he thundered. "Keesh is +afraid of no man!"</p> +<p>"It is said," old Gnob piped on, "that he has harkened to the speech +of +the white man up at the Big House, and that he bends head to the white +man's god, and, moreover, that blood is displeasing to the white man's +god."</p> +<p>Keesh dropped his eyes, and his hands clenched passionately. The +savage +circle laughed derisively, and in the ear of Gnob whispered Madwan, the +shaman, high-priest of the tribe and maker of medicine.</p> +<p>The shaman poked among the shadows on the rim of the firelight and +roused up a slender young boy, whom he brought face to face with Keesh; +and in the hand of Keesh he thrust a knife.</p> +<p>Gnob leaned forward. "Keesh! O Keesh! Darest thou to kill a man? +Behold! +This be Kitz-noo, a slave. Strike, O Keesh, strike with the strength of +thy arm!"</p> +<p>The boy trembled and waited the stroke. Keesh looked at him, and +thoughts of Mr. Brown's higher morality floated through his mind, and +strong upon him was a vision of the leaping flames of Mr. Brown's +particular brand of hell-fire. The knife fell to the ground, and the +boy +sighed and went out beyond the firelight with shaking knees. At the +feet +of Gnob sprawled a wolf-dog, which bared its gleaming teeth and +prepared +to spring after the boy. But the shaman ground his foot into the +brute's +body, and so doing, gave Gnob an idea.</p> +<p>"And then, O Keesh, what wouldst thou do, should a man do this thing +to +you?"—as he spoke, Gnob held a ribbon of salmon to White Fang, and when +the animal attempted to take it, smote him sharply on the nose with a +stick. "And afterward, O Keesh, wouldst thou do thus?"—White Fang was +cringing back on his belly and fawning to the hand of Gnob.</p> +<p>"Listen!"—leaning on the arm of Madwan, Gnob had risen to his feet. +"I am very old, and because I am very old I will tell thee things. +Thy father, Keesh, was a mighty man. And he did love the song of the +bowstring in battle, and these eyes have beheld him cast a spear till +the head stood out beyond a man's body. But thou art unlike. Since thou +left the Raven to worship the Wolf, thou art become afraid of blood, +and +thou makest thy people afraid. This is not good. For behold, when I was +a boy, even as Kitz-noo there, there was no white man in all the land. +But they came, one by one, these white men, till now they are many. And +they are a restless breed, never content to rest by the fire with a +full +belly and let the morrow bring its own meat. A curse was laid upon +them, +it would seem, and they must work it out in toil and hardship."</p> +<p>Keesh was startled. A recollection of a hazy story told by Mr. Brown +of +one Adam, of old time, came to him, and it seemed that Mr. Brown had +spoken true.</p> +<p>"So they lay hands upon all they behold, these white men, and they +go +everywhere and behold all things. And ever do more follow in their +steps, so that if nothing be done they will come to possess all the +land +and there will be no room for the tribes of the Raven. Wherefore it is +meet that we fight with them till none are left. Then will we hold +the passes and the land, and perhaps our children and our children's +children shall flourish and grow fat. There is a great struggle to +come, +when Wolf and Raven shall grapple; but Keesh will not fight, nor will +he +let his people fight. So it is not well that he should take to him my +daughter. Thus have I spoken, I, Gnob, chief of the Tana-naw."</p> +<p>"But the white men are good and great," Keesh made answer. "The +white +men have taught us many things. The white men have given us blankets +and knives and guns, such as we have never made and never could make. I +remember in what manner we lived before they came. I was unborn then, +but I have it from my father. When we went on the hunt we must creep so +close to the moose that a spear-cast would cover the distance. To-day +we +use the white man's rifle, and farther away than can a child's cry be +heard. We ate fish and meat and berries—there was nothing else to +eat—and we ate without salt. How many be there among you who care to go +back to the fish and meat without salt?"</p> +<p>It would have sunk home, had not Madwan leaped to his feet ere +silence +could come. "And first a question to thee, Keesh. The white man up at +the Big House tells you that it is wrong to kill. Yet do we not know +that the white men kill? Have we forgotten the great fight on the +Koyokuk? or the great fight at Nuklukyeto, where three white men killed +twenty of the Tozikakats? Do you think we no longer remember the three +men of the Tana-naw that the white man Macklewrath killed? Tell me, O +Keesh, why does the Shaman Brown teach you that it is wrong to fight, +when all his brothers fight?"</p> +<p>"Nay, nay, there is no need to answer," Gnob piped, while Keesh +struggled with the paradox. "It is very simple. The Good Man Brown +would +hold the Raven tight whilst his brothers pluck the feathers." He raised +his voice. "But so long as there is one Tana-naw to strike a blow, or +one maiden to bear a man-child, the Raven shall not be plucked!"</p> +<p>Gnob turned to a husky young man across the fire. "And what sayest +thou, +Makamuk, who art brother to Su-Su?"</p> +<p>Makamuk came to his feet. A long face-scar lifted his upper lip into +a perpetual grin which belied the glowing ferocity of his eyes. +"This day," he began with cunning irrelevance, "I came by the Trader +Macklewrath's cabin. And in the door I saw a child laughing at the sun. +And the child looked at me with the Trader Macklewrath's eyes, and it +was frightened. The mother ran to it and quieted it. The mother was +Ziska, the Thlunget woman."</p> +<p>A snarl of rage rose up and drowned his voice, which he stilled by +turning dramatically upon Keesh with outstretched arm and accusing +finger.</p> +<p>"So? You give your women away, you Thlunget, and come to the +Tana-naw +for more? But we have need of our women, Keesh; for we must breed men, +many men, against the day when the Raven grapples with the Wolf."</p> +<p>Through the storm of applause, Gnob's voice shrilled clear. "And +thou, +Nossabok, who art her favorite brother?"</p> +<p>The young fellow was slender and graceful, with the strong aquiline +nose +and high brows of his type; but from some nervous affliction the lid of +one eye drooped at odd times in a suggestive wink. Even as he arose it +so drooped and rested a moment against his cheek. But it was not +greeted +with the accustomed laughter. Every face was grave. "I, too, passed by +the Trader Macklewrath's cabin," he rippled in soft, girlish tones, +wherein there was much of youth and much of his sister. "And I saw +Indians with the sweat running into their eyes and their knees shaking +with weariness—I say, I saw Indians groaning under the logs for the +store which the Trader Macklewrath is to build. And with my eyes I saw +them chopping wood to keep the Shaman Brown's Big House warm through +the +frost of the long nights. This be squaw work. Never shall the Tana-naw +do the like. We shall be blood brothers to men, not squaws; and the +Thlunget be squaws."</p> +<p>A deep silence fell, and all eyes centred on Keesh. He looked about +him +carefully, deliberately, full into the face of each grown man. "So," +he said passionlessly. And "So," he repeated. Then turned on his heel +without further word and passed out into the darkness.</p> +<p>Wading among sprawling babies and bristling wolf-dogs, he threaded +the +great camp, and on its outskirts came upon a woman at work by the light +of a fire. With strings of bark stripped from the long roots of +creeping +vines, she was braiding rope for the Fishing. For some time, without +speech, he watched her deft hands bringing law and order out of the +unruly mass of curling fibres. She was good to look upon, swaying +there to her task, strong-limbed, deep-chested, and with hips made for +motherhood. And the bronze of her face was golden in the flickering +light, her hair blue-black, her eyes jet.</p> +<p>"O Su-Su," he spoke finally, "thou hast looked upon me kindly in the +days that have gone and in the days yet young—"</p> +<p>"I looked kindly upon thee for that thou wert chief of the +Thlunget," +she answered quickly, "and because thou wert big and strong."</p> +<p>"Ay—"</p> +<p>"But that was in the old days of the Fishing," she hastened to add, +"before the Shaman Brown came and taught thee ill things and led thy +feet on strange trails."</p> +<p>"But I would tell thee the—"</p> +<p>She held up one hand in a gesture which reminded him of her father. +"Nay, I know already the speech that stirs in thy throat, O Keesh, and +I make answer now. It so happeneth that the fish of the water and the +beasts of the forest bring forth after their kind. And this is good. +Likewise it happeneth to women. It is for them to bring forth their +kind, and even the maiden, while she is yet a maiden, feels the pang of +the birth, and the pain of the breast, and the small hands at the neck. +And when such feeling is strong, then does each maiden look about her +with secret eyes for the man—for the man who shall be fit to father her +kind. So have I felt. So did I feel when I looked upon thee and found +thee big and strong, a hunter and fighter of beasts and men, well able +to win meat when I should eat for two, well able to keep danger afar +off +when my helplessness drew nigh. But that was before the day the Shaman +Brown came into the land and taught thee—"</p> +<p>"But it is not right, Su-Su. I have it on good word—"</p> +<p>"It is not right to kill. I know what thou wouldst say. Then breed +thou +after thy kind, the kind that does not kill; but come not on such quest +among the Tana-naw. For it is said in the time to come, that the Raven +shall grapple with the Wolf. I do not know, for this be the affair of +men; but I do know that it is for me to bring forth men against that +time."</p> +<p>"Su-Su," Keesh broke in, "thou must hear me—"</p> +<p>"A <i>man</i> would beat me with a stick and make me hear," she +sneered. +"But thou ... here!" She thrust a bunch of bark into his hand. "I +cannot +give thee myself, but this, yes. It looks fittest in thy hands. It is +squaw work, so braid away."</p> +<p>He flung it from him, the angry blood pounding a muddy path under +his +bronze.</p> +<p>"One thing more," she went on. "There be an old custom which thy +father +and mine were not strangers to. When a man falls in battle, his scalp +is +carried away in token. Very good. But thou, who have forsworn the +Raven, +must do more. Thou must bring me, not scalps, but heads, two heads, and +then will I give thee, not bark, but a brave-beaded belt, and sheath, +and long Russian knife. Then will I look kindly upon thee once again, +and all will be well."</p> +<p>"So," the man pondered. "So." Then he turned and passed out through +the +light.</p> +<p>"Nay, O Keesh!" she called after him. "Not two heads, but three at +least!"</p> +<br> +<hr style="width: 45%;"><br> +<p>But Keesh remained true to his conversion, lived uprightly, and made +his +tribespeople obey the gospel as propounded by the Rev. Jackson Brown. +Through all the time of the Fishing he gave no heed to the Tana-naw, +nor +took notice of the sly things which were said, nor of the laughter of +the women of the many tribes. After the Fishing, Gnob and his people, +with great store of salmon, sun-dried and smoke-cured, departed for the +Hunting on the head reaches of the Tana-naw. Keesh watched them go, +but did not fail in his attendance at Mission service, where he prayed +regularly and led the singing with his deep bass voice.</p> +<p>The Rev. Jackson Brown delighted in that deep bass voice, and +because +of his sterling qualities deemed him the most promising convert. +Macklewrath doubted this. He did not believe in the efficacy of the +conversion of the heathen, and he was not slow in speaking his mind. +But +Mr. Brown was a large man, in his way, and he argued it out with such +convincingness, all of one long fall night, that the trader, driven +from +position after position, finally announced in desperation, "Knock out +my +brains with apples, Brown, if I don't become a convert myself, if +Keesh holds fast, true blue, for two years!" Mr. Brown never lost +an opportunity, so he clinched the matter on the spot with a virile +hand-grip, and thenceforth the conduct of Keesh was to determine the +ultimate abiding-place of Macklewrath's soul.</p> +<p>But there came news one day, after the winter's rime had settled +down +over the land sufficiently for travel. A Tana-naw man arrived at the +St. George Mission in quest of ammunition and bringing information +that Su-Su had set eyes on Nee-Koo, a nervy young hunter who had bid +brilliantly for her by old Gnob's fire. It was at about this time that +the Rev. Jackson Brown came upon Keesh by the wood-trail which leads +down to the river. Keesh had his best dogs in the harness, and shoved +under the sled-lashings was his largest and finest pair of snow-shoes.</p> +<p>"Where goest thou, O Keesh? Hunting?" Mr. Brown asked, falling into +the +Indian manner.</p> +<p>Keesh looked him steadily in the eyes for a full minute, then +started up +his dogs. Then again, turning his deliberate gaze upon the missionary, +he answered, "No; I go to hell."</p> +<br> +<hr style="width: 45%;"><br> +<p>In an open space, striving to burrow into the snow as though for +shelter +from the appalling desolateness, huddled three dreary lodges. Ringed +all +about, a dozen paces away, was the sombre forest. Overhead there was no +keen, blue sky of naked space, but a vague, misty curtain, pregnant +with +snow, which had drawn between. There was no wind, no sound, nothing but +the snow and silence. Nor was there even the general stir of life about +the camp; for the hunting party had run upon the flank of the caribou +herd and the kill had been large. Thus, after the period of fasting had +come the plenitude of feasting, and thus, in broad daylight, they slept +heavily under their roofs of moosehide.</p> +<p>By a fire, before one of the lodges, five pairs of snow-shoes stood +on end in their element, and by the fire sat Su-Su. The hood of her +squirrel-skin parka was about her hair, and well drawn up around her +throat; but her hands were unmittened and nimbly at work with needle +and +sinew, completing the last fantastic design on a belt of leather faced +with bright scarlet cloth. A dog, somewhere at the rear of one of the +lodges, raised a short, sharp bark, then ceased as abruptly as it had +begun. Once, her father, in the lodge at her back, gurgled and grunted +in his sleep. "Bad dreams," she smiled to herself. "He grows old, and +that last joint was too much."</p> +<p>She placed the last bead, knotted the sinew, and replenished the +fire. +Then, after gazing long into the flames, she lifted her head to the +harsh <i>crunch-crunch</i> of a moccasined foot against the flinty +snow +granules. Keesh was at her side, bending slightly forward to a load +which he bore upon his back. This was wrapped loosely in a soft-tanned +moosehide, and he dropped it carelessly into the snow and sat down. +They +looked at each other long and without speech.</p> +<p>"It is a far fetch, O Keesh," she said at last, "a far fetch from +St. +George Mission by the Yukon."</p> +<p>"Ay," he made answer, absently, his eyes fixed keenly upon the belt +and +taking note of its girth. "But where is the knife?" he demanded.</p> +<p>"Here." She drew it from inside her parka and flashed its naked +length +in the firelight. "It is a good knife."</p> +<p>"Give it me!" he commanded.</p> +<p>"Nay, O Keesh," she laughed. "It may be that thou wast not born to +wear +it."</p> +<p>"Give it me!" he reiterated, without change of tone. "I was so born."</p> +<p>But her eyes, glancing coquettishly past him to the moosehide, saw +the +snow about it slowly reddening. "It is blood, Keesh?" she asked.</p> +<p>"Ay, it is blood. But give me the belt and the long Russian knife."</p> +<p>She felt suddenly afraid, but thrilled when he took the belt roughly +from her, thrilled to the roughness. She looked at him softly, and was +aware of a pain at the breast and of small hands clutching her throat.</p> +<p>"It was made for a smaller man," he remarked grimly, drawing in his +abdomen and clasping the buckle at the first hole.</p> +<p>Su-Su smiled, and her eyes were yet softer. Again she felt the soft +hands at her throat. He was good to look upon, and the belt was indeed +small, made for a smaller man; but what did it matter? She could make +many belts.</p> +<p>"But the blood?" she asked, urged on by a hope new-born and growing. +"The blood, Keesh? Is it ... are they ... heads?"</p> +<p>"Ay."</p> +<p>"They must be very fresh, else would the blood be frozen."</p> +<p>"Ay, it is not cold, and they be fresh, quite fresh."</p> +<p>"Oh, Keesh!" Her face was warm and bright. "And for me?"</p> +<p>"Ay; for thee."</p> +<p>He took hold of a corner of the hide, flirted it open, and rolled +the +heads out before her.</p> +<p>"Three," he whispered savagely; "nay, four at least."</p> +<p>But she sat transfixed. There they lay—the soft-featured Nee-Koo; +the +gnarled old face of Gnob; Makamuk, grinning at her with his lifted +upper +lip; and lastly, Nossabok, his eyelid, up to its old trick, drooped on +his girlish cheek in a suggestive wink. There they lay, the firelight +flashing upon and playing over them, and from each of them a widening +circle dyed the snow to scarlet.</p> +<p>Thawed by the fire, the white crust gave way beneath the head of +Gnob, +which rolled over like a thing alive, spun around, and came to rest at +her feet. But she did not move. Keesh, too, sat motionless, his eyes +unblinking, centred steadfastly upon her.</p> +<p>Once, in the forest, an overburdened pine dropped its load of snow, +and +the echoes reverberated hollowly down the gorge; but neither stirred. +The short day had been waning fast, and darkness was wrapping round +the camp when White Fang trotted up toward the fire. He paused to +reconnoitre, but not being driven back, came closer. His nose shot +swiftly to the side, nostrils a-tremble and bristles rising along the +spine; and straight and true, he followed the sudden scent to his +master's head. He sniffed it gingerly at first and licked the forehead +with his red lolling tongue. Then he sat abruptly down, pointed his +nose +up at the first faint star, and raised the long wolf-howl.</p> +<p>This brought Su-Su to herself. She glanced across at Keesh, who had +unsheathed the Russian knife and was watching her intently. His face +was +firm and set, and in it she read the law. Slipping back the hood of her +parka, she bared her neck and rose to her feet There she paused and +took +a long look about her, at the rimming forest, at the faint stars in +the sky, at the camp, at the snow-shoes in the snow—a last long +comprehensive look at life. A light breeze stirred her hair from the +side, and for the space of one deep breath she turned her head and +followed it around until she met it full-faced.</p> +<p>Then she thought of her children, ever to be unborn, and she walked +over +to Keesh and said, "I am ready."</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="THE_DEATH_OF_LIGOUN"></a> +<h2>THE DEATH OF LIGOUN</h2> +<p>Blood for blood, rank for rank.</p> +<p>—<i>Thlinket Code</i>.</p> +<br> +<p>"Hear now the death of Ligoun—"</p> +<p>The speaker ceased, or rather suspended utterance, and gazed upon me +with an eye of understanding. I held the bottle between our eyes and +the +fire, indicated with my thumb the depth of the draught, and shoved it +over to him; for was he not Palitlum, the Drinker? Many tales had he +told me, and long had I waited for this scriptless scribe to speak of +the things concerning Ligoun; for he, of all men living, knew these +things best.</p> +<p>He tilted back his head with a grunt that slid swiftly into a +gurgle, +and the shadow of a man's torso, monstrous beneath a huge inverted +bottle, wavered and danced on the frown of the cliff at our backs. +Palitlum released his lips from the glass with a caressing suck and +glanced regretfully up into the ghostly vault of the sky where played +the wan white light of the summer borealis.</p> +<p>"It be strange," he said; "cold like water and hot like fire. To +the drinker it giveth strength, and from the drinker it taketh away +strength. It maketh old men young, and young men old. To the man who is +weary it leadeth him to get up and go onward, and to the man unweary it +burdeneth him into sleep. My brother was possessed of the heart of a +rabbit, yet did he drink of it, and forthwith slay four of his enemies. +My father was like a great wolf, showing his teeth to all men, yet did +he drink of it and was shot through the back, running swiftly away. It +be most strange."</p> +<p>"It is 'Three Star,' and a better than what they poison their +bellies +with down there," I answered, sweeping my hand, as it were, over the +yawning chasm of blackness and down to where the beach fires glinted +far below—tiny jets of flame which gave proportion and reality to the +night.</p> +<p>Palitlum sighed and shook his head. "Wherefore I am here with thee."</p> +<p>And here he embraced the bottle and me in a look which told more +eloquently than speech of his shameless thirst.</p> +<p>"Nay," I said, snuggling the bottle in between my knees. "Speak now +of +Ligoun. Of the 'Three Star' we will hold speech hereafter."</p> +<p>"There be plenty, and I am not wearied," he pleaded brazenly. "But +the +feel of it on my lips, and I will speak great words of Ligoun and his +last days."</p> +<p>"From the drinker it taketh away strength," I mocked, "and to the +man +unweary it burdeneth him into sleep."</p> +<p>"Thou art wise," he rejoined, without anger and pridelessly. "Like +all +of thy brothers, thou art wise. Waking or sleeping, the 'Three Star' be +with thee, yet never have I known thee to drink overlong or overmuch. +And the while you gather to you the gold that hides in our mountains +and the fish that swim in our seas; and Palitlum, and the brothers of +Palitlum, dig the gold for thee and net the fish, and are glad to be +made glad when out of thy wisdom thou deemest it fit that the 'Three +Star' should wet our lips."</p> +<p>"I was minded to hear of Ligoun," I said impatiently. "The night +grows +short, and we have a sore journey to-morrow."</p> +<p>I yawned and made as though to rise, but Palitlum betrayed a quick +anxiety, and with abruptness began:—</p> +<p>"It was Ligoun's desire, in his old age, that peace should be among +the +tribes. As a young man he had been first of the fighting men and chief +over the war-chiefs of the Islands and the Passes. All his days had +been +full of fighting. More marks he boasted of bone and lead and iron than +any other man. Three wives he had, and for each wife two sons; and the +sons, eldest born and last and all died by his side in battle. Restless +as the bald-face, he ranged wide and far—north to Unalaska and the +Shallow Sea; south to the Queen Charlottes, ay, even did he go with the +Kakes, it is told, to far Puget Sound, and slay thy brothers in their +sheltered houses.</p> +<p>"But, as I say, in his old age he looked for peace among the tribes. +Not +that he was become afraid, or overfond of the corner by the fire and +the +well-filled pot. For he slew with the shrewdness and blood-hunger of +the +fiercest, drew in his belly to famine with the youngest, and with the +stoutest faced the bitter seas and stinging trail. But because of his +many deeds, and in punishment, a warship carried him away, even to thy +country, O Hair-Face and Boston Man; and the years were many ere he +came +back, and I was grown to something more than a boy and something less +than a young man. And Ligoun, being childless in his old age, made much +of me, and grown wise, gave me of his wisdom.</p> +<p>"'It be good to fight, O Palitlum,' said he. Nay, O Hair-Face, for I +was +unknown as Palitlum in those days, being called Olo, the Ever-Hungry. +The drink was to come after. 'It be good to fight,' spoke Ligoun, 'but +it be foolish. In the Boston Man Country, as I saw with mine eyes, +they are not given to fighting one with another, and they be strong. +Wherefore, of their strength, they come against us of the Islands and +Passes, and we are as camp smoke and sea mist before them. Wherefore I +say it be good to fight, most good, but it be likewise foolish.'</p> +<p>"And because of this, though first always of the fighting men, +Ligoun's +voice was loudest, ever, for peace. And when he was very old, being +greatest of chiefs and richest of men, he gave a potlatch. Never was +there such a potlatch. Five hundred canoes were lined against the river +bank, and in each canoe there came not less than ten of men and women. +Eight tribes were there; from the first and oldest man to the last and +youngest babe were they there. And then there were men from far-distant +tribes, great travellers and seekers who had heard of the potlatch of +Ligoun. And for the length of seven days they filled their bellies with +his meat and drink. Eight thousand blankets did he give to them, as I +well know, for who but I kept the tally and apportioned according to +degree and rank? And in the end Ligoun was a poor man; but his name was +on all men's lips, and other chiefs gritted their teeth in envy that he +should be so great.</p> +<p>"And so, because there was weight to his words, he counselled peace; +and +he journeyed to every potlatch and feast and tribal gathering that he +might counsel peace. And so it came that we journeyed together, Ligoun +and I, to the great feast given by Niblack, who was chief over the +river +Indians of the Skoot, which is not far from the Stickeen. This was in +the last days, and Ligoun was very old and very close to death. He +coughed of cold weather and camp smoke, and often the red blood ran +from +out his mouth till we looked for him to die.</p> +<p>"'Nay,' he said once at such time; 'it were better that I should die +when the blood leaps to the knife, and there is a clash of steel and +smell of powder, and men crying aloud what of the cold iron and quick +lead.' So, it be plain, O Hair-Face, that his heart was yet strong for +battle.</p> +<p>"It is very far from the Chilcat to the Skoot, and we were many days +in +the canoes. And the while the men bent to the paddles, I sat at the +feet +of Ligoun and received the Law. Of small need for me to say the Law, O +Hair-Face, for it be known to me that in this thou art well skilled. +Yet +do I speak of the Law of blood for blood, and rank for rank. Also did +Ligoun go deeper into the matter, saying:—</p> +<p>"'But know this, O Olo, that there be little honor in the killing of +a +man less than thee. Kill always the man who is greater, and thy honor +shall be according to his greatness. But if, of two men, thou killest +the lesser, then is shame thine, for which the very squaws will lift +their lips at thee. As I say, peace be good; but remember, O Olo, if +kill thou must, that thou killest by the Law.'</p> +<p>"It is a way of the Thlinket-folk," Palitlum vouchsafed half +apologetically.</p> +<p>And I remembered the gun-fighters and bad men of my own Western +land, +and was not perplexed at the way of the Thlinket-folk.</p> +<p>"In time," Palitlum continued, "we came to Chief Niblack and the +Skoots. +It was a feast great almost as the potlatch of Ligoun. There were we of +the Chilcat, and the Sitkas, and the Stickeens who are neighbors to the +Skoots, and the Wrangels and the Hoonahs. There were Sundowns and +Tahkos +from Port Houghton, and their neighbors the Awks from Douglass Channel; +the Naass River people, and the Tongas from north of Dixon, and the +Kakes who come from the island called Kupreanoff. Then there were +Siwashes from Vancouver, Cassiars from the Gold Mountains, Teslin men, +and even Sticks from the Yukon Country.</p> +<p>"It was a mighty gathering. But first of all, there was to be a +meeting +of the chiefs with Niblack, and a drowning of all enmities in quass. +The +Russians it was who showed us the way of making quass, for so my father +told me,—my father, who got it from his father before him. But to this +quass had Niblack added many things, such as sugar, flour, dried +apples, +and hops, so that it was a man's drink, strong and good. Not so good as +'Three Star,' O Hair-Face, yet good.</p> +<p>"This quass-feast was for the chiefs, and the chiefs only, and there +was +a score of them. But Ligoun being very old and very great, it was given +that I walk with him that he might lean upon my shoulder and that I +might ease him down when he took his seat and raise him up when he +arose. At the door of Niblack's house, which was of logs and very big, +each chief, as was the custom, laid down his spear or rifle and his +knife. For as thou knowest, O Hair-Face, strong drink quickens, and old +hates flame up, and head and hand are swift to act. But I noted that +Ligoun had brought two knives, the one he left outside the door, the +other slipped under his blanket, snug to the grip. The other chiefs did +likewise, and I was troubled for what was to come.</p> +<p>"The chiefs were ranged, sitting, in a big circle about the room. I +stood at Ligoun's elbow. In the middle was the barrel of quass, and by +it a slave to serve the drink. First, Niblack made oration, with much +show of friendship and many fine words. Then he gave a sign, and the +slave dipped a gourd full of quass and passed it to Ligoun, as was fit, +for his was the highest rank.</p> +<p>"Ligoun drank it, to the last drop, and I gave him my strength to +get on +his feet so that he, too, might make oration. He had kind speech for +the many tribes, noted the greatness of Niblack to give such a feast, +counselled for peace as was his custom, and at the end said that the +quass was very good.</p> +<p>"Then Niblack drank, being next of rank to Ligoun, and after him one +chief and another in degree and order. And each spoke friendly words +and +said that the quass was good, till all had drunk. Did I say all? Nay, +not all, O Hair-Face. For last of them was one, a lean and catlike man, +young of face, with a quick and daring eye, who drank darkly, and spat +forth upon the ground, and spoke no word.</p> +<p>"To not say that the quass was good were insult; to spit forth upon +the +ground were worse than insult. And this very thing did he do. He was +known for a chief over the Sticks of the Yukon, and further naught was +known of him.</p> +<p>"As I say, it was an insult. But mark this, O Hair-Face: it was an +insult, not to Niblack the feast-giver, but to the man chiefest of rank +who sat among those of the circle. And that man was Ligoun. There was +no sound. All eyes were upon him to see what he might do. He made no +movement. His withered lips trembled not into speech; nor did a nostril +quiver, nor an eyelid droop. But I saw that he looked wan and gray, as +I +have seen old men look of bitter mornings when famine pressed, and the +women wailed and the children whimpered, and there was no meat nor sign +of meat. And as the old men looked, so looked Ligoun.</p> +<p>"There was no sound. It were as a circle of the dead, but that each +chief felt beneath his blanket to make sure, and that each chief +glanced to his neighbor, right and left, with a measuring eye. I was +a stripling; the things I had seen were few; yet I knew it to be the +moment one meets but once in all a lifetime.</p> +<p>"The Stick rose up, with every eye upon him, and crossed the room +till +he stood before Ligoun.</p> +<p>"'I am Opitsah, the Knife,' he said.</p> +<p>"But Ligoun said naught, nor looked at him, but gazed unblinking at +the +ground.</p> +<p>"'You are Ligoun,' Opitsah said. 'You have killed many men. I am +still +alive.'</p> +<p>"And still Ligoun said naught, though he made the sign to me and +with my +strength arose and stood upright on his two feet. He was as an old +pine, +naked and gray, but still a-shoulder to the frost and storm. His eyes +were unblinking, and as he had not heard Opitsah, so it seemed he did +not see him.</p> +<p>"And Opitsah was mad with anger, and danced stiff-legged before him, +as +men do when they wish to give another shame. And Opitsah sang a song of +his own greatness and the greatness of his people, filled with bad +words +for the Chilcats and for Ligoun. And as he danced and sang, Opitsah +threw off his blanket and with his knife drew bright circles before the +face of Ligoun. And the song he sang was the Song of the Knife.</p> +<p>"And there was no other sound, only the singing of Opitsah, and the +circle of chiefs that were as dead, save that the flash of the knife +seemed to draw smouldering fire from their eyes. And Ligoun, also, was +very still. Yet did he know his death, and was unafraid. And the knife +sang closer and yet closer to his face, but his eyes were unblinking +and +he swayed not to right or left, or this way or that.</p> +<p>"And Opitsah drove in the knife, so, twice on the forehead of +Ligoun, +and the red blood leaped after it. And then it was that Ligoun gave me +the sign to bear up under him with my youth that he might walk. And he +laughed with a great scorn, full in the face of Opitsah, the Knife. And +he brushed Opitsah to the side, as one brushes to the side a +low-hanging +branch on the trail and passes on.</p> +<p>"And I knew and understood, for there was but shame in the killing +of +Opitsah before the faces of a score of greater chiefs. I remembered +the Law, and knew Ligoun had it in mind to kill by the Law. And who, +chiefest of rank but himself, was there but Niblack? And toward +Niblack, +leaning on my arm, he walked. And to his other arm, clinging and +striking, was Opitsah, too small to soil with his blood the hands of so +great a man. And though the knife of Opitsah bit in again and again, +Ligoun noted it not, nor winced. And in this fashion we three went our +way across the room, Niblack sitting in his blanket and fearful of our +coming.</p> +<p>"And now old hates flamed up and forgotten grudges were remembered. +Lamuk, a Kake, had had a brother drowned in the bad water of the +Stickeen, and the Stickeens had not paid in blankets for their bad +water, as was the custom to pay. So Lamuk drove straight with his long +knife to the heart of Klok-Kutz the Stickeen. And Katchahook remembered +a quarrel of the Naass River people with the Tongas of north of Dixon, +and the chief of the Tongas he slew with a pistol which made much +noise. +And the blood-hunger gripped all the men who sat in the circle, and +chief slew chief, or was slain, as chance might be. Also did they stab +and shoot at Ligoun, for whoso killed him won great honor and would be +unforgotten for the deed. And they were about him like wolves about a +moose, only they were so many they were in their own way, and they slew +one another to make room. And there was great confusion.</p> +<p>"But Ligoun went slowly, without haste, as though many years were +yet +before him. It seemed that he was certain he would make his kill, in +his own way, ere they could slay him. And as I say, he went slowly, and +knives bit into him, and he was red with blood. And though none sought +after me, who was a mere stripling, yet did the knives find me, and the +hot bullets burn me. And still Ligoun leaned his weight on my youth, +and +Opitsah struck at him, and we three went forward. And when we stood +by Niblack, he was afraid, and covered his head with his blanket. The +Skoots were ever cowards.</p> +<p>"And Goolzug and Kadishan, the one a fish-eater and the other a +meat-killer, closed together for the honor of their tribes. And they +raged madly about, and in their battling swung against the knees of +Opitsah, who was overthrown and trampled upon. And a knife, singing +through the air, smote Skulpin, of the Sitkas, in the throat, and he +flung his arms out blindly, reeling, and dragged me down in his fall.</p> +<p>"And from the ground I beheld Ligoun bend over Niblack, and uncover +the +blanket from his head, and turn up his face to the light. And Ligoun +was +in no haste. Being blinded with his own blood, he swept it out of his +eyes with the back of his hand, so he might see and be sure. And when +he was sure that the upturned face was the face of Niblack, he drew the +knife across his throat as one draws a knife across the throat of a +trembling deer. And then Ligoun stood erect, singing his death-song and +swaying gently to and fro. And Skulpin, who had dragged me down, shot +with a pistol from where he lay, and Ligoun toppled and fell, as an old +pine topples and falls in the teeth of the wind."</p> +<p>Palitlum ceased. His eyes, smouldering moodily, were bent upon the +fire, +and his cheek was dark with blood.</p> +<p>"And thou, Palitlum?" I demanded. "And thou?"</p> +<p>"I? I did remember the Law, and I slew Opitsah the Knife, which was +well. And I drew Ligoun's own knife from the throat of Niblack, and +slew +Skulpin, who had dragged me down. For I was a stripling, and I could +slay any man and it were honor. And further, Ligoun being dead, there +was no need for my youth, and I laid about me with his knife, choosing +the chiefest of rank that yet remained."</p> +<p>Palitlum fumbled under his shirt and drew forth a beaded sheath, and +from the sheath, a knife. It was a knife home-wrought and crudely +fashioned from a whip-saw file; a knife such as one may find possessed +by old men in a hundred Alaskan villages.</p> +<p>"The knife of Ligoun?" I said, and Palitlum nodded.</p> +<p>"And for the knife of Ligoun," I said, "will I give thee ten bottles +of +'Three Star.'"</p> +<p>But Palitlum looked at me slowly. "Hair-Face, I am weak as water, +and +easy as a woman. I have soiled my belly with quass, and hooch, and +'Three Star.' My eyes are blunted, my ears have lost their keenness, +and +my strength has gone into fat. And I am without honor in these days, +and +am called Palitlum, the Drinker. Yet honor was mine at the potlatch of +Niblack, on the Skoot, and the memory of it, and the memory of Ligoun, +be dear to me. Nay, didst thou turn the sea itself into 'Three Star' +and +say that it were all mine for the knife, yet would I keep the knife. I +am Palitlum, the Drinker, but I was once Olo, the Ever-Hungry, who bore +up Ligoun with his youth!"</p> +<p>"Thou art a great man, Palitlum," I said, "and I honor thee."</p> +<p>Palitlum reached out his hand.</p> +<p>"The 'Three Star' between thy knees be mine for the tale I have +told," +he said.</p> +<p>And as I looked on the frown of the cliff at our backs, I saw the +shadow +of a man's torso, monstrous beneath a huge inverted bottle.</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="LI_WAN,_THE_FAIR"></a> +<h2>LI WAN, THE FAIR</h2> +<br> +<p>"The sun sinks, Canim, and the heat of the day is gone!"</p> +<p>So called Li Wan to the man whose head was hidden beneath the +squirrel-skin robe, but she called softly, as though divided between +the +duty of waking him and the fear of him awake. For she was afraid of +this +big husband of hers, who was like unto none of the men she had known. +The moose-meat sizzled uneasily, and she moved the frying-pan to one +side of the red embers. As she did so she glanced warily at the two +Hudson Bay dogs dripping eager slaver from their scarlet tongues and +following her every movement. They were huge, hairy fellows, crouched +to leeward in the thin smoke-wake of the fire to escape the swarming +myriads of mosquitoes. As Li Wan gazed down the steep to where the +Klondike flung its swollen flood between the hills, one of the dogs +bellied its way forward like a worm, and with a deft, catlike stroke of +the paw dipped a chunk of hot meat out of the pan to the ground. But Li +Wan caught him from out the tail of her eye, and he sprang back with +a snap and a snarl as she rapped him over the nose with a stick of +firewood.</p> +<p>"Nay, Olo," she laughed, recovering the meat without removing her +eye +from him. "Thou art ever hungry, and for that thy nose leads thee into +endless troubles."</p> +<p>But the mate of Olo joined him, and together they defied the woman. +The +hair on their backs and shoulders bristled in recurrent waves of anger, +and the thin lips writhed and lifted into ugly wrinkles, exposing the +flesh-tearing fangs, cruel and menacing. Their very noses serrulated +and +shook in brute passion, and they snarled as the wolves snarl, with all +the hatred and malignity of the breed impelling them to spring upon the +woman and drag her down.</p> +<p>"And thou, too, Bash, fierce as thy master and never at peace with +the +hand that feeds thee! This is not thy quarrel, so that be thine! and +that!"</p> +<p>As she cried, she drove at them with the firewood, but they avoided +the +blows and refused to retreat. They separated and approached her from +either side, crouching low and snarling. Li Wan had struggled with the +wolf-dog for mastery from the time she toddled among the skin-bales of +the teepee, and she knew a crisis was at hand. Bash had halted, his +muscles stiff and tense for the spring; Olo was yet creeping into +striking distance.</p> +<p>Grasping two blazing sticks by the charred ends, she faced the +brutes. +The one held back, but Bash sprang, and she met him in mid-air with +the flaming weapon. There were sharp yelps of pain and swift odors of +burning hair and flesh as he rolled in the dirt and the woman ground +the +fiery embers into his mouth. Snapping wildly, he flung himself sidewise +out of her reach and in a frenzy of fear scrambled for safety. Olo, on +the other side, had begun his retreat, when Li Wan reminded him of her +primacy by hurling a heavy stick of wood into his ribs. Then the pair +retreated under a rain of firewood, and on the edge of the camp fell to +licking their wounds and whimpering by turns and snarling.</p> +<p>Li Wan blew the ashes off the meat and sat down again. Her heart had +not gone up a beat, and the incident was already old, for this was the +routine of life. Canim had not stirred during the disorder, but instead +had set up a lusty snoring.</p> +<p>"Come, Canim!" she called. "The heat of the day is gone, and the +trail +waits for our feet."</p> +<p>The squirrel-skin robe was agitated and cast aside by a brown arm. +Then +the man's eyelids fluttered and drooped again.</p> +<p>"His pack is heavy," she thought, "and he is tired with the work of +the +morning."</p> +<p>A mosquito stung her on the neck, and she daubed the unprotected +spot +with wet clay from a ball she had convenient to hand. All morning, +toiling up the divide and enveloped in a cloud of the pests, the man +and +woman had plastered themselves with the sticky mud, which, drying in +the sun, covered their faces with masks of clay. These masks, broken in +divers places by the movement of the facial muscles, had constantly to +be renewed, so that the deposit was irregular of depth and peculiar of +aspect.</p> +<p>Li Wan shook Canim gently but with persistence till he roused and +sat +up. His first glance was to the sun, and after consulting the celestial +timepiece he hunched over to the fire and fell-to ravenously on the +meat. He was a large Indian fully six feet in height, deep-chested and +heavy-muscled, and his eyes were keener and vested with greater mental +vigor than the average of his kind. The lines of will had marked his +face deeply, and this, coupled with a sternness and primitiveness, +advertised a native indomitability, unswerving of purpose, and prone, +when thwarted, to sullen cruelty.</p> +<p>"To-morrow, Li Wan, we shall feast." He sucked a marrow-bone clean +and +threw it to the dogs. "We shall have <i>flapjacks</i> fried in <i>bacon +grease</i>, and <i>sugar</i>, which is more toothsome—"</p> +<p>"<i>Flapjacks</i>?" she questioned, mouthing the word curiously.</p> +<p>"Ay," Canim answered with superiority; "and I shall teach you new +ways +of cookery. Of these things I speak you are ignorant, and of many more +things besides. You have lived your days in a little corner of the +earth +and know nothing. But I,"—he straightened himself and looked at her +pridefully,—"I am a great traveller, and have been all places, even +among the white people, and I am versed in their ways, and in the ways +of many peoples. I am not a tree, born to stand in one place always and +know not what there be over the next hill; for I am Canim, the Canoe, +made to go here and there and to journey and quest up and down the +length and breadth of the world."</p> +<p>She bowed her head humbly. "It is true. I have eaten fish and meat +and +berries all my days and lived in a little corner of the earth. Nor did +I dream the world was so large until you stole me from my people and I +cooked and carried for you on the endless trails." She looked up at him +suddenly. "Tell me, Canim, does this trail ever end?"</p> +<p>"Nay," he answered. "My trail is like the world; it never ends. My +trail +<i>is</i> the world, and I have travelled it since the time my legs +could carry me, and I shall travel it until I die. My father and my +mother may be dead, but it is long since I looked upon them, and I do +not care. My tribe is like your tribe. It stays in the one place—which +is far from here,—but I care naught for my tribe, for I am Canim, the +Canoe!"</p> +<p>"And must I, Li Wan, who am weary, travel always your trail until I +die?"</p> +<p>"You, Li Wan, are my wife, and the wife travels the husband's trail +wheresoever it goes. It is the law. And were it not the law, yet would +it be the law of Canim, who is lawgiver unto himself and his."</p> +<p>She bowed her head again, for she knew no other law than that man +was +the master of woman.</p> +<p>"Be not in haste," Canim cautioned her, as she began to strap the +meagre +camp outfit to her pack. "The sun is yet hot, and the trail leads down +and the footing is good."</p> +<p>She dropped her work obediently and resumed her seat.</p> +<p>Canim regarded her with speculative interest. "You do not squat on +your +hams like other women," he remarked.</p> +<p>"No," she answered. "It never came easy. It tires me, and I cannot +take +my rest that way."</p> +<p>"And why is it your feet point not straight before you?"</p> +<p>"I do not know, save that they are unlike the feet of other women."</p> +<p>A satisfied light crept into his eyes, but otherwise he gave no sign.</p> +<p>"Like other women, your hair is black; but have you ever noticed +that it +is soft and fine, softer and finer than the hair of other women?"</p> +<p>"I have noticed," she answered shortly, for she was not pleased at +such +cold analysis of her sex-deficiencies.</p> +<p>"It is a year, now, since I took you from your people," he went on, +"and +you are nigh as shy and afraid of me as when first I looked upon you. +How does this thing be?"</p> +<p>Li Wan shook her head. "I am afraid of you, Canim, you are so big +and +strange. And further, before you looked upon me even, I was afraid of +all the young men. I do not know ... I cannot say ... only it seemed, +somehow, as though I should not be for them, as though ..."</p> +<p>"Ay," he encouraged, impatient at her faltering.</p> +<p>"As though they were not my kind."</p> +<p>"Not your kind?" he demanded slowly. "Then what is your kind?"</p> +<p>"I do not know, I ..." She shook her head in a bewildered manner. "I +cannot put into words the way I felt. It was strangeness in me. I was +unlike other maidens, who sought the young men slyly. I could not care +for the young men that way. It would have been a great wrong, it +seemed, +and an ill deed."</p> +<p>"What is the first thing you remember?" Canim asked with abrupt +irrelevance.</p> +<p>"Pow-Wah-Kaan, my mother."</p> +<p>"And naught else before Pow-Wah-Kaan?"</p> +<p>"Naught else."</p> +<p>But Canim, holding her eyes with his, searched her secret soul and +saw +it waver.</p> +<p>"Think, and think hard, Li Wan!" he threatened.</p> +<p>She stammered, and her eyes were piteous and pleading, but his will +dominated her and wrung from her lips the reluctant speech.</p> +<p>"But it was only dreams, Canim, ill dreams of childhood, shadows of +things not real, visions such as the dogs, sleeping in the sun-warmth, +behold and whine out against."</p> +<p>"Tell me," he commanded, "of the things before Pow-Wah-Kaan, your +mother."</p> +<p>"They are forgotten memories," she protested. "As a child I dreamed +awake, with my eyes open to the day, and when I spoke of the strange +things I saw I was laughed at, and the other children were afraid and +drew away from me. And when I spoke of the things I saw to +Pow-Wah-Kaan, +she chided me and said they were evil; also she beat me. It was a +sickness, I believe, like the falling-sickness that comes to old men; +and in time I grew better and dreamed no more. And now ... I +cannot remember"—she brought her hand in a confused manner to her +forehead—"they are there, somewhere, but I cannot find them, only ..."</p> +<p>"Only," Canim repeated, holding her.</p> +<p>"Only one thing. But you will laugh at its foolishness, it is so +unreal."</p> +<p>"Nay, Li Wan. Dreams are dreams. They may be memories of other lives +we +have lived. I was once a moose. I firmly believe I was once a moose, +what of the things I have seen in dreams, and heard."</p> +<p>Strive as he would to hide it, a growing anxiety was manifest, but +Li +Wan, groping after the words with which to paint the picture, took no +heed.</p> +<p>"I see a snow-tramped space among the trees," she began, "and across +the +snow the sign of a man where he has dragged himself heavily on hand and +knee. And I see, too, the man in the snow, and it seems I am very close +to him when I look. He is unlike real men, for he has hair on his face, +much hair, and the hair of his face and head is yellow like the summer +coat of the weasel. His eyes are closed, but they open and search +about. +They are blue like the sky, and look into mine and search no more. And +his hand moves, slow, as from weakness, and I feel ..."</p> +<p>"Ay," Canim whispered hoarsely. "You feel—?"</p> +<p>"No! no!" she cried in haste. "I feel nothing. Did I say 'feel'? I +did +not mean it. It could not be that I should mean it. I see, and I see +only, and that is all I see—a man in the snow, with eyes like the sky, +and hair like the weasel. I have seen it many times, and always it is +the same—a man in the snow—"</p> +<p>"And do you see yourself?" he asked, leaning forward and regarding +her +intently. "Do you ever see yourself and the man in the snow?"</p> +<p>"Why should I see myself? Am I not real?"</p> +<p>His muscles relaxed and he sank back, an exultant satisfaction in +his +eyes which he turned from her so that she might not see.</p> +<p>"I will tell you, Li Wan," he spoke decisively; "you were a little +bird +in some life before, a little moose-bird, when you saw this thing, and +the memory of it is with you yet. It is not strange. I was once a +moose, +and my father's father afterward became a bear—so said the shaman, and +the shaman cannot lie. Thus, on the Trail of the Gods we pass from life +to life, and the gods know only and understand. Dreams and the shadows +of dreams be memories, nothing more, and the dog, whining asleep in +the sun-warmth, doubtless sees and remembers things gone before. Bash, +there, was a warrior once. I do firmly believe he was once a warrior."</p> +<p>Canim tossed a bone to the brute and got upon his feet. "Come, let +us +begone. The sun is yet hot, but it will get no cooler."</p> +<p>"And these white people, what are they like?" Li Wan made bold to +ask.</p> +<p>"Like you and me," he answered, "only they are less dark of skin. +You +will be among them ere the day is dead."</p> +<p>Canim lashed the sleeping-robe to his one-hundred-and-fifty-pound +pack, +smeared his face with wet clay, and sat down to rest till Li Wan had +finished loading the dogs. Olo cringed at sight of the club in her +hand, +and gave no trouble when the bundle of forty pounds and odd was +strapped +upon him. But Bash was aggrieved and truculent, and could not forbear +to +whimper and snarl as he was forced to receive the burden. He bristled +his back and bared his teeth as she drew the straps tight, the while +throwing all the malignancy of his nature into the glances shot at her +sideways and backward. And Canim chuckled and said, "Did I not say he +was once a very great warrior?"</p> +<p>"These furs will bring a price," he remarked as he adjusted his +head-strap and lifted his pack clear of the ground. "A big price. The +white men pay well for such goods, for they have no time to hunt and +are +soft to the cold. Soon shall we feast, Li Wan, as you have feasted +never +in all the lives you have lived before."</p> +<p>She grunted acknowledgment and gratitude for her lord's +condescension, +slipped into the harness, and bent forward to the load.</p> +<p>"The next time I am born, I would be born a white man," he added, +and +swung off down the trail which dived into the gorge at his feet.</p> +<p>The dogs followed close at his heels, and Li Wan brought up the +rear. +But her thoughts were far away, across the Ice Mountains to the east, +to +the little corner of the earth where her childhood had been lived. Ever +as a child, she remembered, she had been looked upon as strange, as one +with an affliction. Truly she had dreamed awake and been scolded and +beaten for the remarkable visions she saw, till, after a time, she had +outgrown them. But not utterly. Though they troubled her no more +waking, +they came to her in her sleep, grown woman that she was, and many a +night of nightmare was hers, filled with fluttering shapes, vague and +meaningless. The talk with Canim had excited her, and down all the +twisted slant of the divide she harked back to the mocking fantasies of +her dreams.</p> +<p>"Let us take breath," Canim said, when they had tapped midway the +bed of +the main creek.</p> +<p>He rested his pack on a jutting rock, slipped the head-strap, and +sat +down. Li Wan joined him, and the dogs sprawled panting on the ground +beside them. At their feet rippled the glacial drip of the hills, but +it +was muddy and discolored, as if soiled by some commotion of the earth.</p> +<p>"Why is this?" Li Wan asked.</p> +<p>"Because of the white men who work in the ground. Listen!" He held +up +his hand, and they heard the ring of pick and shovel, and the sound +of men's voices. "They are made mad by <i>gold</i>, and work without +ceasing that they may find it. <i>Gold?</i> It is yellow and comes +from +the ground, and is considered of great value. It is also a measure of +price."</p> +<p>But Li Wan's roving eyes had called her attention from him. A few +yards +below and partly screened by a clump of young spruce, the tiered logs +of +a cabin rose to meet its overhanging roof of dirt. A thrill ran through +her, and all her dream-phantoms roused up and stirred about uneasily.</p> +<p>"Canim," she whispered in an agony of apprehension. "Canim, what is +that?"</p> +<p>"The white man's teepee, in which he eats and sleeps."</p> +<p>She eyed it wistfully, grasping its virtues at a glance and +thrilling +again at the unaccountable sensations it aroused. "It must be very warm +in time of frost," she said aloud, though she felt that she must make +strange sounds with her lips.</p> +<p>She felt impelled to utter them, but did not, and the next instant +Canim +said, "It is called a <i>cabin</i>."</p> +<p>Her heart gave a great leap. The sounds! the very sounds! She looked +about her in sudden awe. How should she know that strange word before +ever she heard it? What could be the matter? And then with a shock, +half +of fear and half of delight, she realized that for the first time in +her +life there had been sanity and significance in the promptings of her +dreams.</p> +<p>"<i>Cabin</i>" she repeated to herself. "<i>Cabin.</i>" An +incoherent +flood of dream-stuff welled up and up till her head was dizzy and +her heart seemed bursting. Shadows, and looming bulks of things, and +unintelligible associations fluttered and whirled about, and she strove +vainly with her consciousness to grasp and hold them. For she felt that +there, in that welter of memories, was the key of the mystery; could +she +but grasp and hold it, all would be clear and plain—</p> +<p>O Canim! O Pow-Wah-Kaan! O shades and shadows, what was that?</p> +<p>She turned to Canim, speechless and trembling, the dream-stuff in +mad, +overwhelming riot. She was sick and fainting, and could only listen +to the ravishing sounds which proceeded from the cabin in a wonderful +rhythm.</p> +<p>"Hum, <i>fiddle,</i>" Canim vouchsafed.</p> +<p>But she did not hear him, for in the ecstasy she was experiencing, +it +seemed at last that all things were coming clear. Now! now! she +thought. +A sudden moisture swept into her eyes, and the tears trickled down her +cheeks. The mystery was unlocking, but the faintness was overpowering +her. If only she could hold herself long enough! If only—but the +landscape bent and crumpled up, and the hills swayed back and forth +across the sky as she sprang upright and screamed, "<i>Daddy! +Daddy!</i>" Then the sun reeled, and darkness smote her, and she +pitched +forward limp and headlong among the rocks.</p> +<p>Canim looked to see if her neck had been broken by the heavy pack, +grunted his satisfaction, and threw water upon her from the creek. She +came to slowly, with choking sobs, and sat up.</p> +<p>"It is not good, the hot sun on the head," he ventured.</p> +<p>And she answered, "No, it is not good, and the pack bore upon me +hard."</p> +<p>"We shall camp early, so that you may sleep long and win strength," +he +said gently. "And if we go now, we shall be the quicker to bed."</p> +<p>Li Wan said nothing, but tottered to her feet in obedience and +stirred +up the dogs. She took the swing of his pace mechanically, and followed +him past the cabin, scarce daring to breathe. But no sounds issued +forth, though the door was open and smoke curling upward from the +sheet-iron stovepipe.</p> +<p>They came upon a man in the bend of the creek, white of skin and +blue of +eye, and for a moment Li Wan saw the other man in the snow. But she saw +dimly, for she was weak and tired from what she had undergone. Still, +she looked at him curiously, and stopped with Canim to watch him at his +work. He was washing gravel in a large pan, with a circular, tilting +movement; and as they looked, giving a deft flirt, he flashed up the +yellow gold in a broad streak across the bottom of the pan.</p> +<p>"Very rich, this creek," Canim told her, as they went on. "Sometime +I +will find such a creek, and then I shall be a big man."</p> +<p>Cabins and men grew more plentiful, till they came to where the main +portion of the creek was spread out before them. It was the scene of a +vast devastation. Everywhere the earth was torn and rent as though by a +Titan's struggles. Where there were no upthrown mounds of gravel, great +holes and trenches yawned, and chasms where the thick rime of the earth +had been peeled to bed-rock. There was no worn channel for the creek, +and its waters, dammed up, diverted, flying through the air on giddy +flumes, trickling into sinks and low places, and raised by huge +water-wheels, were used and used again a thousand times. The hills had +been stripped of their trees, and their raw sides gored and perforated +by great timber-slides and prospect holes. And over all, like a +monstrous race of ants, was flung an army of men—mud-covered, dirty, +dishevelled men, who crawled in and out of the holes of their digging, +crept like big bugs along the flumes, and toiled and sweated at the +gravel-heaps which they kept in constant unrest—men, as far as the +eye could see, even to the rims of the hilltops, digging, tearing, and +scouring the face of nature.</p> +<p>Li Wan was appalled at the tremendous upheaval. "Truly, these men +are +mad," she said to Canim.</p> +<p>"Small wonder. The gold they dig after is a great thing," he +replied. +"It is the greatest thing in the world."</p> +<p>For hours they threaded the chaos of greed, Canim eagerly intent, Li +Wan +weak and listless. She knew she had been on the verge of disclosure, +and +she felt that she was still on the verge of disclosure, but the nervous +strain she had undergone had tired her, and she passively waited for +the +thing, she knew not what, to happen. From every hand her senses +snatched +up and conveyed to her innumerable impressions, each of which became +a dull excitation to her jaded imagination. Somewhere within her, +responsive notes were answering to the things without, forgotten and +undreamed-of correspondences were being renewed; and she was aware of +it +in an incurious way, and her soul was troubled, but she was not equal +to the mental exultation necessary to transmute and understand. So she +plodded wearily on at the heels of her lord, content to wait for that +which she knew, somewhere, somehow, must happen.</p> +<p>After undergoing the mad bondage of man, the creek finally returned +to +its ancient ways, all soiled and smirched from its toil, and coiled +lazily among the broad flats and timbered spaces where the valley +widened to its mouth. Here the "pay" ran out, and men were loth to +loiter with the lure yet beyond. And here, as Li Wan paused to prod Olo +with her staff, she heard the mellow silver of a woman's laughter.</p> +<p>Before a cabin sat a woman, fair of skin and rosy as a child, +dimpling +with glee at the words of another woman in the doorway. But the woman +who sat shook about her great masses of dark, wet hair which yielded up +its dampness to the warm caresses of the sun.</p> +<p>For an instant Li Wan stood transfixed. Then she was aware of a +blinding +flash, and a snap, as though something gave way; and the woman before +the cabin vanished, and the cabin and the tall spruce timber, and the +jagged sky-line, and Li Wan saw another woman, in the shine of another +sun, brushing great masses of black hair, and singing as she brushed. +And Li Wan heard the words of the song, and understood, and was a child +again. She was smitten with a vision, wherein all the troublesome +dreams +merged and became one, and shapes and shadows took up their accustomed +round, and all was clear and plain and real. Many pictures jostled +past, +strange scenes, and trees, and flowers, and people; and she saw them +and +knew them all.</p> +<p>"When you were a little bird, a little moose-bird," Canim said, his +eyes +upon her and burning into her.</p> +<p>"When I was a little moose-bird," she whispered, so faint and low he +scarcely heard. And she knew she lied, as she bent her head to the +strap +and took the swing of the trail.</p> +<p>And such was the strangeness of it, the real now became unreal. The +mile +tramp and the pitching of camp by the edge of the stream seemed like a +passage in a nightmare. She cooked the meat, fed the dogs, and unlashed +the packs as in a dream, and it was not until Canim began to sketch his +next wandering that she became herself again.</p> +<p>"The Klondike runs into the Yukon," he was saying; "a mighty river, +mightier than the Mackenzie, of which you know. So we go, you and I, +down to Fort o' Yukon. With dogs, in time of winter, it is twenty +sleeps. Then we follow the Yukon away into the west—one hundred sleeps, +two hundred—I have never heard. It is very far. And then we come to the +sea. You know nothing of the sea, so let me tell you. As the lake is to +the island, so the sea is to the land; all the rivers run to it, and it +is without end. I have seen it at Hudson Bay; I have yet to see it in +Alaska. And then we may take a great canoe upon the sea, you and I, Li +Wan, or we may follow the land into the south many a hundred sleeps. +And +after that I do not know, save that I am Canim, the Canoe, wanderer and +far-journeyer over the earth!"</p> +<p>She sat and listened, and fear ate into her heart as she pondered +over +this plunge into the illimitable wilderness. "It is a weary way," was +all she said, head bowed on knee in resignation.</p> +<p>Then it was a splendid thought came to her, and at the wonder of it +she +was all aglow. She went down to the stream and washed the dried clay +from her face. When the ripples died away, she stared long at her +mirrored features; but sun and weather-beat had done their work, and, +what of roughness and bronze, her skin was not soft and dimpled as a +child's. But the thought was still splendid and the glow unabated as +she +crept in beside her husband under the sleeping-robe.</p> +<p>She lay awake, staring up at the blue of the sky and waiting for +Canim +to sink into the first deep sleep. When this came about, she wormed +slowly and carefully away, tucked the robe around him, and stood up. At +her second step, Bash growled savagely. She whispered persuasively to +him and glanced at the man. Canim was snoring profoundly. Then she +turned, and with swift, noiseless feet sped up the back trail.</p> +<p>Mrs. Evelyn Van Wyck was just preparing for bed. Bored by the duties +put upon her by society, her wealth, and widowed blessedness, she had +journeyed into the Northland and gone to housekeeping in a cosey cabin +on the edge of the diggings. Here, aided and abetted by her friend and +companion, Myrtle Giddings, she played at living close to the soil, and +cultivated the primitive with refined abandon.</p> +<p>She strove to get away from the generations of culture and parlor +selection, and sought the earth-grip her ancestors had forfeited. +Likewise she induced mental states which she fondly believed to +approximate those of the stone-folk, and just now, as she put up her +hair for the pillow, she was indulging her fancy with a palaeolithic +wooing. The details consisted principally of cave-dwellings and cracked +marrow-bones, intersprinkled with fierce carnivora, hairy mammoths, +and combats with rude flaked knives of flint; but the sensations were +delicious. And as Evelyn Van Wyck fled through the sombre forest aisles +before the too arduous advances of her slant-browed, skin-clad wooer, +the door of the cabin opened, without the courtesy of a knock, and a +skin-clad woman, savage and primitive, came in.</p> +<p>"Mercy!"</p> +<p>With a leap that would have done credit to a cave-woman, Miss +Giddings +landed in safety behind the table. But Mrs. Van Wyck held her ground. +She noticed that the intruder was laboring under a strong excitement, +and cast a swift glance backward to assure herself that the way was +clear to the bunk, where the big Colt's revolver lay beneath a pillow.</p> +<p>"Greeting, O Woman of the Wondrous Hair," said Li Wan.</p> +<p>But she said it in her own tongue, the tongue spoken in but a little +corner of the earth, and the women did not understand.</p> +<p>"Shall I go for help?" Miss Giddings quavered.</p> +<p>"The poor creature is harmless, I think," Mrs. Van Wyck replied. +"And +just look at her skin-clothes, ragged and trail-worn and all that. They +are certainly unique. I shall buy them for my collection. Get my sack, +Myrtle, please, and set up the scales."</p> +<p>Li Wan followed the shaping of the lips, but the words were +unintelligible, and then, and for the first time, she realized, in +a moment of suspense and indecision, that there was no medium of +communication between them.</p> +<p>And at the passion of her dumbness she cried out, with arms +stretched +wide apart, "O Woman, thou art sister of mine!"</p> +<p>The tears coursed down her cheeks as she yearned toward them, and +the +break in her voice carried the sorrow she could not utter. But Miss +Giddings was trembling, and even Mrs. Van Wyck was disturbed.</p> +<p>"I would live as you live. Thy ways are my ways, and our ways be +one. My +husband is Canim, the Canoe, and he is big and strange, and I am +afraid. +His trail is all the world and never ends, and I am weary. My mother +was +like you, and her hair was as thine, and her eyes. And life was soft to +me then, and the sun warm."</p> +<p>She knelt humbly, and bent her head at Mrs. Van Wyck's feet. But +Mrs. +Van Wyck drew away, frightened at her vehemence.</p> +<p>Li Wan stood up, panting for speech. Her dumb lips could not +articulate +her overmastering consciousness of kind.</p> +<p>"Trade? you trade?" Mrs. Van Wyck questioned, slipping, after the +fashion of the superior peoples, into pigeon tongue.</p> +<p>She touched Li Wan's ragged skins to indicate her choice, and poured +several hundreds of gold into the blower. She stirred the dust about +and +trickled its yellow lustre temptingly through her fingers. But Li Wan +saw only the fingers, milk-white and shapely, tapering daintily to the +rosy, jewel-like nails. She placed her own hand alongside, all +work-worn +and calloused, and wept.</p> +<p>Mrs. Van Wyck misunderstood. "Gold," she encouraged. "Good gold! You +trade? You changee for changee?" And she laid her hand again on Li +Wan's +skin garments.</p> +<p>"How much? You sell? How much?" she persisted, running her hand +against +the way of the hair so that she might make sure of the sinew-thread +seam.</p> +<p>But Li Wan was deaf as well, and the woman's speech was without +significance. Dismay at her failure sat upon her. How could she +identify +herself with these women? For she knew they were of the one breed, +blood-sisters among men and the women of men. Her eyes roved wildly +about the interior, taking in the soft draperies hanging around, the +feminine garments, the oval mirror, and the dainty toilet accessories +beneath. And the things haunted her, for she had seen like things +before; and as she looked at them her lips involuntarily formed sounds +which her throat trembled to utter. Then a thought flashed upon her, +and +she steadied herself. She must be calm. She must control herself, for +there must be no misunderstanding this time, or else,—and she shook +with a storm of suppressed tears and steadied herself again.</p> +<p>She put her hand on the table. "<i>Table</i>," she clearly and +distinctly enunciated. "<i>Table</i>," she repeated.</p> +<p>She looked at Mrs. Van Wyck, who nodded approbation. Li Wan exulted, +but +brought her will to bear and held herself steady. "<i>Stove</i>" she +went on. "<i>Stove</i>."</p> +<p>And at every nod of Mrs. Van Wyck, Li Wan's excitement mounted. Now +stumbling and halting, and again in feverish haste, as the +recrudescence +of forgotten words was fast or slow, she moved about the cabin, naming +article after article. And when she paused finally, it was in triumph, +with body erect and head thrown back, expectant, waiting.</p> +<p>"Cat," Mrs. Van Wyck, laughing, spelled out in kindergarten fashion. +"I—see—the—cat—catch—the—rat."</p> +<p>Li Wan nodded her head seriously. They were beginning to understand +her +at last, these women. The blood flushed darkly under her bronze at the +thought, and she smiled and nodded her head still more vigorously.</p> +<p>Mrs. Van Wyck turned to her companion. "Received a smattering of +mission +education somewhere, I fancy, and has come to show it off."</p> +<p>"Of course," Miss Giddings tittered. "Little fool! We shall lose our +sleep with her vanity."</p> +<p>"All the same I want that jacket. If it <i>is</i> old, the +workmanship +is good—a most excellent specimen." She returned to her visitor. +"Changee for changee? You! Changee for changee? How much? Eh? How much, +you?"</p> +<p>"Perhaps she'd prefer a dress or something," Miss Giddings suggested.</p> +<p>Mrs. Van Wyck went up to Li Wan and made signs that she would +exchange +her wrapper for the jacket. And to further the transaction, she took Li +Wan's hand and placed it amid the lace and ribbons of the flowing +bosom, +and rubbed the fingers back and forth so they might feel the texture. +But the jewelled butterfly which loosely held the fold in place was +insecurely fastened, and the front of the gown slipped to the side, +exposing a firm white breast, which had never known the lip-clasp of a +child.</p> +<p>Mrs. Van Wyck coolly repaired the mischief; but Li Wan uttered a +loud +cry, and ripped and tore at her skin-shirt till her own breast showed +firm and white as Evelyn Van Wyck's. Murmuring inarticulately and +making +swift signs, she strove to establish the kinship.</p> +<p>"A half-breed," Mrs. Van Wyck commented. "I thought so from her +hair."</p> +<p>Miss Giddings made a fastidious gesture. "Proud of her father's +white +skin. It's beastly! Do give her something, Evelyn, and make her go."</p> +<p>But the other woman sighed. "Poor creature, I wish I could do +something +for her."</p> +<p>A heavy foot crunched the gravel without. Then the cabin door swung +wide, and Canim stalked in. Miss Giddings saw a vision of sudden death, +and screamed; but Mrs. Van Wyck faced him composedly.</p> +<p>"What do you want?" she demanded.</p> +<p>"How do?" Canim answered suavely and directly, pointing at the same +time +to Li Wan. "Um my wife."</p> +<p>He reached out for her, but she waved him back.</p> +<p>"Speak, Canim! Tell them that I am—"</p> +<p>"Daughter of Pow-Wah-Kaan? Nay, of what is it to them that they +should +care? Better should I tell them thou art an ill wife, given to creeping +from thy husband's bed when sleep is heavy in his eyes."</p> +<p>Again he reached out for her, but she fled away from him to Mrs. Van +Wyck, at whose feet she made frenzied appeal, and whose knees she tried +to clasp. But the lady stepped back and gave permission with her eyes +to +Canim. He gripped Li Wan under the shoulders and raised her to her +feet. +She fought with him, in a madness of despair, till his chest was +heaving +with the exertion, and they had reeled about over half the room.</p> +<p>"Let me go, Canim," she sobbed.</p> +<p>But he twisted her wrist till she ceased to struggle. "The memories +of +the little moose-bird are overstrong and make trouble," he began.</p> +<p>"I know! I know!" she broke in. "I see the man in the snow, and as +never +before I see him crawl on hand and knee. And I, who am a little child, +am carried on his back. And this is before Pow-Wah-Kaan and the time I +came to live in a little corner of the earth."</p> +<p>"You know," he answered, forcing her toward the door; "but you will +go +with me down the Yukon and forget."</p> +<p>"Never shall I forget! So long as my skin is white shall I +remember!" +She clutched frantically at the door-post and looked a last appeal to +Mrs. Evelyn Van Wyck.</p> +<p>"Then will I teach thee to forget, I, Canim, the Canoe!"</p> +<p>As he spoke he pulled her fingers clear and passed out with her upon +the +trail.</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"><br> +<br> +<a name="THE_LEAGUE_OF_THE_OLD_MEN"></a> +<h2>THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN</h2> +<br> +<p>At the Barracks a man was being tried for his life. He was an old +man, a +native from the Whitefish River, which empties into the Yukon below +Lake +Le Barge. All Dawson was wrought up over the affair, and likewise the +Yukon-dwellers for a thousand miles up and down. It has been the custom +of the land-robbing and sea-robbing Anglo-Saxon to give the law to +conquered peoples, and ofttimes this law is harsh. But in the case of +Imber the law for once seemed inadequate and weak. In the mathematical +nature of things, equity did not reside in the punishment to be +accorded +him. The punishment was a foregone conclusion, there could be no doubt +of that; and though it was capital, Imber had but one life, while the +tale against him was one of scores.</p> +<p>In fact, the blood of so many was upon his hands that the killings +attributed to him did not permit of precise enumeration. Smoking a pipe +by the trail-side or lounging around the stove, men made rough +estimates +of the numbers that had perished at his hand. They had been whites, all +of them, these poor murdered people, and they had been slain singly, +in pairs, and in parties. And so purposeless and wanton had been these +killings, that they had long been a mystery to the mounted police, even +in the time of the captains, and later, when the creeks realized, and a +governor came from the Dominion to make the land pay for its prosperity.</p> +<p>But more mysterious still was the coming of Imber to Dawson to give +himself up. It was in the late spring, when the Yukon was growling and +writhing under its ice, that the old Indian climbed painfully up the +bank from the river trail and stood blinking on the main street. Men +who +had witnessed his advent, noted that he was weak and tottery, and that +he staggered over to a heap of cabin-logs and sat down. He sat there a +full day, staring straight before him at the unceasing tide of white +men +that flooded past. Many a head jerked curiously to the side to meet his +stare, and more than one remark was dropped anent the old Siwash with +so +strange a look upon his face. No end of men remembered afterward that +they had been struck by his extraordinary figure, and forever afterward +prided themselves upon their swift discernment of the unusual.</p> +<p>But it remained for Dickensen, Little Dickensen, to be the hero of +the +occasion. Little Dickensen had come into the land with great dreams and +a pocketful of cash; but with the cash the dreams vanished, and to earn +his passage back to the States he had accepted a clerical position with +the brokerage firm of Holbrook and Mason. Across the street from the +office of Holbrook and Mason was the heap of cabin-logs upon which +Imber +sat. Dickensen looked out of the window at him before he went to lunch; +and when he came back from lunch he looked out of the window, and the +old Siwash was still there.</p> +<p>Dickensen continued to look out of the window, and he, too, forever +afterward prided himself upon his swiftness of discernment. He was a +romantic little chap, and he likened the immobile old heathen to the +genius of the Siwash race, gazing calm-eyed upon the hosts of the +invading Saxon. The hours swept along, but Imber did not vary his +posture, did not by a hair's-breadth move a muscle; and Dickensen +remembered the man who once sat upright on a sled in the main street +where men passed to and fro. They thought the man was resting, but +later, when they touched him, they found him stiff and cold, frozen to +death in the midst of the busy street. To undouble him, that he might +fit into a coffin, they had been forced to lug him to a fire and thaw +him out a bit. Dickensen shivered at the recollection.</p> +<p>Later on, Dickensen went out on the sidewalk to smoke a cigar and +cool +off; and a little later Emily Travis happened along. Emily Travis was +dainty and delicate and rare, and whether in London or Klondike she +gowned herself as befitted the daughter of a millionnaire mining +engineer. Little Dickensen deposited his cigar on an outside window +ledge where he could find it again, and lifted his hat.</p> +<p>They chatted for ten minutes or so, when Emily Travis, glancing past +Dickensen's shoulder, gave a startled little scream. Dickensen turned +about to see, and was startled, too. Imber had crossed the street and +was standing there, a gaunt and hungry-looking shadow, his gaze riveted +upon the girl.</p> +<p>"What do you want?" Little Dickensen demanded, tremulously plucky.</p> +<p>Imber grunted and stalked up to Emily Travis. He looked her over, +keenly +and carefully, every square inch of her. Especially did he appear +interested in her silky brown hair, and in the color of her cheek, +faintly sprayed and soft, like the downy bloom of a butterfly wing. He +walked around her, surveying her with the calculating eye of a man who +studies the lines upon which a horse or a boat is builded. In the +course +of his circuit the pink shell of her ear came between his eye and the +westering sun, and he stopped to contemplate its rosy transparency. +Then +he returned to her face and looked long and intently into her blue +eyes. +He grunted and laid a hand on her arm midway between the shoulder and +elbow. With his other hand he lifted her forearm and doubled it back. +Disgust and wonder showed in his face, and he dropped her arm with a +contemptuous grunt. Then he muttered a few guttural syllables, turned +his back upon her, and addressed himself to Dickensen.</p> +<p>Dickensen could not understand his speech, and Emily Travis laughed. +Imber turned from one to the other, frowning, but both shook their +heads. He was about to go away, when she called out:</p> +<p>"Oh, Jimmy! Come here!"</p> +<p>Jimmy came from the other side of the street. He was a big, hulking +Indian clad in approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king's +sombrero on his head. He talked with Imber, haltingly, with throaty +spasms. Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a passing +knowledge of the interior dialects.</p> +<p>"Him Whitefish man," he said to Emily Travis. "Me savve um talk no +very +much. Him want to look see chief white man."</p> +<p>"The Governor," suggested Dickensen.</p> +<p>Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went +grave +and puzzled.</p> +<p>"I t'ink um want Cap'n Alexander," he explained. "Him say um kill +white +man, white woman, white boy, plenty kill um white people. Him want to +die."</p> +<p>"Insane, I guess," said Dickensen.</p> +<p>"What you call dat?" queried Jimmy.</p> +<p>Dickensen thrust a finger figuratively inside his head and imparted +a +rotary motion thereto.</p> +<p>"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said Jimmy, returning to Imber, who still +demanded +the chief man of the white men.</p> +<p>A mounted policeman (unmounted for Klondike service) joined the +group +and heard Imber's wish repeated. He was a stalwart young fellow, +broad-shouldered, deep-chested, legs cleanly built and stretched wide +apart, and tall though Imber was, he towered above him by half a head. +His eyes were cool, and gray, and steady, and he carried himself with +the peculiar confidence of power that is bred of blood and tradition. +His splendid masculinity was emphasized by his excessive boyishness,—he +was a mere lad,—and his smooth cheek promised a blush as willingly as +the cheek of a maid.</p> +<p>Imber was drawn to him at once. The fire leaped into his eyes at +sight +of a sabre slash that scarred his cheek. He ran a withered hand down +the +young fellow's leg and caressed the swelling thew. He smote the broad +chest with his knuckles, and pressed and prodded the thick muscle-pads +that covered the shoulders like a cuirass. The group had been added to +by curious passers-by—husky miners, mountaineers, and frontiersmen, +sons of the long-legged and broad-shouldered generations. Imber glanced +from one to another, then he spoke aloud in the Whitefish tongue.</p> +<p>"What did he say?" asked Dickensen.</p> +<p>"Him say um all the same one man, dat p'liceman," Jimmy interpreted.</p> +<p>Little Dickensen was little, and what of Miss Travis, he felt sorry +for +having asked the question.</p> +<p>The policeman was sorry for him and stepped into the breach. "I +fancy +there may be something in his story. I'll take him up to the captain +for +examination. Tell him to come along with me, Jimmy."</p> +<p>Jimmy indulged in more throaty spasms, and Imber grunted and looked +satisfied.</p> +<p>"But ask him what he said, Jimmy, and what he meant when he took +hold of +my arm."</p> +<p>So spoke Emily Travis, and Jimmy put the question and received the +answer.</p> +<p>"Him say you no afraid," said Jimmy.</p> +<p>Emily Travis looked pleased.</p> +<p>"Him say you no <i>skookum</i>, no strong, all the same very soft +like +little baby. Him break you, in um two hands, to little pieces. Him +t'ink much funny, very strange, how you can be mother of men so big, so +strong, like dat p'liceman."</p> +<p>Emily Travers kept her eyes up and unfaltering, but her cheeks +were sprayed with scarlet. Little Dickensen blushed and was quite +embarrassed. The policeman's face blazed with his boy's blood.</p> +<p>"Come along, you," he said gruffly, setting his shoulder to the +crowd +and forcing a way.</p> +<p>Thus it was that Imber found his way to the Barracks, where he made +full and voluntary confession, and from the precincts of which he never +emerged.</p> +<p>Imber looked very tired. The fatigue of hopelessness and age was in +his +face. His shoulders drooped depressingly, and his eyes were +lack-lustre. +His mop of hair should have been white, but sun and weatherbeat had +burned and bitten it so that it hung limp and lifeless and colorless. +He +took no interest in what went on around him. The courtroom was jammed +with the men of the creeks and trails, and there was an ominous note in +the rumble and grumble of their low-pitched voices, which came to his +ears like the growl of the sea from deep caverns.</p> +<p>He sat close by a window, and his apathetic eyes rested now and +again on +the dreary scene without. The sky was overcast, and a gray drizzle was +falling. It was flood-time on the Yukon. The ice was gone, and the +river +was up in the town. Back and forth on the main street, in canoes and +poling-boats, passed the people that never rested. Often he saw these +boats turn aside from the street and enter the flooded square that +marked the Barracks' parade-ground. Sometimes they disappeared beneath +him, and he heard them jar against the house-logs and their occupants +scramble in through the window. After that came the slush of water +against men's legs as they waded across the lower room and mounted the +stairs. Then they appeared in the doorway, with doffed hats and +dripping +sea-boots, and added themselves to the waiting crowd.</p> +<p>And while they centred their looks on him, and in grim anticipation +enjoyed the penalty he was to pay, Imber looked at them, and mused on +their ways, and on their Law that never slept, but went on unceasing, +in +good times and bad, in flood and famine, through trouble and terror and +death, and which would go on unceasing, it seemed to him, to the end of +time.</p> +<p>A man rapped sharply on a table, and the conversation droned away +into +silence. Imber looked at the man. He seemed one in authority, yet Imber +divined the square-browed man who sat by a desk farther back to be the +one chief over them all and over the man who had rapped. Another man by +the same table uprose and began to read aloud from many fine sheets of +paper. At the top of each sheet he cleared his throat, at the bottom +moistened his fingers. Imber did not understand his speech, but the +others did, and he knew that it made them angry. Sometimes it made them +very angry, and once a man cursed him, in single syllables, stinging +and +tense, till a man at the table rapped him to silence.</p> +<p>For an interminable period the man read. His monotonous, sing-song +utterance lured Imber to dreaming, and he was dreaming deeply when the +man ceased. A voice spoke to him in his own Whitefish tongue, and he +roused up, without surprise, to look upon the face of his sister's son, +a young man who had wandered away years agone to make his dwelling with +the whites.</p> +<p>"Thou dost not remember me," he said by way of greeting.</p> +<p>"Nay," Imber answered. "Thou art Howkan who went away. Thy mother be +dead."</p> +<p>"She was an old woman," said Howkan.</p> +<p>But Imber did not hear, and Howkan, with hand upon his shoulder, +roused +him again.</p> +<p>"I shall speak to thee what the man has spoken, which is the tale of +the +troubles thou hast done and which thou hast told, O fool, to the +Captain +Alexander. And thou shalt understand and say if it be true talk or talk +not true. It is so commanded."</p> +<p>Howkan had fallen among the mission folk and been taught by them to +read +and write. In his hands he held the many fine sheets from which the man +had read aloud, and which had been taken down by a clerk when Imber +first made confession, through the mouth of Jimmy, to Captain +Alexander. +Howkan began to read. Imber listened for a space, when a wonderment +rose +up in his face and he broke in abruptly.</p> +<p>"That be my talk, Howkan. Yet from thy lips it comes when thy ears +have +not heard."</p> +<p>Howkan smirked with self-appreciation. His hair was parted in the +middle. "Nay, from the paper it comes, O Imber. Never have my ears +heard. From the paper it comes, through my eyes, into my head, and out +of my mouth to thee. Thus it comes."</p> +<p>"Thus it comes? It be there in the paper?" Imber's voice sank in +whisperful awe as he crackled the sheets 'twixt thumb and finger and +stared at the charactery scrawled thereon. "It be a great medicine, +Howkan, and thou art a worker of wonders."</p> +<p>"It be nothing, it be nothing," the young man responded carelessly +and +pridefully. He read at hazard from the document: "<i>In that year, +before the break of the ice, came an old man, and a boy who was lame of +one foot. These also did I kill, and the old man made much noise—</i>"</p> +<p>"It be true," Imber interrupted breathlessly. "He made much noise +and +would not die for a long time. But how dost thou know, Howkan? The +chief +man of the white men told thee, mayhap? No one beheld me, and him alone +have I told."</p> +<p>Howkan shook his head with impatience. "Have I not told thee it be +there +in the paper, O fool?"</p> +<p>Imber stared hard at the ink-scrawled surface. "As the hunter looks +upon +the snow and says, Here but yesterday there passed a rabbit; and here +by +the willow scrub it stood and listened, and heard, and was afraid; and +here it turned upon its trail; and here it went with great swiftness, +leaping wide; and here, with greater swiftness and wider leapings, came +a lynx; and here, where the claws cut deep into the snow, the lynx made +a very great leap; and here it struck, with the rabbit under and +rolling +belly up; and here leads off the trail of the lynx alone, and there is +no more rabbit,—as the hunter looks upon the markings of the snow and +says thus and so and here, dost thou, too, look upon the paper and say +thus and so and here be the things old Imber hath done?"</p> +<p>"Even so," said Howkan. "And now do thou listen, and keep thy +woman's +tongue between thy teeth till thou art called upon for speech."</p> +<p>Thereafter, and for a long time, Howkan read to him the confession, +and +Imber remained musing and silent At the end, he said:</p> +<p>"It be my talk, and true talk, but I am grown old, Howkan, and +forgotten +things come back to me which were well for the head man there to know. +First, there was the man who came over the Ice Mountains, with cunning +traps made of iron, who sought the beaver of the Whitefish. Him I slew. +And there were three men seeking gold on the Whitefish long ago. Them +also I slew, and left them to the wolverines. And at the Five Fingers +there was a man with a raft and much meat."</p> +<p>At the moments when Imber paused to remember, Howkan translated and +a clerk reduced to writing. The courtroom listened stolidly to each +unadorned little tragedy, till Imber told of a red-haired man whose +eyes +were crossed and whom he had killed with a remarkably long shot.</p> +<p>"Hell," said a man in the forefront of the onlookers. He said it +soulfully and sorrowfully. He was red-haired. "Hell," he repeated. +"That +was my brother Bill." And at regular intervals throughout the session, +his solemn "Hell" was heard in the courtroom; nor did his comrades +check +him, nor did the man at the table rap him to order.</p> +<p>Imber's head drooped once more, and his eyes went dull, as though a +film +rose up and covered them from the world. And he dreamed as only age can +dream upon the colossal futility of youth.</p> +<p>Later, Howkan roused him again, saying: "Stand up, O Imber. It be +commanded that thou tellest why you did these troubles, and slew these +people, and at the end journeyed here seeking the Law."</p> +<p>Imber rose feebly to his feet and swayed back and forth. He began to +speak in a low and faintly rumbling voice, but Howkan interrupted him.</p> +<p>"This old man, he is damn crazy," he said in English to the +square-browed man. "His talk is foolish and like that of a child."</p> +<p>"We will hear his talk which is like that of a child," said the +square-browed man. "And we will hear it, word for word, as he speaks +it. +Do you understand?"</p> +<p>Howkan understood, and Imber's eyes flashed, for he had witnessed +the +play between his sister's son and the man in authority. And then began +the story, the epic of a bronze patriot which might well itself be +wrought into bronze for the generations unborn. The crowd fell +strangely +silent, and the square-browed judge leaned head on hand and pondered +his +soul and the soul of his race. Only was heard the deep tones of Imber, +rhythmically alternating with the shrill voice of the interpreter, and +now and again, like the bell of the Lord, the wondering and meditative +"Hell" of the red-haired man.</p> +<p>"I am Imber of the Whitefish people." So ran the interpretation of +Howkan, whose inherent barbarism gripped hold of him, and who lost his +mission culture and veneered civilization as he caught the savage ring +and rhythm of old Imber's tale. "My father was Otsbaok, a strong man. +The land was warm with sunshine and gladness when I was a boy. The +people did not hunger after strange things, nor hearken to new voices, +and the ways of their fathers were their ways. The women found favor +in the eyes of the young men, and the young men looked upon them +with content. Babes hung at the breasts of the women, and they were +heavy-hipped with increase of the tribe. Men were men in those days. In +peace and plenty, and in war and famine, they were men.</p> +<p>"At that time there was more fish in the water than now, and more +meat +in the forest. Our dogs were wolves, warm with thick hides and hard +to the frost and storm. And as with our dogs so with us, for we were +likewise hard to the frost and storm. And when the Pellys came into our +land we slew them and were slain. For we were men, we Whitefish, and +our fathers and our fathers' fathers had fought against the Pellys and +determined the bounds of the land.</p> +<p>"As I say, with our dogs, so with us. And one day came the first +white +man. He dragged himself, so, on hand and knee, in the snow. And his +skin +was stretched tight, and his bones were sharp beneath. Never was such a +man, we thought, and we wondered of what strange tribe he was, and of +its land. And he was weak, most weak, like a little child, so that we +gave him a place by the fire, and warm furs to lie upon, and we gave +him +food as little children are given food.</p> +<p>"And with him was a dog, large as three of our dogs, and very weak. +The +hair of this dog was short, and not warm, and the tail was frozen so +that the end fell off. And this strange dog we fed, and bedded by the +fire, and fought from it our dogs, which else would have killed him. +And +what of the moose meat and the sun-dried salmon, the man and dog took +strength to themselves; and what of the strength they became big and +unafraid. And the man spoke loud words and laughed at the old men and +young men, and looked boldly upon the maidens. And the dog fought with +our dogs, and for all of his short hair and softness slew three of them +in one day.</p> +<p>"When we asked the man concerning his people, he said, 'I have many +brothers,' and laughed in a way that was not good. And when he was in +his full strength he went away, and with him went Noda, daughter to the +chief. First, after that, was one of our bitches brought to pup. And +never was there such a breed of dogs,—big-headed, thick-jawed, and +short-haired, and helpless. Well do I remember my father, Otsbaok, a +strong man. His face was black with anger at such helplessness, and he +took a stone, so, and so, and there was no more helplessness. And two +summers after that came Noda back to us with a man-child in the hollow +of her arm.</p> +<p>"And that was the beginning. Came a second white man, with +short-haired +dogs, which he left behind him when he went. And with him went six of +our strongest dogs, for which, in trade, he had given Koo-So-Tee, my +mother's brother, a wonderful pistol that fired with great swiftness +six +times. And Koo-So-Tee was very big, what of the pistol, and laughed at +our bows and arrows. 'Woman's things,' he called them, and went forth +against the bald-face grizzly, with the pistol in his hand. Now it be +known that it is not good to hunt the bald-face with a pistol, but how +were we to know? and how was Koo-So-Tee to know? So he went against the +bald-face, very brave, and fired the pistol with great swiftness six +times; and the bald-face but grunted and broke in his breast like it +were an egg, and like honey from a bee's nest dripped the brains of +Koo-So-Tee upon the ground. He was a good hunter, and there was no one +to bring meat to his squaw and children. And we were bitter, and we +said, 'That which for the white men is well, is for us not well.' And +this be true. There be many white men and fat, but their ways have made +us few and lean.</p> +<p>"Came the third white man, with great wealth of all manner of +wonderful +foods and things. And twenty of our strongest dogs he took from us in +trade. Also, what of presents and great promises, ten of our young +hunters did he take with him on a journey which fared no man knew +where. +It is said they died in the snow of the Ice Mountains where man has +never been, or in the Hills of Silence which are beyond the edge of the +earth. Be that as it may, dogs and young hunters were seen never again +by the Whitefish people.</p> +<p>"And more white men came with the years, and ever, with pay and +presents, they led the young men away with them. And sometimes the +young +men came back with strange tales of dangers and toils in the lands +beyond the Pellys, and sometimes they did not come back. And we said: +'If they be unafraid of life, these white men, it is because they have +many lives; but we be few by the Whitefish, and the young men shall go +away no more.' But the young men did go away; and the young women went +also; and we were very wroth.</p> +<p>"It be true, we ate flour, and salt pork, and drank tea which was a +great delight; only, when we could not get tea, it was very bad and we +became short of speech and quick of anger. So we grew to hunger for the +things the white men brought in trade. Trade! trade! all the time was +it trade! One winter we sold our meat for clocks that would not go, and +watches with broken guts, and files worn smooth, and pistols without +cartridges and worthless. And then came famine, and we were without +meat, and two score died ere the break of spring.</p> +<p>"'Now are we grown weak,' we said; 'and the Pellys will fall upon +us, +and our bounds be overthrown.' But as it fared with us, so had it fared +with the Pellys, and they were too weak to come against us.</p> +<p>"My father, Otsbaok, a strong man, was now old and very wise. And he +spoke to the chief, saying: 'Behold, our dogs be worthless. No longer +are they thick-furred and strong, and they die in the frost and +harness. +Let us go into the village and kill them, saving only the wolf ones, +and these let us tie out in the night that they may mate with the wild +wolves of the forest. Thus shall we have dogs warm and strong again.'</p> +<p>"And his word was harkened to, and we Whitefish became known for our +dogs, which were the best in the land. But known we were not for +ourselves. The best of our young men and women had gone away with the +white men to wander on trail and river to far places. And the young +women came back old and broken, as Noda had come, or they came not at +all. And the young men came back to sit by our fires for a time, full +of ill speech and rough ways, drinking evil drinks and gambling through +long nights and days, with a great unrest always in their hearts, till +the call of the white men came to them and they went away again to the +unknown places. And they were without honor and respect, jeering the +old-time customs and laughing in the faces of chief and shamans.</p> +<p>"As I say, we were become a weak breed, we Whitefish. We sold our +warm +skins and furs for tobacco and whiskey and thin cotton things that left +us shivering in the cold. And the coughing sickness came upon us, and +men and women coughed and sweated through the long nights, and the +hunters on trail spat blood upon the snow. And now one, and now +another, +bled swiftly from the mouth and died. And the women bore few children, +and those they bore were weak and given to sickness. And other +sicknesses came to us from the white men, the like of which we had +never +known and could not understand. Smallpox, likewise measles, have I +heard +these sicknesses named, and we died of them as die the salmon in the +still eddies when in the fall their eggs are spawned and there is no +longer need for them to live.</p> +<p>"And yet, and here be the strangeness of it, the white men come as +the +breath of death; all their ways lead to death, their nostrils are +filled +with it; and yet they do not die. Theirs the whiskey, and tobacco, and +short-haired dogs; theirs the many sicknesses, the smallpox and +measles, +the coughing and mouth-bleeding; theirs the white skin, and softness to +the frost and storm; and theirs the pistols that shoot six times very +swift and are worthless. And yet they grow fat on their many ills, and +prosper, and lay a heavy hand over all the world and tread mightily +upon its peoples. And their women, too, are soft as little babes, most +breakable and never broken, the mothers of men. And out of all this +softness, and sickness, and weakness, come strength, and power, and +authority. They be gods, or devils, as the case may be. I do not know. +What do I know, I, old Imber of the Whitefish? Only do I know that they +are past understanding, these white men, far-wanderers and fighters +over +the earth that they be.</p> +<p>"As I say, the meat in the forest became less and less. It be true, +the +white man's gun is most excellent and kills a long way off; but of what +worth the gun, when there is no meat to kill? When I was a boy on the +Whitefish there was moose on every hill, and each year came the caribou +uncountable. But now the hunter may take the trail ten days and not one +moose gladden his eyes, while the caribou uncountable come no more at +all. Small worth the gun, I say, killing a long way off, when there be +nothing to kill.</p> +<p>"And I, Imber, pondered upon these things, watching the while the +Whitefish, and the Pellys, and all the tribes of the land, perishing +as perished the meat of the forest. Long I pondered. I talked with the +shamans and the old men who were wise. I went apart that the sounds of +the village might not disturb me, and I ate no meat so that my belly +should not press upon me and make me slow of eye and ear. I sat long +and +sleepless in the forest, wide-eyed for the sign, my ears patient +and keen for the word that was to come. And I wandered alone in the +blackness of night to the river bank, where was wind-moaning and +sobbing +of water, and where I sought wisdom from the ghosts of old shamans in +the trees and dead and gone.</p> +<p>"And in the end, as in a vision, came to me the short-haired and +detestable dogs, and the way seemed plain. By the wisdom of Otsbaok, my +father and a strong man, had the blood of our own wolf-dogs been kept +clean, wherefore had they remained warm of hide and strong in the +harness. So I returned to my village and made oration to the men. 'This +be a tribe, these white men,' I said. 'A very large tribe, and +doubtless +there is no longer meat in their land, and they are come among us to +make a new land for themselves. But they weaken us, and we die. They +are +a very hungry folk. Already has our meat gone from us, and it were +well, +if we would live, that we deal by them as we have dealt by their dogs.'</p> +<p>"And further oration I made, counselling fight. And the men of the +Whitefish listened, and some said one thing, and some another, and some +spoke of other and worthless things, and no man made brave talk of +deeds and war. But while the young men were weak as water and afraid, I +watched that the old men sat silent, and that in their eyes fires came +and went. And later, when the village slept and no one knew, I drew the +old men away into the forest and made more talk. And now we were +agreed, +and we remembered the good young days, and the free land, and the times +of plenty, and the gladness and sunshine; and we called ourselves +brothers, and swore great secrecy, and a mighty oath to cleanse the +land +of the evil breed that had come upon it. It be plain we were fools, but +how were we to know, we old men of the Whitefish?</p> +<p>"And to hearten the others, I did the first deed. I kept guard upon +the +Yukon till the first canoe came down. In it were two white men, and +when +I stood upright upon the bank and raised my hand they changed their +course and drove in to me. And as the man in the bow lifted his head, +so, that he might know wherefore I wanted him, my arrow sang through +the +air straight to his throat, and he knew. The second man, who held +paddle +in the stern, had his rifle half to his shoulder when the first of my +three spear-casts smote him.</p> +<p>"'These be the first,' I said, when the old men had gathered to me. +'Later we will bind together all the old men of all the tribes, and +after that the young men who remain strong, and the work will become +easy.'</p> +<p>"And then the two dead white men we cast into the river. And of the +canoe, which was a very good canoe, we made a fire, and a fire, also, +of +the things within the canoe. But first we looked at the things, and +they +were pouches of leather which we cut open with our knives. And inside +these pouches were many papers, like that from which thou hast read, +O Howkan, with markings on them which we marvelled at and could not +understand. Now, I am become wise, and I know them for the speech of +men +as thou hast told me."</p> +<p>A whisper and buzz went around the courtroom when Howkan finished +interpreting the affair of the canoe, and one man's voice spoke up: +"That was the lost '91 mail, Peter James and Delaney bringing it in and +last spoken at Le Barge by Matthews going out." The clerk scratched +steadily away, and another paragraph was added to the history of the +North.</p> +<p>"There be little more," Imber went on slowly. "It be there on the +paper, +the things we did. We were old men, and we did not understand. Even I, +Imber, do not now understand. Secretly we slew, and continued to slay, +for with our years we were crafty and we had learned the swiftness of +going without haste. When white men came among us with black looks and +rough words, and took away six of the young men with irons binding them +helpless, we knew we must slay wider and farther. And one by one we old +men departed up river and down to the unknown lands. It was a brave +thing. Old we were, and unafraid, but the fear of far places is a +terrible fear to men who are old.</p> +<p>"So we slew, without haste and craftily. On the Chilcoot and in the +Delta we slew, from the passes to the sea, wherever the white men +camped +or broke their trails. It be true, they died, but it was without worth. +Ever did they come over the mountains, ever did they grow and grow, +while we, being old, became less and less. I remember, by the Caribou +Crossing, the camp of a white man. He was a very little white man, and +three of the old men came upon him in his sleep. And the next day I +came +upon the four of them. The white man alone still breathed, and there +was +breath in him to curse me once and well before he died.</p> +<p>"And so it went, now one old man, and now another. Sometimes the +word +reached us long after of how they died, and sometimes it did not reach +us. And the old men of the other tribes were weak and afraid, and would +not join with us. As I say, one by one, till I alone was left. I am +Imber, of the Whitefish people. My father was Otsbaok, a strong man. +There are no Whitefish now. Of the old men I am the last. The young men +and young women are gone away, some to live with the Pellys, some with +the Salmons, and more with the white men. I am very old, and very +tired, +and it being vain fighting the Law, as thou sayest, Howkan, I am come +seeking the Law."</p> +<p>"O Imber, thou art indeed a fool," said Howkan.</p> +<p>But Imber was dreaming. The square-browed judge likewise dreamed, +and all his race rose up before him in a mighty phantasmagoria—his +steel-shod, mail-clad race, the lawgiver and world-maker among the +families of men. He saw it dawn red-flickering across the dark forests +and sullen seas; he saw it blaze, bloody and red, to full and +triumphant +noon; and down the shaded slope he saw the blood-red sands dropping +into +night. And through it all he observed the Law, pitiless and potent, +ever unswerving and ever ordaining, greater than the motes of men who +fulfilled it or were crushed by it, even as it was greater than he, his +heart speaking for softness.</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr class="full"> +<pre> + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE FROST*** + +******* This file should be named 10736-h.txt or 10736-h.zip ******* + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/7/3/10736">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/7/3/10736</a> + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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