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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Children of the Frost, by Jack London
+
+
+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 www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Children of the Frost
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2004  [eBook #10736]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE FROST***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Wilelmina Malliere and Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+CHILDREN OF THE FROST
+
+BY JACK LONDON
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "And the girl, Kasaan, crept in, very timid and quiet,
+and dropped a little bag upon the things for my journey."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+IN THE FORESTS OF THE NORTH
+
+THE LAW OF LIFE
+
+NAM-BOK THE UNVERACIOUS
+
+THE MASTER OF MYSTERY
+
+THE SUNLANDERS
+
+THE SICKNESS OF LONE CHIEF
+
+KEESH, THE SON OF KEESH
+
+THE DEATH OF LIGOUN
+
+LI WAN, THE FAIR
+
+THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN
+
+
+
+
+IN THE FORESTS OF THE NORTH
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 _voyageurs_,
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked, gripping the extended hand. "Andree?"
+
+"Who's Andree?" the man asked back.
+
+Van Brunt looked at him more sharply. "By George, you've been here
+some time."
+
+"Five years," the man answered, a dim flicker of pride in his eyes.
+"But come on, let's talk."
+
+"Let them camp alongside of me," he answered Van Brunt's glance at his
+party. "Old Tantlatch will take care of them. Come on."
+
+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.
+
+"Two hundred, not counting the young ones," he summed up.
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+"God! But that tastes good!"
+
+Van Brunt nodded sympathetically. "Five years, you say?"
+
+"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."
+
+"Five years," Van Brunt murmured retrospectively, as though turning
+things over in his mind.
+
+"Five years on February last. I crossed the Great Slave early in
+May--"
+
+"And you are ... Fairfax?" Van Brunt interjected.
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"Let me see ... John, I think it is, John Fairfax."
+
+"How did you know?" Fairfax queried lazily, half-absorbed in curling
+smoke-spirals upward in the quiet air.
+
+"The papers were full of it at the time. Prevanche--"
+
+"Prevanche!" Fairfax sat up, suddenly alert. "He was lost in the Smoke
+Mountains."
+
+"Yes, but he pulled through and came out."
+
+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 _did_ have ideas about head-straps, the beggar. And he pulled
+through? Well, I'm glad."
+
+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 _voyageurs_ 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."
+
+Van Brunt shivered and rubbed the backs of his hands briskly.
+
+"And they gave me up for dead?" his companion asked slowly.
+
+"Well, you never came back, so your friends--"
+
+"Promptly forgot." Fairfax laughed harshly, defiantly.
+
+"Why didn't you come out?"
+
+"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."
+
+"I knew your brother at Freiburg. I am Van Brunt."
+
+Fairfax reached forward impulsively and shook his hand. "You were
+Billy's friend, eh? Poor Billy! He spoke of you often."
+
+"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."
+
+"Beastly life!" Van Brunt grimaced his disgust. "I suppose, after five
+years of it, civilization will be sweet? What do you say?"
+
+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?"
+
+"No, it's a pretty good life," he continued, after a pause; "good
+enough for me, and I intend to stay with it."
+
+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.
+
+"But you are coming along with me," Van Brunt said deliberately.
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"Yes, you are."
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+"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?"
+
+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."
+
+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:
+
+"And ... Emily ...?"
+
+"Three years a widow; still a widow."
+
+Another long silence settled down, to be broken by Fairfax finally
+with a naive smile. "I guess you're right, Van Brunt. I'll go along."
+
+"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--"
+
+"When do you start?" Fairfax interrupted.
+
+"After the men have had some sleep. Which reminds me, Michael is
+getting angry, so come and eat."
+
+After supper, when the Crees and _voyageurs_ 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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"Precious lot she understands," Fairfax laughed. "Her first
+introduction, you know. But as you were saying, with the Spanish fleet
+bottled up in Santiago?"
+
+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.
+
+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?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"You?" she said, in the Arctic tongue which differs little from
+Greenland to Point Barrow. "You?"
+
+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.
+
+"Brother," he answered in the same tongue, with a sweeping gesture to
+the south. "Brothers we be, your man and I."
+
+She shook her head. "It is not good that you be here."
+
+"After one sleep I go."
+
+"And my man?" she demanded, with tremulous eagerness.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+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:--
+
+"Yes! Yes! Fairfax! My man!"
+
+"Poor little fool, how could he be your man?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"Who has said he shall go from thee?" he demanded sharply, half in
+exasperation, half in impotence.
+
+"It is for thee to say he shall not go from me," she answered softly,
+a half-sob in her throat.
+
+Van Brunt kicked the embers of the fire savagely and sat down.
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"He is my man."
+
+"Then Jesus forgive all men!" Van Brunt cried out passionately.
+
+"He is my man," she repeated monotonously, beseechingly.
+
+"He is my brother," he answered.
+
+"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."
+
+"After one sleep I go."
+
+"And my man?"
+
+"Thy man comes now. Behold!"
+
+From among the gloomy spruces came the light carolling of Fairfax's
+voice.
+
+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."
+
+She turned, with the free movement of a lithe young animal, and made
+off into the forest.
+
+"It's all fixed," Fairfax called as he came up. "His regal highness
+will receive you after breakfast."
+
+"Have you told him?" Van Brunt asked.
+
+"No. Nor shall I tell him till we're ready to pull out."
+
+Van Brunt looked with moody affection over the sleeping forms of his
+men.
+
+"I shall be glad when we are a hundred leagues upon our way," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"And thy man, how is it with him and thee?"
+
+"He sings strange songs," Thom made answer, "and there is a new look
+on his face."
+
+"So? He hath spoken?"
+
+"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."
+
+Chugungatte whispered in his master's ear, and Keen leaned forward
+from his hips.
+
+"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."
+
+Again Chugungatte whispered and Keen leaned forward, and Thom held her
+speech till her father nodded his head that she might proceed.
+
+"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."
+
+"Is it well, Tantlatch? Is it well?" Chugungatte demanded, with the
+hint of menace in his voice.
+
+"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."
+
+"He is my own man," Thom answered, "and he is a great man."
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+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."
+
+The old shaman paused, and looked directly at the young man.
+
+"And be it known that I, Chugungatte, did advise that the promise be
+broken."
+
+"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."
+
+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!"
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+Chugungatte rose and tottered out; Thom followed; but as Keen stooped
+to the entrance the voice of Tantlatch stopped him.
+
+"Keen, it were well to hearken to my word. The man remains. Let no
+harm befall him."
+
+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 _voyageurs_. 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.
+
+"Damn them," Fairfax muttered. "They've never faced powder, but I
+taught them the trick."
+
+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.
+
+"Wait," he said. "We'll wither the face of the charge and break their
+hearts."
+
+"They'll rush scattered if they remember my teaching."
+
+"Let them. Magazine rifles were made to pump. We'll--good! First
+blood! Extra tobacco, Loon!"
+
+Loon, a Cree, had spotted an exposed shoulder and with a stinging
+bullet apprised its owner of his discovery.
+
+"If we can tease them into breaking forward," Fairfax muttered,--"if
+we can only tease them into breaking forward."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Get ready," Van Brunt commanded, a new metallic note in his voice.
+"Now!"
+
+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.
+
+"The woman! Don't shoot!" he cried. "See! She is unarmed!"
+
+The Crees never heard, nor Michael and his brother _voyageur_, 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....
+
+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.
+
+"My man! My man!" Thom cried. "Thou art safe!"
+
+He tried to struggle on, but her dead weight clogged his steps.
+
+"There is no need! They are dead, and life be good!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAW OF LIFE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Is it well with you?" he asked.
+
+And the old man answered, "It is well."
+
+"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."
+
+"Ay, even now is it snowing."
+
+"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?"
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 _was_ a famine!
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+
+
+
+NAM-BOK THE UNVERACIOUS
+
+
+"A bidarka, is it not so? Look! a bidarka, and one man who drives
+clumsily with a paddle!"
+
+Old Bask-Wah-Wan rose to her knees, trembling with weakness and
+eagerness, and gazed out over the sea.
+
+"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...."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"Nam-Bok!" the old woman cried, so loud and clear that the whole
+village was startled and looked at her.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!"
+
+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.
+
+"It _is_ Nam-Bok," he said at last, and at the conviction in his voice
+the women wailed apprehensively and drew farther away.
+
+The lips of the stranger moved indecisively, and his brown throat
+writhed and wrestled with unspoken words.
+
+"La la, it is Nam-Bok," Bask-Wah-Wan croaked, peering up into his
+face. "Ever did I say Nam-Bok would come back."
+
+"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."
+
+He stepped out with both feet on the sand, and Opee-Kwan waved him
+back.
+
+"Thou art dead, Nam-Bok," he said.
+
+Nam-Bok laughed. "I am fat."
+
+"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."
+
+"I have come back," Nam-Bok answered simply.
+
+"Mayhap thou art a shadow, then, a passing shadow of the Nam-Bok that
+was. Shadows come back."
+
+"I am hungry. Shadows do not eat."
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+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."
+
+"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."
+
+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 _klooch_, bore him two sons after he came back."
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"Ay, strange tales he told."
+
+"I, too, have strange tales to tell," Nam-Bok stated insidiously. And,
+as they wavered, "And presents likewise."
+
+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.
+
+"He has tales to tell," Koogah muttered. "And presents," a woman
+seconded.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+There were exclamations of doubt, and Koogah, whose years were many,
+shook his head.
+
+"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 _schooner_. I saw this thing of wonder, this great
+schooner, coming after me, and on it I saw men--"
+
+"Hold, O Nam-Bok!" Opee-Kwan broke in. "What manner of men were
+they?--big men?"
+
+"Nay, mere men like you and me."
+
+"Did the big canoe come fast?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"The sides were tall, the men short." Opee-Kwan stated the premises
+with conviction. "And did these men dip with long paddles?"
+
+Nam-Bok grinned. "There were no paddles," he said.
+
+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.
+
+"There were no paddles?" Opee-Kwan asked softly, returning the pipe.
+
+"The south wind was behind," Nam-Bok explained.
+
+"But the wind-drift is slow."
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"Small need to strive," Nam-Bok cried angrily. "The schooner went
+likewise against the wind."
+
+"And what said you made the sch--sch--schooner go?" Koogah asked,
+tripping craftily over the strange word.
+
+"The wind," was the impatient response.
+
+"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."
+
+"Thou art a fool!"
+
+"Truth falls from thy lips," Koogah answered meekly. "I was over-long
+in understanding, and the thing was simple."
+
+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.
+
+"This sch--sch--schooner," Koogah imperturbably asked; "it was made of
+a big tree?"
+
+"It was made of many trees," Nam-Bok snapped shortly. "It was very
+big."
+
+He lapsed into sullen silence again, and Opee-Kwan nudged Koogah, who
+shook his head with slow amazement and murmured, "It is very strange."
+
+Nam-bok took the bait. "That is nothing," he said airily; "you should
+see the _steamer_. 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."
+
+"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."
+
+"It is so," Nam-Bok persisted. "The steamer is all iron and does not
+sink."
+
+"Nay, nay; this cannot be."
+
+"With my own eyes I saw it."
+
+"It is not in the nature of things."
+
+"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."
+
+"The sun points out the path."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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?"
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+Opee-Kwan's mouth was twitching violently, and he was about to make
+denunciation of such waste when Koogah kicked him to be still.
+
+"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--"
+
+"How did they know they were near?" Opee-Kwan, unable to contain
+himself longer, demanded. "There was no land to see."
+
+Nam-Bok glowered on him wrathfully. "Did I not say the head man
+brought the sun down out of the sky?"
+
+Koogah interposed, and Nam-Bok went on.
+
+"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--"
+
+"Thou hast just said the head man knew--"
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+"It was a mighty house," Koogah said, masking his unbelief with
+wonder.
+
+"And many trees went into the making of such a house," Opee-Kwan
+added, taking the cue.
+
+"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."
+
+"And they are not big men?"
+
+"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 _money_--a thing of which you know nothing, but
+which is very good.
+
+"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--"
+
+"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."
+
+"Nay, it was not mine."
+
+"It was a find, and a find be lawful."
+
+"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."
+
+"Nam-Bok, that is very much iron," Opee-Kwan cautioned.
+
+"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."
+
+The fisherfolk cried aloud in astonishment, and Opee-Kwan's jaw
+lowered and remained lowered.
+
+"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...."
+
+Opee-Kwan gained control of his jaw again. "And--and then, O Nam-Bok?"
+
+"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."
+
+"As we make our dogs do work?" Koogah asked, with sceptic twinkle in
+his eye.
+
+"Ay, as we make our dogs do work."
+
+"And how do they breed these--these things?" Opee-Kwan questioned.
+
+"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--"
+
+"There, there, O Nam-Bok," Opee-Kwan interrupted. "Tell us of other
+wonders. We grow tired of this which we may not understand."
+
+"You do not understand?" Nam-Bok asked despairingly.
+
+"Nay, we do not understand," the men and women wailed back. "We cannot
+understand."
+
+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.
+
+"Dare I say I rode this iron monster through the land?" he asked
+bitterly.
+
+Opee-Kwan threw up his hands, palms outward, in open incredulity. "Say
+on; say anything. We listen."
+
+"Then did I ride the iron monster, for which I gave money--"
+
+"Thou saidst it was fed with stone."
+
+"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."
+
+"Hadst thou made small notches," Koogah reproved, "thou mightst have
+brought report."
+
+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."
+
+"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.
+
+"What dost thou know of all the world and how large it is?" Nam-Bok
+demanded.
+
+"But there cannot be so many people in one place."
+
+"Who art thou to say what can be and what cannot be?"
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Come, Nam-Bok, arise!" he commanded. "It be time."
+
+"Another feast?" Nam-Bok cried. "Nay, I am not hungry. Go on with the
+eating and let me sleep."
+
+"Time to be gone!" Koogah thundered.
+
+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."
+
+"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."
+
+Nam-Bok was perplexed, but hearkened to the voice of the head man.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+Bask-Wah-Wan limped to the froth-mark and cried, "I bless thee,
+Nam-Bok, for that thou remembered me."
+
+But Koogah, shoving Nam-Bok clear of the beach, tore the shawl from
+her shoulders and flung it into the bidarka.
+
+"It is cold in the long nights," she wailed; "and the frost is prone
+to nip old bones."
+
+"The thing is a shadow," the bone-scratcher answered, "and shadows
+cannot keep thee warm."
+
+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?"
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+THE MASTER OF MYSTERY
+
+
+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.
+
+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 _potlatch_ 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.
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+"The blankets were not!" the women repeated in awed whispers.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+"How can that be, O Bawn?" the women chorussed indignantly. "Who
+should there be?"
+
+"Then has there been witchcraft," Bawn continued stolidly enough,
+though he stole a sly glance at their faces.
+
+"_Witchcraft!_" And at the dread word their voices hushed and each
+looked fearfully at each.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Hoh! Hoh!" he laughed. "Devils and Klok-No-Ton!--than whom no greater
+devil can be found in Thlinket Land."
+
+"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!"
+
+So spoke La-lah, otherwise the Cheater, and Sime laughed scornfully.
+
+"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--"
+
+"But Scundoo hath," La-lah made answer. "And likewise Klok-No-Ton.
+This we know."
+
+"How dost thou know, son of a fool?" Sime thundered, the choleric
+blood darkening his thick bull neck.
+
+"By the word of their mouths--even so."
+
+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!"
+
+And snapping his fingers to right and left, Sime strode through the
+on-lookers, who made over-zealous and fearsome way for him.
+
+"A good fisher and strong hunter, but an evil man," said one.
+
+"Yet does he flourish," speculated another.
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Greeting, O Scundoo!" Klok-No-Ton rumbled, wavering perceptibly from
+doubt of his reception.
+
+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.
+
+"Greeting, Klok-No-Ton," he returned. "The day is fair with thy
+coming."
+
+"Yet it would seem ..." Klok-No-Ton hesitated.
+
+"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."
+
+"It grieves me, friend Scundoo ..."
+
+"Nay, I am made glad, Klok-No-Ton."
+
+"But will I give thee half of that which be given me."
+
+"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."
+
+"As I--"
+
+"As thou now befriendest me."
+
+"That being so, it is then a bad business, these blankets of the woman
+Hooniah?"
+
+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.
+
+"Ever hast thou dealt in strong medicine," he said. "Doubtless the
+evil-doer will be briefly known to thee."
+
+"Ay, briefly known when I set eyes upon him." Again Klok-No-Ton
+hesitated. "Have there been gossips from other places?" he asked.
+
+Scundoo shook his head. "Behold! Is this not a most excellent mucluc?"
+
+He held up the foot-covering of sealskin and walrus hide, and his
+visitor examined it with secret interest.
+
+"It did come to me by a close-driven bargain."
+
+Klok-No-Ton nodded attentively.
+
+"I got it from the man La-lah. He is a remarkable man, and often have
+I thought ..."
+
+"So?" Klok-No-Ton ventured impatiently.
+
+"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."
+
+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."
+
+Scundoo smiled yet more wan and gray, closed the door on the heels of
+his departing visitor, and barred and double-barred it.
+
+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.
+
+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!"
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+Hooniah waddled forward, head bent and gaze averted.
+
+"Where be thy blankets?"
+
+"I but stretched them up in the sun, and behold, they were not!" she
+whined.
+
+"So?"
+
+"It was because of Di Ya."
+
+"So?"
+
+"Him have I beaten sore, and he shall yet be beaten, for that he
+brought trouble upon us who be poor people."
+
+"The blankets!" Klok-No-Ton bellowed hoarsely, foreseeing her desire
+to lower the price to be paid. "The blankets, woman! Thy wealth is
+known."
+
+"I but stretched them up in the sun," she sniffled, "and we be poor
+people and have nothing."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Wherefore?" he cried.
+
+"Na! Na!" the people laughed. "Thy medicine be ill, O Klok-No-Ton!"
+
+"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!"
+
+"It be true!" they cried with one accord. "The blankets of Hooniah
+were gone ere he came!"
+
+"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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+"Harm not Scundoo, who is a master!" a woman cried out.
+
+"Better you return to your own village," a man advised menacingly.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"It shall be death!" Bawn vociferated, "for that it hath brought worry
+upon us, and shame."
+
+"So be it," Scundoo replied, and shut his door.
+
+"Now shall all be made clear and plain, and content rest upon us once
+again," La-lah declaimed oracularly.
+
+"Because of Scundoo, the little man," Sime sneered.
+
+"Because of the medicine of Scundoo, the little man," La-lah
+corrected.
+
+"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."
+
+"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--"
+
+"The Cheater--"
+
+"So called, but the Far-Journeyer right-named."
+
+"I am not so great a traveller--" Sime began.
+
+"Then hold thy tongue," Bawn cut in, and they separated in anger.
+
+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.
+
+"Is there wood gathered for a fire, so that all may see when the work
+be done?" he demanded.
+
+"Yea," Bawn answered. "There be wood in plenty."
+
+"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?"
+
+"We be ready," came the multi-voiced response.
+
+"Then will I call the name aloud, each in his turn and hers, till all
+are called."
+
+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.
+
+"Sime!" Scundoo called out.
+
+"Sime!" he repeated.
+
+But Sime did not stir.
+
+"Art thou afraid of the dark?" La-lah, his own integrity being proved,
+demanded fiercely.
+
+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."
+
+And he passed in boldly, and came out still mocking.
+
+"Some day shalt thou die with great suddenness," La-lah whispered,
+righteously indignant.
+
+"I doubt not," the scoffer answered airily. "Few men of us die in our
+beds, what of the shamans and the deep sea."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Let the fire be lighted," Scundoo commanded.
+
+The bright flames rushed upward, revealing faces yet marked with
+vanishing fear, but also clouded with doubt.
+
+"Surely the thing has failed," Hooniah whispered hoarsely.
+
+"Yea," Bawn answered complacently. "Scundoo groweth old, and we stand
+in need of a new shaman."
+
+"Where now is the wisdom of Jelchs?" Sime snickered in La-lah's ear.
+
+La-lah brushed his brow in a puzzled manner and said nothing.
+
+Sime threw his chest out arrogantly and strutted up to the little
+shaman. "Hoh! Hoh! As I said, nothing has come of it!"
+
+"So it would seem, so it would seem," Scundoo answered meekly. "And it
+would seem strange to those unskilled in the affairs of mystery."
+
+"As thou?" Sime queried audaciously.
+
+"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!"
+
+So unexpected was the order, and so imperatively was it given, that it
+was obeyed without question. Every hand was in the air.
+
+"Let each look on the other's hands, and let all look," Scundoo
+commanded, "so that--"
+
+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.
+
+A stone hurtled through the air and struck him on the cheek.
+
+"It is a lie!" he yelled. "A lie! I know naught of Hooniah's
+blankets!"
+
+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.
+
+"It was a joke! Only a joke!" he shrieked. "I but took them for a
+joke!"
+
+"Where hast thou hidden them?" Scundoo's shrill, sharp voice cut
+through the tumult like a knife.
+
+"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--"
+
+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.
+
+Hooniah came waddling back with the precious blankets. Scundoo stopped
+her.
+
+"We be poor people and have little," she whimpered. "So be not hard
+upon us, O Scundoo."
+
+The people ceased from the quivering stone-pile they had builded, and
+looked on.
+
+"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."
+
+"Am I not wise, my children?" he demanded.
+
+"Thou art indeed wise, O Scundoo!" they cried in one voice.
+
+And he went away into the darkness, the blankets around him, and
+Jelchs nodding sleepily under his arm.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUNLANDERS
+
+
+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.
+
+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 _Search_ 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.
+
+It began to happen when six men came ashore from the _Search_,
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+"Better were it to ask why they come," cried a voice from the
+darkness, and Aab-Waak pushed his way to the front.
+
+"Ay! Why they come!" clamored many voices, and Aab-Waak waved his hand
+for silence.
+
+"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."
+
+"Ay, Aab-Waak! Ay!" cried the people in admiration.
+
+"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."
+
+"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?"
+
+"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."
+
+"Their sugar is very good," Neegah commented, "and their flour."
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"Mayhap they, too, are unafraid, being great fighters," the weazened
+little old hunter objected.
+
+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."
+
+Heads nodded in approval, and the women craned their necks to listen.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"I shall take the gun of Bill-Man for myself," Aab-Waak suddenly
+proclaimed.
+
+"Nay, it shall be mine!" shouted Neegah; "for there is the price of
+Mesahchie to be reckoned."
+
+"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."
+
+"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?"
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"And be it understood that no harm befall Mesahchie, who is worth a
+price," Neegah whispered hoarsely.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+"Did I not say, mayhap, they were fighters?" cackled the weazened old
+hunter.
+
+"It was to be expected," Aab-Waak answered stoutly. "We fought in a
+trap of our making."
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+"Let each ask of his neighbor for Neegah and the six young men," Tyee
+commanded.
+
+And after a time the answer came back, "Neegah and the six young men
+are not."
+
+"And many more are not!" wailed a woman to the rear.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+Tyee rubbed his hands gleefully as the dry structure burned and
+crackled. "Now we have them, brothers! In the trap!"
+
+"And no one may gainsay me the gun of Bill-Man," Aab-Waak announced.
+
+"Save Bill-Man," squeaked the old hunter. "For behold, he cometh now!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Now is he a fool!" cried Tyee, leaping high, as he ran forward, to
+clear the squirming body of one of the Hungry Folk.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"They, too, are unafraid, being great fighters," he wheezed, pawing
+aimlessly with his hands. "And behold! Bill-Man comes now!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Tyee caught his breath and murmured, "Like the young frost in the
+morning sun."
+
+"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."
+
+"Like the young frost in the morning sun," Tyee repeated, crouching
+for shelter behind the dying man and peering at intervals about him.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"So swiftly they go, one may not see them," he observed.
+
+"But many be dead of us," Tyee went on.
+
+"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."
+
+"How may we go down to the ship when we cannot go this way or that?"
+Tyee questioned.
+
+"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."
+
+"Never shall they come from the ship, their brothers! I have said it."
+
+Tyee was gathering courage again, and when the Sunlanders verified the
+prediction by retreating to the cliff, he was light-hearted as ever.
+
+"There be only three of us!" complained one of the Hungry Folk as they
+came together for council.
+
+"Therefore, instead of two, shall you have four guns each," was Tyee's
+rejoinder.
+
+"We did good fighting."
+
+"Ay; and if it should happen that two of you be left, then will you
+have six guns each. Therefore, fight well."
+
+"And if there be none of them left?" Aab-Waak whispered slyly.
+
+"Then will _we_ have the guns, you and I," Tyee whispered back.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Where be Peshack?" an old squaw queried sharply.
+
+"And Olitlie?" "And Polak?" "And Mah-Kook?" the voices took up the
+cry.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Was it a fight?" Tyee demanded finally,--"a good fight?"
+
+"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!"
+
+"Where be thy brothers?" Tyee shook him till he shrieked from the pain
+of his hurts.
+
+Ounenk sobered. "My brothers? They are not."
+
+"And Pome-Lee?" cried one of the two Hungry Folk; "Pome-Lee, the son
+of my mother?"
+
+"Pome-Lee is not," Ounenk answered in a monotonous voice.
+
+"And the Sunlanders?" from Aab-Waak.
+
+"The Sunlanders are not."
+
+"Then the ship of the Sunlanders, and the wealth and guns and things?"
+Tyee demanded.
+
+"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."
+
+"And thou art a fool."
+
+"It may be so," Ounenk answered, unruffled.
+
+"I have seen that which would well make me a fool."
+
+Tyee held his tongue, and all waited till it should please Ounenk to
+tell the story in his own way.
+
+"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!"
+
+Ounenk pointed to his ear, neatly pierced by a buckshot.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+Ounenk looked about him with pride. "I, only, am left," he repeated.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Who so swift as the swift-winged lead?" Aab-Waak pondered.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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--"
+
+He broke off hastily as the air by his ear split sharply to the
+passage of a bullet.
+
+Tyee laughed scornfully. "Let that be thy answer. What else may we do
+with this mad breed of Sunlanders which will not die?"
+
+"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."
+
+"We fought before for great wealth; we fight now that we may live,"
+Aab-Waak summed up succinctly.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The cave!" Tyee cried. "They foresaw my wisdom of the skin-bales and
+fled away into the cave!"
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"How should I know they were great fighters and unafraid?" Tyee
+demanded, spurred to defence by recollection of the dark looks and
+vague complaints.
+
+"We were many and happy," one of the men stated baldly. Another
+fingered his spear with a prurient hand.
+
+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."
+
+"Never again!" chorussed the weary men. "Never again!" And Tyee joined
+with them.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+Tyee clambered in, dragged him up with his back against the wall, but
+the head hung down on the chest and sobbed and wailed.
+
+"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!"
+
+"And did they die, the cursed Sunlanders, at the end of the narrow
+way?" Tyee demanded.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+"So? So?" Tyee mused, too stunned for speech.
+
+He started suddenly, and shivered, for the voice of Bill-Man shot out
+at him from the passage.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"I am hungry, Tyee," he said. "Very hungry."
+
+"And I am dirt at thy feet," Tyee responded.
+
+"Thy word is my law. Further, I commanded my people not to withstand
+thee. I counselled--"
+
+But Bill-Man had turned and was calling back into the passage. "Hey!
+Charley! Jim! Fetch the woman along and come on!"
+
+"We go now to eat," he said, when his comrades and Mesahchie had
+joined him.
+
+Tyee rubbed his hands deprecatingly. "We have little, but it is
+thine."
+
+"After that we go south on the snow," Bill-Man continued.
+
+"May you go without hardship and the trail be easy."
+
+"It is a long way. We will need dogs and food--much!"
+
+"Thine the pick of our dogs and the food they may carry."
+
+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."
+
+And so they departed into the trackless south, Bill-Man, his brothers,
+and Mesahchie. And when the next year came, the _Search Number Two_
+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 _Search Number Two_ brings on
+her yearly trip from the Sunlands.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+
+THE SICKNESS OF LONE CHIEF
+
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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?"
+
+"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?"
+
+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--"
+
+"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."
+
+"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--"
+
+"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."
+
+"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--"
+
+"And before the lodge they sang the
+death-song--_O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ich-klu-kuk-ich-klu-kuk_," wailed
+Mutsak, in so excellent an imitation that all the tendrils of my spine
+crawled and curved in sympathy.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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--"
+
+"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.
+
+"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--"
+
+"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--"
+
+"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."
+
+"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--"
+
+"Ay, O White Man," exclaimed Mutsak. "With a voice like thunder, that
+made the people shake at the knees and become afraid."
+
+"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--"
+
+"With a voice like thunder," prompted Mutsak.
+
+"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!'
+
+"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!'
+
+"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."
+
+"Until the steamboat came," Mutsak prompted.
+
+"Ay," said Lone Chief. "Until the steamboat came."
+
+
+
+
+KEESH, THE SON OF KEESH
+
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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?"
+
+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."
+
+"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!"
+
+An open snicker passed round the circle, and Keesh knew that he stood
+in shame before these people.
+
+"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?"
+
+"Ay, what of the man?" the circle snarled.
+
+"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."
+
+The face of Keesh went dark. "It is a lie!" he thundered. "Keesh is
+afraid of no man!"
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!"
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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?"
+
+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?"
+
+"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!"
+
+Gnob turned to a husky young man across the fire. "And what sayest
+thou, Makamuk, who art brother to Su-Su?"
+
+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."
+
+A snarl of rage rose up and drowned his voice, which he stilled by
+turning dramatically upon Keesh with outstretched arm and accusing
+finger.
+
+"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."
+
+Through the storm of applause, Gnob's voice shrilled clear. "And thou,
+Nossabok, who art her favorite brother?"
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"O Su-Su," he spoke finally, "thou hast looked upon me kindly in the
+days that have gone and in the days yet young--"
+
+"I looked kindly upon thee for that thou wert chief of the Thlunget,"
+she answered quickly, "and because thou wert big and strong."
+
+"Ay--"
+
+"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."
+
+"But I would tell thee the--"
+
+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--"
+
+"But it is not right, Su-Su. I have it on good word--"
+
+"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."
+
+"Su-Su," Keesh broke in, "thou must hear me--"
+
+"A _man_ 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."
+
+He flung it from him, the angry blood pounding a muddy path under his
+bronze.
+
+"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."
+
+"So," the man pondered. "So." Then he turned and passed out through
+the light.
+
+"Nay, O Keesh!" she called after him. "Not two heads, but three at
+least!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Where goest thou, O Keesh? Hunting?" Mr. Brown asked, falling into
+the Indian manner.
+
+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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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 _crunch-crunch_ 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.
+
+"It is a far fetch, O Keesh," she said at last, "a far fetch from St.
+George Mission by the Yukon."
+
+"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.
+
+"Here." She drew it from inside her parka and flashed its naked length
+in the firelight. "It is a good knife."
+
+"Give it me!" he commanded.
+
+"Nay, O Keesh," she laughed. "It may be that thou wast not born to
+wear it."
+
+"Give it me!" he reiterated, without change of tone. "I was so born."
+
+But her eyes, glancing coquettishly past him to the moosehide, saw the
+snow about it slowly reddening. "It is blood, Keesh?" she asked.
+
+"Ay, it is blood. But give me the belt and the long Russian knife."
+
+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.
+
+"It was made for a smaller man," he remarked grimly, drawing in his
+abdomen and clasping the buckle at the first hole.
+
+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.
+
+"But the blood?" she asked, urged on by a hope new-born and growing.
+"The blood, Keesh? Is it ... are they ... heads?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"They must be very fresh, else would the blood be frozen."
+
+"Ay, it is not cold, and they be fresh, quite fresh."
+
+"Oh, Keesh!" Her face was warm and bright. "And for me?"
+
+"Ay; for thee."
+
+He took hold of a corner of the hide, flirted it open, and rolled the
+heads out before her.
+
+"Three," he whispered savagely; "nay, four at least."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then she thought of her children, ever to be unborn, and she walked
+over to Keesh and said, "I am ready."
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF LIGOUN
+
+Blood for blood, rank for rank.
+
+--_Thlinket Code_.
+
+
+"Hear now the death of Ligoun--"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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.
+
+Palitlum sighed and shook his head. "Wherefore I am here with thee."
+
+And here he embraced the bottle and me in a look which told more
+eloquently than speech of his shameless thirst.
+
+"Nay," I said, snuggling the bottle in between my knees. "Speak now of
+Ligoun. Of the 'Three Star' we will hold speech hereafter."
+
+"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."
+
+"From the drinker it taketh away strength," I mocked, "and to the man
+unweary it burdeneth him into sleep."
+
+"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."
+
+"I was minded to hear of Ligoun," I said impatiently. "The night grows
+short, and we have a sore journey to-morrow."
+
+I yawned and made as though to rise, but Palitlum betrayed a quick
+anxiety, and with abruptness began:--
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"'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.'
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"'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.
+
+"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:--
+
+"'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.'
+
+"It is a way of the Thlinket-folk," Palitlum vouchsafed half
+apologetically.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"The Stick rose up, with every eye upon him, and crossed the room till
+he stood before Ligoun.
+
+"'I am Opitsah, the Knife,' he said.
+
+"But Ligoun said naught, nor looked at him, but gazed unblinking at
+the ground.
+
+"'You are Ligoun,' Opitsah said. 'You have killed many men. I am still
+alive.'
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+Palitlum ceased. His eyes, smouldering moodily, were bent upon the
+fire, and his cheek was dark with blood.
+
+"And thou, Palitlum?" I demanded. "And thou?"
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"The knife of Ligoun?" I said, and Palitlum nodded.
+
+"And for the knife of Ligoun," I said, "will I give thee ten bottles
+of 'Three Star.'"
+
+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!"
+
+"Thou art a great man, Palitlum," I said, "and I honor thee."
+
+Palitlum reached out his hand.
+
+"The 'Three Star' between thy knees be mine for the tale I have told,"
+he said.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+LI WAN, THE FAIR
+
+
+"The sun sinks, Canim, and the heat of the day is gone!"
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Come, Canim!" she called. "The heat of the day is gone, and the trail
+waits for our feet."
+
+The squirrel-skin robe was agitated and cast aside by a brown arm.
+Then the man's eyelids fluttered and drooped again.
+
+"His pack is heavy," she thought, "and he is tired with the work of
+the morning."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"To-morrow, Li Wan, we shall feast." He sucked a marrow-bone clean
+and threw it to the dogs. "We shall have _flapjacks_ fried in _bacon
+grease_, and _sugar_, which is more toothsome--"
+
+"_Flapjacks_?" she questioned, mouthing the word curiously.
+
+"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."
+
+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?"
+
+"Nay," he answered. "My trail is like the world; it never ends. My
+trail _is_ 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!"
+
+"And must I, Li Wan, who am weary, travel always your trail until I
+die?"
+
+"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."
+
+She bowed her head again, for she knew no other law than that man was
+the master of woman.
+
+"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."
+
+She dropped her work obediently and resumed her seat.
+
+Canim regarded her with speculative interest. "You do not squat on
+your hams like other women," he remarked.
+
+"No," she answered. "It never came easy. It tires me, and I cannot
+take my rest that way."
+
+"And why is it your feet point not straight before you?"
+
+"I do not know, save that they are unlike the feet of other women."
+
+A satisfied light crept into his eyes, but otherwise he gave no sign.
+
+"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?"
+
+"I have noticed," she answered shortly, for she was not pleased at
+such cold analysis of her sex-deficiencies.
+
+"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?"
+
+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 ..."
+
+"Ay," he encouraged, impatient at her faltering.
+
+"As though they were not my kind."
+
+"Not your kind?" he demanded slowly. "Then what is your kind?"
+
+"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."
+
+"What is the first thing you remember?" Canim asked with abrupt
+irrelevance.
+
+"Pow-Wah-Kaan, my mother."
+
+"And naught else before Pow-Wah-Kaan?"
+
+"Naught else."
+
+But Canim, holding her eyes with his, searched her secret soul and saw
+it waver.
+
+"Think, and think hard, Li Wan!" he threatened.
+
+She stammered, and her eyes were piteous and pleading, but his will
+dominated her and wrung from her lips the reluctant speech.
+
+"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."
+
+"Tell me," he commanded, "of the things before Pow-Wah-Kaan, your
+mother."
+
+"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 ..."
+
+"Only," Canim repeated, holding her.
+
+"Only one thing. But you will laugh at its foolishness, it is so
+unreal."
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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 ..."
+
+"Ay," Canim whispered hoarsely. "You feel--?"
+
+"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--"
+
+"And do you see yourself?" he asked, leaning forward and regarding her
+intently. "Do you ever see yourself and the man in the snow?"
+
+"Why should I see myself? Am I not real?"
+
+His muscles relaxed and he sank back, an exultant satisfaction in his
+eyes which he turned from her so that she might not see.
+
+"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."
+
+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."
+
+"And these white people, what are they like?" Li Wan made bold to ask.
+
+"Like you and me," he answered, "only they are less dark of skin. You
+will be among them ere the day is dead."
+
+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?"
+
+"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."
+
+She grunted acknowledgment and gratitude for her lord's condescension,
+slipped into the harness, and bent forward to the load.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"Let us take breath," Canim said, when they had tapped midway the bed
+of the main creek.
+
+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.
+
+"Why is this?" Li Wan asked.
+
+"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 _gold_, and work without ceasing
+that they may find it. _Gold?_ It is yellow and comes from the ground,
+and is considered of great value. It is also a measure of price."
+
+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.
+
+"Canim," she whispered in an agony of apprehension. "Canim, what is
+that?"
+
+"The white man's teepee, in which he eats and sleeps."
+
+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.
+
+She felt impelled to utter them, but did not, and the next instant
+Canim said, "It is called a _cabin_."
+
+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.
+
+"_Cabin_" she repeated to herself. "_Cabin._" 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--
+
+O Canim! O Pow-Wah-Kaan! O shades and shadows, what was that?
+
+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.
+
+"Hum, _fiddle,_" Canim vouchsafed.
+
+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,
+"_Daddy! Daddy!_" Then the sun reeled, and darkness smote her, and she
+pitched forward limp and headlong among the rocks.
+
+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.
+
+"It is not good, the hot sun on the head," he ventured.
+
+And she answered, "No, it is not good, and the pack bore upon me
+hard."
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+Li Wan was appalled at the tremendous upheaval. "Truly, these men are
+mad," she said to Canim.
+
+"Small wonder. The gold they dig after is a great thing," he replied.
+"It is the greatest thing in the world."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"When you were a little bird, a little moose-bird," Canim said, his
+eyes upon her and burning into her.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Mercy!"
+
+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.
+
+"Greeting, O Woman of the Wondrous Hair," said Li Wan.
+
+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.
+
+"Shall I go for help?" Miss Giddings quavered.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+And at the passion of her dumbness she cried out, with arms stretched
+wide apart, "O Woman, thou art sister of mine!"
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+She knelt humbly, and bent her head at Mrs. Van Wyck's feet. But Mrs.
+Van Wyck drew away, frightened at her vehemence.
+
+Li Wan stood up, panting for speech. Her dumb lips could not
+articulate her overmastering consciousness of kind.
+
+"Trade? you trade?" Mrs. Van Wyck questioned, slipping, after the
+fashion of the superior peoples, into pigeon tongue.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+She put her hand on the table. "_Table_," she clearly and distinctly
+enunciated. "_Table_," she repeated.
+
+She looked at Mrs. Van Wyck, who nodded approbation. Li Wan exulted,
+but brought her will to bear and held herself steady. "_Stove_" she
+went on. "_Stove_."
+
+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.
+
+"Cat," Mrs. Van Wyck, laughing, spelled out in kindergarten fashion.
+"I--see--the--cat--catch--the--rat."
+
+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.
+
+Mrs. Van Wyck turned to her companion. "Received a smattering of
+mission education somewhere, I fancy, and has come to show it off."
+
+"Of course," Miss Giddings tittered. "Little fool! We shall lose our
+sleep with her vanity."
+
+"All the same I want that jacket. If it _is_ 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?"
+
+"Perhaps she'd prefer a dress or something," Miss Giddings suggested.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"A half-breed," Mrs. Van Wyck commented. "I thought so from her hair."
+
+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."
+
+But the other woman sighed. "Poor creature, I wish I could do
+something for her."
+
+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.
+
+"What do you want?" she demanded.
+
+"How do?" Canim answered suavely and directly, pointing at the same
+time to Li Wan. "Um my wife."
+
+He reached out for her, but she waved him back.
+
+"Speak, Canim! Tell them that I am--"
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"Let me go, Canim," she sobbed.
+
+But he twisted her wrist till she ceased to struggle. "The memories of
+the little moose-bird are overstrong and make trouble," he began.
+
+"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."
+
+"You know," he answered, forcing her toward the door; "but you will go
+with me down the Yukon and forget."
+
+"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.
+
+"Then will I teach thee to forget, I, Canim, the Canoe!"
+
+As he spoke he pulled her fingers clear and passed out with her upon
+the trail.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What do you want?" Little Dickensen demanded, tremulously plucky.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Oh, Jimmy! Come here!"
+
+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.
+
+"Him Whitefish man," he said to Emily Travis. "Me savve um talk no
+very much. Him want to look see chief white man."
+
+"The Governor," suggested Dickensen.
+
+Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went grave
+and puzzled.
+
+"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."
+
+"Insane, I guess," said Dickensen.
+
+"What you call dat?" queried Jimmy.
+
+Dickensen thrust a finger figuratively inside his head and imparted a
+rotary motion thereto.
+
+"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said Jimmy, returning to Imber, who still
+demanded the chief man of the white men.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Dickensen.
+
+"Him say um all the same one man, dat p'liceman," Jimmy interpreted.
+
+Little Dickensen was little, and what of Miss Travis, he felt sorry
+for having asked the question.
+
+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."
+
+Jimmy indulged in more throaty spasms, and Imber grunted and looked
+satisfied.
+
+"But ask him what he said, Jimmy, and what he meant when he took hold
+of my arm."
+
+So spoke Emily Travis, and Jimmy put the question and received the
+answer.
+
+"Him say you no afraid," said Jimmy.
+
+Emily Travis looked pleased.
+
+"Him say you no _skookum_, 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."
+
+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.
+
+"Come along, you," he said gruffly, setting his shoulder to the crowd
+and forcing a way.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Thou dost not remember me," he said by way of greeting.
+
+"Nay," Imber answered. "Thou art Howkan who went away. Thy mother be
+dead."
+
+"She was an old woman," said Howkan.
+
+But Imber did not hear, and Howkan, with hand upon his shoulder,
+roused him again.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"That be my talk, Howkan. Yet from thy lips it comes when thy ears
+have not heard."
+
+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."
+
+"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."
+
+"It be nothing, it be nothing," the young man responded carelessly
+and pridefully. He read at hazard from the document: "_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--_"
+
+"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."
+
+Howkan shook his head with impatience. "Have I not told thee it be
+there in the paper, O fool?"
+
+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?"
+
+"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."
+
+Thereafter, and for a long time, Howkan read to him the confession,
+and Imber remained musing and silent At the end, he said:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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?"
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"'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.
+
+"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.'
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.'
+
+"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?
+
+"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.
+
+"'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.'
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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."
+
+"O Imber, thou art indeed a fool," said Howkan.
+
+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.
+
+
+
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