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Title: Children of the Frost

Author: Jack London

Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #10736]
                Most recently updated: December 20, 2020

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Wilelmina Mallière and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE FROST ***


E-text prepared by Wilelmina Mallière 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. "Andrée?"

"Who's Andrée?" 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 naïve 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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