Children of the Frost
by
Jack London
Part 2 out of 3
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.
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