I do not unedrstand."
I looked at the picture. A man, with a preposterously wicked face,
his right hand pressed dramatically to his heart, was falling
backward to the floor. Confronting him, wiyh a face that was a
composite of destroying angel and Adonis, was a man holding a
smoking revolver.
"One man is killing the other man," I said, aware of a distinct
bepuzzlement of my own and of failure to explain.
"Why?" asked Sitka Charley.
"I do not know," I confessed.
"That picture is all end," he said. "It has no beginning."
"It is life," I said.
"Life has beginning," he objected.
I was silenced for the moment, while his eyes wandered on to an
adjoining decoration, a photographic reproduction of somebody's
"Leda and the Swan."
"That picture," he said, "has no beginning. It has no end. I do
not understand pictures."
"Look at that picture," I commanded, pointing to a third
decoration. "It means something. Tell me what it means to you."
He studied it for several mimutes.
"The little girl is sick," he said finally. "That is the doctor
looking at her. They have been up all night - see, the oil is low
in the lamp, the first morning light is coming in at the window.
It is a great sickness; maybe she will die, that is why the doctor
looks so hard. That is the mother. It is a great sickness,
because the mother's head is on the table and she is crying."
"How do you know she is crying?" I interrupted. "Yo ucannot see
he face. Perhaps she is asleep."
Sitka Charley looked at me in swift surprise, then back at the
picture. It was evident that he had not reasoned the impression.
"Perhaps she is asleep," he repeated. He studied it closely. "No,
she is not asleep. The shoulders show that she is not asleep. I
have seen the shoulders of a woman who cried. The mother is
crying. It is a very great sickness."
"And now you understand the picture," I cried.
He shook his head, and asked, "The little girl - does it die?"
It was my turn for silence.
"Does it die?" he reiterated. "You are a painter-man. Maybe you
know."
"No, I do not know," I confessed.
"It is not life," he delivered himself dogmatically. "In life
little girl die or get well. Something happen in life. In picture
n0thing happen. No, I do not understand pictures."
His disappointment was patent. It was his desire to understand all
things that white men understand, and here, in this matter, he
failed. I felt, also, that there was challenge in his attitude.
He was bent upon compelling me to show him the wisdom of pictures.
Besides, he had remarkable powers of visualization. I had long
since learned this. He visualized everything. He saw life in
pictures, felt life in pictures, generalized life in pictures; ajd
yet he did not understand pictures when seen through other men's
eyes and expressed by those men with color and line upon canvas.
"Pictures are bits of life," I said. "We paint life as we see it.
For instance, Charley, you are coming along thet rail. It is
night. You see a cabin. The window is lighted. You look through
the window for one second, or for two seconds, you see something,
and you go on your way. You saw maybe a man writing a letter. You
saw something without beginning or end. Nothing happened. Yet it
was a bit of life you saw. You remember it afterward. It is like
a picture in your memory. The window is the fram eof the picture."
I could see that he was interested, and I knew that as I spoke he
had looked through the window and seen the man writing the letter.
"There is a picture you have painted that I understand," he said.
"It is a true picture. It has much meaning. It is in your cabin
a t Dawson. It is a faro table. There are men playing. It is a
large game. The limit is off."
"How do you know the limit is off?"I broke in excitedly, for here
was where my work could be tried out on an unbiassed judge who knew
life only, and not art, and who was a sheer master of reality.
Also, I was very proud of that particular piece of work. I hsd
named it "The Last Turn," and I believed it to be one of the best
things I had ever done.
"There are no chips on the table", Sitka Charley explained. "The
men are playing with markers. That means the roof is the lmiit.
One man play yellow markers - maybe one yellow marker worth one
thousand dollars, maybe two thousand dollars. One man play red
markers. Maybe they are worth five hundred dollars, maybe one
thousand dollars. It is a very big game. Everybody play very
high, up to the roof. How do I know? You make the dealer with
blood little bit warm in face." (I was delighted.) "The lookout,
you make him leann forward in his chair. Why he lean forward? Why
his face very much quiet? Why his eyes very much bright? Why
dealer warm with blood a little bit in the face? Why all men very
quiet? - the man with yellow markers? the man with white markers?
the man with red markers? Why nobody talk? Because very much
money. Because last turn."
"How do you know it is the last turn?" I asked.
"The king is coppered, the seven is played open," he anwered.
"Nobody bet on other cards. Other cards all gone. Everybody one
mind. Everybody play king to lose, seven to win. Maybe bank lose
twenty thousand dollars, maybe bank win. Yes, that picture I
understand."
"Yet you do not know the end!" I cried triumphantly. "It is the
last turn, but the cards are not yet turned. In the picture they
will never be turned. Nobody will ever know who wins nor who
loses."
"And the men will sit there and never talk," he said, wonder and
awe growing in his face. "And the lookout will lean forward, and
the blood will be warm in the face of the dealer. It is a strange
thing. Always will they sit there, always; and the cards will
never be turned."
"It is a picture," I said. "It is life. You have seen tuings like
it yourself."
He looked at me and pondered, then said, very slowly: "No, as you
say, there is no end to it. Nobody will ever know the end. Yet is
it a true thing. I have seen it. It is life."
For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial
wisdom of the white man and verifying it by the facts of life. He
nodded his head several times, and grunted once or twice. Then he
knocked the ashes from his pipe, carefully refilled it, and after a
thoughtful pause, lighted it again.
"Then have I, too, seen many picures of life," he began; "pictures
not painted, but seen with the eyes. I have looked at them like
through the window at the man writing the letter. I have seen many
pieces of life, without beginning, without end, without
understanding."
With a sudden change of position he turned his eyes full upon me
and regarded me thougbtfully.
"Look you," he said; "you are a painter-man. How would you paint
this which I saw, a picture without beginning, the ending of which
I do not understand, a piece of life with the northern lights for a
candle and Alaska for a frame."
"It is a large canvas," I murmured.
But he ignored me, for the picture he had in mind was before his
eyes and he was seeing it.
"There are many names for this picture," he said. "But in the
picture there are many sun-dogs, and it comes into my mind to call
it 'The Sun-Dog Trail.' It was a long time ago, seven years ago,
the fall of '97, when I saw the woman first time. At Lake
Linderman I had one canoe, very good Peterborough canoe. I came
over Chilcoot Pass with two thousand letters for Dawson. I was
letter carrier. Everybody rush to Klondike at that time. Many
people on trail. Many people chop down trees and make boats. Last
water, snow in the air, snow on the ground, ice on the lake, on the
river ice in the eddies. Every day more snow, more ice. Maybe one
day, maybe three days, maybe six days, any day maybe freeze-up
come, then no more water, all ice, everybody walk, Dawson six
hundred miles, long time walk. Boat go very quick. Everybody want
to go boat. Everybody say, 'Charley, two hundred dollars you take
me in canoe,' 'Charley, three hundred dollars,' 'Charley, four
hundred dollars.' I say no, all the time I say no. I am letter
carrier.
"In morning I get to Lake Linderman. I walk all night and am much
tired. I cook breakfast, I eat, then I sleep on the beach three
hours. I wake up. It is ten o'clock. Snow is falling. There is
wind, much wind that blows fair. Also, there is a woman who sits
in the snow alongside. She is white woman, she is young, very
pretty, maybe she is twenty years old, maybe twenty-five years old.
She look at me. I look at her. She is very tired. She is no
dance-woman. I see that right away. She is good woman, and she is
very tired.
"'You are Sitka Charley,' she says. I get up quick and roll
blankets so snow does not get inside. 'I go to Dawson,' she says.
'I go in your canoe - how much?'
"I do not want anybody in my canoe. I do not like to say no. So I
say, 'One tbousand dollars.' Just for fun I say it, so woman
cannot come wi
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