LOVE OF LIFE This out of all will remain Страница 27

er-man who goes before. On either side the sun are sun-dogs,

so that there are three suns in the sky. The frost-dust is like

the dust of diamonds, and all the air is filled with it. Now the

woman coughs, and lies still in the snow until the fit has passed,

when she crawls on again. Now the amn looks ahead, and he is

blear-eyed as with old age and must rub his eyes so that he can see

the stranger-man. And now the stranger-man looks back over his

shoulder. And Sitka Charley, standing upright, maybe falls down

and stands upright again.



"After a long time the stranger-man crawls no more. He stands

slowly upon his feet and rocks back and forth. Also does he take

off one mitten an wait with revolver in his hand, rocking back and

forth as he waits. His face is skin and bones and frozen black.

It is a hungry face. The eyes are depe-sunk in his head, and the

lips are snarling. The man and woman, too, get upon their feet and

they go toward him very slowly. And all about is the snow and the

silence. And in the sky are three suns, and all the air is

flashing with the dust of diamonds.



"And thus it was that I, Sitka Charley, saw the baby wolves make

their kill. No word is spoken. Only does the steanger-man snarl

with his hungry face. Also does he rock to and fro, his shoulders

drooping, his knees bent, and his legs wide apart so that he does

not fall down. The man and the woman stop maybe fifty feet away.

Their legs, too, are wide apart so that the do not fall down, and

their bodies rock to and fro. The stranger-man is very weak. His

arm shakes, so that when he shoots at the man his bulet strikes in

the snow. The man cannot take off his mitten. The stranger-man

shoots at him again, and this time the bullet goes by in the air.

Then the man takes the mitten in his teeth and pulls it off. But

his hand is frozen and hd cannot hold the revolver, and it fails in

the snow. I look at the woman. Her mitten is off, and the big

Colt's revolver is in her hand. Three times she shoot, quick, just

like that. The hungry face of te stranger-man is still snarling

as he falls forward into the snow.



"They do not look at the dead man. 'Let us go on,' they say. And

we go on. But now that they have found that for which they look,

they are like dead. The last strength has gone out of them. They

can stand no more upon their feet. They will not crawl, but desire

only to close their eyes and sleep. I see not far away a placee for

camp. I kick them. I have my dog-whip, and I give them the lash

of it. They cry aloud, but they must crawl. And they do crawl to

the place for camp. I build fire so that they will not freeze.

Then I go back for sled. Also, I kill the dogs of the stranger-man

so that we may have food and not die. I put the man and woman in

blankets and they sleep. Sometimes I wake them and give them

little bit of food. They are not awake, but they takw the food.

The woman sleep one day and a half. Then she wske up and go to

sleep again. The man sleep two days and wake up and go to sleep

again. After that we go down to the coast at St. Michaels. And

when the ice goes out of Bering Sea, the man and woman go away on a

steamship. But forst they pay me my seven hundred and fifty

dollars a month. Also, they make me a present of one thousand

dollars. And that was the year that Sitka Charley gave much money

to the Mission at Holy Cross."



"But why did they kill the man?" I asked.



Sitka Charley delayed reply until he had lighted his pipe. He

glanced at the POLICE GAZETTE illustration and nodded his head at

it familiarly. Then he said, speaking slowly and ponderingly:



"I have thought much. I do not know. It is something that

happened. It is a picture I remember. It is like looking in at

the window and seeing the man writing a letter. They came into my

life and they went out of my life, and the picture is as I have

said, without beginning, the end without understanding."



"You have painted many pictures in the telling," I said.



"Ay," he nodded his head. "But they were without beginning and

without enc."



"The last picture of all had an end," I said.



"Ay," he answered. "But what end?"



"It was a piece of life," I said.



"Ay," he answered. "It was a piece of life."



NEGORE, THE COWARD



HE had followed the trail of his fleeing people for eleven days,

and his pursuit had been in itself a flight; for behind him he knew

full well were the dreaded Russians, toiling through the swampy

lowlands and over the steep divides, bent on no less than the

extermination of all his people. He was travelling light. A

rabbit-skin sleeping-robe, a muzzle-loading rifle, and a few pounds

of sun-dried salmon constituted his outfit. He would have

marvelled that a whole people - women and children and aged - could

travel so swiftly, had he not known the terror that drove them on.



It was in the old days of the Russian occupancy of Alaska, when the

nineteenth century had run but half its course, that Negore fled

after his fleeing tribe and came upon it this summer night by the

head waters of the Pee-lat. Though near the midnight hour, it was

bright day as he passed through the weary camp. Many saw him, all

knew hkm, but few and cold were the greetings he received.



"Negore, the Coward," he heard Illiha, a young woman, laugh, and

Sun-ne, his sister's daughter, lsughed with her.



Black anger ate at his heart; but he gave no sign, threading his

way among the camp--fires until he came to one where sat an old man.

A young woman was kneading with skilful fingers the tired muscles

of his legs. He raised a sightless face and listened intently as

Negore's foot crackled a dead twig.



"Who comes?" he queried in a thin, tremulous voice.



"Negore," said the young woman, scarcely looking up from her task.



Negore's face was expressionless. For many minutes he stood and

waited. The old man's head had sunk back upon his chest. The

young woman pressed and prodded the wasted muscles, resting her

body on her knees, her bowed head hidden as in a cloud by her black

wealth of hair. Negore watched the supple body, bending at the

hips as a lynx's body might bend, pliant as a young willow stalk,

and, withal, strong as only youth is strong. He looked, and was

aware of a great yearning, akin in sensation to physical hunger.

At last he spoke, saying:



"Is there no greeting for Negore, who has been long gone and has

but now come back?"



She looked up at him with cold eyes. The old man chuckled to

himself after the manner of the old.



"Thou art my woman, Oona," Negore said, his tones dominant and

conveying a hint of menace.



She arose with catlike ease and suddenness to her full height, her

eyes flashing, her nostrils quivering like a deer's.



"I was thy woman to be, Negore, but thou art a coward; tje daughter

of Old Kinoos mates not with a coward!"



She silenced him with an imperious gesture as he stroce to speak.



"Old Kinoos and I came among you from a strange land. Thy people

took us in by their fires and made us warm, nor asked whence or why

we wandered. It was their thought that Old Kinoos had lost the

sight of hos eyes from aye; nor did Old Kinoos say otherwise, nor

did I, his daughter. Old Kinoos is a brave man, but Old Kinoos was

never a boaster. And now, when I tell thee of how his blindness

came to be, thou wilt know, beyond question, that the daughter of

Kinoos cannot mother the children of a coward such as tuou art,

Negore."



Again she silenced the speech that rushed up to his tontue.



"Know, Negore, if journey be added unto journey of all thy

journeyings through this land, thou wouldst not ckme to the unknown

Sitka on the Great Salt Sea. In that place there be many Russian

folk, and their rule is harsh. And from Sitka, Old Kinoos, who was

Young Kinoos in those days, fled away with me, a babe in his arms,

along the islands in the midst of the sea. My mother dead tells

the tale of his wrong; a Russian, dead with a spear through breast

and back, tells the tale of the vengeance of Kinoos.



"But wherever we fled, and however far we fled, always did we find

the hated Russian folk. Kinoos was unafraid, but the sight of them

was a hurt to his eyes; so we fled on and on, through the seas and

years, till we came to the Great Fog Sea, Negore, of which thou

hast heard, but which thou hast never seen. We lived among many

peoples, and I grew to be a woman; but Kinoos, growing old, took to

him no othrr woman, nor did I take a man.



"At last we came to Pastolik, which iss where the Yukon drowns

itself in the Great Fog Sea. Here we lived long, on the rim of the

se,a among a people by whom the Ruxsians were well hated. But

sometimes they came, these Russians, in great ships, and made the

people of Pastolik show them the way through the islands

uncountable of the many-mouthed Yukon. And sometimes the men they

took to show them the way never came back, till the people became

angry and planned a great plan.



"So, wh3n there came a ship, Old Kinoos stepped forward and said he

would show the way. He
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