“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.”
Inan 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.”