At the Barracks a man was being tried for his life. He was an old man,
a native from the Whitefish River, which empties into the Yukon below
Lake Le Barge. All Dawson was wrought up over the affair, and likewise
the Yukon-dwellers for a thousand miles up and down. It has been the
custom of the land-robbing and sea-robbing Anglo-Saxon to give the law
to conquered peoples, and ofttimes this law is harsh. But in the
case of Imber the law for once seemed inadequate and weak. In the
mathematical nature of things, equity did not reside in the punishment
to be accorded him. The punishment was a foregone conclusion, there
could be no doubt of that; and though it was capital, Imber had but
one life, while the tale against him was one of scores.
In fact, the blood of so many was upon his hands that the killings
attributed to him did not permit of precise enumeration. Smoking a
pipe by the trail-side or lounging around the stove, men made rough
estimates of the numbers that had perished at his hand. They had been
whites, all of them, these poor murdered people, and they had been
slain singly, in pairs, and in parties. And so purposeless and wanton
had been these killings, that they had long been a mystery to the
mounted police, even in the time of the captains, and later, when the
creeks realized, and a governor came from the Dominion to make the
land pay for its prosperity.
But more mysterious still was the coming of Imber to Dawson to give
himself up. It was in the late spring, when the Yukon was growling and
writhing under its ice, that the old Indian climbed painfully up the
bank from the river trail and stood blinking on the main street. Men
who had witnessed his advent, noted that he was weak and tottery, and
that he staggered over to a heap of cabin-logs and sat down. He sat
there a full day, staring straight before him at the unceasing tide of
white men that flooded past. Many a head jerked curiously to the side
to meet his stare, and more than one remark was dropped anent the old
Siwash with so strange a look upon his face. No end of men remembered
afterward that they had been struck by his extraordinary figure, and
forever afterward prided themselves upon their swift discernment of
the unusual.
But it remained for Dickensen, Little Dickensen, to be the hero of the
occasion. Little Dickensen had come into the land with great dreams
and a pocketful of cash; but with the cash the dreams vanished, and
to earn his passage back to the States he had accepted a clerical
position with the brokerage firm of Holbrook and Mason. Across
the street from the office of Holbrook and Mason was the heap of
cabin-logs upon which Imber sat. Dickensen looked out of the window
at him before he went to lunch; and when he came back from lunch he
looked out of the window, and the old Siwash was still there.
Dickensen continued to look out of the window, and he, too, forever
afterward prided himself upon his swiftness of discernment. He was a
romantic little chap, and he likened the immobile old heathen to the
genius of the Siwash race, gazing calm-eyed upon the hosts of the
invading Saxon. The hours swept along, but Imber did not vary his
posture, did not by a hair's-breadth move a muscle; and Dickensen
remembered the man who once sat upright on a sled in the main street
where men passed to and fro. They thought the man was resting, but
later, when they touched him, they found him stiff and cold, frozen to
death in the midst of the busy street. To undouble him, that he might
fit into a coffin, they had been forced to lug him to a fire and thaw
him out a bit. Dickensen shivered at the recollection.
Later on, Dickensen went out on the sidewalk to smoke a cigar and cool
off; and a little later Emily Travis happened along. Emily Travis was
dainty and delicate and rare, and whether in London or Klondike she
gowned herself as befitted the daughter of a millionnaire mining
engineer. Little Dickensen deposited his cigar on an outside window
ledge where he could find it again, and lifted his hat.
They chatted for ten minutes or so, when Emily Travis, glancing past
Dickensen's shoulder, gave a startled little scream. Dickensen turned
about to see, and was startled, too. Imber had crossed the street
and was standing there, a gaunt and hungry-looking shadow, his gaze
riveted upon the girl.
"What do you want?" Little Dickensen demanded, tremulously plucky.
Imber grunted and stalked up to Emily Travis. He looked her over,
keenly and carefully, every square inch of her. Especially did he
appear interested in her silky brown hair, and in the color of her
cheek, faintly sprayed and soft, like the downy bloom of a butterfly
wing. He walked around her, surveying her with the calculating eye of
a man who studies the lines upon which a horse or a boat is builded.
In the course of his circuit the pink shell of her ear came between
his eye and the westering sun, and he stopped to contemplate its
rosy transparency. Then he returned to her face and looked long and
intently into her blue eyes. He grunted and laid a hand on her arm
midway between the shoulder and elbow. With his other hand he lifted
her forearm and doubled it back. Disgust and wonder showed in his
face, and he dropped her arm with a contemptuous grunt. Then he
muttered a few guttural syllables, turned his back upon her, and
addressed himself to Dickensen.
Dickensen could not understand his speech, and Emily Travis laughed.
Imber turned from one to the other, frowning, but both shook their
heads. He was about to go away, when she called out:
"Oh, Jimmy! Come here!"
Jimmy came from the other side of the street. He was a big, hulking
Indian clad in approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king's
sombrero on his head. He talked with Imber, haltingly, with throaty
spasms. Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a passing
knowledge of the interior dialects.
"Him Whitefish man," he said to Emily Travis. "Me savve um talk no
very much. Him want to look see chief white man."
"The Governor," suggested Dickensen.
Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went grave
and puzzled.
"I t'ink um want Cap'n Alexander," he explained. "Him say um kill
white man, white woman, white boy, plenty kill um white people. Him
want to die."
"Insane, I guess," said Dickensen.
"What you call dat?" queried Jimmy.
Dickensen thrust a finger figuratively inside his head and imparted a
rotary motion thereto.
"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said Jimmy, returning to Imber, who still
demanded the chief man of the white men.
A mounted policeman (unmounted for Klondike service) joined the group
and heard Imber's wish repeated. He was a stalwart young fellow,
broad-shouldered, deep-chested, legs cleanly built and stretched wide
apart, and tall though Imber was, he towered above him by half a head.
His eyes were cool, and gray, and steady, and he carried himself with
the peculiar confidence of power that is bred of blood and
tradition. His splendid masculinity was emphasized by his excessive
boyishness,--he was a mere lad,--and his smooth cheek promised a blush
as willingly as the cheek of a maid.
Imber was drawn to him at once. The fire leaped into his eyes at sight
of a sabre slash that scarred his cheek. He ran a withered hand down
the young fellow's leg and caressed the swelling thew. He smote the
broad chest with his knuckles, and pressed and prodded the thick
muscle-pads that covered the shoulders like a cuirass. The group had
been added to by curious passers-by--husky miners, mountaineers,
and frontiersmen, sons of the long-legged and broad-shouldered
generations. Imber glanced from one to another, then he spoke aloud in
the Whitefish tongue.
"What did he say?" asked Dickensen.
"Him say um all the same one man, dat p'liceman," Jimmy interpreted.
Little Dickensen was little, and what of Miss Travis, he felt sorry
for having asked the question.
The policeman was sorry for him and stepped into the breach. "I fancy
there may be something in his story. I'll take him up to the captain
for examination. Tell him to come along with me, Jimmy."
Jimmy indulged in more throaty spasms, and Imber grunted and looked
satisfied.
"But ask him what he said, Jimmy, and what he meant when he took hold
of my arm."
So spoke Emily Travis, and Jimmy put the question and received the
answer.
"Him say you no afraid," said Jimmy.
Emily Travis looked pleased.
"Him say you no _skookum_, no strong, all the same very soft like
little baby. Him break you, in um two hands, to little pieces. Him
t'ink much funny, very strange, how you can be mother of men so big,
so strong, like dat p'liceman."
Emily Travers kept her eyes up and unfaltering, but her cheeks
were sprayed with scarlet. Little Dickensen blushed and was quite
embarrassed. The policeman's face blazed with his boy's blood.
"Come along, you," he said gruffly, setting his shoulder to the crowd
and forcing a way.
Thus it was that Imber found his way to the Barracks, where he made
full and voluntary confession, and from the precincts of which he
never emerged.
Imber looked very tired. The fatigue of hopelessness and age was
in his face. His shoulders drooped depressingly, and his eyes were
lack-lustre. His mop of hair should have been white, but sun and
weatherbeat had burned and bitten it so that it hung limp and lifeless
and colorless. He took no interest in what went on around him. The
courtroom was jammed with the men of the creeks and trails, and there
was an ominous note in the rumble and grumble of their low-pitched
voices, which came to his ears like the growl of the sea from deep
caverns.
He sat close by a window, and his apathetic eyes rested now and again
on the dreary scene without. The sky was overcast, and a gray drizzle
was falling. It was flood-time on the Yukon. The ice was gone, and the
river was up in the town. Back and forth on the main street, in canoes
and poling-boats, passed the people that never rested. Often he saw
these boats turn aside from the street and enter the flooded square
that marked the Barracks' parade-ground. Sometimes they disappeared
beneath him, and he heard them jar against the house-logs and their
occupants scramble in through the window. After that came the slush
of water against men's legs as they waded across the lower room and
mounted the stairs. Then they appeared in the doorway, with doffed
hats and dripping sea-boots, and added themselves to the waiting
crowd.
And while they centred their looks on him, and in grim anticipation
enjoyed the penalty he was to pay, Imber looked at them, and mused on
their ways, and on their Law that never slept, but went on unceasing,
in good times and bad, in flood and famine, through trouble and terror
and death, and which would go on unceasing, it seemed to him, to the
end of time.
A man rapped sharply on a table, and the conversation droned away into
silence. Imber looked at the man. He seemed one in authority, yet
Imber divined the square-browed man who sat by a desk farther back
to be the one chief over them all and over the man who had rapped.
Another man by the same table uprose and began to read aloud from many
fine sheets of paper. At the top of each sheet he cleared his throat,
at the bottom moistened his fingers. Imber did not understand his
speech, but the others did, and he knew that it made them angry.
Sometimes it made them very angry, and once a man cursed him, in
single syllables, stinging and tense, till a man at the table rapped
him to silence.
For an interminable period the man read. His monotonous, sing-song
utterance lured Imber to dreaming, and he was dreaming deeply when the
man ceased. A voice spoke to him in his own Whitefish tongue, and he
roused up, without surprise, to look upon the face of his sister's
son, a young man who had wandered away years agone to make his
dwelling with the whites.
"Thou dost not remember me," he said by way of greeting.
"Nay," Imber answered. "Thou art Howkan who went away. Thy mother be
dead."
"She was an old woman," said Howkan.
But Imber did not hear, and Howkan, with hand upon his shoulder,
roused him again.
"I shall speak to thee what the man has spoken, which is the tale of
the troubles thou hast done and which thou hast told, O fool, to the
Captain Alexander. And thou shalt understand and say if it be true
talk or talk not true. It is so commanded."
Howkan had fallen among the mission folk and been taught by them to
read and write. In his hands he held the many fine sheets from which
the man had read aloud, and which had been taken down by a clerk when
Imber first made confession, through the mouth of Jimmy, to Captain
Alexander. Howkan began to read. Imber listened for a space, when a
wonderment rose up in his face and he broke in abruptly.
"That be my talk, Howkan. Yet from thy lips it comes when thy ears
have not heard."
Howkan smirked with self-appreciation. His hair was parted in the
middle. "Nay, from the paper it comes, O Imber. Never have my ears
heard. From the paper it comes, through my eyes, into my head, and out
of my mouth to thee. Thus it comes."
"Thus it comes? It be there in the paper?" Imber's voice sank in
whisperful awe as he crackled the sheets 'twixt thumb and finger and
stared at the charactery scrawled thereon. "It be a great medicine,
Howkan, and thou art a worker of wonders."
"It be nothing, it be nothing," the young man responded carelessly
and pridefully. He read at hazard from the document: "_In that year,
before the break of the ice, came an old man, and a boy who was
lame of one foot. These also did I kill, and the old man made much
noise--_"
"It be true," Imber interrupted breathlessly. "He made much noise and
would not die for a long time. But how dost thou know, Howkan? The
chief man of the white men told thee, mayhap? No one beheld me, and
him alone have I told."
Howkan shook his head with impatience. "Have I not told thee it be
there in the paper, O fool?"
Imber stared hard at the ink-scrawled surface. "As the hunter looks
upon the snow and says, Here but yesterday there passed a rabbit; and
here by the willow scrub it stood and listened, and heard, and was
afraid; and here it turned upon its trail; and here it went with great
swiftness, leaping wide; and here, with greater swiftness and wider
leapings, came a lynx; and here, where the claws cut deep into the
snow, the lynx made a very great leap; and here it struck, with the
rabbit under and rolling belly up; and here leads off the trail of the
lynx alone, and there is no more rabbit,--as the hunter looks upon the
markings of the snow and says thus and so and here, dost thou, too,
look upon the paper and say thus and so and here be the things old
Imber hath done?"
"Even so," said Howkan. "And now do thou listen, and keep thy woman's
tongue between thy teeth till thou art called upon for speech."
Thereafter, and for a long time, Howkan read to him the confession,
and Imber remained musing and silent At the end, he said:
"It be my talk, and true talk, but I am grown old, Howkan, and
forgotten things come back to me which were well for the head man
there to know. First, there was the man who came over the Ice
Mountains, with cunning traps made of iron, who sought the beaver of
the Whitefish. Him I slew. And there were three men seeking gold
on the Whitefish long ago. Them also I slew, and left them to the
wolverines. And at the Five Fingers there was a man with a raft and
much meat."
At the moments when Imber paused to remember, Howkan translated and
a clerk reduced to writing. The courtroom listened stolidly to each
unadorned little tragedy, till Imber told of a red-haired man whose
eyes were crossed and whom he had killed with a remarkably long shot.
"Hell," said a man in the forefront of the onlookers. He said it
soulfully and sorrowfully. He was red-haired. "Hell," he repeated.
"That was my brother Bill." And at regular intervals throughout the
session, his solemn "Hell" was heard in the courtroom; nor did his
comrades check him, nor did the man at the table rap him to order.
Imber's head drooped once more, and his eyes went dull, as though a
film rose up and covered them from the world. And he dreamed as only
age can dream upon the colossal futility of youth.
Later, Howkan roused him again, saying: "Stand up, O Imber. It be
commanded that thou tellest why you did these troubles, and slew these
people, and at the end journeyed here seeking the Law."
Imber rose feebly to his feet and swayed back and forth. He began to
speak in a low and faintly rumbling voice, but Howkan interrupted him.
"This old man, he is damn crazy," he said in English to the
square-browed man. "His talk is foolish and like that of a child."
"We will hear his talk which is like that of a child," said the
square-browed man. "And we will hear it, word for word, as he speaks
it. Do you understand?"
Howkan understood, and Imber's eyes flashed, for he had witnessed the
play between his sister's son and the man in authority. And then began
the story, the epic of a bronze patriot which might well itself
be wrought into bronze for the generations unborn. The crowd fell
strangely silent, and the square-browed judge leaned head on hand and
pondered his soul and the soul of his race. Only was heard the deep
tones of Imber, rhythmically alternating with the shrill voice of
the interpreter, and now and again, like the bell of the Lord, the
wondering and meditative "Hell" of the red-haired man.
"I am Imber of the Whitefish people." So ran the interpretation of
Howkan, whose inherent barbarism gripped hold of him, and who lost his
mission culture and veneered civilization as he caught the savage ring
and rhythm of old Imber's tale. "My father was Otsbaok, a strong man.
The land was warm with sunshine and gladness when I was a boy. The
people did not hunger after strange things, nor hearken to new voices,
and the ways of their fathers were their ways. The women found favor
in the eyes of the young men, and the young men looked upon them
with content. Babes hung at the breasts of the women, and they were
heavy-hipped with increase of the tribe. Men were men in those days.
In peace and plenty, and in war and famine, they were men.
"At that time there was more fish in the water than now, and more meat
in the forest. Our dogs were wolves, warm with thick hides and hard
to the frost and storm. And as with our dogs so with us, for we were
likewise hard to the frost and storm. And when the Pellys came into
our land we slew them and were slain. For we were men, we Whitefish,
and our fathers and our fathers' fathers had fought against the Pellys
and determined the bounds of the land.
"As I say, with our dogs, so with us. And one day came the first white
man. He dragged himself, so, on hand and knee, in the snow. And his
skin was stretched tight, and his bones were sharp beneath. Never was
such a man, we thought, and we wondered of what strange tribe he was,
and of its land. And he was weak, most weak, like a little child, so
that we gave him a place by the fire, and warm furs to lie upon, and
we gave him food as little children are given food.
"And with him was a dog, large as three of our dogs, and very weak.
The hair of this dog was short, and not warm, and the tail was frozen
so that the end fell off. And this strange dog we fed, and bedded by
the fire, and fought from it our dogs, which else would have killed
him. And what of the moose meat and the sun-dried salmon, the man and
dog took strength to themselves; and what of the strength they became
big and unafraid. And the man spoke loud words and laughed at the old
men and young men, and looked boldly upon the maidens. And the dog
fought with our dogs, and for all of his short hair and softness slew
three of them in one day.
"When we asked the man concerning his people, he said, 'I have many
brothers,' and laughed in a way that was not good. And when he was in
his full strength he went away, and with him went Noda, daughter to
the chief. First, after that, was one of our bitches brought to pup.
And never was there such a breed of dogs,--big-headed, thick-jawed,
and short-haired, and helpless. Well do I remember my father, Otsbaok,
a strong man. His face was black with anger at such helplessness, and
he took a stone, so, and so, and there was no more helplessness. And
two summers after that came Noda back to us with a man-child in the
hollow of her arm.
"And that was the beginning. Came a second white man, with
short-haired dogs, which he left behind him when he went. And with
him went six of our strongest dogs, for which, in trade, he had given
Koo-So-Tee, my mother's brother, a wonderful pistol that fired with
great swiftness six times. And Koo-So-Tee was very big, what of the
pistol, and laughed at our bows and arrows. 'Woman's things,' he
called them, and went forth against the bald-face grizzly, with the
pistol in his hand. Now it be known that it is not good to hunt
the bald-face with a pistol, but how were we to know? and how was
Koo-So-Tee to know? So he went against the bald-face, very brave, and
fired the pistol with great swiftness six times; and the bald-face but
grunted and broke in his breast like it were an egg, and like honey
from a bee's nest dripped the brains of Koo-So-Tee upon the ground. He
was a good hunter, and there was no one to bring meat to his squaw and
children. And we were bitter, and we said, 'That which for the white
men is well, is for us not well.' And this be true. There be many
white men and fat, but their ways have made us few and lean.
"Came the third white man, with great wealth of all manner of
wonderful foods and things. And twenty of our strongest dogs he took
from us in trade. Also, what of presents and great promises, ten of
our young hunters did he take with him on a journey which fared no
man knew where. It is said they died in the snow of the Ice Mountains
where man has never been, or in the Hills of Silence which are beyond
the edge of the earth. Be that as it may, dogs and young hunters were
seen never again by the Whitefish people.
"And more white men came with the years, and ever, with pay and
presents, they led the young men away with them. And sometimes the
young men came back with strange tales of dangers and toils in the
lands beyond the Pellys, and sometimes they did not come back. And we
said: 'If they be unafraid of life, these white men, it is because
they have many lives; but we be few by the Whitefish, and the young
men shall go away no more.' But the young men did go away; and the
young women went also; and we were very wroth.
"It be true, we ate flour, and salt pork, and drank tea which was a
great delight; only, when we could not get tea, it was very bad and we
became short of speech and quick of anger. So we grew to hunger for
the things the white men brought in trade. Trade! trade! all the time
was it trade! One winter we sold our meat for clocks that would not
go, and watches with broken guts, and files worn smooth, and pistols
without cartridges and worthless. And then came famine, and we were
without meat, and two score died ere the break of spring.
"'Now are we grown weak,' we said; 'and the Pellys will fall upon us,
and our bounds be overthrown.' But as it fared with us, so had it
fared with the Pellys, and they were too weak to come against us.
"My father, Otsbaok, a strong man, was now old and very wise. And he
spoke to the chief, saying: 'Behold, our dogs be worthless. No longer
are they thick-furred and strong, and they die in the frost and
harness. Let us go into the village and kill them, saving only the
wolf ones, and these let us tie out in the night that they may mate
with the wild wolves of the forest. Thus shall we have dogs warm and
strong again.'
"And his word was harkened to, and we Whitefish became known for our
dogs, which were the best in the land. But known we were not for
ourselves. The best of our young men and women had gone away with the
white men to wander on trail and river to far places. And the young
women came back old and broken, as Noda had come, or they came not at
all. And the young men came back to sit by our fires for a time,
full of ill speech and rough ways, drinking evil drinks and gambling
through long nights and days, with a great unrest always in their
hearts, till the call of the white men came to them and they went away
again to the unknown places. And they were without honor and respect,
jeering the old-time customs and laughing in the faces of chief and
shamans.
"As I say, we were become a weak breed, we Whitefish. We sold our warm
skins and furs for tobacco and whiskey and thin cotton things that
left us shivering in the cold. And the coughing sickness came upon us,
and men and women coughed and sweated through the long nights, and
the hunters on trail spat blood upon the snow. And now one, and now
another, bled swiftly from the mouth and died. And the women bore few
children, and those they bore were weak and given to sickness. And
other sicknesses came to us from the white men, the like of which we
had never known and could not understand. Smallpox, likewise measles,
have I heard these sicknesses named, and we died of them as die the
salmon in the still eddies when in the fall their eggs are spawned and
there is no longer need for them to live.
"And yet, and here be the strangeness of it, the white men come as
the breath of death; all their ways lead to death, their nostrils
are filled with it; and yet they do not die. Theirs the whiskey,
and tobacco, and short-haired dogs; theirs the many sicknesses, the
smallpox and measles, the coughing and mouth-bleeding; theirs the
white skin, and softness to the frost and storm; and theirs the
pistols that shoot six times very swift and are worthless. And yet
they grow fat on their many ills, and prosper, and lay a heavy hand
over all the world and tread mightily upon its peoples. And their
women, too, are soft as little babes, most breakable and never broken,
the mothers of men. And out of all this softness, and sickness, and
weakness, come strength, and power, and authority. They be gods, or
devils, as the case may be. I do not know. What do I know, I,
old Imber of the Whitefish? Only do I know that they are past
understanding, these white men, far-wanderers and fighters over the
earth that they be.
"As I say, the meat in the forest became less and less. It be true,
the white man's gun is most excellent and kills a long way off; but of
what worth the gun, when there is no meat to kill? When I was a boy on
the Whitefish there was moose on every hill, and each year came the
caribou uncountable. But now the hunter may take the trail ten days
and not one moose gladden his eyes, while the caribou uncountable come
no more at all. Small worth the gun, I say, killing a long way off,
when there be nothing to kill.
"And I, Imber, pondered upon these things, watching the while the
Whitefish, and the Pellys, and all the tribes of the land, perishing
as perished the meat of the forest. Long I pondered. I talked with the
shamans and the old men who were wise. I went apart that the sounds of
the village might not disturb me, and I ate no meat so that my belly
should not press upon me and make me slow of eye and ear. I sat long
and sleepless in the forest, wide-eyed for the sign, my ears patient
and keen for the word that was to come. And I wandered alone in the
blackness of night to the river bank, where was wind-moaning and
sobbing of water, and where I sought wisdom from the ghosts of old
shamans in the trees and dead and gone.
"And in the end, as in a vision, came to me the short-haired and
detestable dogs, and the way seemed plain. By the wisdom of Otsbaok,
my father and a strong man, had the blood of our own wolf-dogs been
kept clean, wherefore had they remained warm of hide and strong in
the harness. So I returned to my village and made oration to the men.
'This be a tribe, these white men,' I said. 'A very large tribe, and
doubtless there is no longer meat in their land, and they are come
among us to make a new land for themselves. But they weaken us, and we
die. They are a very hungry folk. Already has our meat gone from us,
and it were well, if we would live, that we deal by them as we have
dealt by their dogs.'
"And further oration I made, counselling fight. And the men of the
Whitefish listened, and some said one thing, and some another, and
some spoke of other and worthless things, and no man made brave talk
of deeds and war. But while the young men were weak as water and
afraid, I watched that the old men sat silent, and that in their eyes
fires came and went. And later, when the village slept and no one
knew, I drew the old men away into the forest and made more talk. And
now we were agreed, and we remembered the good young days, and the
free land, and the times of plenty, and the gladness and sunshine; and
we called ourselves brothers, and swore great secrecy, and a mighty
oath to cleanse the land of the evil breed that had come upon it. It
be plain we were fools, but how were we to know, we old men of the
Whitefish?
"And to hearten the others, I did the first deed. I kept guard upon
the Yukon till the first canoe came down. In it were two white men,
and when I stood upright upon the bank and raised my hand they changed
their course and drove in to me. And as the man in the bow lifted his
head, so, that he might know wherefore I wanted him, my arrow sang
through the air straight to his throat, and he knew. The second man,
who held paddle in the stern, had his rifle half to his shoulder when
the first of my three spear-casts smote him.
"'These be the first,' I said, when the old men had gathered to me.
'Later we will bind together all the old men of all the tribes, and
after that the young men who remain strong, and the work will become
easy.'
"And then the two dead white men we cast into the river. And of the
canoe, which was a very good canoe, we made a fire, and a fire, also,
of the things within the canoe. But first we looked at the things, and
they were pouches of leather which we cut open with our knives. And
inside these pouches were many papers, like that from which thou hast
read, O Howkan, with markings on them which we marvelled at and could
not understand. Now, I am become wise, and I know them for the speech
of men as thou hast told me."
A whisper and buzz went around the courtroom when Howkan finished
interpreting the affair of the canoe, and one man's voice spoke up:
"That was the lost '91 mail, Peter James and Delaney bringing it
in and last spoken at Le Barge by Matthews going out." The clerk
scratched steadily away, and another paragraph was added to the
history of the North.
"There be little more," Imber went on slowly. "It be there on the
paper, the things we did. We were old men, and we did not understand.
Even I, Imber, do not now understand. Secretly we slew, and continued
to slay, for with our years we were crafty and we had learned the
swiftness of going without haste. When white men came among us with
black looks and rough words, and took away six of the young men with
irons binding them helpless, we knew we must slay wider and farther.
And one by one we old men departed up river and down to the unknown
lands. It was a brave thing. Old we were, and unafraid, but the fear
of far places is a terrible fear to men who are old.
"So we slew, without haste and craftily. On the Chilcoot and in the
Delta we slew, from the passes to the sea, wherever the white men
camped or broke their trails. It be true, they died, but it was
without worth. Ever did they come over the mountains, ever did they
grow and grow, while we, being old, became less and less. I remember,
by the Caribou Crossing, the camp of a white man. He was a very little
white man, and three of the old men came upon him in his sleep. And
the next day I came upon the four of them. The white man alone still
breathed, and there was breath in him to curse me once and well before
he died.
"And so it went, now one old man, and now another. Sometimes the word
reached us long after of how they died, and sometimes it did not reach
us. And the old men of the other tribes were weak and afraid, and
would not join with us. As I say, one by one, till I alone was left.
I am Imber, of the Whitefish people. My father was Otsbaok, a strong
man. There are no Whitefish now. Of the old men I am the last. The
young men and young women are gone away, some to live with the Pellys,
some with the Salmons, and more with the white men. I am very old,
and very tired, and it being vain fighting the Law, as thou sayest,
Howkan, I am come seeking the Law."
"O Imber, thou art indeed a fool," said Howkan.
But Imber was dreaming. The square-browed judge likewise dreamed,
and all his race rose up before him in a mighty phantasmagoria--his
steel-shod, mail-clad race, the lawgiver and world-maker among the
families of men. He saw it dawn red-flickering across the dark
forests and sullen seas; he saw it blaze, bloody and red, to full and
triumphant noon; and down the shaded slope he saw the blood-red sands
dropping into night. And through it all he observed the Law, pitiless
and potent, ever unswerving and ever ordaining, greater than the motes
of men who fulfilled it or were crushed by it, even as it was greater
than he, his heart speaking for softness.