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-luster.
His mop of hair should have been white, but sun--and weather-beat 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 court-room 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 centered 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 court-room 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 court-room; 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.
[Illustration: "ALL THEIR WAYS LEAD TO DEATH"
FROM A PAINTING BY MAYNARD DIXON.]
"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, counseling 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 marveled 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 court-room 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.