"Because we are sick they take away our liberty. We have obeyed the law.
We have done no wrong. And yet they would put us in prison. Molokai is
a prison. That you know. Niuli, there, his sister was sent to Molokai
seven years ago. He has not seen her since. Nor will he ever see her.
She must stay there until she dies. This is not her will. It is not
Niuli's will. It is the will of the white men who rule the land. And
who are these white men?
"We know. We have it from our fathers and our fathers' fathers. They
came like lambs, speaking softly. Well might they speak softly, for we
were many and strong, and all the islands were ours. As I say, they
spoke softly. They were of two kinds. The one kind asked our
permission, our gracious permission, to preach to us the word of God. The
other kind asked our permission, our gracious permission, to trade with
us. That was the beginning. Today all the islands are theirs, all the
land, all the cattle--everything is theirs. They that preached the word
of God and they that preached the word of Rum have fore-gathered and
become great chiefs. They live like kings in houses of many rooms, with
multitudes of servants to care for them. They who had nothing have
everything, and if you, or I, or any Kanaka be hungry, they sneer and
say, 'Well, why don't you work? There are the plantations.'"
Koolau paused. He raised one hand, and with gnarled and twisted fingers
lifted up the blazing wreath of hibiscus that crowned his black hair. The
moonlight bathed the scene in silver. It was a night of peace, though
those who sat about him and listened had all the seeming of
battle-wrecks. Their faces were leonine. Here a space yawned in a face
where should have been a nose, and there an arm-stump showed where a hand
had rotted off. They were men and women beyond the pale, the thirty of
them, for upon them had been placed the mark of the beast.
They sat, flower-garlanded, in the perfumed, luminous night, and their
lips made uncouth noises and their throats rasped approval of Koolau's
speech. They were creatures who once had been men and women. But they
were men and women no longer. They were monsters--in face and form
grotesque caricatures of everything human. They were hideously maimed
and distorted, and had the seeming of creatures that had been racked in
millenniums of hell. Their hands, when they possessed them, were like
harpy claws. Their faces were the misfits and slips, crushed and bruised
by some mad god at play in the machinery of life. Here and there were
features which the mad god had smeared half away, and one woman wept
scalding tears from twin pits of horror, where her eyes once had been.
Some were in pain and groaned from their chests. Others coughed, making
sounds like the tearing of tissue. Two were idiots, more like huge apes
marred in the making, until even an ape were an angel. They mowed and
gibbered in the moonlight, under crowns of drooping, golden blossoms.
One, whose bloated ear-lobe flapped like a fan upon his shoulder, caught
up a gorgeous flower of orange and scarlet and with it decorated the
monstrous ear that flip-flapped with his every movement.
And over these things Koolau was king. And this was his kingdom,--a
flower-throttled gorge, with beetling cliffs and crags, from which
floated the blattings of wild goats. On three sides the grim walls rose,
festooned in fantastic draperies of tropic vegetation and pierced by cave-
entrances--the rocky lairs of Koolau's subjects. On the fourth side the
earth fell away into a tremendous abyss, and, far below, could be seen
the summits of lesser peaks and crags, at whose bases foamed and rumbled
the Pacific surge. In fine weather a boat could land on the rocky beach
that marked the entrance of Kalalau Valley, but the weather must be very
fine. And a cool-headed mountaineer might climb from the beach to the
head of Kalalau Valley, to this pocket among the peaks where Koolau
ruled; but such a mountaineer must be very cool of head, and he must know
the wild-goat trails as well. The marvel was that the mass of human
wreckage that constituted Koolau's people should have been able to drag
its helpless misery over the giddy goat-trails to this inaccessible spot.
"Brothers," Koolau began.
But one of the mowing, apelike travesties emitted a wild shriek of
madness, and Koolau waited while the shrill cachination was tossed back
and forth among the rocky walls and echoed distantly through the
pulseless night.
"Brothers, is it not strange? Ours was the land, and behold, the land is
not ours. What did these preachers of the word of God and the word of
Rum give us for the land? Have you received one dollar, as much as one
dollar, any one of you, for the land? Yet it is theirs, and in return
they tell us we can go to work on the land, their land, and that what we
produce by our toil shall be theirs. Yet in the old days we did not have
to work. Also, when we are sick, they take away our freedom."
"Who brought the sickness, Koolau?" demanded Kiloliana, a lean and wiry
man with a face so like a laughing faun's that one might expect to see
the cloven hoofs under him. They were cloven, it was true, but the
cleavages were great ulcers and livid putrefactions. Yet this was
Kiloliana, the most daring climber of them all, the man who knew every
goat-trail and who had led Koolau and his wretched followers into the
recesses of Kalalau.
"Ay, well questioned," Koolau answered. "Because we would not work the
miles of sugar-cane where once our horses pastured, they brought the
Chinese slaves from overseas. And with them came the Chinese
sickness--that which we suffer from and because of which they would
imprison us on Molokai. We were born on Kauai. We have been to the
other islands, some here and some there, to Oahu, to Maui, to Hawaii, to
Honolulu. Yet always did we come back to Kauai. Why did we come back?
There must be a reason. Because we love Kauai. We were born here. Here
we have lived. And here shall we die--unless--unless--there be weak
hearts amongst us. Such we do not want. They are fit for Molokai. And
if there be such, let them not remain. Tomorrow the soldiers land on the
shore. Let the weak hearts go down to them. They will be sent swiftly
to Molokai. As for us, we shall stay and fight. But know that we will
not die. We have rifles. You know the narrow trails where men must
creep, one by one. I, alone, Koolau, who was once a cowboy on Niihau,
can hold the trail against a thousand men. Here is Kapalei, who was once
a judge over men and a man with honour, but who is now a hunted rat, like
you and me. Hear him. He is wise."
Kapalei arose. Once he had been a judge. He had gone to college at
Punahou. He had sat at meat with lords and chiefs and the high
representatives of alien powers who protected the interests of traders
and missionaries. Such had been Kapalei. But now, as Koolau had said,
he was a hunted rat, a creature outside the law, sunk so deep in the mire
of human horror that he was above the law as well as beneath it. His
face was featureless, save for gaping orifices and for the lidless eyes
that burned under hairless brows.
"Let us not make trouble," he began. "We ask to be left alone. But if
they do not leave us alone, then is the trouble theirs and the penalty.
My fingers are gone, as you see." He held up his stumps of hands that
all might see. "Yet have I the joint of one thumb left, and it can pull
a trigger as firmly as did its lost neighbour in the old days. We love
Kauai. Let us live here, or die here, but do not let us go to the prison
of Molokai. The sickness is not ours. We have not sinned. The men who
preached the word of God and the word of Rum brought the sickness with
the coolie slaves who work the stolen land. I have been a judge. I know
the law and the justice, and I say to you it is unjust to steal a man's
land, to make that man sick with the Chinese sickness, and then to put
that man in prison for life."
"Life is short, and the days are filled with pain," said Koolau. "Let us
drink and dance and be happy as we can."
From one of the rocky lairs calabashes were produced and passed round.
The calabashes were filled with the fierce distillation of the root of
the _ti_-plant; and as the liquid fire coursed through them and mounted
to their brains, they forgot that they had once been men and women, for
they were men and women once more. The woman who wept scalding tears
from open eye-pits was indeed a woman apulse with life as she plucked the
strings of an _ukulele_ and lifted her voice in a barbaric love-call such
as might have come from the dark forest-depths of the primeval world. The
air tingled with her cry, softly imperious and seductive. Upon a mat,
timing his rhythm to the woman's song Kiloliana danced. It was
unmistakable. Love danced in all his movements, and, next, dancing with
him on the mat, was a woman whose heavy hips and generous breast gave the
lie to her disease-corroded face. It was a dance of the living dead, for
in their disintegrating bodies life still loved and longed. Ever the
woman whose sightless eyes ran scalding tears chanted her love-cry, ever
the dancers of love danced in the warm night, and ever the calabashes
went around till in all their brains were maggots crawling of memory and
desire. And with the woman on the mat danced a slender maid whose face
was beautiful and unmarred, but whose twisted arms that rose and fell
marked the disease's ravage. And the two idiots, gibbering and mouthing
strange noises, danced apart, grotesque, fantastic, travestying love as
they themselves had been travestied by life.
But the woman's love-cry broke midway, the calabashes were lowered, and
the dancers ceased, as all gazed into the abyss above the sea, where a
rocket flared like a wan phantom through the moonlit air.
"It is the soldiers," said Koolau. "Tomorrow there will be fighting. It
is well to sleep and be prepared."
The lepers obeyed, crawling away to their lairs in the cliff, until only
Koolau remained, sitting motionless in the moonlight, his rifle across
his knees, as he gazed far down to the boats landing on the beach.
The far head of Kalalau Valley had been well chosen as a refuge. Except
Kiloliana, who knew back-trails up the precipitous walls, no man could
win to the gorge save by advancing across a knife-edged ridge. This
passage was a hundred yards in length. At best, it was a scant twelve
inches wide. On either side yawned the abyss. A slip, and to right or
left the man would fall to his death. But once across he would find
himself in an earthly paradise. A sea of vegetation laved the landscape,
pouring its green billows from wall to wall, dripping from the cliff-lips
in great vine-masses, and flinging a spray of ferns and air-plants in to
the multitudinous crevices. During the many months of Koolau's rule, he
and his followers had fought with this vegetable sea. The choking
jungle, with its riot of blossoms, had been driven back from the bananas,
oranges, and mangoes that grew wild. In little clearings grew the wild
arrowroot; on stone terraces, filled with soil scrapings, were the _taro_
patches and the melons; and in every open space where the sunshine
penetrated were _papaia_ trees burdened with their golden fruit.
Koolau had been driven to this refuge from the lower valley by the beach.
And if he were driven from it in turn, he knew of gorges among the
jumbled peaks of the inner fastnesses where he could lead his subjects
and live. And now he lay with his rifle beside him, peering down through
a tangled screen of foliage at the soldiers on the beach. He noted that
they had large guns with them, from which the sunshine flashed as from
mirrors. The knife-edged passage lay directly before him. Crawling
upward along the trail that led to it he could see tiny specks of men. He
knew they were not the soldiers, but the police. When they failed, then
the soldiers would enter the game.
He affectionately rubbed a twisted hand along his rifle barrel and made
sure that the sights were clean. He had learned to shoot as a
wild-cattle hunter on Niihau, and on that island his skill as a marksman
was unforgotten. As the toiling specks of men grew nearer and larger, he
estimated the range, judged the deflection of the wind that swept at
right angles across the line of fire, and calculated the chances of
overshooting marks that were so far below his level. But he did not
shoot. Not until they reached the beginning of the passage did he make
his presence known. He did not disclose himself, but spoke from the
thicket.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
"We want Koolau, the leper," answered the man who led the native police,
himself a blue-eyed American.
"You must go back," Koolau said.
He knew the man, a deputy sheriff, for it was by him that he had been
harried out of Niihau, across Kauai, to Kalalau Valley, and out of the
valley to the gorge.
"Who are you?" the sheriff asked.
"I am Koolau, the leper," was the reply.
"Then come out. We want you. Dead or alive, there is a thousand dollars
on your head. You cannot escape."
Koolau laughed aloud in the thicket.
"Come out!" the sheriff commanded, and was answered by silence.
He conferred with the police, and Koolau saw that they were preparing to
rush him.
"Koolau," the sheriff called. "Koolau, I am coming across to get you."
"Then look first and well about you at the sun and sea and sky, for it
will be the last time you behold them."
"That's all right, Koolau," the sheriff said soothingly. "I know you're
a dead shot. But you won't shoot me. I have never done you any wrong."
Koolau grunted in the thicket.
"I say, you know, I've never done you any wrong, have I?" the sheriff
persisted.
"You do me wrong when you try to put me in prison," was the reply. "And
you do me wrong when you try for the thousand dollars on my head. If you
will live, stay where you are."
"I've got to come across and get you. I'm sorry. But it is my duty."
"You will die before you get across."
The sheriff was no coward. Yet was he undecided. He gazed into the gulf
on either side and ran his eyes along the knife-edge he must travel. Then
he made up his mind.
"Koolau," he called.
But the thicket remained silent.
"Koolau, don't shoot. I am coming."
The sheriff turned, gave some orders to the police, then started on his
perilous way. He advanced slowly. It was like walking a tight rope. He
had nothing to lean upon but the air. The lava rock crumbled under his
feet, and on either side the dislodged fragments pitched downward through
the depths. The sun blazed upon him, and his face was wet with sweat.
Still he advanced, until the halfway point was reached.
"Stop!" Koolau commanded from the thicket. "One more step and I shoot."
The sheriff halted, swaying for balance as he stood poised above the
void. His face was pale, but his eyes were determined. He licked his
dry lips before he spoke.
"Koolau, you won't shoot me. I know you won't."
He started once more. The bullet whirled him half about. On his face
was an expression of querulous surprise as he reeled to the fall. He
tried to save himself by throwing his body across the knife-edge; but at
that moment he knew death. The next moment the knife-edge was vacant.
Then came the rush, five policemen, in single file, with superb
steadiness, running along the knife-edge. At the same instant the rest
of the posse opened fire on the thicket. It was madness. Five times
Koolau pulled the trigger, so rapidly that his shots constituted a
rattle. Changing his position and crouching low under the bullets that
were biting and singing through the bushes, he peered out. Four of the
police had followed the sheriff. The fifth lay across the knife-edge
still alive. On the farther side, no longer firing, were the surviving
police. On the naked rock there was no hope for them. Before they could
clamber down Koolau could have picked off the last man. But he did not
fire, and, after a conference, one of them took off a white undershirt
and waved it as a flag. Followed by another, he advanced along the knife-
edge to their wounded comrade. Koolau gave no sign, but watched them
slowly withdraw and become specks as they descended into the lower
valley.
Two hours later, from another thicket, Koolau watched a body of police
trying to make the ascent from the opposite side of the valley. He saw
the wild goats flee before them as they climbed higher and higher, until
he doubted his judgment and sent for Kiloliana, who crawled in beside
him.
"No, there is no way," said Kiloliana.
"The goats?" Koolau questioned.
"They come over from the next valley, but they cannot pass to this. There
is no way. Those men are not wiser than goats. They may fall to their
deaths. Let us watch."
"They are brave men," said Koolau. "Let us watch."
Side by side they lay among the morning-glories, with the yellow blossoms
of the _hau_ dropping upon them from overhead, watching the motes of men
toil upward, till the thing happened, and three of them, slipping,
rolling, sliding, dashed over a cliff-lip and fell sheer half a thousand
feet.
Kiloliana chuckled.
"We will be bothered no more," he said.
"They have war guns," Koolau made answer. "The soldiers have not yet
spoken."
In the drowsy afternoon, most of the lepers lay in their rock dens
asleep. Koolau, his rifle on his knees, fresh-cleaned and ready, dozed
in the entrance to his own den. The maid with the twisted arms lay below
in the thicket and kept watch on the knife-edge passage. Suddenly Koolau
was startled wide awake by the sound of an explosion on the beach. The
next instant the atmosphere was incredibly rent asunder. The terrible
sound frightened him. It was as if all the gods had caught the envelope
of the sky in their hands and were ripping it apart as a woman rips apart
a sheet of cotton cloth. But it was such an immense ripping, growing
swiftly nearer. Koolau glanced up apprehensively, as if expecting to see
the thing. Then high up on the cliff overhead the shell burst in a
fountain of black smoke. The rock was shattered, the fragments falling
to the foot of the cliff.
Koolau passed his hand across his sweaty brow. He was terribly shaken.
He had had no experience with shell-fire, and this was more dreadful than
anything he had imagined.
"One," said Kapahei, suddenly bethinking himself to keep count.
A second and a third shell flew screaming over the top of the wall,
bursting beyond view. Kapahei methodically kept the count. The lepers
crowded into the open space before the caves. At first they were
frightened, but as the shells continued their flight overhead the leper
folk became reassured and began to admire the spectacle.
The two idiots shrieked with delight, prancing wild antics as each air-
tormenting shell went by. Koolau began to recover his confidence. No
damage was being done. Evidently they could not aim such large missiles
at such long range with the precision of a rifle.
But a change came over the situation. The shells began to fall short.
One burst below in the thicket by the knife-edge. Koolau remembered the
maid who lay there on watch, and ran down to see. The smoke was still
rising from the bushes when he crawled in. He was astounded. The
branches were splintered and broken. Where the girl had lain was a hole
in the ground. The girl herself was in shattered fragments. The shell
had burst right on her.
First peering out to make sure no soldiers were attempting the passage,
Koolau started back on the run for the caves. All the time the shells
were moaning, whining, screaming by, and the valley was rumbling and
reverberating with the explosions. As he came in sight of the caves, he
saw the two idiots cavorting about, clutching each other's hands with
their stumps of fingers. Even as he ran, Koolau saw a spout of black
smoke rise from the ground, near to the idiots. They were flung apart
bodily by the explosion. One lay motionless, but the other was dragging
himself by his hands toward the cave. His legs trailed out helplessly
behind him, while the blood was pouring from his body. He seemed bathed
in blood, and as he crawled he cried like a little dog. The rest of the
lepers, with the exception of Kapahei, had fled into the caves.
"Seventeen," said Kapahei. "Eighteen," he added.
This last shell had fairly entered into one of the caves. The explosion
caused the caves to empty. But from the particular cave no one emerged.
Koolau crept in through the pungent, acrid smoke. Four bodies,
frightfully mangled, lay about. One of them was the sightless woman
whose tears till now had never ceased.
Outside, Koolau found his people in a panic and already beginning to
climb the goat-trail that led out of the gorge and on among the jumbled
heights and chasms. The wounded idiot, whining feebly and dragging
himself along on the ground by his hands, was trying to follow. But at
the first pitch of the wall his helplessness overcame him and he fell
back.
"It would be better to kill him," said Koolau to Kapahei, who still sat
in the same place.
"Twenty-two," Kapahei answered. "Yes, it would be a wise thing to kill
him. Twenty-three--twenty-four."
The idiot whined sharply when he saw the rifle levelled at him. Koolau
hesitated, then lowered the gun.
"It is a hard thing to do," he said.
"You are a fool, twenty-six, twenty-seven," said Kapahei. "Let me show
you."
He arose, and with a heavy fragment of rock in his hand, approached the
wounded thing. As he lifted his arm to strike, a shell burst full upon
him, relieving him of the necessity of the act and at the same time
putting an end to his count.
Koolau was alone in the gorge. He watched the last of his people drag
their crippled bodies over the brow of the height and disappear. Then he
turned and went down to the thicket where the maid had keen killed. The
shell-fire still continued, but he remained; for far below he could see
the soldiers climbing up. A shell burst twenty feet away. Flattening
himself into the earth, he heard the rush of the fragments above his
body. A shower of hau blossoms rained upon him. He lifted his head to
peer down the trail, and sighed. He was very much afraid. Bullets from
rifles would not have worried him, but this shell-fire was abominable.
Each time a shell shrieked by he shivered and crouched; but each time he
lifted his head again to watch the trail.
At last the shells ceased. This, he reasoned, was because the soldiers
were drawing near. They crept along the trail in single file, and he
tried to count them until he lost track. At any rate, there were a
hundred or so of them--all come after Koolau the leper. He felt a
fleeting prod of pride. With war guns and rifles, police and soldiers,
they came for him, and he was only one man, a crippled wreck of a man at
that. They offered a thousand dollars for him, dead or alive. In all
his life he had never possessed that much money. The thought was a
bitter one. Kapahei had been right. He, Koolau, had done no wrong.
Because the _haoles_ wanted labour with which to work the stolen land,
they had brought in the Chinese coolies, and with them had come the
sickness. And now, because he had caught the sickness, he was worth a
thousand dollars--but not to himself. It was his worthless carcass,
rotten with disease or dead from a bursting shell, that was worth all
that money.
When the soldiers reached the knife-edged passage, he was prompted to
warn them. But his gaze fell upon the body of the murdered maid, and he
kept silent. When six had ventured on the knife-edge, he opened fire.
Nor did he cease when the knife-edge was bare. He emptied his magazine,
reloaded, and emptied it again. He kept on shooting. All his wrongs
were blazing in his brain, and he was in a fury of vengeance. All down
the goat-trail the soldiers were firing, and though they lay flat and
sought to shelter themselves in the shallow inequalities of the surface,
they were exposed marks to him. Bullets whistled and thudded about him,
and an occasional ricochet sang sharply through the air. One bullet
ploughed a crease through his scalp, and a second burned across his
shoulder-blade without breaking the skin.
It was a massacre, in which one man did the killing. The soldiers began
to retreat, helping along their wounded. As Koolau picked them off he
became aware of the smell of burnt meat. He glanced about him at first,
and then discovered that it was his own hands. The heat of the rifle was
doing it. The leprosy had destroyed most of the nerves in his hands.
Though his flesh burned and he smelled it, there was no sensation.
He lay in the thicket, smiling, until he remembered the war guns. Without
doubt they would open upon him again, and this time upon the very thicket
from which he had inflicted the danger. Scarcely had he changed his
position to a nook behind a small shoulder of the wall where he had noted
that no shells fell, than the bombardment recommenced. He counted the
shells. Sixty more were thrown into the gorge before the war-guns
ceased. The tiny area was pitted with their explosions, until it seemed
impossible that any creature could have survived. So the soldiers
thought, for, under the burning afternoon sun, they climbed the
goat-trail again. And again the knife-edged passage was disputed, and
again they fell back to the beach.
For two days longer Koolau held the passage, though the soldiers
contented themselves with flinging shells into his retreat. Then Pahau,
a leper boy, came to the top of the wall at the back of the gorge and
shouted down to him that Kiloliana, hunting goats that they might eat,
had been killed by a fall, and that the women were frightened and knew
not what to do. Koolau called the boy down and left him with a spare gun
with which to guard the passage. Koolau found his people disheartened.
The majority of them were too helpless to forage food for themselves
under such forbidding circumstances, and all were starving. He selected
two women and a man who were not too far gone with the disease, and sent
them back to the gorge to bring up food and mats. The rest he cheered
and consoled until even the weakest took a hand in building rough
shelters for themselves.
But those he had dispatched for food did not return, and he started back
for the gorge. As he came out on the brow of the wall, half a dozen
rifles cracked. A bullet tore through the fleshy part of his shoulder,
and his cheek was cut by a sliver of rock where a second bullet smashed
against the cliff. In the moment that this happened, and he leaped back,
he saw that the gorge was alive with soldiers. His own people had
betrayed him. The shell-fire had been too terrible, and they had
preferred the prison of Molokai.
Koolau dropped back and unslung one of his heavy cartridge-belts. Lying
among the rocks, he allowed the head and shoulders of the first soldier
to rise clearly into view before pulling trigger. Twice this happened,
and then, after some delay, in place of a head and shoulders a white flag
was thrust above the edge of the wall.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
"I want you, if you are Koolau the leper," came the answer.
Koolau forgot where he was, forgot everything, as he lay and marvelled at
the strange persistence of these _haoles_ who would have their will
though the sky fell in. Aye, they would have their will over all men and
all things, even though they died in getting it. He could not but admire
them, too, what of that will in them that was stronger than life and that
bent all things to their bidding. He was convinced of the hopelessness
of his struggle. There was no gainsaying that terrible will of the
_haoles_. Though he killed a thousand, yet would they rise like the
sands of the sea and come upon him, ever more and more. They never knew
when they were beaten. That was their fault and their virtue. It was
where his own kind lacked. He could see, now, how the handful of the
preachers of God and the preachers of Rum had conquered the land. It was
because--
"Well, what have you got to say? Will you come with me?"
It was he voice of the invisible man under the white flag. There he was,
like any haole, driving straight toward the end determined.
"Let us talk," said Koolau.
The man's head and shoulders arose, then his whole body. He was a smooth-
faced, blue-eyed youngster of twenty-five, slender and natty in his
captain's uniform. He advanced until halted, then seated himself a dozen
feet away.
"You are a brave man," said Koolau wonderingly. "I could kill you like a
fly."
"No, you couldn't," was the answer.
"Why not?"
"Because you are a man, Koolau, though a bad one. I know your story. You
kill fairly."
Koolau grunted, but was secretly pleased.
"What have you done with my people?" he demanded. "The boy, the two
women, and the man?"
"They gave themselves up, as I have now come for you to do."
Koolau laughed incredulously.
"I am a free man," he announced. "I have done no wrong. All I ask is to
be left alone. I have lived free, and I shall die free. I will never
give myself up."
"Then your people are wiser than you," answered the young captain.
"Look--they are coming now."
Koolau turned and watched the remnant of his band approach. Groaning and
sighing, a ghastly procession, it dragged its wretchedness past. It was
given to Koolau to taste a deeper bitterness, for they hurled
imprecations and insults at him as they went by; and the panting hag who
brought up the rear halted, and with skinny, harpy-claws extended,
shaking her snarling death's head from side to side, she laid a curse
upon him. One by one they dropped over the lip-edge and surrendered to
the hiding soldiers.
"You can go now," said Koolau to the captain. "I will never give myself
up. That is my last word. Good-bye."
The captain slipped over the cliff to his soldiers. The next moment, and
without a flag of truce, he hoisted his hat on his scabbard, and Koolau's
bullet tore through it. That afternoon they shelled him out from the
beach, and as he retreated into the high inaccessible pockets beyond, the
soldiers followed him.
For six weeks they hunted him from pocket to pocket, over the volcanic
peaks and along the goat-trails. When he hid in the lantana jungle, they
formed lines of beaters, and through lantana jungle and guava scrub they
drove him like a rabbit. But ever he turned and doubled and eluded.
There was no cornering him. When pressed too closely, his sure rifle
held them back and they carried their wounded down the goat-trails to the
beach. There were times when they did the shooting as his brown body
showed for a moment through the underbrush. Once, five of them caught
him on an exposed goat-trail between pockets. They emptied their rifles
at him as he limped and climbed along his dizzy way. Afterwards they
found bloodstains and knew that he was wounded. At the end of six weeks
they gave up. The soldiers and police returned to Honolulu, and Kalalau
Valley was left to him for his own, though head-hunters ventured after
him from time to time and to their own undoing.
Two years later, and for the last time, Koolau crawled into a thicket and
lay down among the _ti_-leaves and wild ginger blossoms. Free he had
lived, and free he was dying. A slight drizzle of rain began to fall,
and he drew a ragged blanket about the distorted wreck of his limbs. His
body was covered with an oilskin coat. Across his chest he laid his
Mauser rifle, lingering affectionately for a moment to wipe the dampness
from the barrel. The hand with which he wiped had no fingers left upon
it with which to pull the trigger.
He closed his eyes, for, from the weakness in his body and the fuzzy
turmoil in his brain, he knew that his end was near. Like a wild animal
he had crept into hiding to die. Half-conscious, aimless and wandering,
he lived back in his life to his early manhood on Niihau. As life faded
and the drip of the rain grew dim in his ears it seemed to him that he
was once more in the thick of the horse-breaking, with raw colts rearing
and bucking under him, his stirrups tied together beneath, or charging
madly about the breaking corral and driving the helping cowboys over the
rails. The next instant, and with seeming naturalness, he found himself
pursuing the wild bulls of the upland pastures, roping them and leading
them down to the valleys. Again the sweat and dust of the branding pen
stung his eyes and bit his nostrils.
All his lusty, whole-bodied youth was his, until the sharp pangs of
impending dissolution brought him back. He lifted his monstrous hands
and gazed at them in wonder. But how? Why? Why should the wholeness of
that wild youth of his change to this? Then he remembered, and once
again, and for a moment, he was Koolau, the leper. His eyelids fluttered
wearily down and the drip of the rain ceased in his ears. A prolonged
trembling set up in his body. This, too, ceased. He half-lifted his
head, but it fell back. Then his eyes opened, and did not close. His
last thought was of his Mauser, and he pressed it against his chest with
his folded, fingerless hands.