And while he appeared very sick and looked about him with dull eyes, he
noted the fighting strength of Ivan's men, and noted with satisfaction
that Ivan did not recognize him as the man he had beaten before the
gates of the fort. It was a strange following his dull eyes saw. There
were Slavonian hunters, fair-skinned and mighty-muscled; short, squat
Finns, with flat noses and round faces; Siberian half-breeds, whose
noses were more like eagle-beaks; and lean, slant-eyed men, who bore
in their veins the Mongol and Tartar blood as well as the blood of the
Slav. Wild adventurers they were, forayers and destroyers from the far
lands beyond the Sea of Bering, who blasted the new and unknown world
with fire and sword and clutched greedily for its wealth of fur and
hide. Negore looked upon them with satisfaction, and in his mind's eye
he saw them crushed and lifeless at the passage up the rocks. And ever
he saw, waiting for him at the passage up the rocks, the face and the
form of Oona, and ever he heard her voice in his ears and felt the
soft, warm glow of her eyes. But never did he forget to shiver, nor to
stumble where the footing was rough, nor to cry aloud at the bite of
the lash. Also, he was afraid of Karduk, for he knew him for no true
man. His was a false eye, and an easy tongue--a tongue too easy, he
judged, for the awkwardness of honest speech.
All that day they marched. And on the next, when Karduk asked him at
command of Ivan, he said he doubted they would meet with his tribe till
the morrow. But Ivan, who had once been shown the way by Old Kinoos,
and had found that way to lead through the white water and a deadly
fight, believed no more in anything. So when they came to a passage up
the rocks, he halted his forty men, and through Karduk demanded if the
way were clear.
Negore looked at it shortly and carelessly. It was a vast slide that
broke the straight wall of a cliff, and was overrun with brush and
creeping plants, where a score of tribes could have lain well hidden.
He shook his head. "Nay, there be nothing there," he said. "The way is
clear."
Again Ivan spoke to Karduk, and Karduk said:
"Know, strange brother, if thy talk be not straight, and if thy people
block the way and fall upon Ivan and his men, that thou shalt die, and
at once."
"My talk is straight," Negore said. "The way is clear."
Still Ivan doubted, and ordered two of his Slavonian hunters to go up
alone. Two other men he ordered to the side of Negore. They placed
their guns against his breast and waited. All waited. And Negore knew,
should one arrow fly, or one spear be flung, that his death would come
upon him. The two Slavonian hunters toiled upward till they grew small
and smaller, and when they reached the top and waved their hats that
all was well, they were like black specks against the sky.
The guns were lowered from Negore's breast and Ivan gave the order for
his men to go forward. Ivan was silent, lost in thought. For an hour he
marched, as though puzzled, and then, through Karduk's mouth, he said
to Negore:
"How didst thou know the way was clear when thou didst look so briefly
upon it?"
Negore thought of the little birds he had seen perched among the rocks
and upon the bushes, and smiled, it was so simple; but he shrugged his
shoulders and made no answer. For he was thinking, likewise, of another
passage up the rocks, to which they would soon come, and where the
little birds would all be gone. And he was glad that Karduk came from
the Great Fog Sea, where there were no trees or bushes, and where men
learned water-craft instead of land-craft and wood-craft.
Three hours later, when the sun rode overhead, they came to another
passage up the rocks, and Karduk said:
"Look with all thine eyes, strange brother, and see if the way be
clear, for Ivan is not minded this time to wait while men go up before."
Negore looked, and he looked with two men by his side, their guns
resting against his breast. He saw that the little birds were all gone,
and once he saw the glint of sunlight on a rifle-barrel. And he thought
of Oona, and of her words: "And when the fighting begins, it is for
thee, Negore, to crawl secretly away so that thou be not slain."
He felt the two guns pressing on his breast. This was not the way she
had planned. There would be no crawling secretly away. He would be the
first to die when the fighting began. But he said, and his voice was
steady, and he still feigned to see with dull eyes and to shiver from
his sickness:
"The way is clear."
And they started up, Ivan and his forty men from the far lands beyond
the Sea of Bering. And there was Karduk, the man from Pastolik, and
Negore, with the two guns always upon him. It was a long climb, and
they could not go fast; but very fast to Negore they seemed to approach
the midway point where top was no less near than bottom.
A gun cracked among the rocks to the right, and Negore heard the
war-yell of all his tribe, and for an instant saw the rocks and bushes
bristle alive with his kinfolk. Then he felt torn asunder by a burst of
flame hot through his being, and as he fell he knew the sharp pangs of
life as it wrenches at the flesh to be free.
But he gripped his life with a miser's clutch and would not let it
go. He still breathed the air, which bit his lungs with a painful
sweetness; and dimly he saw and heard, with passing spells of blindness
and deafness, the flashes of sight and sound again wherein he saw the
hunters of Ivan falling to their deaths, and his own brothers fringing
the carnage and filling the air with the tumult of their cries and
weapons, and, far above, the women and children loosing the great rocks
that leaped like things alive and thundered down.
The sun danced above him in the sky, the huge walls reeled and swung,
and still he heard and saw dimly. And when the great Ivan fell across
his legs, hurled there lifeless and crushed by a down-rushing rock, he
remembered the blind eyes of Old Kinoos and was glad.
Then the sounds died down, and the rocks no longer thundered past,
and he saw his tribespeople creeping close and closer, spearing the
wounded as they came. And near to him he heard the scuffle of a mighty
Slavonian hunter, loath to die, and, half uprisen, borne back and down
by the thirsty spears.
Then he saw above him the face of Oona, and felt about him the arms of
Oona; and for a moment the sun steadied and stood still, and the great
walls were upright and moved not.
"Thou art a brave man, Negore," he heard her say in his ear; "thou art
my man, Negore."
And in that moment he lived all the life of gladness of which she had
told him, and the laughter and the song, and as the sun went out of the
sky above him, as in his old age, he knew the memory of her was sweet.
And as even the memories dimmed and died in the darkness that fell upon
him, he knew in her arms the fulfilment of all the ease and rest she
had promised him. And as black night wrapped around him, his head upon
her breast, he felt a great peace steal about him, and he was aware of
the hush of many twilights and the mystery of silence.