the ship expedition. This party comprised fully two-thirds of the
tribesmen, and departed for the coast, a dozen miles away, laden with
skins and things to trade. The remaining men were disposed in a large
half-circle about the breastwork which Bill-Man and his Sunlanders had
begun to throw up. Tyee was quick to note the virtues of things, and at
once set his men to digging shallow trenches.
"The time will go before they are aware," he explained to Aab- Waak;
"and their minds being busy, they will not think overmuch of the dead that
are, nor gather trouble to themselves. And in the dark of night they may
creep closer, so that when the Sunlanders look forth in the morning light
they will find us very near."
In the midday heat the men ceased from their work and made a meal of
dried fish and seal oil which the women brought up. There was some
clamor for the food of the Sunlanders in the igloo of Neegah, but Tyee
refused to divide it until the return of the ship party. Speculations upon the
outcome became rife, but in the midst of it a dull boom drifted up over the
land from the sea. The keen-eyed ones made out a dense cloud of smoke,
which quickly disappeared, and which they averred was directly over the
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58
ship of the Sunlanders. Tyee was of the opinion that it was a big gun. Aab-
Waak did not know, but thought it might be a signal of some sort.
Anyway, he said, it was time something happened.
Five or six hours afterward a solitary man was descried coming across the
wide flat from the sea, and the women and children poured out upon him
in a body. It was Ounenk, naked, winded, and wounded. The blood still
trickled down his face from a gash on the forehead. His left arm,
frightfully mangled, hung helpless at his side. But most significant of all,
there was a wild gleam in his eyes which betokened the women knew not
what.
"Where be Peshack?" an old squaw queried sharply.
"And Olitlie?" "And Polak?" "And Mah-Kook?" the voices took up the
cry.
But he said nothing, brushing his way through the clamorous mass and
directing his staggering steps toward Tyee. The old squaw raised the wail,
and one by one the women joined her as they swung in behind. The men
crawled out of their trenches and ran back to gather about Tyee, and it was
noticed that the Sunlanders climbed upon their barricade to see.
Ounenk halted, swept the blood from his eyes, and looked about. He
strove to speak, but his dry lips were glued together. Likeeta fetched him
water, and he grunted and drank again.
"Was it a fight?" Tyee demanded finally,—"a good fight?"
"Ho! ho! ho!" So suddenly and so fiercely did Ounenk laugh that every
voice hushed. "Never was there such a fight! So I say, I, Ounenk, fighter
beforetime of beasts and men. And ere I forget, let me speak fat words and
wise. By fighting will the Sunlanders teach us Mandell Folk how to fight.
And if we fight long enough, we shall be great fighters, even as the
Sunlanders, or else we shall be—dead. Ho! ho! ho! It was a fight!"
"Where be thy brothers?" Tyee shook him till he shrieked from the pain of
his hurts.
Ounenk sobered. "My brothers? They are not."
"And Pome-Lee?" cried one of the two Hungry Folk; "Pome-Lee the son
of my mother?"
"Pome-Lee is not," Ounenk answered in a monotonous voice.
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"And the Sunlanders?" from Aab-Waak.
"The Sunlanders are not."
"Then the ship of the Sunlanders, and the wealth and guns and things?"
Tyee demanded.
"Neither the ship of the Sunlanders, nor the wealth and guns and things,"
was the unvarying response. "All are not. Nothing is. I only am."
"And thou art a fool."
"It may be so," Ounenk answered, unruffled. "I have seen that which
would well make me a fool."
Tyee held his tongue, and all waited till it should please Ounenk to tell the
story in his own way.
"We took no guns, O Tyee," he at last began; "no guns, my brothers —
only knives and hunting bows and spears. And in twos and threes, in our
kayaks, we came to the ship. They were glad to see us, the Sunlanders, and
we spread our skins and they brought out their articles of trade, and
everything was well. And Pome-Lee waited—waited till the sun was well
overhead and they sat at meat, when he gave the cry and we fell upon
them. Never was there such a fight, and never such fighters. Half did we
kill in the quickness of surprise, but the half that was left became as devils,
and they multiplied themselves, and everywhere they fought like devils.
Three put their backs against the mast of the ship, and we ringed them
with our dead before they died. And some got guns and shot with both
eyes wide open, and very quick and sure. And one got a big gun, from
which at one time he shot many small bullets. And so, behold!"
Ounenk pointed to his ear, neatly pierced by a buckshot.
"But I, Ounenk, drove my spear through his back from behind. And in
such fashion, one way and another, did we kill them all—all save the head
man. And him we were about, many of us, and he was alone, when he
made a great cry and broke through us, five or six dragging upon him, and
ran down inside the ship. And then, when the wealth of the ship was ours,
and only the head man down below whom we would kill presently, why
then there was a sound as of all the guns in the world— a mighty sound!
And like a bird I rose up in the air, and the living Mandell Folk, and the
dead Sunlanders, the little kayaks, the big ship, the guns, the wealth—
everything rose up in the air. So I say, I, Ounenk, who tell the tale, am the
only one left."
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A great silence fell upon the assemblage. Tyee looked at Aab- Waak with
awe-struck eyes, but forbore to speak. Even the women were too stunned
to wail the dead.
Ounenk looked about him with pride. "I, only, am left," he repeated.
But at that instant a rifle cracked from Bill-Man's barricade, and there was
a sharp spat and thud on the chest of Ounenk. He swayed backward and
came forward again, a look of startled surprise on his face. He gasped, and
his lips writhed in a grim smile. There was a shrinking together of the
shoulders and a bending of the knees. He shook himself, as might a
drowsing man, and straightened up. But the shrinking and bending began
again, and he sank down slowly, quite slowly, to the ground.
It was a clean mile from the pit of the Sunlanders, and death had spanned
it. A great cry of rage went up, and in it there was much of bloodvengeance,
much of the unreasoned ferocity of the brute. Tyee . and Aab-
Waak tried to hold the Mandell Folk back, were thrust aside, and could
only turn and watch the mad charge. But no shots came from the
Sunlanders, and ere half the distance was covered, many, affrighted by
the
mysterious silence of the pit, halted and waited. The wilder spirits bore on,
and when they had cut the remaining distance in half, the pit still showed
no sign of life. At two hundred yards they slowed down and bunched; at
one hundred, they stopped, a score of them, suspicious, and conferred
together.
Then a wreath of smoke crowned the barricade, and they scattered like a
handful of pebbles thrown at random. Four went down, and four more, and
they continued swiftly to fall, one and two at a time, till but one remained,
and he in full flight with death singing about his ears. It was Nok, a young
hunter, long-legged and tall, and he ran as never before. He skimmed
across the naked open like a bird, and soared and sailed and curved from
side to side. The rifles in the pit rang out in solid volley; they flut-flut-flutflutted
in ragged sequence; and still Nok rose and dipped and rose again
unharmed. There was a lull in the ~firing, as though the Sunlanders had
given over, and Nok curved less and less in his flight till he darted straight
forward at every leap. And then, as he leaped cleanly and well, one lone
rifle barked from the pit, and he doubled up in mid-air, struck the ground
in a ball, and like a teal 1 bounced from the impact, and came down in a
broken heap.
"Who so swift as the swift-winged lead?" Aab-Waak pondered.
Tyee grunted and turned away. The incident was closed and there was a
more pressing matter at hand. One Hungry Man and forty fighters, some
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61
of them hurt, remained; and there were four Sunlanders yet: to reckon
with.
"We will keep them in their hole by the cliff," he said, "and when famine
has gripped them hard we will slay them like children."
"But of what matter to fight?" queried Oloof, one of the younger men.
"The wealth of the Sunlanders is not; only remains that in the igloo of
Neegah, a paltry quantity—"
He broke off hastily as the air by his ear split sharply to the passage of a
bullet.
Tyee laughed scornfully. "Let that be thy answer. What else may we do
with this mad breed of Sunlanders which will not die?"
"What a thing is foolishness!" Oloof protested, his ears furtively alert for
the coming of other bullets. "It is not right that they should fight so, these
Sunlanders. Why will they not die easily? They are fools not to know that
they are dead men, and they give us much trouble."
"We fought before for great wealth; we fight now that we may live," Aab-
Waak summed up succinctly.
That night there was a clash in the trenches, and shots exchanged. And in
the morning the igloo of Neegah was found empty of the Sunlanders'
possessions. These they themselves had taken, for the signs of their trail
were visible to the sun. Oloof climbed to the brow of the cliff to hurl great
stones down into the pit, but the cliff overhung, and he hurled down abuse
and insult instead, and promised bitter torture to them in the end. Bill-Man
mocked him back in the tongue of the Bear Folk, and Tyee, lifting his
head from a trench to see, had his shoulder scratched deeply by a bullet.
And in the dreary days that followed, and in the wild nights when they
pushed the trenches closer, there was much discussion as to the wisdom of
letting the Sunlanders go. But of this they were afraid, and the women
raised a cry always at the thought. This much they had seen of the
Sunlanders; they cared to see no more. All the time the whistle and blubblub
of bullets filled the air, and all the time the death- list grew. In the
golden sunrise came the faint, far crack of a rifle, and a stricken woman
would throw up her hands on the distant edge of the village; in the
noonday heat, men in the trenches heard the shrill singsong and knew their
deaths; or in the gray afterglow of evening, the dirt kicked up in puffs by
the winking fires. And through the nights the long "Wah-hoo-ha-a wahhoo-
ha-a!" of mourning women held dolorous sway.
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As Tyee had promised, in the end famine gripped the Sunlanders. And
once, when an early fall gale blew, one of them crawled through the
darkness past the trenches and stole many dried fish. But he could not get
back with them, and the sun found him vainly hiding in the village. So he
fought the great fight by himself, and in a narrow ring of Mandell Folk
shot four with his revolver, and ere they could lay hands on him for the
torture, turned it on himself and died.
This threw a gloom upon the people. Oloof put the question, "If one man
die so hard, how hard will die the three who yet are left?"
Then Mesahchie stood up on the barricade and called in by name three
dogs which had wandered close,—meat and life,—which set back the day
of reckoning and put despair in the hearts of the Mandell Folk. And on the
head of Mesahchie were showered the curses of a generation.
The days dragged by. The sun hurried south, the nights grew long and
longer, and there was a touch of frost in the air. And still the Sunlanders
held the pit. Hearts were breaking under the unending strain, and Tyee
thought hard and deep. Then he sent forth word that all the skins and hides
of all the tribe be collected. These he had made into huge cylindrical bales,
and behind each bale he placed a man.
When the word was given the brief day was almost spent, and it was slow
work and tedious, rolling the big bales forward foot by foot. The bullets of
the Sunlanders blub-blubbed and thudded against them, but could not go
through, and the men howled their delight. But the dark was at hand, and
Tyee, secure of success, called the bales back to the trenches.
In the morning, in the face of an unearthly silence from the pit, the real
advance began. At first, with large intervals between, the bales slowly
converged as the circle drew in. At a hundred yards they were quite close
together, so that Tyee's order to halt was passed along in whispers. The pit
showed no sign of life. They watched long and sharply, but nothing
stirred. The advance was taken up and the manaeuvre repeated at fifty
yards. Still no sign nor sound. Tyee shook his head, and even Aab-Waak
was dubious. But the order was given to go on, and go on they did, till
bale touched bale and a solid rampart of skin and hide bowed out from the
cliff about the pit and back to the cliff again.
Tyee looked back and saw the women and children clustering blackly in
the deserted trenches. He looked ahead at the silent pit. The men were
wriggling nervously, and he ordered every second bale forward. This
double line advanced till bale touched bale as before. Then AabWaak, of
his own will, pushed one bale forward alone. When it touched the
barricade, he waited a long while. After that he tossed unresponsive rocks
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63
over into the pit, and finally, with great care, stood up and peered in. A
carpet of empty cartridges, a few white-picked dog bones, and a soggy
place where water dripped from a crevice, met his eyes. That was all. The
Sunlanders were gone.
There were murmurings of witchcraft, vague complaints, dark looks which
foreshadowed to Tyee dread things which yet might come to pass, and he
breathed easier when Aab-Waak took up the trail along the base of the
cliff.
"The cave!" Tyee cried. "They foresaw my wisdom of the skin- bales and
fled away into the cave!"
The cliff was honey-combed with a labyrinth of subterranean passages
which found vent in an opening midway between the pit and where the
trench tapped the wall. Thither, and with many exclamations, the
tribesmen followed Aab-Waak, and, arrived, they saw plainly where the
Sunlanders had climbed to the mouth, twenty and odd feet above.
"Now the thing is done," Tyee said, rubbing his hands. "Let word go forth
that rejoicing be made, for they are in the trap now, these Sunlanders,—in
the trap. The young men shall climb up, and the mouth of the cave be
filled with stones, so that Bill-Man and his brothers and Mesahchie shall
by famine be pinched to shadows and die cursing in the silence and dark."
Cries of delight and relief greeted this, and Howgah, the last of the Hungry
Folk, swarmed up the steep slant and drew himself, crouching, upon the
lip of the opening. But as he crouched, a muffled report rushed forth, and
as he clung desperately to the slippery edge, a second. His grip loosed
with reluctant weakness, and he pitched down at the feet of Tyee, quivered
for a moment like some monstrous jelly, and was still.
"How should I know they were great fighters and unafraid?" Tyee
demanded, spurred to defence by recollection of the dark looks and vague
complaints.
"We were many and happy," one of the men stated baldly. Another
fingered his spear with a prurient hand.
But Oloof cried them cease. "Give ear, my brothers! There be another
way! As a boy I chanced upon it playing along the steep. It is hidden by
the rocks, and there is no reason that a man should go there; wherefore it is
secret, and no man knows. It is very small, and you crawl on your belly a
long way, and then you are in the cave. To- night we will so crawl,
without noise, on our bellies, and come upon the Sunlanders from behind.
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