Children of the Frost

by Children Of The Frost (Pg) [Lit]

  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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  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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  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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  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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