Children of the Frost
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And to-morrow we will be at peace, and never again will we quarrel with
the Sunlanders in the years to come."
"Never again!" chorused the weary men. "Never again!" And Tyee joined
with them.
That night, with the memory of their dead in their hearts, and in their
hands stones and spears and knives, the horde of women and children
collected about the known mouth of the cave. Down the twenty and odd
precarious feet to the ground no Sunlander could hope to pass and live. In
the village remained only the wounded men, while every able man—and
there were thirty of them—followed Oloof to the secret opening. A
hundred feet of broken ledges and insecurely heaped rocks were between
it and the earth, and because of the rocks, which might be displaced by the
touch of hand or foot, but one man climbed at a time. Oloof went up first,
called softly for the next to come on, and disappeared inside. A man
followed, a second, and a third, and so on, till only Tyee remained. He
received the call of the last man, but a quick doubt assailed him and he
stayed to ponder. Half an hour later he swung up to the opening and
peered in. He could feel the narrowness of the passage, and the darkness
before him took on solidity. The fear of the walled-in earth chilled him
and he could not venture. All the men who had died, from Neegah the first
of the Mandells, to Howgah the last of the Hungry Folk, came and sat with
him, but he chose the terror of their company rather than face the horror
which he felt to lurk in the thick blackness. He had been sitting long when
something soft and cold fluttered lightly on his cheek, and he knew the
first winter's snow was falling. The dim dawn came, and after that the
bright day, when he heard a low guttural sobbing, which came and went at
intervals along the passage and which drew closer each time and more
distinct. He slipped over the edge, dropped his feet to the first ledge, and
waited.
That which sobbed made slow progress, but at last, after many halts, it
reached him, and he was sure no Sunlander made the noise. So he reached
a hand inside, and where there should have been a head felt the shoulders
of a man uplifted on bent arms. The head he found later, not erect, but
hanging straight down so that the crown rested on the floor of the passage.
"Is it you, Tyee?" the head said. "For it is I, Aab-Waak, who am helpless
and broken as a rough-flung spear. My head is in the dirt, and I may not
climb down unaided."
Tyee clambered in, dragged him up with his back against the wall, but the
head hung down on the chest and sobbed and wailed.
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"Ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!" it went. "Oloof forgot, for Mesahchie likewise knew
the secret and showed the Sunlanders, else they would not have waited at
the end of the narrow way. Wherefore, I am a broken man, and helpless—
ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!"
"And did they die, the cursed Sunlanders, at the end of the narrow way?"
Tyee demanded.
"How should I know they waited?" Aab-Waak gurgled. "For my brothers
had gone before, many of them, and there was no sound of struggle. How
should I know why there should be no sound of struggle ? And ere I knew,
two hands were about my neck so that I could not cry out and warn my
brothers yet to come. And then there were two hands more on my head,
and two more on my feet. In this fashion the three Sunlanders had me.
And while the hands held my head in one place, the hands on my feet
swung my body around, and as we wring the neck of a duck in the marsh,
so my neck was wrung.
"But it was not given that I should die," he went on, a remnant of pride yet
glimmering. "I, only, am left. Oloof and the rest lie on their backs in a
row, and their faces turn this way and that, and the faces of some be
underneath where the backs of their heads should be. It is not good to look
upon; for when life returned to me I saw them all by the light of a torch
which the Sunlanders left, and I had been laid with them in the row."
"So? So?" Tyee mused, too stunned for speech.
He started suddenly, and shivered, for the voice of Bill-Man shot out at
him from the passage.
"It is well," it said. HI look for the man who crawls with the broken neck,
and lo, do I find Tyee. Throw down thy gun, Tyee, so that I may hear it
strike among the rocks."
Tyee obeyed passively, and Bill-Man crawled forward into the light. Tyee
looked at him curiously. He was gaunt and worn and dirty, and his eyes
burned like twin coals in their cavernous sockets.
"I am hungry, Tyee," he said. "Very hungry."
"And I am dirt at thy feet," Tyee responded. "Thy word is my law. Further,
I commanded my people not to withstand thee. I counselled—"
But Bill-Man had turned and was calling back into the passage. "Hey!
Charley! Jim ! Fetch the woman along and come on ! "
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"We go now to eat," he said, when his comrades and Mesahchie had
joined him.
Tyee rubbed his hands deprecatingly. "We have little, but it is shine. "
"After that we go south on the snow," Bill-Man continued.
"May you go without hardship and the trail be easy."
"It is a long way. We will need dogs and food—much"!"
"Thine the pick of our dogs and the food they may carry."
Bill-Man slipped over the edge of the opening and prepared to descend.
"But we come again, Tyee. We come again, and our days shall be long in
the land."
And so they departed into the trackless south, Bill-Man, his brothers, and
Mesahchie. And when the next year came, the Search Number Two rode
at anchor in Mandell Bay. The few Mandell men, who survived because
their wounds had prevented their crawling into the cave, went to work at
the hest of the Sunlanders and dug in the ground. They hunt and fish no
more, but receive a daily wage, with which they buy flour, sugar, calico,
and such things which the Search Number Two brings on her yearly trip
from the Sunlands.
And this mine is worked in secret, as many Northland mines have been
worked; and no white man outside the Company, which is BillMan, Jim,
and Charley, knows the whereabouts of Mandell on the rim of the polar
sea. Aab-Waak still carries his head on one shoulder, is become an oracle,
and preaches peace to the younger generation, for which he receives a
pension from the Company. Tyee is foreman of the mine. But he has
achieved a new theory concerning the Sunlanders.
"They that live under the path of the sun are not soft," he says, smoking
his pipe and watching the day-shift take itself off and the nightshift go on.
"For the sun enters into their blood and burns them with a great fire till
they are filled with lusts and passions. They burn always, so that they may
not know when they are beaten. Further, there is an unrest in them, which
is a devil, and they are flung out ove
r the earth to toil and suffer and fight
without end. I know. I am Tyee."
THE SICKNESS OF LONE CHIEF
(First published in Out West, Oct, 1902)
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THIS is a tale that was told to me by two old men. We sat in the smoke of
a mosquito-smudge, in the cool of the day, which was midnight; and ever
and anon, throughout the telling, we smote lustily and with purpose at
such of the winged pests as braved the smoke for a snack at our hides. To
the right, beneath us, twenty feet down the crumbling bank, the Yukon
gurgled lazily. To the left, on the rose- leaf rim of the low-lying hills,
smouldered the sleepy sun, which saw no sleep that night nor was destined
to see sleep for many nights to come.
The old men who sat with me and valorously slew mosquitoes were Lone
Chief and Mutsak, erstwhile comrades in arms, and now withered
repositories of tradition and ancient happening. They were the last of their
generation and without honor among the younger set which had grown up
on the farthest fringe of a mining civilization. Who cared for tradition in
these days, when spirits could be evoked from black bottles, and black
bottles could be evoked from the complaisant white men for a few hours'
sweat or a mangy fur? Of what potency the fearful rites and masked
mysteries of shamanism, when daily that living wonder, the steamboat,
coughed and spluttered up and down the Yukon in defiance of all law, a
veritable fire- breathing monster? And of what value was hereditary
prestige, when he who now chopped the most wood, or best conned a
stern-wheeler through the island mazes, attained the chiefest consideration
of his fellows?
Of a truth, having lived too long, they had fallen on evil days, these two
old men, Lone Chief and Mutsak, and in the new order they were without
honor or place. So they waited drearily for death, and the while their
hearts warmed to the strange white man who shared with them the
torments of the mosquito-smudge and lent ready ear to their tales of old
time before the steamboat came.
"So a girl was chosen for me," Lone Chief was saying. His voice, shrill
and piping, ever and again dropped plummet-like into a hoarse and rattling
bass, and, just as one became accustomed to it, soaring upward into the
thin treble—alternate cricket chirpings and bullfrog croakings, as it were.
"So a girl was chosen for me," he was saying. "For my father, who was
Kask-ta-ka, the Otter, was angered because I looked not with a needful eye
upon women. He was an old man, and chief of his tribe. I was the last of
his sons to be alive, and through me, only, could he look to see his blood
go down among those to come after and as yet unborn. But know, O White
Man, that I was very sick; and when neither the hunting nor the fishing
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delighted me, and by meat my belly was not made warm, how should I
look with favor upon women ? or prepare for the feast of marriage ? or
look forward to the prattle and troubles of little children ?"
"Ay," Mutsak interrupted. "For had not Lone Chief fought in the arms of a
great bear till his head was cracked and blood ran from out his ears ?"
Lone Chief nodded vigorously. "Mutsak speaks true. In the time that
followed, my head was well, and it was not well. For though the flesh
healed and the sore went away, yet was I sick inside. When I walked, my
legs shook under me, and when I looked at the light, my eyes became
filled with tears. And when I opened my eyes, the world outside went
around and around, and when I closed my eyes, my head inside went
around and around, and all the things I had ever seen went around and
around inside my head. And above my eyes there was a great pain, as
though something heavy rested always upon me, or like a band that is
drawn tight and gives much hurt. And speech was slow to me, and I
waited long for each right word to come to my tongue. And when I waited
not long, all manner of words crowded in, and my tongue spoke
foolishness. I was very sick, and when my father, the Otter, brought the
girl Kasaan before me—"
"Who was a young girl, and strong, my sister's child," Mutsak broke in.
"Strong-tripped for children was Kasaan, and straight- legged and quick of
foot. She made better moccasins than any of all the young girls, and the
bark-rope she braided was the stoutest. And she had a smile in her eyes,
and a laugh on her lips; and her temper was not hasty, nor was she
unmindful that men give the law and women ever obey."
"As I say, I was very sick," Lone Chief went on. "And when my father, the
Otter, brought the girl Kasaan before me, I said rather should they make
me ready for burial than for marriage. Whereat the face of my father went
black with anger, and he said that I should be served according to my
wish, and that I who was yet alive should be made ready for death as one
already dead—"
"Which be not the way of our people, O White Man," spoke up Mutsak.
"For know that these things that were done to Lone Chief it was our
custom to do only to dead men. But the Otter was very angry."
"Ay," said Lone Chief. "My father, the Otter, was a man short of speech
and swift of deed. And he commanded the people to gather before the
lodge wherein I lay. And when they were gathered, he commanded them
to mourn for his son who was dead—"
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"And before the lodge they sang the death-song—O-o-o-o-o-o- ahaa-ha-aich-
klu-kuk-ich-klu-kuk,,, wailed Mutsak, in so excellent an imitation that
all the tendrils of my spine crawled and curved in sympathy.
"And inside the lodge," continued Lone Chief, "my mother blackened her
face with soot, and flung ashes upon her head, and mourned for me as one
already dead; for so had my father commanded. So Okiakuta, my mother,
mourned with much noise, and beat her breasts and tore her hair; and
likewise Hooniak, my sister, and Seenatah, my mother's sister; and the
noise they made caused a great ache in my head, and I felt that I would
surely and immediately die.
"And the elders of the Bribe gathered about me where I lay and discussed
the journey my soul must take. One spoke of the thick and endless forests
where lost souls wandered crying, and where I, too, might chance to
wander and never see the end. And another spoke of the big rivers, rapid
with bad water, where evil spirits shrieked and lifted up their formless
arms to drag one down by the hair. For these rivers, all said together, a
canoe must be provided me. And yet another spoke of the storms, such as
no live man ever saw, when the stars rained down out of the sky, and the
earth gaped wide in many cracks, and all the rivers in the heart of the earth
rushed out and in. Whereupon they that sat by me flung up their arms and
wailed loudly; and those outside heard, and wailed more loudly. And as to
t
hem I was as dead, so was I to my own mind dead. I did not know when,
or how, yet did I know that I had surely died.
"And Okiakuta, my mother, laid beside me my squirrel-skin parka. Also
she laid beside me my parka of caribou hide, and my rain coat of seal gut,
and my wet-weather muclucs, that my soul should be warm and dry on its
long journey. Further, there was mention made of a steep hill, thick with
briers and devil's-club, and she fetched heavy moccasins to make the way
easy for my feet.
"And when the elders spoke of the great beasts I should have to slay, the
young men laid beside me my strongest bow and straightest arrows, my
throwing-stick, my spear and knife. And when the elders spoke of the
darkness and silence of the great spaces my soul must wander through, my
mother wailed yet more loudly and flung yet more ashes upon her head.
"And the girl, Kasaan, crept in, very timid and quiet, and dropped a little
bag upon the things for my journey. And in the little bag, I knew, were the
flint and steel and the well-dried tinder for the fires my soul must build.
And the blankets were chosen which were to be wrapped around me. Also
were the slaves selected that were to be killed that my soul might have
company. There were seven of these slaves, for my father was rich and
powerful, and it was fit that I, his son, should have proper burial. These
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slaves we had got in war from the Mukumuks, who live down the Yukon.
On the morrow, Skolka, the shaman, would kill them, one by one, so that
their souls should go questing with mine through the Unknown. Among
other things, they would carry my canoe till we came to the big river, rapid
with bad water. And there being no room, and their work being done, they
would come no farther, but remain and howl forever in the dark and
endless forest.
"And as I looked on my fine warm clothes, and my blankets and weapons
of war, and as I thought of the seven slaves to be slain, I felt proud of my
burial and knew that I must be the envy of many men. And all the while
my father, the Otter, sat silent and black. And all that day and night the
people sang my death-song and beat the drums, till it seemed that I had
surely died a thousand times.
"But in the morning my father arose and made talk. He had been a fighting