All dwellers on the Yukon bank for twice a thousand miles knew the large
log house, the old man and the tending slaves; and well did the Sisters
know the house, its unending revelry, its feasting and its fun. So there was
weeping at Holy Cross when El-Soo departed.
There was a great cleaning up in the large house when El-Soo arrived.
Klakee-Nah, himself masterful, protested at this masterful conduct of his
young daughter; but in the end, dreaming barbarically of magnificence, he
went forth and borrowed a thousand dollars from old Porportuk, than
whom there was no richer Indian on the Yukon. Also, Klakee-Nah ran up
a heavy bill at the trading post. El-Soo re-created the large house. She
invested it with new splendor, while Klakee-Nah maintained its ancient
traditions of hospitality and revelry.
All this was unusual for a Yukon Indian, but Klakee-Nah was an unusual
Indian. Not alone did he like to render inordinate hospitality, but, what of
being a chief and of acquiring much money, he was able to do it. In the
primitive trading days he had been a power over his people, and he had
dealt profitably with the white trading companies. Later on, with
Porportuk, he had made a gold-strike on the Koyokuk River. Klakee-Nah
was by training and nature an aristocrat. Porportuk was bourgeois, and
Porportuk bought him out of the gold-mine. Porportuk was content to plod
and accumulate. Klakee-Nah went back to his large house and proceeded
to spend. Porportuk was known as the richest Indian in Alaska. Klakee-
Nah was known as the whitest. Porportuk was a money-lender and a
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usurer. Klakee-Nah was an anachronism — a mediaeval ruin, a fighter and
a feaster, happy with wine and song.
El-Soo adapted herself to the large house and its ways as readily as she
had adapted herself to Holy Cross Mission and its ways. She did not try to
reform her father and direct his footsteps toward God. It is true, she
reproved him when he drank overmuch and profoundly, but that was for
the sake of his health and the direction of his footsteps on solid earth.
The latchstring to the large house was always out. What with the coming
and the going, it was never still. The rafters of the great living-room shook
with the roar of wassail and of song. At table sat men from all the world
and chiefs from distant tribes — Englishmen and Colonials, lean Yankee
traders and rotund officials of the great companies, cowboys from the
Western ranges, sailors from the sea, hunters and dog-mushers of a score
of nationalities.
El-Soo drew breath in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. She could speak
English as well as she could her native tongue, and she sang English songs
and ballads. The passing Indian ceremonials she knew, and the perishing
traditions. The tribal dress of the daughter of a chief she knew how to
wear upon occasion. But for the most part she dressed as white women
dress. Not for nothing was her needlework at the Mission and her innate
artistry. She carried her clothes like a white woman, and she made clothes
that could be so carried.
In her way she was as unusual as her father, and the position she occupied
was as unique as his. She was the one Indian woman who was the social
equal with the several white women at Tana-naw Station. She was the one
Indian woman to whom white men honorably made proposals of marriage.
And she was the one Indian woman whom no white man ever insulted.
For El-Soo was beautiful — not as white women are beautiful, not as
Indian women are beautiful. It was the flame of her, that did not depend
upon feature, that was her beauty. So far as mere line and feature went,
she was the classic Indian type. The black hair and the fine bronze were
hers, and the black eyes, brilliant and bold, keen as sword-light, proud;
and hers the delicate eagle nose with the thin, quivering nostrils, the high
cheek-bones that were not broad apart, and the thin lips that were not too
thin. But over all and through all poured the flame of her — the
unanalyzable something that was fire and that was the soul of her, that lay
mellow-warm or blazed in her eyes, that sprayed the cheeks of her, that
distended the nostrils, that curled the lip, or, when the lip was in repose,
that was still there in the lip, the lip palpitant with its presence.
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And El-Soo had wit — rarely sharp to hurt, yet quick to search out
forgivable weakness. The laughter of her mind played like lambent flame
over all about her, and from all about her arose answering laughter. Yet
she was never the centre of things. This she would not permit. The large
house, and all of which it was significant, was her father’s; and through it,
to the last, moved his heroic figure — host, master of the revels, and giver
of the law. It is true, as the strength oozed from him, that she caught up
responsibilities from his failing hands. But in appearance he still ruled,
dozing oft-times at the board, a bacchanalian ruin, yet in all seeming the
ruler of the feast.
And through the large house moved the figure of Porportuk, ominous,
with shaking head, coldly disapproving, paying for it all. Not that he really
paid, for he compounded interest in weird ways, and year by year
absorbed the properties of Klakee-Nah. Porportuk once took it upon
himself to chide El-Soo upon the wasteful way of life in the large house —
it was when he had about absorbed the last of Klakee-Nah’s wealth — but
he never ventured so to chide again. El-Soo, like her father, was an
aristocrat, as disdainful of money as he, and with an equal sense of honor
as finely strung.
Porportuk continued grudgingly to advance money, and ever the money
flowed in golden foam away. Upon one thing El-Soo was resolved — her
father should die as he had lived. There should be for him no passing from
high to low, no diminution of the revels, no lessening of the lavish
hospitality. When there was famine, as of old, the Indians came groaning
to the large house and went away content. When there was famine and no
money, money was borrowed from Porportuk, and the Indians still went
away content. El-Soo might well have repeated, after the aristocrats of
another time and place, that after her came the deluge. In her case the
deluge was old Porportuk. With every advance of money, he looked upon
her with a more possessive eye, and felt bourgeoning within him ancient
fires.
But El-Soo had no eyes for him. Nor had she eyes for the white men who
wanted to marry her at the Mission with ring and priest and book. For at
Tana-naw Station was a young man, Akoon, of her own blood, and tribe,
and village. He was strong and beautiful to her eyes, a great hunter, and, in
that he had wandered far and much, very poor; he had been to all the
unknown wastes and places; he had journeyed to Sitka and to the United
States; he had crossed the continent to Hudson Bay and back again, and as
seal-hunter on a ship he had sailed to Siberia and for Japan.
When he returned from the gold-strike in Klondike he came, as was his
wont, to the large house to make report to old Klakee-Nah of all the world
that he had seen; and there he first saw El-Soo, three years back from the
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Mission. Thereat, Akoon wandered no more. He refused a wage of twenty
dollars a day as pilot on the big steamboats. He hunted some and fished
some, but never far from Tana-naw Station, and he was at the large house
often and long. And El-Soo measured him against many men and found
him good. He sang songs to her, and was ardent and glowed until all Tananaw
Station knew he loved her. And Porportuk but grinned and advanced
more money for the upkeep of the large house.
Then came the death table of Klakee-Nah. He sat at feast, with death in his
throat, that he could not drown with wine. And laughter and joke and song
went around, and Akoon told a story that made the rafters echo. There
were no tears or sighs at that table. It was no more than fit that Klakee-
Nah should die as he had lived, and none knew this better than El-Soo,
with her artist sympathy. The old roystering crowd was there, and, as of
old, three frost-bitten sailors were there, fresh from the long traverse from
the Arctic, survivors of a ship’s company of seventy-four. At Klakee-Nah’s
back were four old men, all that were left him of the slaves of his youth.