He did not circle the table. He came across suddenly, over the top of the
table. El-Soo was taken off her guard. She sprang back with a sharp cry of
alarm, and Porportuk would have caught her had it not been for Tommy.
Tommy’s leg went out. Porportuk tripped and pitched forward on the
ground. El-Soo got her start.
“Then catch me,” she laughed over her shoulder, as she fled away.
She ran lightly and easily, but Porportuk ran swiftly and savagely. He
outran her. In his youth he had been swiftest of all the young men. But El-
Soo dodged in a willowy, elusive way. Being in native dress, her feet were
not cluttered with skirts, and her pliant body curved a flight that defied the
gripping fingers of Porportuk.
With laughter and tumult, the great crowd scattered out to see the chase. It
led through the Indian encampment; and ever dodging, circling, and
reversing, El-Soo and Porportuk appeared and disappeared among the
tents. El-Soo seemed to balance herself against the air with her arms, now
one side, now on the other, and sometimes her body, too, leaned out upon
the air far from the perpendicular as she achieved her sharpest curves. And
Porportuk, always a leap behind, or a leap this side or that, like a lean
hound strained after her.
They crossed the open ground beyond the encampment and disappeared in
the forest. Tana-naw Station waited their reappearance, and long and
vainly it waited.
In the meantime Akoon ate and slept, and lingered much at the steamboat
landing, deaf to the rising resentment of Tana-naw Station in that he did
nothing. Twenty-four hours later Porportuk returned. He was tired and
savage. He spoke to no one but Akoon, and with him tried to pick a
quarrel. But Akoon shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Porportuk
did not waste time. He outfitted half a dozen of the young men, selecting
the best trackers and travellers, and at their head plunged into the forest.
Next day the steamer Seattle, bound up river, pulled in to the shore and
wooded up. When the lines were cast off and she churned out from the
bank, Akoon was on board in the pilot-house. Not many hours afterward,
when it was his turn at the wheel, he saw a small birch-bark canoe put off
from the shore. There was only one person in it. He studied it carefully,
put the wheel over, and slowed down.
The captain entered the pilot-house. “What’s the matter?” he demanded.
“The water’s good.”
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Akoon grunted. He saw a larger canoe leaving the bank, and in it were a
number of persons. As the Seattle lost headway, he put the wheel over
some more.
The captain fumed. “It’s only a squaw,” he protested.
Akoon did not grunt. He was all eyes for the squaw and the pursuing
canoe. In the latter six paddles were flashing, while the squaw paddled
slowly.
“You’ll be aground,” the captain protested, seizing the wheel.
But Akoon countered his strength on the wheel and looked him in the
eyes. The captain slowly released the spokes. “Queer beggar,” he sniffed
to himself.
Akoon held the Seattle on the edge of the shoal water and waited till he
saw the squaw’s fingers clutch the forward rail. Then he signalled for full
speed ahead and ground the wheel over. The large canoe was very near,
but the gap between it and the steamer was widening.
The squaw laughed and leaned over the rail. “Then catch me, Porportuk!”
she cried.
Akoon left the steamer at Fort Yukon. He outfitted a small poling-boat and
went up the Porcupine River. And with him went El-Soo. It was a weary
journey, and the way led across the backbone of the world; but Akoon had
travelled it before. When they came to the head-waters of the Porcupine,
they left the boat and went on foot across the Rocky Mountains.
Akoon greatly liked to walk behind El-Soo and watch the movement of
her. There was a music in it that he loved. And especially he loved the
well-rounded calves in their sheaths of soft-tanned leather, the slim ankles,
and the small moccasined feet that were tireless through the longest days.
“You are light as air,” he said, looking up at her. “It is no labor for you to
walk. You almost float, so lightly do your feet rise and fall. You are like a
deer, El-Soo; you are like a deer, and your eyes are like deer’s eyes,
sometimes when you look at me, or when you hear a quick sound and
wonder if it be danger that stirs. Your eyes are like a deer’s eyes now as
you look at me.”
And El-Soo, luminous and melting, bent and kissed Akoon.
“When we reach the Mackenzie, we will not delay,” Akoon said later. “We
will go south before the winter catches us. We will go to the sunlands
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where there is no snow. But we will return. I have seen much of the world,
and there is no land like Alaska, no sun like our sun, and the snow is good
after the long summer.”
“And you will learn to read,” said El-Soo.
And Akoon said, “I will surely learn to read.”
But there was delay when they reached the Mackenzie. They fell in with a
band of Mackenzie Indians and, hunting, Akoon was shot by accident. The
rifle was in the hands of a youth. The bullet broke Akoon’s right arm and,
ranging farther, broke two of his ribs. Akoon knew rough surgery, while
El-Soo had learned some refinements at Holy Cross. The bones were
finally set, and Akoon lay by the fire for them to knit. Also, he lay by the
fire so that the smoke would keep the mosquitoes away.
Then it was that Porportuk, with his six young men, arrived. Akoon
groaned in his helplessness and made appeal to the Mackenzies. But
Porportuk made demand, and the Mackenzies were perplexed. Porportuk
was for seizing upon El-Soo, but this they would not permit. Judgment
must be given, and, as it was an affair of man and woman, the council of
the old men was called — this that warm judgment might not be given by
the young men, who were warm of heart.
The old men sat in a circle about the smudge-fire. Their faces were lean
and wrinkled, and they gasped and panted for air. The smoke was not
good for them. Occasionally they struck with withered hands at the
mosquitoes that braved the smoke. After such exertion they coughed
hollowly and painfully. Some spat blood, and one of them sat a bit apart
with head bowed forward, and bled slowly and continuously at the mouth;
the coughing sickness had gripped them. They were as dead men; their
time was short. It was a judgment of the dead.
“And I paid for her a heavy price,” Porportuk concluded his complaint.
“Such a price you have never seen. Sell all that is yours — sell your spears
and arrows and rifles, sell your skins and furs, sell your tents and boats
and dogs, sell everything, and you will not have maybe a thousand dollars.
Yet did I pay for the woman, El-Soo, twenty-six times the price of all your
spears and arrows and rifles, your skins and furs, your tents and boats and
dogs. It was a heavy price.”
The old men nodded gravely, though their weazened eye-slits widened
with wonder that any woman should be worth such a price. The one that
bled at the mouth wiped his lips. “Is it true talk?” he asked each of
Porportuk’s six young men. And each answered that it was true.
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“Is it true talk?” he asked El-Soo, and she answered, “It is true.”
“But Porportuk has not told that he is an old man,” Akoon said, “and that
he has daughters older than El-Soo.”
“It is true, Porportuk is an old man,” said El-Soo.
“It is for Porportuk to measure the strength of his age,” said he who bled at
the mouth. “We be old men. Behold! Age is never so old as youth would
measure it.”
And the circle of old men champed their gums, and nodded approvingly,
and coughed.
“I told him that I would never be his wife,” said El-Soo.
“Yet you took from him twenty-six times all that we possess?” asked a
one-eyed old man.
El-Soo was silent.
“It is true?” And his one eye burned and bored into her like a fiery gimlet.
“It is true,” she said.
“But I will run away again,” she broke out passionately, a moment later.
“Always will I run away.”
“That is for Porportuk to consider,” said another of the old men. “It is for
us to consider the judgment.”
“What price did you pay for her?” was demanded of Akoon.
“No price did I pay for her,” he answered. “She was above price. I did not