her overmastering consciousness of kind.
“Trade? you trade?” Mrs. Van Wyck questioned, slipping, after the
fashion of the superior peoples, into pigeon tongue.
She touched Li Wan’s ragged skins to indicate her choice, and poured
several hundreds of gold into the blower. She stirred the dust about and
trickled its yellow lustre temptingly through her fingers. But Li Wan saw
only the fingers, milk-white and shapely, tapering daintily to the rosy,
jewel-like nails. She placed her own hand alongside, all work-worn and
calloused, and wept.
Mrs. Van Wyck misunderstood. “Gold,” she encouraged. “Good gold!
You trade? You changee for changee?” And she laid her hand again on Li
Wan’s skin garments.
“How much ? You sell ? How much ?” she persisted, running her hand
against the way of the hair so that she might make sure of the sinewthread
seam.
But Li Wan was deaf as well, and the woman’s speech was without
significance. Dismay at her failure sat upon her. How could she identify
herself with these women? For she knew they were of the one breed,
blood-sisters among men and the women of men. Her eyes roved wildly
about the interior, taking in the soft draperies hanging around, the
feminine garments, the oval mirror, and the dainty toilet accessories
beneath. And the things haunted her, for she had seen like things before;
and as she looked at them her lips involuntarily formed sounds which her
throat trembled to utter. Then a thought flashed upon her, and she steadied
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herself. She must be calm. She must control herself, for there must be no
misunderstanding this time, or else,—and she shook with a storm of
suppressed tears and steadied herself again.
She put her hand on the table. “Table,” she clearly and distinctly
enunciated. “Table,” she repeated.
She looked at Mrs. Van Wyck, who nodded approbation. Li Wan exulted,
but brought her will to bear and held herself steady. “Stove,” she went on.
“Stove.”
And at every nod of Mrs. Van Wyck, Li Wan’s excitement mounted. Now
stumbling and halting, and again in feverish haste, as the recrudescence of
forgotten words was fast or slow, she moved about the cabin, naming
article after article. And when she paused finally, it was in triumph, with
body erect and head thrown back, expectant, waiting.
“Cat,” Mrs. Van Wyck, laughing, spelled out in kindergarten fashion. “I—
see—the—cat—catch—the—rat. ”
Li Wan nodded her head seriously. They were beginning to understand her
at last, these women. The blood flushed darkly under her bronze at the
thought, and she smiled and nodded her head still more vigorously.
Mrs. Van Wyck turned to her companion. “Received a smattering of
mission education somewhere, I fancy, and has come to show it off.”
“Of course,” Miss Giddings tittered. “Little fool! We shall lose our sleep
with her vanity.”
“All the same I want that jacket. If it is old, the workmanship is good—a
most excellent specimen.” She returned to her visitor. “Changee for
changee? You! Changee for changee? How much? Eh? How much, you?”
“Perhaps she’d prefer a dress or something,” Miss Giddings suggested.
Mrs. Van Wyck went up to Li Wan and made signs that she would
exchange her wrapper for the jacket. And to further the transaction, she
took Li Wan’s hand and placed it amid the lace and ribbons of the flowing
bosom, and rubbed the fingers back and forth so they might feel the
texture. But the jewelled butterfly which loosely held the fold in place was
insecurely fastened, and the front of the gown slipped to the side exposing
a firm white breast, which had never known the lip-clasp of a child.
Mrs. Van Wyck coolly repaired the mischief; but Li Wan uttered a loud
cry, and ripped and tore at her skin-shirt till her own breast showed firm
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and white as Evelyn Van Wyck’s. Murmuring inarticulately and making
swift signs, she strove to establish the kinship.
“A half-breed,” Mrs. Van Wyck commented. “I thought so from her hair.”
Miss Giddings made a fastidious gesture. “Proud of her father’s white skin.
It’s beastly! Do give her something, Evelyn, and make her go.”
But the other woman sighed. “Poor creature, I wish I could do something
for her.”
A heavy foot crunched the gravel without. Then the cabin door swung
wide, and Canim stalked in. Miss Giddings saw a vision of sudden death,
and screamed; but Mrs. Van Wyck faced him composedly.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“How do?” Canim answered suavely and directly, pointing at the same
time to Li Wan. “Um my wife.”
He reached out for her, but she waved him back.
“Speak, Canim! Tell them that I am—”
“Daughter of Pow-Wah-Kaan? Nay, of what is it to them that they should
care? Better should I tell them thou art an ill wife, given to creeping from
thy husband’s bed when sleep is heavy in his eyes.”
Again he reached out for her, but she fled away from him to Mrs. Van
Wyck, at whose feet she made frenzied appeal, and whose knees she tried
to clasp. But the lady stepped back and gave permission with her eyes to
Canim. He gripped Li Wan under the shoulders and raised her to her feet.
She fought with him, in a madness of despair, till his chest was heaving
with the exertion, and they had reeled about over half the room.
“Let me go, Canim,” she sobbed.
But he twisted her wrist till she ceased to struggle. “The memories of the
little moose-bird are overstrong and make trouble,” he began.
“I know! I know!” she broke in. “I see the man in the snow, and as never
before I see him crawl on hand and knee. And I, who am a little child, am
carried on his back. And this is before Pow-Wah- Kaan and the time I
came to live in a little corner of the earth.”
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“You know,” he answered, forcing her toward the door; “but you will go
with me down the Yukon and forget.”
“Never shall I forget! So long as my skin is white shall I remember!” She
clutched frantically at the door-post and looked a last appeal to Mrs.
Evelyn Van Wyck.
“Then will I teach thee to forget, I, Canim, the Canoe!”
As he spoke he pulled her fingers clear and passed out with her upon the
trail.
THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN
(First Published in Brandur Magazine Vol. 1, October 4, 1902)
At the Barracks a man was being tried for his life. He was an old man, a native from the
Whitefish River, which empties into the Yukon below Lake Le Barge. All Dawson was
wrought up over the affair, and likewise the Yukon-dwellers for a thousand miles up and
down. It has been the custom of the land-robbing and sea-robbing Anglo-Saxon to give
the law to conquered peoples, and ofttimes this law is harsh. But in the case of Imber the
law for once seemed inadequate and weak. In the mathematical nature of things, equity
did not reside in the punishment to be accorded him. The punishment was a foregone
conclusion, there could be no doubt of that; and though it was capital, Imber had but one
life, while the tale against him was one of scores.
In fact, the blood of so many was upon his hands that the killings attributed to him did
not permit of precise enumeration. Smoking a pipe by the trailside or lounging around the
stove, men made rough estimates of the numbers that had perished at his hand. They had
been whites, all of them, these poor murdered people, and they had been slain singly, in
pairs, and in parties. And so purposeless and wanton had been these killings, that they
had long been a mystery to the mounted police, even in the time of the captains, and later,
when the creeks realized, and a governor came from the Dominion to make the land pay
for its prosperity. But more mysterious still was the coming of Imber to Dawson to give
himself up. It was in the late spring, when the Yukon was growling and writhing under its
ice, that the old Indian climbed painfully up the bank from the river trail and stood
blinking on the main street. Men who had witnessed his advent, noted that he was weak
and tottery, and that he staggered over to a heap of cabin-logs and sat down. He sat there
a full day, staring straight before him at the unceasing tide of white men that flooded past.
Many a head jerked curiously to the side to meet his stare, and more than one remark was
dropped anent the old Siwash with so strange a look upon his face. No end of men
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remembered afterward that they had been struck by his extraordinary figure, and forever
afterward prided themselves upon their swift discernment of the unusual.