trouble and terror and death, and which would go on unceasing, it seemed to him, to the
end of time. A man rapped sharply on a table, and the conversation droned away into
silence. Imber looked at the man. He seemed one in authority, yet Imber divined the
square-browed man who sat by a desk farther back to be the one chief over them all and
over the man who had rapped. Another man by the same table uprose and began to read
aloud from many fine sheets of paper. At the top of each sheet he cleared his throat, at the
bottom moistened his fingers. Imber did not understand his speech, but the others did,
and he knew that it made them angry. Sometimes it made them very angry, and once a
man cursed him, in single syllables, stinging and tense, till a man at the table rapped him
to silence.
For an interminable period the man read. His monotonous, sing-song utterance lured
Imber to dreaming, and he was dreaming deeply when the man ceased. A voice spoke to
him in his own Whitefish tongue, and he roused up, without surprise, to look upon the
face of his sister’s son, a young man who had wandered away years agone to make his
dwelling with the whites.
“Thou dost not remember me,” he said by way of greeting.
“Nay,” Imber answered. “Thou art Howkan who went away. Thy mother be dead.”
“She was an old woman,” said Howkan.
But Imber did not hear, and Howkan, with hand upon his shoulder, roused him again.
“I shall speak to thee what the man has spoken, which is the tale of the troubles thou hast
done and which thou hast told, O fool, to the Captain Alexander. And thou shalt
understand and say if it be true talk or talk not true. It is so commanded.”
Howkan had fallen among the mission folk and been taught by them to read and write. In
his hands he held the many fine sheets from which the man had read aloud, and which
had been taken down by a clerk when Imber first made confession, through the mouth of
Jimmy, to Captain Alexander. Howkan began to read. Imber listened for a space, when a
wonderment rose up in his face and he broke in abruptly.
“That be my talk, Howkan. Yet from thy lips it comes when thy ears have not heard.”
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Howkan smirked with self-appreciation. His hair was parted in the middle. “Nay, from
the paper it comes, O Imber. Never have my ears heard. From the paper it comes, through
my eyes, into my head, and out of my mouth to thee. Thus it comes.”
“Thus it comes? It be there in the paper?” Imber’s voice sank in whisperful awe as he
crackled the sheets ‘twixt thumb and finger and stared at the charactery scrawled thereon.
“It be a great medicine, Howkan, and thou art a worker of wonders.”
“It be nothing, it be nothing,” the young man responded carelessly and pridefully. He
read at hazard from the document: “In that year, before the break of the ice, came an old
man, and a boy who was lame of one foot. These also did I kill, and the old man made
much noise — ”
“It be true,” Imber interrupted breathlessly. “He made much noise and would not die for a
long time. But how dost thou know, Howkan? The chief man of the white men told thee,
mayhap? No one beheld me, and him alone have I told.” Howkan shook his head with
impatience. “Have I not told thee it be there in the paper, O fool?”
Imber stared hard at the ink-scrawled surface. “As the hunter looks upon the snow and
says, Here but yesterday there passed a rabbit; and here by the willow scrub it stood and
listened, and heard, and was afraid; and here it turned upon its trail; and here it went with
great swiftness, leaping wide; and here, with greater swiftness and wider leapings, came a
lynx; and here, where the claws cut deep into the snow, the lynx made a very great leap;
and here it struck, with the rabbit under and rolling belly up; and here leads off the trail of
the lynx alone, and there is no more rabbit, — as the hunter looks upon the markings of
the snow and says thus and so and here, dost thou, too, look upon the paper and say thus
and so and here be the things old Imber hath done?”
“Even so,” said Howkan. “And now do thou listen, and keep thy woman’s tongue between
thy teeth till thou art called upon for speech.”
Thereafter, and for a long time, Howkan read to him the confession, and Imber remained
musing and silent. At the end, he said:
“It be my talk, and true talk, but I am grown old, Howkan, and forgotten things come
back to me which were well for the head man there to know. First, there was the man
who came over the Ice Mountains, with cunning traps made of iron, who sought the
beaver of the Whitefish. Him I slew. And there were three men seeking gold on the
Whitefish long ago. Them also I slew, and left them to the wolverines. And at the Five
Fingers there was a man with a raft and much meat.”
At the moments when Imber paused to remember, Howkan translated and a clerk reduced
to writing. The courtroom listened stolidly to each unadorned little tragedy, till Imber told
of a red-haired man whose eyes were crossed and whom he had killed with a remarkably
long shot.
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“Hell,” said a man in the forefront of the onlookers. He said it soulfully and sorrowfully.
He was red-haired. “Hell,” he repeated. “That was my brother Bill.” And at regular
intervals throughout the session, his solemn “Hell” was heard in the courtroom; nor did
his comrades check him, nor did the man at the table rap him to order.
Imber’s head drooped once more, and his eyes went dull, as though a film rose up and
covered them from the world. And he dreamed as only age can dream upon the colossal
futility of youth.
Later, Howkan roused him again, saying: “Stand up, O Imber. It be commanded that thou
tellest why you did these troubles, and slew these people, and at the end journeyed here
seeking the Law.”
Imber rose feebly to his feet and swayed back and forth. He began to speak in a low and
faintly rumbling voice, but Howkan interrupted him.
“This old man, he is damn crazy,” he said in English to the square-browed man. “His talk
is foolish and like that of a child.”
“We will hear his talk which is like that of a child,” said the square-browed man. “And
we will hear it, word for word, as he speaks it. Do you understand?”
Howkan understood, and Imber’s eyes flashed, for he had witnessed the play between his
sister’s son and the man in authority. And then began the story, the epic of a bronze
patriot which might well itself be wrought into bronze for the generations unborn. The
crowd fell strangely silent, and the square-browed judge leaned head on hand and
pondered his soul and the soul of his race. Only was heard the deep tones of Imber,
rhythmically alternating with the shrill voice of the interpreter, and now and again, like
the bell of the Lord, the wondering and meditative “Hell” of the red-haired man.
“I am Imber of the Whitefish people.” So ran the interpretation of Howkan, whose
inherent barbarism gripped hold of him, and who lost his mission culture and veneered
civilization as he caught the savage ring and rhythm of old Imber’s tale. “My father was
Otsbaok, a strong man. The land was warm with sunshine and gladness when I was a
boy. The people did not hunger after strange things, nor hearken to new voices, and the
ways of their fathers were their ways. The women found favor in the eyes of the young
men, and the young men looked upon them with content. Babes hung at the breasts of the
women, and they were heavy-hipped with increase of the tribe. Men were men in those
days. In peace and plenty, and in war and famine, they were men.
“At that time there was more fish in the water than now, and more meat in the forest. Our
dogs were wolves, warm with thick hides and hard to the frost and storm. And as with
our dogs so with us, for we were likewise hard to the frost and storm. And when the
Pellys came into our land we slew them and were slain. For we were men, we Whitefish,
and our fathers and our fathers’ fathers had fought against the Pellys and determined the
bounds of the land.