He did not complain. It was the way of life, and it was just. He had been born close to the
earth, close to the earth had he lived, and the law thereof was not new to him. It was the
law of all flesh. Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She had no concern for that concrete
thing called the individual. Her interest lay in the species, the race. This was the deepest
abstraction old Koskoosh’s barbaric mind was capable of, but he grasped it firmly. He
saw it exemplified in all life. The rise of the sap, the bursting greenness of the willow
bud, the fall of the yellow leaf — in this alone was told the whole history. But one task did
Nature set the individual. Did he not perform it, he died. Did he perform it, it was all the
same, he died. Nature did not care; there were plenty who were obedient, and it was only
the obedience in this matter, not the obedient, which lived and lived always. The tribe of
Koskoosh was very old. The old men he had known when a boy, had known old men
before them. Therefore it was true that the tribe lived, that it stood for the obedience of all
its members, way down into the forgotten past, whose very resting-places were
unremembered. They did not count; they were episodes. They had passed away like
clouds from a summer sky. He also was an episode, and would pass away. Nature did not
care. To life she set one task, gave one law. To perpetuate was the task of life, its law was
death. A maiden was a good creature to look upon, full-breasted and strong, with spring
to her step and light in her eyes. But her task was yet before her. The light in her eyes
brightened, her step quickened, she was now bold with the young men, now timid, and
she gave them of her own unrest. And ever she grew fairer and yet fairer to look upon, till
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21
some hunter, able no longer to withhold himself, took her to his lodge to cook and toil for
him and to become the mother of his children. And with the coming of her offspring her
looks left her. Her limbs dragged and shuffled, her eyes dimmed and bleared, and only
the little children found joy against the withered cheek of the old squaw by the fire. Her
task was done. But a little while, on the first pinch of famine or the first long trail, and
she would be left, even as he had been left, in the snow, with a little pile of wood. Such
was the law. He placed a stick carefully upon the fire and resumed his meditations. It was
the same everywhere, with all things. The mosquitoes vanished with the first frost. The
little tree-squirrel crawled away to die. When age settled upon the rabbit it became slow
and heavy, and could no longer outfoot its enemies. Even the big bald-face grew clumsy
and blind and quarrelsome, in the end to be dragged down by a handful of yelping
huskies. He remembered how he had abandoned his own father on an upper reach of the
Klondike one winter, the winter before the missionary came with his talk-books and his
box of medicines. Many a time had Koskoosh smacked his lips over the recollection of
that box, though now his mouth refused to moisten. The “painkiller” had been especially
good. But the missionary was a bother after all, for he brought no meat into the camp, and
he ate heartily, and the hunters grumbled. But he chilled his lungs on the divide by the
Mayo, and the dogs afterwards nosed the stones away and fought over his bones.
Koskoosh placed another stick on the fire and harked back deeper into the past. There
was the time of the Great Famine, when the old men crouched empty-bellied to the fire,
and let fall from their lips dim traditions of the ancient day when the Yukon ran wide
open for three winters, and then lay frozen for three summers. He had lost his mother in
that famine. In the summer the salmon run had failed, and the tribe looked forward to the
winter and the coming of the caribou. Then the winter came, but with it there were no
caribou. Never had the like been known, not even in the lives of the old men. But the
caribou did not come, and it was the seventh year, and the rabbits had not replenished,
and the dogs were naught but bundles of bones. And through the long darkness the
children wailed and died, and the women, and the old men; and not one in ten of the tribe
lived to meet the sun when it came back in the spring. That was a famine!
But he had seen times of plenty, too, when the meat spoiled on their hands, and the dogs
were fat and worthless with overeating — times when they let the game go unkilled, and
the women were fertile, and the lodges were cluttered with sprawling men-children and
women-children. Then it was the men became high-stomached, and revived ancient
quarrels, and crossed the divides to the south to kill the Pellys, and to the west that they
might sit by the dead fires of the Tananas. He remembered, when a boy, during a time of
plenty, when he saw a moose pulled down by the wolves. Zing-ha lay with him in the
snow and watched — Zing-ha, who later became the craftiest of hunters, and who, in the
end, fell through an air-hole on the Yukon. They found him, a month afterward, just as he
had crawled halfway out and frozen stiff to the ice.
But the moose. Zing-ha and he had gone out that day to play at hunting after the manner
of their fathers. On the bed of the creek they struck the fresh track of a moose, and with it
the tracks of many wolves. “An old one,” Zing-ha, who was quicker at reading the sign,
said — “an old one who cannot keep up with the herd. The wolves have cut him out from
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22
his brothers, and they will never leave him.” And it was so. It was their way. By day and
by night, never resting, snarling on his heels, snapping at his nose, they would stay by
him to the end. How Zing-ha and he felt the blood-lust quicken! The finish would be a
sight to see!
Eager-footed, they took the trail, and even he, Koskoosh, slow of sight and an unversed
tracker, could have followed it blind, it was so wide. Hot were they on the heels of the
chase, reading the grim tragedy, fresh-written, at every step. Now they came to where the
moose had made a stand. Thrice the length of a grown man’s body, in every direction, had
the snow been stamped about and uptossed. In the midst were the deep impressions of the
splay-hoofed game, and all about, everywhere, were the lighter footmarks of the wolves.
Some, while their brothers harried the kill, had lain to one side and rested. The fullstretched
impress of their bodies in the snow was as perfect as though made the moment
before. One wolf had been caught in a wild lunge of the maddened victim and trampled
to death. A few bones, well picked, bore witness.
Again, they ceased the uplift of their snowshoes at a second stand. Here the great animal
had fought desperately. Twice had he been dragged down, as the snow attested, and twice
had he shaken his assailants clear and gained footing once more. He had done his task
long since, but none the less was life dear to him. Zing-ha said it was a strange thing, a
moose once down to get free again; but this one certainly had. The shaman would see
signs and wonders in this when they told him.
And yet again, they come to where the moose had made to mount the bank and gain the
timber. But his foes had laid on from behind, till he reared and fell back upon them,
crushing two deep into the snow. It was plain the kill was at hand, for their brothers had
left them untouched. Two more stands were hurried past, brief in time-length and very
close together. The trail was red now, and the clean stride of the great beast had grown
short and slovenly. Then they heard the first sounds of the battle — not the full-throated
chorus of the chase, but the short, snappy bark which spoke of close quarters and teeth to
flesh. Crawling up the wind, Zing-ha bellied it through the snow, and with him crept he,
Koskoosh, who was to be chief of the tribesmen in the years to come. Together they
shoved aside the under branches of a young spruce and peered forth. It was the end they