come that which we may divide, and the Sunlanders be not yet dead.”
A bullet glanced from a rock before them, and singing shrilly, rose low
over their heads on its second flight. Tyee ducked and shivered, but Aab-
Waak grinned and sought vainly to follow it with his eyes.
“So swiftly they go, one may not see them,” he observed.
“But many be dead of us,” Tyee went on.
“And many be left,” was the reply. “And they hug close to the earth, for
they have become wise in the fashion of fighting. Further, they are
angered. Moreover, when we have killed the Sunlanders on the ship, there
will remain but four on the land. These may take long to kill, but in the
end it will happen.”
“How may we go down to the ship when we cannot go this way or that?”
Tyee questioned.
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“It is a bad place where lie Bill-Man and his brothers,” Aab-Waak
explained. “We may come upon them from every side, which is not good.
So they aim to get their backs against the cliff and wait until their brothers
of the ship come to give them aid.”
“Never shall they come from the ship, their brothers! I have said it.”
Tyee was gathering courage again, and when the Sunlanders verified the
prediction by retreating to the cliff, he was light-hearted as ever.
“There be only three of us!” complained one of the Hungry Folk as they
came together for council.
“Therefore, instead of two, shall you have four guns each,” was Tyee’s
rejoinder.
“We did good fighting.”
“Ay; and if it should happen that two of you be left, then will you have six
guns each. Therefore, fight well.”
“And if there be none of them left?” Aab-Waak whispered slyly.
“Then will we have the guns, you and I,” Tyee whispered back.
However, to propitiate the Hungry Folk, he made one of them leader of
the ship expedition. This party comprised fully two-thirds of the
tribesmen, and departed for the coast, a dozen miles away, laden with
skins and things to trade. The remaining men were disposed in a large
half-circle about the breastwork which Bill-Man and his Sunlanders had
begun to throw up. Tyee was quick to note the virtues of things, and at
once set his men to digging shallow trenches.
“The time will go before they are aware,” he explained to Aab- Waak;
“and their minds being busy, they will not think overmuch of the dead that
are, nor gather trouble to themselves. And in the dark of night they may
creep closer, so that when the Sunlanders look forth in the morning light
they will find us very near.”
In the midday heat the men ceased from their work and made a meal of
dried fish and seal oil which the women brought up. There was some
clamor for the food of the Sunlanders in the igloo of Neegah, but Tyee
refused to divide it until the return of the ship party. Speculations upon the
outcome became rife, but in the midst of it a dull boom drifted up over the
land from the sea. The keen-eyed ones made out a dense cloud of smoke,
which quickly disappeared, and which they averred was directly over the
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ship of the Sunlanders. Tyee was of the opinion that it was a big gun. Aab-
Waak did not know, but thought it might be a signal of some sort.
Anyway, he said, it was time something happened.
Five or six hours afterward a solitary man was descried coming across the
wide flat from the sea, and the women and children poured out upon him
in a body. It was Ounenk, naked, winded, and wounded. The blood still
trickled down his face from a gash on the forehead. His left arm,
frightfully mangled, hung helpless at his side. But most significant of all,
there was a wild gleam in his eyes which betokened the women knew not
what.
“Where be Peshack?” an old squaw queried sharply.
“And Olitlie?” “And Polak?” “And Mah-Kook?” the voices took up the
cry.
But he said nothing, brushing his way through the clamorous mass and
directing his staggering steps toward Tyee. The old squaw raised the wail,
and one by one the women joined her as they swung in behind. The men
crawled out of their trenches and ran back to gather about Tyee, and it was
noticed that the Sunlanders climbed upon their barricade to see.
Ounenk halted, swept the blood from his eyes, and looked about. He
strove to speak, but his dry lips were glued together. Likeeta fetched him
water, and he grunted and drank again.
“Was it a fight?” Tyee demanded finally,—”a good fight?”
“Ho! ho! ho!” So suddenly and so fiercely did Ounenk laugh that every
voice hushed. “Never was there such a fight! So I say, I, Ounenk, fighter
beforetime of beasts and men. And ere I forget, let me speak fat words and
wise. By fighting will the Sunlanders teach us Mandell Folk how to fight.
And if we fight long enough, we shall be great fighters, even as the
Sunlanders, or else we shall be—dead. Ho! ho! ho! It was a fight!”
“Where be thy brothers?” Tyee shook him till he shrieked from the pain of
his hurts.
Ounenk sobered. “My brothers? They are not.”
“And Pome-Lee?” cried one of the two Hungry Folk; “Pome-Lee the son
of my mother?”
“Pome-Lee is not,” Ounenk answered in a monotonous voice.
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“And the Sunlanders?” from Aab-Waak.
“The Sunlanders are not.”
“Then the ship of the Sunlanders, and the wealth and guns and things?”
Tyee demanded.
“Neither the ship of the Sunlanders, nor the wealth and guns and things,”
was the unvarying response. “All are not. Nothing is. I only am.”
“And thou art a fool.”
“It may be so,” Ounenk answered, unruffled. “I have seen that which
would well make me a fool.”
Tyee held his tongue, and all waited till it should please Ounenk to tell the
story in his own way.
“We took no guns, O Tyee,” he at last began; “no guns, my brothers —
only knives and hunting bows and spears. And in twos and threes, in our
kayaks, we came to the ship. They were glad to see us, the Sunlanders, and
we spread our skins and they brought out their articles of trade, and
everything was well. And Pome-Lee waited—waited till the sun was well
overhead and they sat at meat, when he gave the cry and we fell upon
them. Never was there such a fight, and never such fighters. Half did we
kill in the quickness of surprise, but the half that was left became as devils,
and they multiplied themselves, and everywhere they fought like devils.
Three put their backs against the mast of the ship, and we ringed them
with our dead before they died. And some got guns and shot with both
eyes wide open, and very quick and sure. And one got a big gun, from
which at one time he shot many small bullets. And so, behold!”
Ounenk pointed to his ear, neatly pierced by a buckshot.
“But I, Ounenk, drove my spear through his back from behind. And in
such fashion, one way and another, did we kill them all—all save the head
man. And him we were about, many of us, and he was alone, when he
made a great cry and broke through us, five or six dragging upon him, and
ran down inside the ship. And then, when the wealth of the ship was ours,
and only the head man down below whom we would kill presently, why
then there was a sound as of all the guns in the world— a mighty sound!
And like a bird I rose up in the air, and the living Mandell Folk, and the
dead Sunlanders, the little kayaks, the big ship, the guns, the wealth—
everything rose up in the air. So I say, I, Ounenk, who tell the tale, am the
only one left.”
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A great silence fell upon the assemblage. Tyee looked at Aab- Waak with
awe-struck eyes, but forbore to speak. Even the women were too stunned
to wail the dead.
Ounenk looked about him with pride. “I, only, am left,” he repeated.
But at that instant a rifle cracked from Bill-Man’s barricade, and there was
a sharp spat and thud on the chest of Ounenk. He swayed backward and
came forward again, a look of startled surprise on his face. He gasped, and
his lips writhed in a grim smile. There was a shrinking together of the
shoulders and a bending of the knees. He shook himself, as might a
drowsing man, and straightened up. But the shrinking and bending began
again, and he sank down slowly, quite slowly, to the ground.
It was a clean mile from the pit of the Sunlanders, and death had spanned