shadows and streaks of light. A wounded man lifted his head and crawled
painfully out of the swale,Michael following him with his rifle but
forbearing to shoot. A whistle ran along the invisible line from left to
right, and a flight of arrows arched through the air.
“Get ready,” Van Brunt commanded, a new metallic note in his voice.
“Now!”
They broke cover simultaneously. The forest heaved into sudden life. A
great yell went up, and the rifles barked back sharp defiance.. Tribesmen
knew their deaths in mid-leap, and as they fell, their brothers surged over
them in a roaring, irresistible wave. In the forefront of the rush, hair flying
and arms swinging free, flashing past the tree-trunks, and leaping the
obstructing logs, came Thom. Fairfax sighted on her and almost pulled
trigger ere he knew her.
“The woman! Don’t shoot!” he cried. “See! She is unarmed!”
The Crees never heard, nor Michael and his brother voyageur, nor Van
Brunt, who was keeping one shell continuously in the air. But Thom bore
straight on, unharmed, at the heels of a skin-clad hunter who had veered in
before her from the side. Fairfax emptied his magazine into the men to
right and left of her, and swung his rifle to meet the big hunter. But the
man, seeming to recognize him, swerved suddenly aside and plunged his
spear into the body of Michael. On the moment Thom had one arm passed
around her husband’s neck, and twisting half about, with voice and gesture
CHILDREN OF THE FROST
18
was splitting the mass of charging warriors. A score of men hurled past on
either side, and Fairfax, for a brief instant’s space, stood looking upon her
and her bronze beauty, thrilling, exulting, stirred to unknown deeps,
visioning strange things, dreaming, immortally dreaming. Snatches and
scraps of old-world philosophies and new-world ethics floated through his
mind, and things wonderfully concrete and wofully incongruous—hunting
scenes, stretches of sombre forest, vastnesses of silent snow, the glittering
of ballroom lights, great galleries and lecture halls, a fleeting shimmer of
glistening testtubes, long rows of book-lined shelves, the throb of
machinery and the roar of traffic, a fragment of forgotten song, faces of
dear women and old chums, a lonely watercourse amid upstanding peaks,
a shattered boat on a pebbly strand, quiet moonlit fields, fat vales, the
smell of hay….
A hunter, struck between the eyes with a rifle-ball, pitched forward
lifeless, and with the momentum of his charge slid along the ground.
Fairfax came back to himself. His comrades, those that lived, had been
swept far back among the trees beyond. He could hear the fierce “Hia!
Hia!” of the hunters as they closed in and cut and thrust with their
weapons of bone and ivory. The cries of the stricken men smote him like
blows. He knew the fight was over, the cause was lost, but all his race
traditions and race loyalty impelled him into the welter that he might die at
least with his kind.
“My man! My man!” Thom cried. “Thou art safe!”
He tried to struggle on, but her dead weight clogged his steps
“There is no need! They are dead, and life be good!”
She held him close around the neck and twined her limbs about his till he
tripped and stumbled, reeled violently to recover footing, tripped again,
and fell backward to the ground. His head struck a jutting root, and he was
half-stunned and could struggle but feebly. In the fall she had heard the
feathered swish of an arrow darting past, and she covered his body with
hers, as with a shield, her arms holding him tightly, her ace and lips
pressed upon his neck.
Then it was that Keen rose up from a tangled thicket a score of feet away.
He looked about him with care. The fight had swept on and the cry of the
last man was dying away. There was no one to see. He fitted an arrow to
the string and glanced at the man and woman. Between her breast and arm
the flesh of the man’s side showed white. Keen bent the bow and drew
back the arrow to its head. Twice he did so, calmly and for certainty, and
then drove the bone-barbed missile straight home to the white flesh,
gleaming yet more white in the dark-armed, dark-breasted embrace.
CHILDREN OF THE FROST
19
THE LAW OF LIFE
(First published in McClure’s Magazine Vol. 16, March, 1901)
Summary
Old Koskoosh listened greedily. Though his sight had long since faded, his hearing was
still acute, and the slightest sound penetrated to the glimmering intelligence which yet
abode behind the withered forehead, but which no longer gazed forth upon the things of
the world. Ah! that was Sit-cum-to-ha, shrilly anathematizing the dogs as she cuffed and
beat them into the harnesses. Sit-cum-to-ha was his daughter’s daughter, but she was too
busy to waste a thought upon her broken grandfather, sitting alone there in the snow,
forlorn and helpless. Camp must be broken. The long trail waited while the short day
refused to linger. Life called her, and the duties of life, not death. And he was very close
to death now.
The thought made the old man panicky for the moment, and he stretched forth a palsied
hand which wandered tremblingly over the small heap of dry wood beside him.
Reassured that it was indeed there, his hand returned to the shelter of his mangy furs, and
he again fell to listening. The sulky crackling of half-frozen hides told him that the chief’s
moose-skin lodge had been struck, and even then was being rammed and jammed into
portable compass. The chief was his son, stalwart and strong, head man of the tribesmen,
and a mighty hunter. As the women toiled with the camp luggage, his voice rose, chiding
them for their slowness. Old Koskoosh strained his ears. It was the last time he would
hear that voice. There went Geehow’s lodge! And Tusken’s! Seven, eight, nine; only the
shaman’s could be still standing. There! They were at work upon it now. He could hear
the shaman grunt as he piled it on the sled. A child whimpered, and a woman soothed it
with soft, crooning gutturals. Little Koo-tee, the old man thought, a fretful child, and not
overstrong. It would die soon, perhaps, and they would burn a hole through the frozen
tundra and pile rocks above to keep the wolverines away. Well, what did it matter? A few
years at best, and as many an empty belly as a full one. And in the end, Death waited,
ever-hungry and hungriest of them all.
What was that? Oh, the men lashing the sleds and drawing tight the thongs. He listened,
who would listen no more. The whip-lashes snarled and bit among the dogs. Hear them
whine! How they hated the work and the trail! They were off! Sled after sled churned
slowly away into the silence. They were gone. They had passed out of his life, and he
faced the last bitter hour alone. No. The snow crunched beneath a moccasin; a man stood
beside him; upon his head a hand rested gently. His son was good to do this thing. He
remembered other old men whose sons had not waited after the tribe. But his son had. He
wandered away into the past, till the young man’s voice brought him back.
CHILDREN OF THE FROST
20
“Is it well with you?” he asked.
And the old man answered, “It is well.”
“There be wood beside you,” the younger man continued, “and the fire burns bright. The
morning is gray, and the cold has broken. It will snow presently. Even now is it
snowing.”
“Ay, even now is it snowing.”
“The tribesmen hurry. Their bales are heavy, and their bellies flat with lack of feasting.
The trail is long and they travel fast. go now. It is well?”
“It is well. I am as a last year’s leaf, clinging lightly to the stem. The first breath that
blows, and I fall. My voice is become like an old woman’s. My eyes no longer show me
the way of my feet, and my feet are heavy, and I am tired. It is well.”
He bowed his head in content till the last noise of the complaining snow had died away,
and he knew his son was beyond recall. Then his hand crept out in haste to the wood. It
alone stood between him and the eternity that yawned in upon him. At last the measure of
his life was a handful of fagots. One by one they would go to feed the fire, and just so,
step by step, death would creep upon him. When the last stick had surrendered up its
heat, the frost would begin to gather strength. First his feet would yield, then his hands;
and the numbness would travel, slowly, from the extremities to the body. His head would
fall forward upon his knees, and he would rest. It was easy. All men must die.