open place among the trees, with great fires burning and the snow
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41
moccasin-packed as hard as Portland cement. Next me was Tilly,
beaded and scarlet-clothed galore, and against her Chief George
and his head men. The shaman was being helped out by the big
medicines from the other tribes, and it shivered my spine up and
down, the deviltries they cut. I caught myself wondering if the
folks in Liverpool could only see me now; and I thought of yellow-
haired Gussie, whose brother I licked after my first voyage, just
because he was not for having a sailor-man courting his sister.
And with Gussie in my eyes I looked at Tilly. A rum old world,
thinks I, with man a-stepping in trails the mother little dreamed
of when he lay at suck.
“So be. When the noise was loudest, walrus hides booming and
priests a-singing, I says, ‘Are you ready?’ Gawd! Not a start,
not a shot of the eyes my way, not the twitch of a muscle. ‘I
knew,’ she answers, slow and steady as a calm spring tide.
‘Where?’ ‘The high bank at the edge of the ice,’ I whispers back.
‘Jump out when I give the word.’
“Did I say there was no end of huskies? Well, there was no end.
Here, there, everywhere, they were scattered about,–tame wolves
and nothing less. When the strain runs thin they breed them in
the bush with the wild, and they’re bitter fighters. Right at the
toe of my moccasin lay a big brute, and by the heel another. I
doubled the first one’s tail, quick, till it snapped in my grip.
As his jaws clipped together where my hand should have been, I
threw the second one by the scruff straight into his mouth. ‘Go!’
I cried to Tilly.
“You know how they fight. In the wink of an eye there was a
raging hundred of them, top and bottom, ripping and tearing each
other, kids and squaws tumbling which way, and the camp gone wild.
Tilly’d slipped away, so I followed. But when I looked over my
shoulder at the skirt of the crowd, the devil laid me by the
heart, and I dropped the blanket and went back.
“By then the dogs’d been knocked apart and the crowd was
untangling itself. Nobody was in proper place, so they didn’t
note that Tilly’d gone. ‘Hello,’ I says, gripping Chief George by
the hand. ‘May your potlach-smoke rise often, and the Sticks
bring many furs with the spring.’
“Lord love me, Dick, but he was joyed to see me,–him with the
upper hand and wedding Tilly. Chance to puff big over me. The
tale that I was hot after her had spread through the camps, and my
presence did him proud. All hands knew me, without my blanket,
and set to grinning and giggling. It was rich, but I made it
richer by playing unbeknowing.
“‘What’s the row?’ I asks. ‘Who’s getting married now?’
“‘Chief George,’ the shaman says, ducking his reverence to him.
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42
“‘Thought he had two klooches.’
“‘Him takum more,–three,’ with another duck.
“‘Oh!’ And I turned away as though it didn’t interest me.
“But this wouldn’t do, and everybody begins singing out,
‘Killisnoo! Killisnoo!’
“‘Killisnoo what?’ I asked.
“‘Killisnoo, klooch, Chief George,’ they blathered. ‘Killisnoo,
klooch.’
“I jumped and looked at Chief George. He nodded his head and
threw out his chest.
“She’ll be no klooch of yours,’ I says solemnly. ‘No klooch of
yours,’ I repeats, while his face went black and his hand began
dropping to his hunting-knife.
“‘Look!’ I cries, striking an attitude. ‘Big Medicine. You watch
my smoke.’
“I pulled off my mittens, rolled back my sleeves, and made half-a-
dozen passes in the air.
“‘Killisnoo!’ I shouts. ‘Killisnoo! Killisnoo!’
“I was making medicine, and they began to scare. Every eye was on
me; no time to find out that Tilly wasn’t there. Then I called
Killisnoo three times again, and waited; and three times more.
All for mystery and to make them nervous. Chief George couldn’t
guess what I was up to, and wanted to put a stop to the foolery;
but the shamans said to wait, and that they’d see me and go me one
better, or words to that effect. Besides, he was a superstitious
cuss, and I fancy a bit afraid of the white man’s magic.
“Then I called Killisnoo, long and soft like the howl of a wolf,
till the women were all a-tremble and the bucks looking serious.
“‘Look!’ I sprang for’ard, pointing my finger into a bunch of
squaws–easier to deceive women than men, you know. ‘Look!’ And
I raised it aloft as though following the flight of a bird. Up,
up, straight overhead, making to follow it with my eyes till it
disappeared in the sky.
“‘Killisnoo,’ I said, looking at Chief George and pointing upward
again. ‘Killisnoo.’
“So help me, Dick, the gammon worked. Half of them, at least, saw
Tilly disappear in the air. They’d drunk my whiskey at Juneau and
seen stranger sights, I’ll warrant. Why should I not do this
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43
thing, I, who sold bad spirits corked in bottles? Some of the
women shrieked. Everybody fell to whispering in bunches. I
folded my arms and held my head high, and they drew further away
from me. The time was ripe to go. ‘Grab him,’ Chief George
cries. Three or four of them came at me, but I whirled, quick,
made a couple of passes like to send them after Tilly, and pointed
up. Touch me? Not for the kingdoms of the earth. Chief George
harangued them, but he couldn’t get them to lift a leg. Then he
made to take me himself; but I repeated the mummery and his grit
went out through his fingers.
“‘Let your shamans work wonders the like of which I have done this
night,’ I says. ‘Let them call Killisnoo down out of the sky
whither I have sent her.’ But the priests knew their limits.
‘May your klooches bear you sons as the spawn of the salmon,’ I
says, turning to go; ‘and may your totem pole stand long in the
land, and the smoke of your camp rise always.’
“But if the beggars could have seen me hitting the high places for
the sloop as soon as I was clear of them, they’d thought my own
medicine had got after me. Tilly’d kept warm by chopping the ice
away, and was all ready to cast off. Gawd! how we ran before it,
the Taku howling after us and the freezing seas sweeping over at
every clip. With everything battened down, me a-steering and
Tilly chopping ice, we held on half the night, till I plumped the
sloop ashore on Porcupine Island, and we shivered it out on the
beach; blankets wet, and Tilly drying the matches on her breast.
“So I think I know something about it. Seven years, Dick, man and
wife, in rough sailing and smooth. And then she died, in the
heart of the winter, died in childbirth, up there on the Chilcat
Station. She held my hand to the last, the ice creeping up inside
the door and spreading thick on the gut of the window. Outside,
the lone howl of the wolf and the Silence; inside, death and the
Silence. You’ve never heard the Silence yet, Dick, and Gawd grant
you don’t ever have to hear it when you sit by the side of death.
Hear it? Ay, till the breath whistles like a siren, and the heart
booms, booms, booms, like the surf on the shore.
“Siwash, Dick, but a woman. White, Dick, white, clear through.
Towards the last she says, ‘Keep my feather bed, Tommy, keep it
always.’ And I agreed. Then she opened her eyes, full with the
pain. ‘I’ve been a good woman to you, Tommy, and because of that
I want you to promise–to promise’–the words seemed to stick in
her throat–‘that when you marry, the woman be white. No more
Siwash, Tommy. I know. Plenty white women down to Juneau now. I
know. Your people call you “squaw-man,” your women turn their
heads to the one side on the street, and you do not go to their
cabins like other men. Why? Your wife Siwash. Is it not so?
And this is not good. Wherefore I die. Promise me. Kiss me in
token of your promise.’
“I kissed her, and she dozed off, whispering, ‘It is good.’ At
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44
the end, that near gone my ear was at her lips, she roused for the
last time. ‘Remember, Tommy; remember my feather bed.’ Then she
died, in childbirth, up there on the Chilcat Station.”
The tent heeled over and half flattened before the gale. Dick
refilled his pipe, while Tommy drew the tea and set it aside
against Molly’s return.
And she of the flashing eyes and Yankee blood? Blinded, falling,