things that left
us shivering in the cold. And the coughing sickness came upon us, and
men and women coughed and sweated through the long nights, and the
hunters on trail spat blood upon the snow. And now one, and now another,
bled swiftly from the mouth and died. And the women bore few children,
and those they bore were weak and given to sickness. And other
sicknesses came to us from the white men, the like of which we had never
known and could not understand. Smallpox, likewise measles, have I heard
these sicknesses named, and we died of them as die the salmon in the
still eddies when in the fall their eggs are spawned and there is no
longer need for them to live.

"And yet, and here be the strangeness of it, the white men come as the
breath of death; all their ways lead to death, their nostrils are filled
with it; and yet they do not die. Theirs the whiskey, and tobacco, and
short-haired dogs; theirs the many sicknesses, the smallpox and measles,
the coughing and mouth-bleeding; theirs the white skin, and softness to
the frost and storm; and theirs the pistols that shoot six times very
swift and are worthless. And yet they grow fat on their many ills, and
prosper, and lay a heavy hand over all the world and tread mightily upon
its peoples. And their women, too, are soft as little babes, most
breakable and never broken, the mothers of men. And out of all this
softness, and sickness, and weakness, come strength, and power, and
authority. They be gods, or devils, as the case may be. I do not know.
What do I know, I, old Imber of the Whitefish? Only do I know that they
are past understanding, these white men, far-wanderers and fighters over
the earth that they be.

"As I say, the meat in the forest became less and less. It be true, the
white man's gun is most excellent and kills a long way off; but of what
worth the gun, when there is no meat to kill? When I was a boy on the
Whitefish there was moose on every hill, and each year came the caribou
uncountable. But now the hunter may take the trail ten days and not one
moose gladden his eyes, while the caribou uncountable come no more at
all. Small worth the gun, I say, killing a long way off, when there be
nothing to kill.

[Illustration: "ALL THEIR WAYS LEAD TO DEATH"
FROM A PAINTING BY MAYNARD DIXON.]

"And I, Imber, pondered upon these things, watching the while the
Whitefish, and the Pellys, and all the tribes of the land, perishing as
perished the meat of the for