to his throat, and he knew. The second man, who held paddle
in the stern, had his rifle half to his shoulder when the first of my
three spear-casts smote him.
"'These be the first,' I said, when the old men had gathered to me.
'Later we will bind together all the old men of all the tribes, and
after that the young men who remain strong, and the work will become
easy.'
"And then the two dead white men we cast into the river. And of the
canoe, which was a very good canoe, we made a fire, and a fire, also, of
the things within the canoe. But first we looked at the things, and they
were pouches of leather which we cut open with our knives. And inside
these pouches were many papers, like that from which thou hast read, O
Howkan, with markings on them which we marveled at and could not
understand. Now, I am become wise, and I know them for the speech of men
as thou hast told me."
A whisper and buzz went around the court-room when Howkan finished
interpreting the affair of the canoe, and one man's voice spoke up:
"That was the lost '91 mail, Peter James and Delaney bringing it in and
last spoken at Le Barge by Matthews going out." The clerk scratched
steadily away, and another paragraph was added to the history of the
North.
"There be little more," Imber went on slowly. "It be there on the paper,
the things we did. We were old men, and we did not understand. Even I,
Imber, do not now understand. Secretly we slew, and continued to slay,
for with our years we were crafty and we had learned the swiftness of
going without haste. When white men came among us with black looks and
rough words, and took away six of the young men with irons binding them
helpless, we knew we must slay wider and farther. And one by one we old
men departed up river and down to the unknown lands. It was a brave
thing. Old we were, and unafraid, but the fear of far places is a
terrible fear to men who are old.
"So we slew, without haste, and craftily. On the Chilkoot and in the
Delta we slew, from the passes to the sea, wherever the white men camped
or broke their trails. It be true, they died, but it was without worth.
Ever did they come over the mountains, ever did they grow and grow,
while we, being old, became less and less. I remember, by the Caribou
Crossing, the camp of a white man. He was a very little white man, and
three of the old men came upon him in his sleep. And the next day I came
upon the four of them. The white man alone still
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