rl later came upon five wrapped in a bandana
handkerchief.

When at last the flowers began to bud, Jean and her nephew climbed the
gulch trail to the top of the Island where Kobuk lay under the tundra
on the crest of the hill. The lone tree, so like a woman with
wind-blown hair, had lost one of its branches during the winter gales,
but it still stood, as if looking out across Kobuk's grave to the
far-away, illimitable skyline; ever looking, Jean thought, as she was,
for a ship that never came.

She and Lollie made Kobuk's resting place a bed of transplanted violets
and iris and dog-tooth lilies. When the work was finished, Lollie
stood leaning on the club he had begun to carry, as his one desire in
life at this period was to emulate Robinson Crusoe. He looked
thoughtfully down at the grave for some time.

"Perhaps, after all, Jean, it's better that Kobuk died," he said at
last. "We'd have nothing to feed him now, poor old Kobuk, and he'd be
hungry, like us." He raised his thin little face to watch a sea-parrot
flying overhead with a fish in its bill.

Jean leaned against the tree, one of her recurrent floods of
hopelessness sweeping her. Far down the tundra toward the north she
could see the flag-pole on the Lookout. The tattered home-made flag
hung dispiritedly in the still sunny air, and the smoke of the signal
fire was a mere straight-rising wisp. The calls of happy mating gulls
came to mock her--gulls replete with the bountiful food of the sea.
Today she was hungry, so hungry that every atom of her body cried for
food, hot, nourishing food which she had not known for months. And
Ellen, back there at the cabin, was growing weaker and weaker each day.

The girl's eyes dully followed the low-flying sea-parrots. In a half
conscious way she noticed that many of them came toward the crest of
the hill and disappeared. Sea-parrots were not as fishy tasting as
gulls, as she had heard Kayak Bill say. If only they had some way of
killing these birds perhaps the broth and the flesh might bring back
Ellen's strength.

"Jean, isn't that the place the old bear came up the hill?" Lollie's
voice broke in on her thoughts. He was pointing to the scrubby growth
on the brow of the hill where she had first seen the bear of Kon Klayu.
"Let's go over and see."

As they walked toward the ridge their feet made no sound on the soft
tundra. They peered down hill into the shady recesses under the
stunted alder and salmon