the end. Bill-Man mocked him back in the tongue of the Bear
Folk, and Tyee, lifting his head from a trench to see, had his
shoulder scratched deeply by a bullet.

And in the dreary days that followed, and in the wild nights when they
pushed the trenches closer, there was much discussion as to the wisdom
of letting the Sunlanders go. But of this they were afraid, and the
women raised a cry always at the thought This much they had seen of
the Sunlanders; they cared to see no more. All the time the whistle
and blub-blub of bullets filled the air, and all the time the
death-list grew. In the golden sunrise came the faint, far crack of a
rifle, and a stricken woman would throw up her hands on the distant
edge of the village; in the noonday heat, men in the trenches heard
the shrill sing-song and knew their deaths; or in the gray afterglow
of evening, the dirt kicked up in puffs by the winking fires. And
through the nights the long "Wah-hoo-ha-a wah-hoo-ha-a!" of mourning
women held dolorous sway.

As Tyee had promised, in the end famine gripped the Sunlanders. And
once, when an early fall gale blew, one of them crawled through the
darkness past the trenches and stole many dried fish.

But he could not get back with them, and the sun found him vainly
hiding in the village. So he fought the great fight by himself, and
in a narrow ring of Mandell Folk shot four with his revolver, and ere
they could lay hands on him for the torture, turned it on himself and
died.

This threw a gloom upon the people. Oloof put the question, "If one
man die so hard, how hard will die the three who yet are left?"

Then Mesahchie stood up on the barricade and called in by name three
dogs which had wandered close,--meat and life,--which set back the day
of reckoning and put despair in the hearts of the Mandell Folk. And on
the head of Mesahchie were showered the curses of a generation.

The days dragged by. The sun hurried south, the nights grew long and
longer, and there was a touch of frost in the air. And still the
Sunlanders held the pit. Hearts were breaking under the unending
strain, and Tyee thought hard and deep. Then he sent forth word that
all the skins and hides of all the tribe be collected. These he had
made into huge cylindrical bales, and behind each bale he placed a
man.

When the word was given the brief day was almost spent, and it was
slow work and tedious, rolling the big bales forward foot by foot The
bullets of the Sun