hild laughing at the
sun. And the child looked at me with the Trader Macklewrath's eyes,
and it was frightened. The mother ran to it and quieted it. The mother
was Ziska, the Thlunget woman."

A snarl of rage rose up and drowned his voice, which he stilled by
turning dramatically upon Keesh with outstretched arm and accusing
finger.

"So? You give your women away, you Thlunget, and come to the Tana-naw
for more? But we have need of our women, Keesh; for we must breed men,
many men, against the day when the Raven grapples with the Wolf."

Through the storm of applause, Gnob's voice shrilled clear. "And thou,
Nossabok, who art her favorite brother?"

The young fellow was slender and graceful, with the strong aquiline
nose and high brows of his type; but from some nervous affliction the
lid of one eye drooped at odd times in a suggestive wink. Even as he
arose it so drooped and rested a moment against his cheek. But it was
not greeted with the accustomed laughter. Every face was grave. "I,
too, passed by the Trader Macklewrath's cabin," he rippled in soft,
girlish tones, wherein there was much of youth and much of his sister.
"And I saw Indians with the sweat running into their eyes and their
knees shaking with weariness--I say, I saw Indians groaning under the
logs for the store which the Trader Macklewrath is to build. And with
my eyes I saw them chopping wood to keep the Shaman Brown's Big House
warm through the frost of the long nights. This be squaw work. Never
shall the Tana-naw do the like. We shall be blood brothers to men, not
squaws; and the Thlunget be squaws."

A deep silence fell, and all eyes centred on Keesh. He looked about
him carefully, deliberately, full into the face of each grown man.
"So," he said passionlessly. And "So," he repeated. Then turned on his
heel without further word and passed out into the darkness.

Wading among sprawling babies and bristling wolf-dogs, he threaded
the great camp, and on its outskirts came upon a woman at work by the
light of a fire. With strings of bark stripped from the long roots of
creeping vines, she was braiding rope for the Fishing. For some time,
without speech, he watched her deft hands bringing law and order out
of the unruly mass of curling fibres. She was good to look upon,
swaying there to her task, strong-limbed, deep-chested, and with hips
made for motherhood. And the bronze of her face was golden in the
flickering light, her hair blue-black, her ey