Children of the Frost
Page 16
seam.
But Li Wan was deaf as well, and the woman's speech was without
significance. Dismay at her failure sat upon her. How could she identify
herself with these women? For she knew they were of the one breed,
blood-sisters among men and the women of men. Her eyes roved wildly
about the interior, taking in the soft draperies hanging around, the
feminine garments, the oval mirror, and the dainty toilet accessories
beneath. And the things haunted her, for she had seen like things before;
and as she looked at them her lips involuntarily formed sounds which her
throat trembled to utter. Then a thought flashed upon her, and she steadied
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herself. She must be calm. She must control herself, for there must be no
misunderstanding this time, or else,—and she shook with a storm of
suppressed tears and steadied herself again.
She put her hand on the table. "Table," she clearly and distinctly
enunciated. "Table," she repeated.
She looked at Mrs. Van Wyck, who nodded approbation. Li Wan exulted,
but brought her will to bear and held herself steady. "Stove," she went on.
"Stove."
And at every nod of Mrs. Van Wyck, Li Wan's excitement mounted. Now
stumbling and halting, and again in feverish haste, as the recrudescence of
forgotten words was fast or slow, she moved about the cabin, naming
article after article. And when she paused finally, it was in triumph, with
body erect and head thrown back, expectant, waiting.
"Cat," Mrs. Van Wyck, laughing, spelled out in kindergarten fashion. "I—
see—the—cat—catch—the—rat. "
Li Wan nodded her head seriously. They were beginning to understand her
at last, these women. The blood flushed darkly under her bronze at the
thought, and she smiled and nodded her head still more vigorously.
Mrs. Van Wyck turned to her companion. "Received a smattering of
mission education somewhere, I fancy, and has come to show it off."
"Of course," Miss Giddings tittered. "Little fool! We shall lose our sleep
with her vanity."
"All the same I want that jacket. If it is old, the workmanship is good—a
most excellent specimen." She returned to her visitor. "Changee for
changee? You! Changee for changee? How much? Eh? How much, you?"
"Perhaps she'd prefer a dress or something," Miss Giddings suggested.
Mrs. Van Wyck went up to Li Wan and made signs that she would
exchange her wrapper for the jacket. And to further the transaction, she
took Li Wan's hand and placed it amid the lace and ribbons of the flowing
bosom, and rubbed the fingers back and forth so they might feel the
texture. But the jewelled butterfly which loosely held the fold in place was
insecurely fastened, and the front of the gown slipped to the side exposing
a firm white breast, which had never known the lip-clasp of a child.
Mrs. Van Wyck coolly repaired the mischief; but Li Wan uttered a loud
cry, and ripped and tore at her skin-shirt till her own breast showed firm
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and white as Evelyn Van Wyck's. Murmuring inarticulately and making
swift signs, she strove to establish the kinship.
"A half-breed," Mrs. Van Wyck commented. "I thought so from her hair."
Miss Giddings made a fastidious gesture. "Proud of her father's white skin.
It's beastly! Do give her something, Evelyn, and make her go."
But the other woman sighed. "Poor creature, I wish I could do something
for her."
A heavy foot crunched the gravel without. Then the cabin door swung
wide, and Canim stalked in. Miss Giddings saw a vision of sudden death,
and screamed; but Mrs. Van Wyck faced him composedly.
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"How do?" Canim answered suavely and directly, pointing at the same
time to Li Wan. "Um my wife."
He reached out for her, but she waved him back.
"Speak, Canim! Tell them that I am—"
"Daughter of Pow-Wah-Kaan? Nay, of what is it to them that they should
care? Better should I tell them thou art an ill wife, given to creeping from
thy husband's bed when sleep is heavy in his eyes."
Again he reached out for her, but she fled away from him to Mrs. Van
Wyck, at whose feet she made frenzied appeal, and whose knees she tried
to clasp. But the lady stepped back and gave permission with her eyes to
Canim. He gripped Li Wan under the shoulders and raised her to her feet.
She fought with him, in a madness of despair, till his chest was heaving
with the exertion, and they had reeled about over half the room.
"Let me go, Canim," she sobbed.
But he twisted her wrist till she ceased to struggle. "The memories of the
little moose-bird are overstrong and make trouble," he began.
"I know! I know!" she broke in. "I see the man in the snow, and as never
before I see him crawl on hand and knee. And I, who am a little child, am
carried on his back. And this is before Pow-Wah- Kaan and the time I
came to live in a little corner of the earth."
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"You know," he answered, forcing her toward the door; "but you will go
with me down the Yukon and forget."
"Never shall I forget! So long as my skin is white shall I remember!" She
clutched frantically at the door-post and looked a last appeal to Mrs.
Evelyn Van Wyck.
"Then will I teach thee to forget, I, Canim, the Canoe!"
As he spoke he pulled her fingers clear and passed out with her upon the
trail.
THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN
(First Published in Brandur Magazine Vol. 1, October 4, 1902)
At the Barracks a man was being tried for his life. He was an old man, a native from the
Whitefish River, which empties into the Yukon below Lake Le Barge. All Dawson was
wrought up over the affair, and likewise the Yukon-dwellers for a thousand miles up and
down. It has been the custom of the land-robbing and sea-robbing Anglo-Saxon to give
the law to conquered peoples, and ofttimes this law is harsh. But in the case of Imber the
law for once seemed inadequate and weak. In the mathematical nature of things, equity
did not reside in the punishment to be accorded him. The punishment was a foregone
conclusion, there could be no doubt of that; and though it was capital, Imber had but one
life, while the tale against him was one of scores.
In fact, the blood of so many was upon his hands that the killings attributed to him did
not permit of precise enumeration. Smoking a pipe by the trailside or lounging around the
stove, men made rough estimates of the numbers that had perished at his hand. They had
been whites, all of them, these poor murdered people, and they had been slain singly, in
pairs, and in parties. And so purposeless and wanton had been these killings, that they
had long been a mystery to the mounted police, even in the time of the captains, and later,
when the creeks realized, and a governor came from the Dominion to make the land pay
for its prosperity. But more myster
ious still was the coming of Imber to Dawson to give
himself up. It was in the late spring, when the Yukon was growling and writhing under its
ice, that the old Indian climbed painfully up the bank from the river trail and stood
blinking on the main street. Men who had witnessed his advent, noted that he was weak
and tottery, and that he staggered over to a heap of cabin-logs and sat down. He sat there
a full day, staring straight before him at the unceasing tide of white men that flooded past.
Many a head jerked curiously to the side to meet his stare, and more than one remark was
dropped anent the old Siwash with so strange a look upon his face. No end of men
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remembered afterward that they had been struck by his extraordinary figure, and forever
afterward prided themselves upon their swift discernment of the unusual.
But it remained for Dickensen, Little Dickensen, to be the hero of the occasion. Little
Dickensen had come into the land with great dreams and a pocketful of cash; but with the
cash the dreams vanished, and to earn his passage back to the States he had accepted a
clerical position with the brokerage firm of Holbrook and Mason. Across the street from
the office of Holbrook and Mason was the heap of cabin-logs upon which Imber sat.
Dickensen looked out of the window at him before he went to lunch; and when he came
back from lunch he looked out of the window, and the old Siwash was still there.
Dickensen continued to look out of the window, and he, too, forever afterward prided
himself upon his swiftness of discernment. He was a romantic little chap, and he likened
the immobile old heathen to the genius of the Siwash race, gazing calm-eyed upon the
hosts of the invading Saxon. The hours swept along, but Imber did not vary his posture,
did not by a hair's-breadth move a muscle; and Dickensen remembered the man who once
sat upright on a sled in the main street where men passed to and fro. They thought the
man was resting, but later, when they touched him, they found him stiff and cold, frozen
to death in the midst of the busy street. To undouble him, that he might fit into a coffin,
they had been forced to lug him to a fire and thaw him out a bit. Dickensen shivered at
the recollection.
Later on, Dickensen went out on the sidewalk to smoke a cigar and cool off; and a little
later Emily Travis happened along. Emily Travis was dainty and delicate and rare, and
whether in London or Klondike she gowned herself as befitted the daughter of a
millionnaire mining engineer. Little Dickensen deposited his cigar on an outside window
ledge where he could find it again, and lifted his hat.
They chatted for ten minutes or so, when Emily Travis, glancing past Dickensen's
shoulder, gave a startled little scream. Dickensen turned about to see, and was startled,
too. Imber had crossed the street and was standing there, a gaunt and hungry-looking
shadow, his gaze riveted upon the girl.
"What do you want?" Little Dickensen demanded, tremulously plucky.
Imber grunted and stalked up to Emily Travis. He looked her over, keenly and carefully,
every square inch of her. Especially did he appear interested in her silky brown hair, and
in the color of her cheek, faintly sprayed and soft, like the downy bloom of a butterfly
wing. He walked around her, surveying her with the calculating eye of a man who studies
the lines upon which a horse or a boat is builded. In the course of his circuit the pink shell
of her ear came between his eye and the westering sun, and he stopped to contemplate its
rosy transparency. Then he returned to her face and looked long and intently into her blue
eyes. He grunted and laid a hand on her arm midway between the shoulder and elbow.
With his other hand he lifted her forearm and doubled it back. Disgust and wonder
showed in his face, and he dropped her arm with a contemptuous grunt. Then he muttered
a few guttural syllables, turned his back upon her, and addressed himself to Dickensen.
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Dickensen could not understand his speech, and Emily Travis laughed. Imber turned from
one to the other, frowning, but both shook their heads. He was about to go away, when
she called out:
"Oh, Jimmy! Come here!"
Jimmy came from the other side of the street. He was a big, hulking Indian clad in
approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king's sombrero on his head. He talked with
Imber, haltingly, with throaty spasms. Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a
passing knowledge of the interior dialects.
"Him Whitefish man," he said to Emily Travis. "Me savve um talk no very much. Him
want to look see chief white man."
"The Governor," suggested Dickensen.
Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went grave and puzzled.
"I t'ink um want Cap'n Alexander," he explained. "Him say um kill white man, white
woman, white boy, plenty kill um white people. Him want to die."
"Insane, I guess," said Dickensen.
"What you call dat?" queried Jimmy.
Dickensen thrust a finger figuratively inside his head and imparted a rotary motion
thereto.
"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said Jimmy, returning to Imber, who still demanded the chief man
of the white men.
A mounted policeman (unmounted for Klondike service) joined the group and heard
Imber's wish repeated. He was a stalwart young fellow, broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
legs cleanly built and stretched wide apart, and tall though Imber was, he towered above
him by half a head. His eyes were cool, and gray, and steady, and he carried himself with
the peculiar confidence of power that is bred of blood and tradition. His splendid
masculinity was emphasized by his excessive boyishness, -- he was a mere lad, -- and his
smooth cheek promised a blush as willingly as the cheek of a maid.
Imber was drawn to him at once. The fire leaped into his eyes at sight of a sabre slash that
scarred his cheek. He ran a withered hand down the young fellow's leg and caressed the
swelling thew. He smote the broad chest with his knuckles, and pressed and prodded the
thick muscle-pads that covered the shoulders like a cuirass. The group had been added to
by curious passers-by -- husky miners, mountaineers, and frontiersmen, sons of the longlegged
and broad-shouldered generations. Imber glanced from one to another, then he
spoke aloud in the Whitefish tongue.
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"What did he say?" asked Dickensen.
"Him say um all the same one man, dat p'liceman," Jimmy interpreted.
Little Dickensen was little, and what of Miss Travis, he felt sorry for having asked the
question. The policeman was sorry for him and stepped into the breach. "I fancy there
may be something in his story. I'll take him up to the captain for examination. Tell him to
come along with me, Jimmy."
Jimmy indulged in more throaty spasms, and Imber grunted and looked satisfied.
"But ask him what he said, Jimmy, and what he meant when he took hold of my arm."
So spoke Emily Travis, and Jimmy put the question and received the answer.
"Him say you no afraid," said Jimmy.
Emily Travis looked pleased.
"Him say you no skookum, no strong, all the same very soft like little baby. Him break
you, in um two hands, to little pieces. Him t'ink much funny, very strange, how you can
be mother of men so big, so strong, like dat p'liceman."
Emily Travers kept her eyes up and unfaltering, but her cheeks were sprayed with scarlet.
Little Dickensen blushed and was quite embarrassed. The policeman's face blazed with
his boy's blood.
"Come along, you," he said gruffly, setting his shoulder to the crowd and forcing a way.
Thus it was that Imber found his way to the Barracks, where he made full and voluntary
confession, and from the precincts of which he never emerged.
Imber looked very tired. The fatigue of hopelessness and age was in his face. His
shoulders drooped depressingly, and his eyes were lack-lustre. His mop of hair should
have been white, but sun and weatherbeat had burned and bitten it so that it hung limp
and lifeless and colorless. He took no interest in what went on around him. The
courtroom was jammed with the men of the creeks and trails, and there was an ominous
note in the rumble and grumble of their low-pitched voices, which came to his ears like
the growl of the sea from deep caverns.
He sat close by a window, and his apathetic eyes rested now and again on the dreary
scene without. The sky was overcast, and a gray drizzle was falling. It was flood-time on
the Yukon. The ice was gone, and the river was up in the town. Back and forth on the
main street, in canoes and poling-boats, passed the people that never rested. Often he saw
these boats turn aside from the street and enter the flooded square that marked the
Barracks' parade-ground. Sometimes they disappeared beneath him, and he heard them
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jar against the house-logs and their occupants scramble in through the window. After that
came the slush of water against men's legs as they waded across the lower room and
mounted the stairs. Then they appeared in the doorway, with doffed hats and dripping
sea-boots, and added themselves to the waiting crowd.
And while they centred their looks on him, and in grim anticipation enjoyed the penalty
he was to pay, Imber looked at them, and mused on their ways, and on their Law that