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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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109
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
never slept, but went on unceasing, in good times and bad, in flood and
famine, through
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trouble and terror and death, and which would go on unceasing, it seemed to
him, to the
end of time. A man rapped sharply on a table, and the conversation droned
away into
silence. Imber looked at the man. He seemed one in authority, yet Imber
divined the
square-browed man who sat by a desk farther back to be the one chief over
them all and
over the man who had rapped. Another man by the same table uprose and began
to read
aloud from many fine sheets of paper. At the top of each sheet he cleared his
throat, at the
bottom moistened his fingers. Imber did not understand his speech, but the
others did,
and he knew that it made them angry. Sometimes it made them very angry, and
once a
man cursed him, in single syllables, stinging and tense, till a man at the
table rapped him
to silence.
For an interminable period the man read. His monotonous, sing-song utterance
lured
Imber to dreaming, and he was dreaming deeply when the man ceased. A voice
spoke to
him in his own Whitefish tongue, and he roused up, without surprise, to look
upon the
face of his sister's son, a young man who had wandered away years agone to
make his
dwelling with the whites.
"Thou dost not remember me," he said by way of greeting.
"Nay," Imber answered. "Thou art Howkan who went away. Thy mother be dead."
"She was an old woman," said Howkan.
But Imber did not hear, and Howkan, with hand upon his shoulder, roused him
again.
"I shall speak to thee what the man has spoken, which is the tale of the
troubles thou hast
done and which thou hast told, O fool, to the Captain Alexander. And thou
shalt
understand and say if it be true talk or talk not true. It is so commanded."
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Howkan had fallen among the mission folk and been taught by them to read and
write. In
his hands he held the many fine sheets from which the man had read aloud, and
which
had been taken down by a clerk when Imber first made confession, through the
mouth of
Jimmy, to Captain Alexander. Howkan began to read. Imber listened for a
space, when a
wonderment rose up in his face and he broke in abruptly.
"That be my talk, Howkan. Yet from thy lips it comes when thy ears have not
heard."
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110
Howkan smirked with self-appreciation. His hair was parted in the middle.
"Nay, from
the paper it comes, O Imber. Never have my ears heard. From the paper it
comes, through
my eyes, into my head, and out of my mouth to thee. Thus it comes."
"Thus it comes? It be there in the paper?" Imber's voice sank in whisperful
awe as he
crackled the sheets 'twixt thumb and finger and stared at the charactery
scrawled thereon.
"It be a great medicine, Howkan, and thou art a worker of wonders."
"It be nothing, it be nothing," the young man responded carelessly and
pridefully. He
read at hazard from the document: "In that year, before the break of the ice,
came an old
man, and a boy who was lame of one foot. These also did I kill, and the old
man made
much noise -- "
"It be true," Imber interrupted breathlessly. "He made much noise and would
not die for a
long time. But how dost thou know, Howkan? The chief man of the white men
told thee,
mayhap? No one beheld me, and him alone have I told." Howkan shook his head
with
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impatience. "Have I not told thee it be there in the paper, O fool?"
Imber stared hard at the ink-scrawled surface. "As the hunter looks upon the
snow and
says, Here but yesterday there passed a rabbit; and here by the willow scrub
it stood and
listened, and heard, and was afraid; and here it turned upon its trail; and
here it went with
great swiftness, leaping wide; and here, with greater swiftness and wider
leapings, came a
lynx; and here, where the claws cut deep into the snow, the lynx made a very
great leap;
and here it struck, with the rabbit under and rolling belly up; and here
leads off the trail of
the lynx alone, and there is no more rabbit, -- as the hunter looks upon the
markings of
the snow and says thus and so and here, dost thou, too, look upon the paper
and say thus
and so and here be the things old Imber hath done?"
"Even so," said Howkan. "And now do thou listen, and keep thy woman's tongue
between
thy teeth till thou art called upon for speech."
Thereafter, and for a long time, Howkan read to him the confession, and Imber
remained
musing and silent. At the end, he said:
"It be my talk, and true talk, but I am grown old, Howkan, and forgotten
things come
back to me which were well for the head man there to know. First, there was
the man
who came over the Ice Mountains, with cunning traps made of iron, who sought
the
beaver of the Whitefish. Him I slew. And there were three men seeking gold on
the
Whitefish long ago. Them also I slew, and left them to the wolverines. And at
the Five
Fingers there was a man with a raft and much meat."
At the moments when Imber paused to remember, Howkan translated and a clerk
reduced
to writing. The courtroom listened stolidly to each unadorned little tragedy,
till Imber told
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of a red-haired man whose eyes were crossed and whom he had killed with a
remarkably
long shot.
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111
"Hell," said a man in the forefront of the onlookers. He said it soulfully
and sorrowfully.
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