the underbrush. Once, five of them caught
him on an exposed goat-trail between pockets. They emptied their rifles
at him as he limped and climbed along his dizzy way. Afterwards they
found bloodstains and knew that he was wounded. At the end of six weeks
they gave up. The soldiers and police returned to Honolulu, and Kalalau
Valley was left to him for his own, though head-hunters ventured after
him from time to time and to their own undoing.

Two years later, and for the last time, Koolau crawled into a thicket and
lay down among the _ti_-leaves and wild ginger blossoms. Free he had
lived, and free he was dying. A slight drizzle of rain began to fall,
and he drew a ragged blanket about the distorted wreck of his limbs. His
body was covered with an oilskin coat. Across his chest he laid his
Mauser rifle, lingering affectionately for a moment to wipe the dampness
from the barrel. The hand with which he wiped had no fingers left upon
it with which to pull the trigger.

He closed his eyes, for, from the weakness in his body and the fuzzy
turmoil in his brain, he knew that his end was near. Like a wild animal
he had crept into hiding to die. Half-conscious, aimless and wandering,
he lived back in his life to his early manhood on Niihau. As life faded
and the drip of the rain grew dim in his ears it seemed to him that he
was once more in the thick of the horse-breaking, with raw colts rearing
and bucking under him, his stirrups tied together beneath, or charging
madly about the breaking corral and driving the helping cowboys over the
rails. The next instant, and with seeming naturalness, he found himself
pursuing the wild bulls of the upland pastures, roping them and leading
them down to the valleys. Again the sweat and dust of the branding pen
stung his eyes and bit his nostrils.

All his lusty, whole-bodied youth was his, until the sharp pangs of
impending dissolution brought him back. He lifted his monstrous hands
and gazed at them in wonder. But how? Why? Why should the wholeness of
that wild youth of his change to this? Then he remembered, and once
again, and for a moment, he was Koolau, the leper. His eyelids fluttered
wearily down and the drip of the rain ceased in his ears. A prolonged
trembling set up in his body. This, too, ceased. He half-lifted his
head, but it fell back. Then his eyes opened, and did not close. His
last thought was of his Mauser, and he pressed it against his chest with