ls, but how were we to know, we old men of the
Whitefish?

"And to hearten the others, I did the first deed. I kept guard upon
the Yukon till the first canoe came down. In it were two white men,
and when I stood upright upon the bank and raised my hand they changed
their course and drove in to me. And as the man in the bow lifted his
head, so, that he might know wherefore I wanted him, my arrow sang
through the air straight to his throat, and he knew. The second man,
who held paddle in the stern, had his rifle half to his shoulder when
the first of my three spear-casts smote him.

"'These be the first,' I said, when the old men had gathered to me.
'Later we will bind together all the old men of all the tribes, and
after that the young men who remain strong, and the work will become
easy.'

"And then the two dead white men we cast into the river. And of the
canoe, which was a very good canoe, we made a fire, and a fire, also,
of the things within the canoe. But first we looked at the things, and
they were pouches of leather which we cut open with our knives. And
inside these pouches were many papers, like that from which thou hast
read, O Howkan, with markings on them which we marvelled at and could
not understand. Now, I am become wise, and I know them for the speech
of men as thou hast told me."

A whisper and buzz went around the courtroom when Howkan finished
interpreting the affair of the canoe, and one man's voice spoke up:
"That was the lost '91 mail, Peter James and Delaney bringing it
in and last spoken at Le Barge by Matthews going out." The clerk
scratched steadily away, and another paragraph was added to the
history of the North.

"There be little more," Imber went on slowly. "It be there on the
paper, the things we did. We were old men, and we did not understand.
Even I, Imber, do not now understand. Secretly we slew, and continued
to slay, for with our years we were crafty and we had learned the
swiftness of going without haste. When white men came among us with
black looks and rough words, and took away six of the young men with
irons binding them helpless, we knew we must slay wider and farther.
And one by one we old men departed up river and down to the unknown
lands. It was a brave thing. Old we were, and unafraid, but the fear
of far places is a terrible fear to men who are old.

"So we slew, without haste and craftily. On the Chilcoot and in the
Delta we slew, from the passes to the sea, where