is hands; and the numbness
would travel, slowly, from the extremities to the body. His head would
fall forward upon his knees, and he would rest. It was easy. All men
must die.

He did not complain. It was the way of life, and it was just. He had
been born close to the earth, close to the earth had he lived, and the
law thereof was not new to him. It was the law of all flesh. Nature
was not kindly to the flesh. She had no concern for that concrete
thing called the individual. Her interest lay in the species, the
race. This was the deepest abstraction old Koskoosh's barbaric mind
was capable of, but he grasped it firmly. He saw it exemplified in all
life. The rise of the sap, the bursting greenness of the willow bud,
the fall of the yellow leaf--in this alone was told the whole history.
But one task did Nature set the individual. Did he not perform it, he
died. Did he perform it, it was all the same, he died. Nature did
not care; there were plenty who were obedient, and it was only the
obedience in this matter, not the obedient, which lived and lived
always. The tribe of Koskoosh was very old. The old men he had known
when a boy, had known old men before them. Therefore it was true that
the tribe lived, that it stood for the obedience of all its members,
way down into the forgotten past, whose very resting-places were
unremembered. They did not count; they were episodes. They had passed
away like clouds from a summer sky. He also was an episode, and would
pass away. Nature did not care. To life she set one task, gave one
law. To perpetuate was the task of life, its law was death. A maiden
was a good creature to look upon, full-breasted and strong, with
spring to her step and light in her eyes. But her task was yet before
her. The light in her eyes brightened, her step quickened, she was
now bold with the young men, now timid, and she gave them of her own
unrest. And ever she grew fairer and yet fairer to look upon, till
some hunter, able no longer to withhold himself, took her to his lodge
to cook and toil for him and to become the mother of his children. And
with the coming of her offspring her looks left her. Her limbs dragged
and shuffled, her eyes dimmed and bleared, and only the little
children found joy against the withered cheek of the old squaw by the
fire. Her task was done. But a little while, on the first pinch of
famine or the first long trail, and she would be left, even as he had
been left, in the snow, wi