oming and going of a natural thing, of a thing that
had existed for him and for his kind since life began, and he spoke of it
quietly and without a gesture. There had been a camp of twenty-two, and
there were now fifteen. Seven had died, four men, two women, and one child.
Each day during the great storm the men had gone out on their futile search
for game, and every few days one of them had failed to return. Thus four
had died. The dogs were eaten. Corn and fish were gone; there remained but
a little flour, and this was for the women and the children. The men had
eaten nothing but bark and roots for five days. And there seemed to be no
hope. It was death to stray far from the camp. That morning the two men had
set out for the post, but Mukoki said calmly that they would never return.
And then Roscoe spoke of Oachi, his daughter, and for the first time the
iron lines of the chief's bronze face seemed to soften, and his head bent
over a little, and his shoulders drooped. Not until then did Roscoe learn
the depths of sorrow hidden behind the splendid strength of the starving
man. Oachi's mother had been a French woman. Six months before she had died
in this tepee, and Mukoki had buried his wife up on the face of the
mountain, where the storm was moaning. After this Roscoe could not speak.
He was choking. He loaded his pipe again, and sat down close to the chief,
so that their knees and their shoulders touched, and thus, as taught him by
old Rameses, he smoked with Oachi's father the pledge of eternal
friendship, of brotherhood in life, of spirit communion in the Valley of
Silent Men. After that Mukoki left him and he crawled back upon his bunk,
weak and filled with pain, knowing that he was facing death with the
others. He was not afraid, but was filled with a great thankfulness that,
even at the price of starvation, fate had allowed him to touch at last the
edge of the fabric of his dreams. All of that day he wrote, in the hours
when he felt best. He filled page after page of the tablets which he
carried in his pack, writing feverishly and with great haste, oppressed
only by the fear that he would not be able to finish the message which he
had for the people of that other world a thousand miles away. Three times
during the morning Oachi came in and brought him the cooked fish and a
biscuit which she had made for him out of flour and meal. And each time he
said, "I am a man with the other men, Oachi. I would be a woman if I a