The Law of Life

Old Koskoosh listened greedily. Though his sight had long since faded, his hearingwas still acute, and the slightest sound penetrated to the glimmering intelligencewhich yet abode behind the withered forehead, but which no longer gazed forthupon the things of the world. Ah! that was Sit-cum-to-ha, shrilly anathematizingthe dogs as she cuffed and beat them into the harnesses. Sit-cum-to-ha was hisdaughter's daughter, but she was too busy to waste a thought upon her brokengrandfather, sitting alone there in the snow, forlorn and helpless. Camp must bebroken. The long trail waited while the short day refused to linger. Life called her,and the duties of life, not death. And he was very close to death now.The thought made the old man panicky for the moment, and he stretched forth apalsied hand which wandered tremblingly over the small heap of dry wood besidehim. Reassured that it was indeed there, his hand returned to the shelter of hismangy furs, and he again fell to listening. The sulky crackling of half-frozen hidestold him that the chief's moose-skin lodge had been struck, and even then wasbeing rammed and jammed into portable compass. The chief was his son, stalwartand strong, head man of the tribesmen, and a mighty hunter. As the women toiledwith the camp luggage, his voice rose, chiding them for their slowness. OldKoskoosh strained his ears. It was the last time he would hear that voice. Therewent Geehow's lodge! And Tusken's! Seven, eight, nine; only the shaman's couldbe still standing. There! They were at work upon it now. He could hear the shamangrunt as he piled it on the sled. A child whimpered, and a woman soothed it withsoft, crooning gutturals. Little Koo-tee, the old man thought, a fretful child, and notoverstrong. It would die soon, perhaps, and they would burn a hole through thefrozen tundra and pile rocks above to keep the wolverines away. Well, what did itmatter? A few years at best, and as many an empty belly as a full one. And in theend, Death waited, ever-hungry and hungriest of them all.What was that? Oh, the men lashing the sleds and drawing tight the thongs. Helistened, who would listen no more. The whip-lashes snarled and bit among the

dogs. Hear them whine! How they hated the work and the trail! They were off!Sled after sled churned slowly away into the silence. They were gone. They hadpassed out of his life, and he faced the last bitter hour alone. No. The snowcrunched beneath a moccasin; a man stood beside him; upon his head a hand restedgently. His son was good to do this thing. He remembered other old men whosesons had not waited after the tribe. But his son had. He wandered away into thepast, till the young man's voice brought him back."Is it well with you?" he asked.And the old man answered, "It is well.""There be wood beside you," the younger man continued, "and the fire burnsbright. The morning is gray, and the cold has broken. It will snow presently. Evennow is it snowing.""Ay, even now is it snowing.""The tribesmen hurry. Their bales are heavy, and their bellies flat with lack offeasting. The trail is long and they travel fast. I go now. It is well?""It is well. I am as a last year's leaf, clinging lightly to the stem. The first breaththat blows, and I fall. My voice is become like an old woman's. My eyes no longershow me the way of my feet, and my feet are heavy, and I am tired. It is well."He bowed his head in content till the last noise of the complaining snow had diedaway, and he knew his son was beyond recall. Then his hand crept out in haste tothe wood. It alone stood between him and the eternity that yawned in upon him. Atlast the measure of his life was a handful of fagots. One by one they would go tofeed the fire, and just so, step by step, death would creep upon him. When the laststick had surrendered up its heat, the frost would begin to gather strength. First hisfeet would yield, then his hands; and the numbness would travel, slowly, from theextremities to the body. His head would fall forward upon his knees, and he wouldrest. 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 closeto the earth, close to the earth had he lived, and the law thereof was not new tohim. It was the law of all flesh. Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She had noconcern 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 wascapable of, but he grasped it firmly. He saw it exemplified in all life. The rise ofthe sap, the bursting greenness of the willow bud, the fall of the yellow leaf--in thisalone was told the whole history. But one task did Nature set the individual. Did henot perform it, he died. Did he perform it, it was all the same, he died. Nature didnot care; there were plenty who were obedient, and it was only the obedience inthis matter, not the obedient, which lived and lived always. The tribe of Koskooshwas very old. The old men he had known when a boy, had known old men beforethem. Therefore it was true that the tribe lived, that it stood for the obedience of allits members, way down into the forgotten past, whose very resting-places wereunremembered. They did not count; they were episodes. They had passed awaylike 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 thetask 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 wasyet before her. The light in her eyes brightened, her step quickened, she was nowbold with the young men, now timid, and she gave them of her own unrest. Andever she grew fairer and yet fairer to look upon, till some hunter, able no longer towithhold himself, took her to his lodge to cook and toil for him and to become themother of his children. And with the coming of her offspring her looks left her. Herlimbs dragged and shuffled, her eyes dimmed and bleared, and only the littlechildren found joy against the withered cheek of the old squaw by the fire. Her taskwas done. But a little while, on the first pinch of famine or the first long trail, andshe would be left, even as he had been left, in the snow, with a little pile of wood.Such was the law.He placed a stick carefully upon the fire and resumed his meditations. It was thesame everywhere, with all things. The mosquitoes vanished with the first frost. Thelittle tree-squirrel crawled away to die. When age settled upon the rabbit it becameslow and heavy, and could no longer outfoot its enemies. Even the big bald-facegrew clumsy and blind and quarrelsome, in the end to be dragged down by ahandful of yelping huskies. He remembered how he had abandoned his own fatheron an upper reach of the Klondike one winter, the winter before the missionarycame with his talk-books and his box of medicines. Many a time had Koskooshsmacked his lips over the recollection of that box, though now his mouth refused tomoisten. The "painkiller" had been especially good. But the missionary was abother after all, for he brought no meat into the camp, and he ate heartily, and thehunters grumbled. But he chilled his lungs on the divide by the Mayo, and the dogsafterwards nosed the stones away and fought over his bones.

Koskoosh placed another stick on the fire and harked back deeper into the past.There was the time of the Great Famine, when the old men crouched empty-belliedto the fire, and let fall from their lips dim traditions of the ancient day when theYukon ran wide open for three winters, and then lay frozen for three summers. Hehad lost his mother in that famine. In the summer the salmon run had failed, andthe tribe looked forward to the winter and the coming of the caribou. Then thewinter came, but with it there were no caribou. Never had the like been known, noteven in the lives of the old men. But the caribou did not come, and it was theseventh year, and the rabbits had not replenished, and the dogs were naught butbundles of bones. And through the long darkness the children wailed and died, andthe women, and the old men; and not one in ten of the tribe lived to meet the sunwhen it came back in the spring. That was a famine!But he had seen times of plenty, too, when the meat spoiled on their hands, and thedogs were fat and worthless with overeating--times when they let the game gounkilled, and the women were fertile, and the lodges were cluttered with sprawlingmen-children and women-children. Then it was the men became high-stomached,and revived ancient quarrels, and crossed the divides to the south to kill the Pellys,and to the west that they might sit by the dead fires of the Tananas. Heremembered, when a boy, during a time of plenty, when he saw a moose pulleddown by the wolves. Zing-ha lay with him in the snow and watched--Zing-ha, wholater became the craftiest of hunters, and who, in the end, fell through an air-holeon the Yukon. They found him, a month afterward, just as he had crawled halfwayout and frozen stiff to the ice.But the moose. Zing-ha and he had gone out that day to play at hunting after themanner of their fathers. On the bed of the creek they struck the fresh track of amoose, and with it the tracks of many wolves. "An old one," Zing-ha, who wasquicker at reading the sign, said--"an old one who cannot keep up with the herd.The wolves have cut him out from his brothers, and they will never leave him."And it was so. It was their way. By day and by night, never resting, snarling on hisheels, snapping at his nose, they would stay by him to the end. How Zing-ha andhe felt the blood-lust quicken! The finish would be a sight to see!Eager-footed, they took the trail, and even he, Koskoosh, slow of sight and anunversed tracker, could have followed it blind, it was so wide. Hot were they onthe heels of the chase, reading the grim tragedy, fresh-written, at every step. Nowthey came to where the moose had made a stand. Thrice the length of a grownman's body, in every direction, had the snow been stamped about and uptossed. Inthe midst were the deep impressions of the splay-hoofed game, and all about,

everywhere, were the lighter footmarks of the wolves. Some, while their brothersharried the kill, had lain to one side and rested. The full-stretched impress of theirbodies in the snow was as perfect as though made the moment before. One wolfhad been caught in a wild lunge of the maddened victim and trampled to death. Afew bones, well picked, bore witness.Again, they ceased the uplift of their snowshoes at a second stand. Here the greatanimal had fought desperately. Twice had he been dragged down, as the snowattested, and twice had he shaken his assailants clear and gained footing oncemore. He had done his task long since, but none the less was life dear to him. Zing-ha said it was a strange thing, a moose once down to get free again; but this onecertainly had. The shaman would see signs and wonders in this when they toldhim.And yet again, they come to where the moose had made to mount the bank andgain the timber. But his foes had laid on from behind, till he reared and fell backupon them, crushing two deep into the snow. It was plain the kill was at hand, fortheir brothers had left them untouched. Two more stands were hurried past, brief intime-length and very close together. The trail was red now, and the clean stride ofthe great beast had grown short and slovenly. Then they heard the first sounds ofthe battle--not the full-throated chorus of the chase, but the short, snappy barkwhich spoke of close quarters and teeth to flesh. Crawling up the wind, Zing-habellied it through the snow, and with him crept he, Koskoosh, who was to be chiefof the tribesmen in the years to come. Together they shoved aside the underbranches of a young spruce and peered forth. It was the end they saw.The picture, like all of youth's impressions, was still strong with him, and his dimeyes watched the end played out as vividly as in that far-off time. Koskooshmarvelled at this, for in the days which followed, when he was a leader of men anda head of councillors, he had done great deeds and made his name a curse in themouths of the Pellys, to say naught of the strange white man he had killed, knife toknife, in open fight.For long he pondered on the days of his youth, till the fire died down and the frostbit deeper. He replenished it with two sticks this time, and gauged his grip on lifeby what remained. If Sit-cum-to-ha had only remembered her grandfather, andgathered a larger armful, his hours would have been longer. It would have beeneasy. But she was ever a careless child, and honored not her ancestors from thetime the Beaver, son of the son of Zing-ha, first cast eyes upon her. Well, whatmattered it? Had he not done likewise in his own quick youth? For a while he

listened to the silence. Perhaps the heart of his son might soften, and he wouldcome back with the dogs to take his old father on with the tribe to where thecaribou ran thick and the fat hung heavy upon them.He strained his ears, his restless brain for the moment stilled. Not a stir, nothing.He alone took breath in the midst of the great silence. It was very lonely. Hark!What was that? A chill passed over his body. The familiar, long-drawn howl brokethe void, and it was close at hand. Then on his darkened eyes was projected thevision of the moose--the old bull moose--the torn flanks and bloody sides, theriddled mane, and the great branching horns, down low and tossing to the last. Hesaw the flashing forms of gray, the gleaming eyes, the lolling tongues, the slaveredfangs. And he saw the inexorable circle close in till it became a dark point in themidst of the stamped snow.A cold muzzle thrust against his cheek, and at its touch his soul leaped back to thepresent. His hand shot into the fire and dragged out a burning faggot. Overcomefor the nonce by his hereditary fear of man, the brute retreated, raising a prolongedcall to his brothers; and greedily they answered, till a ring of crouching, jaw-slobbered gray was stretched round about. The old man listened to the drawing inof this circle. He waved his brand wildly, and sniffs turned to snarls; but thepanting brutes refused to scatter. Now one wormed his chest forward, dragging hishaunches after, now a second, now a third; but never a one drew back. Why shouldhe cling to life? he asked, and dropped the blazing stick into the snow. It sizzledand went out. The circle grunted uneasily, but held its own. Again he saw the laststand of the old bull moose, and Koskoosh dropped his head wearily upon hisknees. What did it matter after all? Was it not the law of life?