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One night, after Yamikan has gone home, Bidarshik stands up, so, very tall, and he strikes his chest with his fist, and says, 'When I am a man, I shall journey in far places, even to the land where there is no snow, and see things for myself." "Always did Bidarshik journey in far places," Zilla interrupted proudly. "It be true," Ebbits assented gravely.
There they crouched by the fire, the pair of them, at the end of their days, old and withered and helpless, racked by rheumatism, bitten by hunger, and tantalized by the frying-odors of my abundance of meat. They rocked back and forth in a slow and hopeless way, and regularly, once every five minutes, Ebbits emitted a low groan. It was not so much a groan of pain, as of pain-weariness.
Also, I would hear the name of that country. I have heard the name before, but I would hear it again, if it be the same thus will I know if I have heard lies or true talk." Old Ebbits regarded me with a wistful face. He would have the truth at any cost, though it was his desire to retain his faith in the marvel he had never seen. "Yes," I answered, "it is true talk that you have heard.
I insisted. "Thy very strong sons and thine old-age hunger?" "There was Moklan," Ebbits began. "A strong man," interrupted the mother. "He could dip paddle all of a day and night and never stop for the need of rest. He was wise in the way of the salmon and in the way of the water. He was very wise." "There was Moklan," Ebbits repeated, ignoring the interruption.
"But the white man speaks true in different ways. To-day he speaks true one way, to-morrow he speaks true another way, and there is no understanding him nor his way." "To-day speak true one way, to-morrow speak true another way, which is to lie," was Zilla's dictum. "There is no understanding the white man," Ebbits went on doggedly.
He ceased, puffed at the pipe, found that it was out, and passed it over to Zilla, who took the sneer at the white man off her lips in order to pucker them about the pipe-stem. Ebbits seemed sinking back into his senility with the tale untold, and I demanded: "What of thy sons, Moklan and Bidarshik? And why is it that you and your old woman are without meat at the end of your years?"
"He would shake his head and say, 'Only do I care to eat the grub of the white man and grow fat after the manner of Yamikan." "And he did not eat the meat," Ebbits went on. "And the sickness of Bidarshik grew into a great sickness until I thought he would die. It was not a sickness of the body, but of the head. It was a sickness of desire. I, Ebbits, who am his father, make a great think.
"Ay," said Ebbits, "and he saw that Yamikan had made true talk of the things he had seen. But there was no way for Bidarshik to journey to the white man's land under the sun, and he grew sick and weary like an old man and moved not away from the fire. No longer did he go forth to kill meat " "And no longer did he eat the meat placed before him," Zilla broke in.
I shook my head in token of my ignorance, and Ebbits looked compassion at me, while Zilla snorted her customary contempt. "Look you, O White Man," he said. "In thy camp is a dog that bites. When the dog bites a man, you give that man a present because you are sorry and because it is thy dog. You make payment. Is it not so?
"Know, O White Man, that it is because of thy kind, because of all white men, that my man and I have no meat in our old age and sit without tobacco in the cold." "Nay," Ebbits said gravely, with a stricter sense of justice. "Wrong has been done us, it be true; but the white men did not mean the wrong." "Where be Moklan?" she demanded.