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His monotonous, sing-song utterance lured Imber to dreaming, and he was dreaming deeply when the man ceased. A voice spoke to him in his own Whitefish tongue, and he roused up, without surprise, to look upon the face of his sister's son, a young man who had wandered away years agone to make his dwelling with the whites. "Thou dost not remember me," he said by way of greeting.
He may be escaping by the basement window!" "Jam hiems transiit, imber abiit et recessit; surge, amica mea, et veni!" droned the priest, and the whole company clattered downstairs. "Quick! Out with you!" commanded Father Holland. "Speed to y'r heels, and blessing on the last o' ye!" I dashed down the stairs and was bolting through the doorway when some one shouted, "There he is!"
"And I, Imber, pondered upon these things, watching the while the Whitefish, and the Pellys, and all the tribes of the land, perishing as perished the meat of the forest. Long I pondered. I talked with the shamans and the old men who were wise.
And so purposeless and wanton had been these killings, that they had long been a mystery to the mounted police, even in the time of the captains, and later, when the creeks realized, and a governor came from the Dominion to make the land pay for its prosperity. But more mysterious still was the coming of Imber to Dawson to give himself up.
They chatted for ten minutes or so, when Emily Travis, glancing past Dickensen's shoulder, gave a startled little scream. Dickensen turned about to see, and was startled, too. Imber had crossed the street and was standing there, a gaunt and hungry-looking shadow, his gaze riveted upon the girl. "What do you want?" Little Dickensen demanded, tremulously plucky.
He was a romantic little chap, and he likened the immobile old heathen the genius of the Siwash race, gazing calm-eyed upon the hosts of the invading Saxon. The hours swept along, but Imber did not vary his posture, did not by a hair's-breadth move a muscle; and Dickensen remembered the man who once sat upright on a sled in the main street where men passed to and fro.
His monotonous, sing-song utterance lured Imber to dreaming, and he was dreaming deeply when the man ceased. A voice spoke to him in his own Whitefish tongue, and he roused up, without surprise, to look upon the face of his sister's son, a young man who had wandered away years agone to make his dwelling with the whites. "Thou dost not remember me," he said by way of greeting.
Dickensen could not understand his speech, and Emily Travis laughed. Imber turned from one to the other, frowning, but both shook their heads. He was about to go away, when she called out: "Oh, Jimmy! Come here!" Jimmy came from the other side of the street. He was a big, hulking Indian clad in approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king's sombrero on his head.
I am very old, and very tired, and it being vain fighting the Law, as thou sayest, Howkan, I am come seeking the Law." "O Imber, thou art indeed a fool," said Howkan. But Imber was dreaming. The square-browed judge likewise dreamed, and all his race rose up before him in a mighty phantasmagoria his steel-shod, mail-clad race, the law-giver and world-maker among the families of men.
And he dreamed as only age can dream upon the colossal futility of youth. Later, Howkan roused him again, saying: "Stand up, O Imber. It be commanded that thou tellest why you did these troubles, and slew these people, and at the end journeyed here seeking the Law." Imber rose feebly to his feet and swayed back and forth.
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