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Updated: June 16, 2025
Alan was one of the few who, by reason of much effort, had learned the story of the kloof from old Sokwenna; how, so long ago that Sokwenna was a young man, a hostile tribe had descended upon his people, killing the men and stealing the women; and how at last Sokwenna and a handful of his tribesmen fled south with what women were left and made a final stand in the kloof, and there, on a day that was golden and filled with the beauty of bird-song and flowers, had ambushed their enemies and killed them to a man.
The emptiness of the tundras, the illimitable spaces without sign of human life, the vast stage waiting for its impending drama, with its sunshine, its song of birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck a new note in him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat like a spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and lifeless stare of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out of that space which seemed so free of all evil.
"But Sokwenna has returned, and you will not be alone." "Where are you going?" "As far as the cottonwoods, I think." "Then I am going with you." "I expect to walk very fast." "Not faster than I, Alan." "But I want to make sure the country is clear in that direction before twilight shuts out the distances." "I will help you." Her hand crept into his. "I am going with you, Alan," she repeated.
He could expect no mercy nothing now but the most terrible of vengeance at their hands, and as he dodged back from the window he cursed Sokwenna under his breath, even as he felt the relief of knowing he was not dead. Before a shot had been fired from outside, he was up the ladder; in another moment he was bending over the huddled form of the old Eskimo. "Come below!" he commanded.
But " "They didn't rest an hour in coming from the mountains." "You know what I mean, Stampede." "Not many, Alan. Seven were killed, including Sokwenna," and he counted over the names of the slain. Tautuk and Amuk Toolik were not among them. "And Tautuk?" "He is wounded. Missed death by an inch, and it has almost killed Keok.
"We must be ready to leave through the cellar-pit." His hand touched Sokwenna's face; it hesitated, groped in the darkness, and then grew still over the old warrior's heart. There was no tremor or beat of life in the aged beast. Sokwenna was dead. The guns of Graham's men opened fire again. Volley after volley crashed into the cabin as Alan descended the ladder.
Another moment later, from where he sat cross-legged at the little window in the attic, keeping his unsleeping vigil with a rifle across his knees, old Sokwenna saw his master walk across the open, and something in the manner of his going brought back a vision of another day long ago when Ghost Kloof had rung with the cries of battle, and the hands now gnarled and twisted with age had played their part in the heroic stand of his people against the oppressors from the farther north.
In the candle-glow Alan saw the door of this trap propped open with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever. Sokwenna had foreseen. Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle in her hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the attic, and began to climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for him. Alan pointed to the open trap.
He watched with the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking that the bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight.
All were dead now, all but Sokwenna. For a space Alan was sorry he had called Sokwenna to his cabin. He was no longer the cheerful and gentle "old man" of his people; the old man who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook, who loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained an impish boyhood along with his great age. He was changed.
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