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And then, as he leaped cleanly and well, one lone rifle barked from the pit, and he doubled up in mid-air, struck the ground in a ball, and like a ball bounced from the impact, and came down in a broken heap. "Who so swift as the swift-winged lead?" Aab-Waak pondered. Tyee grunted and turned away. The incident was closed and there was more pressing matter at hand.
The cause of all these things, the peaceableness, and the polygamy, and the tired neck of Aab-Waak, goes back among the years to the time when the schooner Search dropped anchor in Mandell Bay, and when Tyee, chief man of the tribe, conceived a scheme of sudden wealth.
Oloof protested, his ears furtively alert for the coming of other bullets. "It is not right that they should fight so, these Sunlanders. Why will they not die easily? They are fools not to know that they are dead men, and they give us much trouble." "We fought before for great wealth; we fight now that we may live," Aab-Waak summed up succinctly.
Aab-Waak still carries his head on one shoulder, is become an oracle, and preaches peace to the younger generation, for which he receives a pension from the Company. Tyee is foreman of the mine. But he has achieved a new theory concerning the Sunlanders.
"Better were it to ask why they come," cried a voice from the darkness, and Aab-Waak pushed his way to the front. "Ay! Why they come!" clamored many voices, and Aab-Waak waved his hand for silence. "Men do not dig in the ground for nothing," he began. "And I have it in mind of the Whale People, who are likewise Sunlanders, and who lost their ship in the ice.
Tyee and Aab-Waak tried to hold the Mandell Folk back, were thrust aside, and could only turn and watch the mad charge. But no shots came from the Sunlanders, and ere half the distance was covered, many, affrighted by the mysterious silence of the pit, halted and waited. The wilder spirits bore on, and when they had cut the remaining distance in half, the pit still showed no sign of life.
Wherefore, I am a broken man, and helpless ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!" "And did they die, the cursed Sunlanders, at the end of the narrow way?" Tyee demanded. "How should I know they waited?" Aab-Waak gurgled. "For my brothers had gone before, many of them, and there was no sound of struggle. How should I know why there should be no sound of struggle?
"Ay; and if it should happen that two of you be left, then will you have six guns each. Therefore, fight well." "And if there be none of them left?" Aab-Waak whispered slyly. "Then will we have the guns, you and I," Tyee whispered back. However, to propitiate the Hungry Folk, he made one of them leader of the ship expedition.
So the tribesmen crouched in the hollow places and burrowed into the dirt in the open, while the Sunlanders' bullets searched the plain. "Move not," Tyee pleaded, as Aab-Waak came worming over the ground to him. "Move not, good Aab-Waak, else you bring death upon us." "Death sits upon many," Aab-Waak laughed; "wherefore, as you say, there will be much wealth in division.
The advance was taken up and the manoeuvre repeated at fifty yards. Still no sign nor sound. Tyee shook his head, and even Aab-Waak was dubious. But the order was given to go on, and go on they did, till bale touched bale and a solid rampart of skin and hide bowed out from the cliff about the pit and back to the cliff again.
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