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Updated: June 15, 2025
You would probably think him mad if he told you the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were here with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway, he has been cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled every woman and child in the village on their way to the mountains. Keok and Nawadlook wouldn't go.
For a mighty resolution had taken root in the prospector's heart, and he felt himself thrilled and a bit trembling at the nearness of the greatest drama that had ever entered his life. Alan, looking back after the first few minutes, saw that Keok and Nawadlook stood alone. Stampede was gone.
Even Keok and Nawadlook heard his laugh. It was strange, they thought Keok with her knife, and Nawadlook with her gun for the bird was singing, and Alan Holt was laughing, and Mary Standish was very still.
His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he traveled slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within him. He could not laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra call to Amuk Toolik and his people, who would be riotous in their happiness at his return. They loved him. He knew that.
It was Nawadlook who turned first and saw who it was with Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little screech that only one person in the world could make, and that was Keok. She dropped the armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire and made straight for him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild creature in the manner of her coming, was only a moment behind.
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.
In the edge of the tundra beyond the cottonwoods he noticed three saddle-deer grazing at the ends of ropes which were fastened to cotton-tufted nigger-heads. He drew off his pack as Mary Standish went to help Keok pick up the fallen sticks. Nawadlook was pulling a coffee-pot from the tiny fire. Stampede began to fill a pipe.
But Tautuk and Amuk Toolik did not come, and he saw the strange change in Keok, and knew that they were dead. Yet he dreaded to ask the question, for more than any others of his people did he love these two missing comrades of the tundras. It was Stampede who first told him in detail what had happened but he would say little of the fight on the ledge, and it was Mary who told him of that.
The old warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly and said something reassuring to Keok, and faced the window again with the gun which she had loaded for him.
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