drumming of partridges, and songs of robins, and great music, for the
winter is broken, Passuk, and I have learned the love of woman.'

"She smiled and moved for me to draw her closer. And she said, 'I am
glad.' After that she lay quiet for a long time, breathing softly, her
head upon my breast. Then she whispered: 'The trail ends here, and I am
tired. But first I would speak of other things. In the long ago, when I
was a girl on the Chilcat, I played alone among the skin bales of my
father's lodge; for the men were away on the hunt, and the women and boys
were dragging in the meat. It was in the spring, and I was alone. A
great brown bear, just awake from his winter's sleep, hungry, his fur
hanging to the bones in flaps of leanness, shoved his head within the
lodge and said, "Oof!" My brother came running back with the first sled
of meat. And he fought the bear with burning sticks from the fire, and
the dogs in their harnesses, with the sled behind them, fell upon the
bear. There was a great battle and much noise. They rolled in the fire,
the skin bales were scattered, the lodge overthrown. But in the end the
bear lay dead, with the fingers of my brother in his mouth and the marks
of his claws upon my brother's face. Did you mark the Indian by the
Pelly trail, his mitten which had no thumb, his hand which he warmed by
our fire? He was my brother. And I said he should have no grub. And he
went away in the Silence without grub.'

"This, my brothers, was the love of Passuk, who died in the snow, by the
Caribou Crossing. It was a mighty love, for she denied her brother for
the man who led her away on weary trails to a bitter end. And, further,
such was this woman's love, she denied herself. Ere her eyes closed for
the last time she took my hand and slipped it under her squirrel-skin
_parka_ to her waist. I felt there a well-filled pouch, and learned the
secret of her lost strength. Day by day we had shared fair, to the last