and his bones were crushed; but the bear had much meat on him and
the people were saved. Keesh was his only son, and after that
Keesh lived alone with his mother. But the people are prone to
forget, and they forgot the deed of his father; and he being but a
boy, and his mother only a woman, they, too, were swiftly
forgotten, and ere long came to live in the meanest of all the
IGLOOS.

It was at a council, one night, in the big IGLOO of Klosh-Kwan, the
chief, that Keesh showed the blood that ran in his veins and the
manhood that stiffened his back. With the dignity of an elder, he
rose to his feet, and waited for silence amid the babble of voices.

"It is true that meat be apportioned me and mine," he said. "But
it is ofttimes old and tough, this meat, and, moreover, it has an
unusual quantity of bones."

The hunters, grizzled and gray, and lusty and young, were aghast.
The like had never been known before. A child, that talked like a
grown man, and said harsh things to their very faces!

But steadily and with seriousness, Keesh went on. "For that I know
my father, Bok, was a great hunter, I speak these words. It is
said that Bok brought home more meat than any of the two best
hunters, that with his own hands he attended to the division of it,
that with his own eyes he saw to it that the least old woman and
the last old man received fair share."

"Na! Na!" the men cried. "Put the child out!" "Send him off to
bed!" "He is no man that he should talk to men and graybeards!"