Tales of the Klondyke | Page 3

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This etext was prepared from the 1906 Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons

edition by David Price, email [email protected]

TALES OF THE KLONDYKE

THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS

Contents:
The God of His Fathers The Great Interrogation Which Make Men
Remember Siwash The Man with the Gash Jan, the Unrepentant Grit of
Women Where the Trail Forks A Daughter of the Aurora At the
Rainbow's End The Scorn of Women

THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS

On every hand stretched the forest primeval,--the home of noisy
comedy and silent tragedy. Here the struggle for survival continued to
wage with all its ancient brutality. Briton and Russian were still to
overlap in the Land of the Rainbow's End-- and this was the very heart
of it--nor had Yankee gold yet purchased its vast domain. The
wolf-pack still clung to the flank of the cariboo-herd, singling out the
weak and the big with calf, and pulling them down as remorselessly as
were it a thousand, thousand generations into the past. The sparse
aborigines still acknowledged the rule of their chiefs and medicine men,
drove out bad spirits, burned their witches, fought their neighbors, and
ate their enemies with a relish which spoke well of their bellies. But it
was at the moment when the stone age was drawing to a close. Already,
over unknown trails and chartless wildernesses, were the harbingers of
the steel arriving,--fair-faced, blue-eyed, indomitable men, incarnations
of the unrest of their race. By accident or design, single-handed and in
twos and threes, they came from no one knew whither, and fought, or
died, or passed on, no one knew whence. The priests raged against
them, the chiefs called forth their fighting men, and stone clashed with
steel; but to little purpose. Like water seeping from some mighty
reservoir, they trickled through the dark forests and mountain passes,
threading the highways in bark canoes, or with their moccasined feet
breaking trail for the wolf-dogs. They came of a great breed, and their
mothers were many; but the fur-clad denizens of the Northland had this

yet to learn. So many an unsung wanderer fought his last and died
under the cold fire of the aurora, as did his brothers in burning sands
and reeking jungles, and as they shall continue to do till in the fulness
of time the destiny of their race be achieved.
It was near twelve. Along the northern horizon a rosy glow, fading to
the west and deepening to the east, marked the unseen dip of the
midnight sun. The gloaming and the dawn were so commingled that
there was no night,--simply a wedding of day with day, a scarcely
perceptible blending of two circles of the sun. A kildee timidly chirped
good-night; the full, rich throat of a robin proclaimed good-morrow.
From an island on the breast of the Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced
its interminable wrongs, while a loon laughed