The grizzly king : $b a romance of the wildCurwood, James Oliver
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The grizzly king : $b a romance of the wild
Curwood, James Oliver
Grizzly bear -- Fiction; Wilderness areas -- Fiction
He filled page after page of the tablets which he
carried in his pack, writing feverishly and with great haste, oppressed
only by the fear that he would not be able to finish the message which he
had for the people of that other world a thousand miles away. Three times
during the morning Oachi came in and brought him the cooked fish and a
biscuit which she had made for him out of flour and meal. And each time he
said, "I am a man with the other men, Oachi. I would be a woman if I ate."
The third time Oachi knelt close down at his side, and when he refused the
food again there came a strange light into her eyes, and she said, "If you
starve--I starve!"
It was the first revelation to him. He put up his hands. They touched her
face. Some potent spirit in him carried him across all gulfs. In that
moment, thrilling, strange, he was heart and soul of the First People. In
an instant he had drifted back a thousand years, beyond the memory of
cities, of clubs, of all that went with civilization. A wild, half savage
longing filled him. One of his hands slipped to her shining hair, and
suddenly their faces lay close to each other, and he knew that in that
moment love had come to him from the fount of glory itself.
* * * * *
Days followed--black days filled with the endless terrors of the storm. And
yet they were days of a strange contentment which Roscoe had never felt
before. Oachi and her father were with him a great deal in the tepee which
they had given up to him. On the third day Roscoe noticed that Oachi's
little hands were bruised and red and he found that the chief's daughter
had gone out to dig down through ice and snow with the other women after
roots. The camp lived entirely on roots now--wild flag and moose roots
ground up and cooked in a batter. On this same day, late in the afternoon,
there came a low wailing grief from one of the tepees, a moaning sound that
pitched itself to the key of the storm until it seemed to be a part of it.
A child had died, and the mother was mourning. That night another of the
camp huntsmen failed to return at dusk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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