Chapter XII

“LET THERE BE PEACE”

ONCE the next fall Sitka again met the Eskimo, who again pursued him with his spear. This time the little bear made a great dive into the sea and swam to safety under water.

But apparently the little brown boy was determined to have his hide,—as determined as the little white bear was to keep it. For Unga had boasted in his village that he meant to get that bear. He had vowed to have Sitka’s great fur coat.

The next year, when Sitka had grown larger still, and Mother White Bear was too busy with his new little brother to pay him any attention, the Eskimo nicked his ear with his bone-pointed spear. After that he knew him by that nicked ear. The year after he grazed Sitka’s side, and Sitka turned and pursued him angrily, as determined now to get the boy as the boy was to get the bear.

Year after year went by, while Sitka grew into a huge white monster, and Unga developed into a lithe little brown-faced man clad in the fur of his kill. And it came to pass that the Eskimo’s one great desire was to carry Sitka’s pelt to his igloo and deliver his boast to the admiring eyes of his village. And Sitka knew that the Eskimo youth would never leave him in peace while they both should live.

One autumn when Sitka was ten years old and the Eskimo twenty, they had both gone far inland over the Arctic barrens, and both for the same reason, in the hope of securing some reindeer meat. As it happened, a hoard of the great, white Arctic wolves had also followed the deer.

One night Sitka stood gazing at the most wonderful Aurora he had ever seen. Brilliant bars of light colored like the rainbow marched across the Northern sky-line,—always from West to East. Suddenly across the glowing North stalked a row of seven of the great white wolves. Failing to find the reindeer, and seeing Sitka so far from his native seas, they began circling toward him; and though the lone bear knew better than to hope to fight off so many foes, and though he took to his heels with all swiftness, the wolves were swifter, and soon he was baring fang and claw to a circle of famished green eyes and slavering jaws. Sitka reared himself on his great haunches, towering tall above them, that he might sell his life dearly.

But Unga had also seen the seven wolves, white against the ruddy sky. And he had seen the great white bear prints, and knew that his old-time foe was near. Now, he told himself with chagrin, the wolves would get the bear, not he,—and he could never bring the great white pelt to his village in the pride of his long-time boast.

Like the flight of a falling star a bright idea shot into his head. He, armed as he was with the musket the white men had given his father, would fight the wolves off the bear! Then he would still have a chance, some day, of getting the bear himself.

With the fire-arm that spoke death from afar, he came running to meet the wolves. With his musket that out-marvelled the sharpest spear he brought down the foremost wolf. But the shot only wounded that great beast, so white against the surrounding whiteness,—it did not stop him long. The surprise of that gave the little brown man pause. A new thought appalled him. Should his gun fail too often, might he not find himself in danger?

On came the ravening wolf pack, and back fell the Eskimo with his weapon that here broke a leg and there caused the red blood to flow, but did not stop the wolves. Soon Unga was standing back to back with the great white bear, within the narrowing circle of their foes, aware that not the bear’s life alone, but his own, lay largely in Sitka’s fighting powers.

But though the great bear unaided could not have felled so many foes, who darted now on this side, now on that, under his guard in intent to ham-string him, nor could the Eskimo alone have handled so many with even the best of weapons, between them they put first one, then another of the attacking hoard to rout. Where the great bear was taken at a disadvantage, the Eskimo came to the rescue. Where the little brown man would have been overwhelmed, the mailed white forearm of his furry foe sent one more of their common foes to writhing in an agony of deep-cut wounds. Now the leader wolf had turned the brunt of his ferocity on the weaker animal, which was the man. But Unga’s musket, pointed close, blew the old wolf’s head off. Then the next in leadership of the wolf pack approached the bear, keen to dart under his mailed fist, that guarded his vitals, and out again before punishment descended. But the lightning swiftness of that mailed fist was aided by the roar of the man-made weapon close at his head, and he was done for.

All this while the little brown man recognized with amazement that for himself as well as the bear it had become a matter of life and death. They two stood back to back, comrades of battle, with Sitka, red-eyed and furious, turning the tide of battle in his favor. And twin to the thought, he also recognized that, were it not for his musket, the bear would soon have been laid low on the snow instead of the mangled wolves.

The bear also was bleeding, as was the little brown man, but both would heal quickly, as the wounds were not deep. But the wolves lay dead at their feet.

The bear stood licking his wounds, while the Auroral curtain shot beauty across the frozen sky, as if nothing but beauty could exist in all the white Arctic world. Sitka was too blinded with blood to see his remaining enemy,—his life-long enemy, more feared by far than the wolves had ever been. Unga could have got him then. But he didn’t!

He had fought side by side with this great furry fellow, with their two lives in the balance. He had fought to save the bear, and the bear’s good fight had saved his own life. They were fellow fighters! They had fought together,—and won!

It came to him then that he no longer wanted the pelt of the plucky brute. He no longer cared to make it his boast in the village nor wear it before his igloo. Why, he owed a debt of gratitude to that bear, and the bear was already his in the sense that he had saved him. Besides, the great white beast, whom he had watched from the days of his wee, fat cub-hood,—this dumb brute who would now be so helpless against the pointing of the man-made musket,—had he not fairly won his life and freedom?

“Do you go your way, and I will go mine,” he said in his heart, and by some strange telepathy, Sitka in his heart understood. “Henceforth, let there be peace between us!”

The little brown man sped away into the Arctic night, to the East where the reindeer herded, and Sitka shambled off toward the West, where the fish of the sea never failed him.