"London, Jack - Tales of the klondyke" - читать интересную книгу автора (London Jack)

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