A hunter, struck between the eyes with a rifle-ball, pitched forward lifeless, and with the momentum of his charge slid along the ground.  Fairfax came back to himself.  His comrades, those that lived, had been swept far back among the trees beyond.  He could hear the fierce “Hia!  Hia!” of the hunters as they closed in and cut and thrust with their weapons of bone and ivory.  The cries of the stricken men smote him like blows.  He knew the fight was over, the cause was lost, but all his race traditions and race loyalty impelled him into the welter that he might die at least with his kind.

“My man!  My man!” Thom cried.  “Thou art safe!”

He tried to struggle on, but her dead weight clogged his steps.

“There is no need!  They are dead, and life be good!”

She held him close around the neck and twined her limbs about his till he tripped and stumbled, reeled violently to recover footing, tripped again, and fell backward to the ground.  His head struck a jutting root, and he was half-stunned and could struggle but feebly.  In the fall she had heard the feathered swish of an arrow darting past, and she covered his body with hers, as with a shield, her arms holding him tightly, her face and lips pressed upon his neck.

Then it was that Keen rose up from a tangled thicket a score of feet away.  He looked about him with care.  The fight had swept on and the cry of the last man was dying away.  There was no one to see.  He fitted an arrow to the string and glanced at the man and woman.  Between her breast and arm the flesh of the man’s side showed white.  Keen bent the bow and drew back the arrow to its head.  Twice he did so, calmly and for certainty, and then drove the bone-barbed missile straight home to the white flesh, gleaming yet more white in the dark-armed, dark-breasted embrace.

THE LAW OF LIFE

Old Koskoosh listened greedily.  Though his sight had long since faded, his hearing was still acute, and the slightest sound penetrated to the glimmering intelligence which yet abode behind the withered forehead, but which no longer gazed forth upon the things of the world.  Ah! that was Sit-cum-to-ha, shrilly anathematizing the dogs as she cuffed and beat them into the harnesses.  Sit-cum-to-ha was his daughter’s daughter, but she was too busy to waste a thought upon her broken grandfather, sitting alone there in the snow, forlorn and helpless.  Camp must be broken.  The long trail waited while the short day refused to linger.  Life called her, and the duties of life, not death.  And he was very close to death now.