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The God of His Fathers: Tales of the Klondyke By: Jack London (1876-1916) |
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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 These tales have appeared in "McClure's," "Ainslee's," "Outing," the
"Overland Monthly," the "Wave," the "National," and the San Francisco
"Examiner." To the kindness of the various editors is due their
reappearance in more permanent form . TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE WOLF WHO HAVE BRED AND SUCKLED A RACE OF MEN
THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS
I
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 mockingly back across a still stretch of
river. In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch bark canoes
were lined two and three deep. Ivory bladed spears, bone barbed arrows,
buckskin thonged bows, and simple basket woven traps bespoke the fact
that in the muddy current of the river the salmon run was on. In the
background, from the tangle of skin tents and drying frames, rose the
voices of the fisher folk. Bucks skylarked with bucks or flirted with
the maidens, while the older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of
having fulfilled the end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as
they braided rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At their feet
their naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the muck with the
tawny wolf dogs. To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it, stood a
second camp of two tents. But it was a white man's camp. If nothing
else, the choice of position at least bore convincing evidence of this... Continue reading book >>
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Short stories |
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