And it was only by the cumulative evidence of years that he had
finally come to understand. Being an alien, when he did know, he
knew it better than the white man himself; being an Indian, he
had achieved the impossible.
And of these things had been bred a certain contempt for his own
people--a contempt which he had made it a custom to conceal, but
which now burst forth in a polyglot whirlwind of curses upon the
heads of Kah-Chucte and Gowhee. They cringed before him like a
brace of snarling wolf dogs, too cowardly to spring, too wolfish
to cover their fangs. They were not handsome creatures. Neither
was Sitka Charley. All three were frightful-looking. There was no
flesh to their faces; their cheekbones were massed with hideous
scabs which had cracked and frozen alternately under the intense
frost; while their eyes burned luridly with the light which is
born of desperation and hunger. Men so situated, beyond the pale
of the honor and the law, are not to be trusted. Sitka Charley
knew this; and this was why he had forced them to abandon their
rifles with the rest of the camp outfit ten days before. His
rifle and Captain Eppingwell's were the only ones that remained.
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