But the people are prone
to forget, and they forgot the deed of his father; and he being but a
boy, and his mother only a woman, they, too, were swiftly forgotten, and
ere long came to live in the meanest of all the _igloos_.
It was at a council, one night, in the big _igloo_ of Klosh-Kwan, the
chief, that Keesh showed the blood that ran in his veins and the manhood
that stiffened his back. With the dignity of an elder, he rose to his
feet, and waited for silence amid the babble of voices.
"It is true that meat be apportioned me and mine," he said. "But it is
ofttimes old and tough, this meat, and, moreover, it has an unusual
quantity of bones."
The hunters, grizzled and gray, and lusty and young, were aghast. The
like had never been known before. A child, that talked like a grown man,
and said harsh things to their very faces!
But steadily and with seriousness, Keesh went on. "For that I know my
father, Bok, was a great hunter, I speak these words. It is said that
Bok brought home more meat than any of the two best hunters, that with
his own hands he attended to the division of it, that with his own eyes
he saw to it that the least old woman and the least old man received
fair share.
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