"Know, O White Man, that it is because of thy kind, because of all
white men, that my man and I have no meat in our old age and sit
without tobacco in the cold."
"Nay," Ebbits said gravely, with a stricter sense of justice.
"Wrong has been done us, it be true; but the white men did not mean
the wrong."
"Where be Moklan?" she demanded. "Where be thy strong son, Moklan,
and the fish he was ever willing to bring that you might eat?"
The old man shook his head.
"And where be Bidarshik, thy strong son? Ever was he a mighty
hunter, and ever did he bring thee the good back-fat and the sweet
dried tongues of the moose and the caribou. I see no back-fat and
no sweet dried tongues. Your stomach is full with emptiness
through the days, and it is for a man of a very miserable and lying
people to give you to eat."
"Nay," old Ebbits interposed in kindliness, "the white man's is not
a lying people. The white man speaks true. Always does the white
man speak true." He paused, casting about him for words wherewith
to temper the severity of what he was about to say.
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