The Handful of Sticks

Then his hand moved out from the furs to touch the wood. It alone stood between him and what lay beyond the death that opened before him. Now the measure of his life was a handful of sticks. One by one they would go to feed the fire, and just so, step by step, death would come closer to him. When the last stick had given all of its heat, the frost would begin to gather strength. First his feet would yield, then his hands; and the lack of feeling would travel, slowly, to his body. His head would fall forward upon his knees, and he would rest. It was easy. All men must die.

He did not murmur. It was the law of life, and it was just. He had been born close to the earth and close to the earth had he lived. Its law was not new to him. It was the law of all flesh. Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She had no concern for that single thing called the individual. Her interest lay in the race of man as a whole. This was the deepest thought that old Koskoosh's uneducated mind could master. But he grasped this idea firmly. He saw its truth displayed everywhere. The awakening of life in a tree, the bursting greenness of its branches, the fall of the yellow leaf — in this alone was told the whole history. But one task nature did give the individual. Did he not perform it, he died. Did he perform it, it was all the same — he died. Nature did not care; there were plenty who would obey. It was only the need that this duty be obeyed, not the man who obeyed it, which lived and lived always. The tribe of Koskoosh was very old. The old men he had known when he was a boy had known old men before them. Therefore, it was true that the tribe lived, that it represented the obeying of all its members, whose final resting places were unremembered. They were not important; they were chapters in life's story. They had passed away like clouds from a summer sky. He also would pass away. Nature did not care. To life she gave one task and one law. To continue the race was the task of life; its law was death.

A young girl was a good creature to look upon, full-breasted and strong, with a lightness to her step and a shine in her eyes. But her task was yet before her. The light in her eyes brightened and her step quickened. She laughed with the young men, then she turned away. She passed on to them her own unrest. And she grew fairer and yet fairer to look upon. Finally, some hunter took her to his tent to cook and work for him and to become the mother of his children. And with the coming of her children her beauty left her. She dragged her legs and arms when she walked. Her eyes lost their brightness. Then only the little ones found joy in the old, lined face. Her task was done. In a little while, in the first famine or in the first long trail, she would be left, as he had been left, in the snow, with a little pile of wood. Such was the law.