Short Stories
He arose, and with a heavy fragment of rock in his hand, ap-
proached the wounded thing. As he lifted his arm to strike, a
shell burst full upon him, relieving him of the necessity of the act
and at the same time putting an end to his count.
Koolau was alone in the gorge. He watched the last of his
people drag their crippled bodies over the brow of the height
and disappear. Then he turned and went down to the thicket
where the maid had keen killed. The shell-fire still continued,
but he remained; for far below he could see the soldiers climbing
up. A shell burst twenty feet away. Flattening himself into the
earth, he heard the rush of the fragments above his body. A
shower of hau blossoms rained upon him. He lifted his head to
peer down the trail, and sighed. He was very much afraid. Bul-
lets from rifles would not have worried him, but this shell-fire
was abominable. Each time a shell shrieked by he shivered and
crouched; but each time he lifted his head again to watch the
trail.
At last the shells ceased. This, he reasoned, was because the
soldiers were drawing near. They crept along the trail in single
file, and he tried to count them until he lost track. At any rate,
there were a hundred or so of them—all come after Koolau the
leper. He felt a fleeting prod of pride. With war guns and rifles,
police and soldiers, they came for him, and he was only one
man, a crippled wreck of a man at that. They offered a thousand
dollars for him, dead or alive. In all his life he had never pos-
sessed that much money. The thought was a bitter one. Kapahei
had been right. He, Koolau, had done no wrong. Because the ha-
oles wanted labour with which to work the stolen land, they had
brought in the Chinese coolies, and with them had come the
sickness. And now, because he had caught the sickness, he was
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