Short Stories
ceased. The tiny area was pitted with their explosions, until it
seemed impossible that any creature could have survived. So the
soldiers thought, for, under the burning afternoon sun, they
climbed the goat-trail again. And again the knife-edged passage
was disputed, and again they fell back to the beach.
For two days longer Koolau held the passage, though the sol-
diers contented themselves with flinging shells into his retreat.
Then Pahau, a leper boy, came to the top of the wall at the back
of the gorge and shouted down to him that Kiloliana, hunting
goats that they might eat, had been killed by a fall, and that the
women were frightened and knew not what to do. Koolau called
the boy down and left him with a spare gun with which to guard
the passage. Koolau found his people disheartened. The majority
of them were too helpless to forage food for themselves under
such forbidding circumstances, and all were starving. He select-
ed two women and a man who were not too far gone with the
disease, and sent them back to the gorge to bring up food and
mats. The rest he cheered and consoled until even the weakest
took a hand in building rough shelters for themselves.
But those he had dispatched for food did not return, and he
started back for the gorge. As he came out on the brow of the
wall, half a dozen rifles cracked. A bullet tore through the fleshy
part of his shoulder, and his cheek was cut by a sliver of rock
where a second bullet smashed against the cliff. In the moment
that this happened, and he leaped back, he saw that the gorge
was alive with soldiers. His own people had betrayed him. The
shell-fire had been too terrible, and they had preferred the pris-
on of Molokai.
Koolau dropped back and unslung one of his heavy cartridge
-belts. Lying among the rocks, he allowed the head and should-
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