Short Stories
hiding soldiers.
"You can go now," said Koolau to the captain. "I will never
give myself up. That is my last word. Good-bye."
The captain slipped over the cliff to his soldiers. The next
moment, and without a flag of truce, he hoisted his hat on his
scabbard, and Koolau's bullet tore through it. That afternoon
they shelled him out from the beach, and as he retreated into the
high inaccessible pockets beyond, the soldiers followed him.
For six weeks they hunted him from pocket to pocket, over
the volcanic peaks and along the goat-trails. When he hid in the
lantana jungle, they formed lines of beaters, and through lantana
jungle and guava scrub they drove him like a rabbit. But ever he
turned and doubled and eluded. There was no cornering him.
When pressed too closely, his sure rifle held them back and they
carried their wounded down the goat-trails to the beach. There
were times when they did the shooting as his brown body
showed for a moment through the underbrush. Once, five of
them caught him on an exposed goat-trail between pockets.
They emptied their rifles at him as he limped and climbed along
his dizzy way. Afterwards they found bloodstains and knew that
he was wounded. At the end of six weeks they gave up. The sol-
diers and police returned to Honolulu, and Kalalau Valley was
left to him for his own, though head-hunters ventured after him
from time to time and to their own undoing.
Two years later, and for the last time, Koolau crawled into a
thicket and lay down among the ti-leaves and wild ginger blos-
soms. Free he had lived, and free he was dying. A slight drizzle
of rain began to fall, and he drew a ragged blanket about the dis-
torted wreck of his limbs. His body was covered with an oilskin
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