While everything else in the Fire Valley was growing, developing and flourishing, Little Mok's frail body had ever grown but slowly, and about the beginning of his twelfth year there appeared a change in him. He became permanently weak and grew more and more helpless day by day. His cherished excursions to the river, even his little journeys on old One-Ear's strong arm to the cliff top, from whence he could see the whole world at once, had all to be abandoned.
When the winter snows began to whirl in the air Little Mok was lying quietly on his bed, his great eyes looking wistfully up at Lightfoot, who in vain taxed her limited skill and resources to tempt him to eat and become more sturdy. She hovered over him like a distressed mother bird over its youngling fallen from the nest, but, with all her efforts, she could not bring back even his usual slight measure of health and strength to the poor Little Mok. Ab came sometimes and looked sadly at the two and then walked moodily away, a great weight on his breast. Old Mok was always at work, and yet always ready to give Little Mok water or turn his weary little frame on its rude bed, or spread the furs over the wasted body, and always Lightfoot waited and hoped and feared. And at last Little Mok died, and was buried under the stones, and the snow fell over the lonely cairn under the fir trees outside the Fire Valley where his grave was made.
Lightfoot was silent and sad, and could not smile nor laugh any more. She longed for Little Mok, and did not eat or sleep. One night Ab, trying to comfort her, said, "You will see him again."
"What do you mean?" cried Lightfoot. And Ab only answered, "You will see him; he will come at night. Go to sleep, and you will see him."
But Lightfoot could not sleep yet and for many a night her eyes closed only when extreme fatigue compelled sleep toward the morning.
And at last, after many days and nights, Lightfoot, when asleep, saw Little Mok. Just as in life, she saw him, with all his familiar looks and motions. But he did not stay long. And again and again she saw him, and it comforted her somewhat because he smiled. There had come to her such a heartache about him, lying out there under the snow and stones, with no one to care for him, that the smile warmed her heavy heart and she told Ab that she had seen Little Mok, only whispering it to him--for it was not well, she knew, to talk about such things--and she whispered to Ab, too, her anguish that Little Mok only came at night, and never when it was day, but she did not complain. She only said: "I want to see him in the daytime."
And Ab could think of nothing to say. But that made him think more and more. He felt drawn closer to Lightfoot, his wife, no longer a young girl, but the mother of Little Mok, who was dead, and of all his children.
In his mind arose, vaguely obscure, yet persistent, the idea that brute strength and vigor, keen senses and reckless bravery were not, after all, the sole qualities that make and influence men. Old Mok, crippled and disabled for the hunt and defense, was nevertheless a power not to be despised, and Little Mok, the helpless child, had been still strong enough to win and keep the love of all the stalwart and rough cave people. Ab was sorry for Lightfoot. When in the spring the forlorn mother held in her arms a baby girl a little brightness came into her eyes again, and Ab, seeing this, was glad, but neither Ab nor Lightfoot ever forgot their eldest and dearest, Little Mok.