Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin | Page 6

hurried out of doors, hopeful for the day's pleasures. The snow had stopped, but the ground was covered with a thick white pall, and the mountains were turned to rose colour in the morning sun, which was rising in a blaze of glory.
"Good morning, Kalitan," shouted Ted to his Indian friend, whom he spied heaping wood upon the camp-fire. "Isn't it dandy? What can we do to-day?"
"Have breakfast," said Kalitan, briefly. "Then do what Tyee says."
"Well, I hope he'll say something exciting." said Ted.
"Think good day to hunt," said Kalitan, as he prepared things for the morning meal.
"Where did you get the fish?" asked Ted.
"Broke ice-hole and fished when I got up," said the Thlinkit.
"You don't mean you have been fishing already," exclaimed the lazy Ted, and Kalitan smiled as he said:
"White people like fish. Tyee said: 'Catch fish for Boston men's breakfast,' and I go."
"Do you always mind him like that?" asked Ted. He generally obeyed his father, but there were times when he wasn't anxious to and argued a little about it. Kalitan looked at him in astonishment.
"He chief!" he said, simply.
"What will we do with the camp if we all go hunting?" asked Ted.
"Nothing," said Kalitan.
"Leave Chetwoof to watch, I suppose," I continued Ted.
"Watch? Why?" asked Kalitan.
"Why, everything; some one will steal our things," said Ted.
"Thlinkits not steal," said Kalitan, with dignity. "Maybe white man come along and steal from his brothers; Indians not. If we go away to long hunt, we cache blankets and no one would touch."
"What do you mean by _cache_?" asked Ted.
"We build a mound hut near the house, and put there the blankets and stores. Sometime they stay there for years, but no one would take from a cache. If one has plenty of wood by the seashore or in the forest, he may cord it and go his way and no one will touch it. A deer hangs on a tree where dogs may not reach it, but no stray hunter would slice even a piece. We are not thieves."
"It is a pity you could not send missionaries to the States, you Thlinkits, my boy," said Mr. Strong, who had come up in time to hear Kalitan's words, "I'm afraid white people are less honest."
"Teddy, do you know we are to have some hunting to-day, and that you'll get your first experience with a glacier."
"Hurrah," shouted Ted, dancing up and down in excitement.
"Tyee Klake says we can hunt toward the base of the glacier, and I shall try to go a little ways upon it and see how the land lies, or, rather, the ice. It is getting warmer, and, if it continues a few days, the snow will melt enough to let us go over to that island you are so anxious to see."
Ted's eyes shone, and the amount of breakfast he put away quite prepared him for his day's work, which, pleasant though it might be, certainly was hard work. The chief said they must seek the glacier first before the sun got hot, for it was blinding on the snow. So they set out soon after breakfast, leaving Chetwoof in charge of the camp, and with orders to catch enough fish for dinner.
"We'll be ready to eat them, heads and tails," said Ted, and his father added, laughingly:
"'Bible, bones, and hymn-book, too.'"
"What does that mean?" asked Ted, as Kalitan looked up inquiringly.
"Once a writer named Macaulay said he could make a rhyme for any word in the English language, and a man replied, 'You can't rhyme Timbuctoo.' But he answered without a pause:
"If I were a Cassowary On the plains of Timbuctoo, I'd eat up a missionary, Bible, bones, and hymn-book, too."
Ted laughed, but Kalitan said, grimly:
"Not good to eat Boston missionary, he all skin and bone!"
"Where did they get the name Alaska?" asked Ted, as they tramped over the snow toward the glacier.
"Al-ay-ck-sa--great country," said Kalitan.
"It certainly is," said Ted. "It's fine! I never saw anything like this at home," pointing as he spoke to the scene in front of him.
A group of evergreen trees, firs and the Alaska spruce, so useful for fires and torches, fringed the edge of the ice-field, green and verdant in contrast to the gleaming snows of the mountain, which rose in a gentle slope at first, then precipitously, in a dazzling and enchanting combination of colour. It was as if some marble palace of old rose before them against the heavens, for the ice was cut and serrated into spires and gables, turrets and towers, all seeming to be ornamented with fretwork where the sun's rays struck the peaks and turned them into silver and gold. Lower down the ice looked like animals, so twisted was it into fantastic shapes; fierce sea monsters with yawning mouths seeming ready to devour; bears