The Magnetic North | Page 7

was dumb.
"This is the one that talks English," said the Boy, indicating Nicholas, "and he lives at Pymeut, and he's been converted."
"How far is Pymeut?"
"We sleep Pymeut to-night," says Nicholas.
"Which way?"
The native jerked his head up the river.
"Many people there?"
He nodded.
"White men, too?"
He shook his head.
"How far to the nearest white men?"
Nicholas's mind wandered from the white man's catechism and fixed itself on his race's immemorial problem: how far it was to the nearest thing to eat.
"I thought you said he could speak English."
"So he can, first rate. He and I had a great pow-wow, didn't we, Nicholas?"
Nicholas smiled absently, and fixed his one eye on the bacon that Mac was cutting on the deal box into such delicate slices.
"He'll talk all right," said the Boy, "when he's had some breakfast."
Mac had finished the cutting, and now put the frying-pan on an open hole in the little stove.
"Cook him?" inquired Nicholas.
"Yes. Don't you cook him?"
"Take heap time, cook him."
"You couldn't eat it raw!"
Nicholas nodded emphatically.
Mac said "No," but the Boy was curious to see if they would really eat it uncooked.
"Let them have some of it raw while the rest is frying"; and he beckoned the visitors to the deal box. They made a dart forward, gathered up the fat bacon several slices at a time, and pushed it into their mouths.
"Ugh!" said the Colonel under his breath.
Mac quickly swept what was left into the frying-pan, and began to cut a fresh lot.
The Boy divided the cold beans, got out biscuits, and poured the tea, while silence and a strong smell of ancient fish and rancid seal pervaded the little tent.
O'Flynn put a question or two, but Nicholas had gone stone-deaf. There was no doubt about it, they had been starving.
After a good feed they sat stolidly by the fire, with no sign of consciousness, save the blinking of beady eyes, till the Colonel suggested a smoke. Then they all grinned broadly, and nodded with great vigour. Even those who had no other English understood "tobacco."
When he had puffed awhile, Nicholas took his pipe out of his mouth, and, looking at the Boy, said:
"You no savvy catch fish in winter?"
"Through the ice? No. How you do it?"
"Make hole--put down trap--heap fish all winter."
"You get enough to live on?" asked the Colonel.
"They must have dried fish, too, left over from the summer," said Mac.
Nicholas agreed. "And berries and flour. When snow begin get soft, Pymeuts all go off--" He motioned with his big head towards the hills.
"What do you get there?" Mac was becoming interested.
"Caribou, moose--"
"Any furs?"
"Yes; trap ermun, marten--"
"Lynx, too, I suppose, and fox?"
Nicholas nodded. "All kinds. Wolf--muskrat, otter--wolverine--all kinds."
"You got some skins now?" asked the Nova Scotian.
"Y--yes. More when snow get soft. You come Pymeut--me show."
"Where have ye been just now?" asked O'Flynn.
"St. Michael."
"How long since ye left there?"
"Twelve sleeps."
"He means thirteen days."
Nicholas nodded.
"They couldn't possibly walk that far in--"
"Oh yes," says the Boy; "they don't follow the windings of the river, they cut across the portage, you know."
"Snow come--no trail--big mountains--all get lost."
"What did you go to St. Michael's for?"
"Oh, me pilot. Me go all over. Me leave N. A. T. and T. boat St. Michael's last trip."
"Then you're in the employ of the great North American Trading and Transportation Company?"
Nicholas gave that funny little duck of the head that meant yes.
"That's how you learnt English," says the Colonel.
"No; me learn English at Holy Cross. Me been baptize."
"At that Jesuit mission up yonder?"
"Forty mile."
"Well," says Potts, "I guess you've had enough walking for one winter."
Nicholas seemed not to follow this observation. The Boy interpreted:
"You heap tired, eh? You no go any more long walk till ice go out, eh?"
Nicholas grinned.
"Me go Ikogimeut--all Pymeut go."
"What for?"
"Big feast."
"Oh, the Russian mission there gives a feast?"
"No. Big Innuit feast."
"When?"
"Pretty quick. Every year big feast down to Ikogimeut when Yukon ice get hard, so man go safe with dog-team."
"Do many people go?"
"All Innuit go, plenty Ingalik go."
"How far do they come?"
"All over; come from Koserefsky, come from Anvik--sometime Nulato."
"Why, Nulato's an awful distance from Ikogimeut."
"Three hundred and twenty miles," said the pilot, proud of his general information, and quite ready, since he had got a pipe between his teeth, to be friendly and communicative.
"What do you do at Ikogimeut when you have these--" "Big fire--big feed--tell heap stories--big dance. Oh, heap big time!"
"Once every year, eh, down at Ikogimeut?"
"Three times ev' year. Ev' village, and"--he lowered his voice, not with any hit of reverence or awe, but with an air of making a sly and cheerful confidence--"and when man die."
"You make a feast and have a dance when a friend dies?"
"If no priests. Priests no like. Priests say, 'Man no dead; man gone up.'" Nicholas pondered the strange saying, and slowly shook his head.
"In that the priests are right," said Mac grudgingly.
It