ADRIFT IN THE NIGHT
The ways of the savage and the highly civilized man are vastly different.
One is tempted to believe at times that the savage has the better end of
the bargain. Civilized man, from the time he enters school at six or
seven, until he is able to work no longer because of old age, rises at a
certain time each morning, goes at a stated hour to an appointed place,
stays a specified number of hours for study or work, then returns to his
home. This program is seldom varied.
The savage has no program. He rises one morning, comes upon the track of
game, begins a hunt that may lead him far and consume two days and a
night. The game at last run down and captured, he eats, then lies down to
sleep while the sun goes round the earth and returns to shine again.
Waking, he eats again. Then finding that some part of his hunting tog
requires attention, he consumes unlimited hours on the task.
It was so with Omnakok, the hunchback. Johnny, lying propped up among the
deer skins, watched him shaving away at the slab of tough wood for two
hours before he realized what he was about.
“He’s making a bow,” he told himself, “a bow, that’s it. Wonder what sort
of wood it is?”
To this question he could find no answer. Many strange woods were found
here. Besides, it is known that trade between the strange northern tribes
extends over thousands of miles.
“May have come from Russia or Greenland,” he told himself.
When his bumps and bruises began to make themselves felt and his eyes
grew heavy he dropped back among the deer skins and, entrusting himself
to the One who notes the sparrow’s fall, passed into the land of dreams.
When he awoke, several hours later, the bow was fully fashioned but still
the hunchback stood bending over it.
“He’s backing it with some tissue,” the boy told himself. “I know. It’s
reindeer sinew. I’ve heard of that. A bow so backed will never crack.”
Then a thought struck him all of a heap.
“He’s making that bow for me!” His heart gave a great leap. Perhaps no
boy in all the world ever felt such real joy over prospects of a new bow.
That it was intended for him he could not doubt for, though made on the
same lines and in the identical manner of Omnakok’s own, it was much
lighter.
“Fifty pounds, perhaps sixty,” he told himself. “How well he has judged
my strength.”
Sitting up, he felt his bumps. “Not so bad. Guess I could walk.” He stood
up, took a few steps, made a wry face, rubbed his legs, took a few more
steps, then gave vent to a low laugh. He was getting fit; be able to
travel soon.
Having placed the damp sinew, well mixed with fish glue, at the back of
the bow, Omnakok placed the bow before the fire, then dropping into a
corner, with legs crossed and long arms hanging down, he fell asleep.
On tiptoe Johnny wandered from corner to corner of the cabin. He had been
right. There was no food. The hunchback had shared his last meal.
“Some old sport,” he thought. “Not so bad for a savage.”
“When he wakes,” he told himself, “my new bow will be dry. Then we will
go for a hunt. Wonder what the game will be like?”
Had he known he surely must have shuddered. Had he known what was
happening to his good pal Faye Duncan, he must have rushed from the cabin
in a mad desire to reach her side and bring her aid. Knowing none of
these things, he replenished the fire, then sat down patiently to wait
the next move on the strange checkerboard of life.
Faye Duncan and her grandfather had joined the Indians in a meal of
stewed bear meat. Gordon Duncan had taken his place by the fire for his
evening nap, when Tico, who had been sleeping with nose on paws, suddenly
rose to sniff the air, then to go away into the night.
Her fear of the unknown overcome by curiosity, the girl followed him.
They had not gone a hundred paces before they came to a trail in the
snow. Many hours old, even distorted as they were by the melting of the
snow, the footprints were unmistakable.
“The—the great banshee!” the girl whispered under her breath.
As for the dog, he lifted up his voice in a howl which was an
unmistakable plaint for a lost friend. Little wonder. The trail had been
made by the hunchback as he had carried Johnny to his cabin.
Having completed his dirge of the night, Tico, nose to the snow, went
trotting away.
“He’s on the trail of the great banshee!” The girl gripped her breast to
still her heart’s wild beating. “Sha—shall I follow? Dare I?”
She answered her own question by again taking up the trail.
A quarter mile farther on, she came to that which made her start and
stare. A little to one side of the trail, a dark spot stood out against
the whiteness of the earth’s snow blanket.
“A—a mitten,” she said, picking it up. “It, why it—” again she strove in
vain to still her heart. “It’s Johnny’s!”
Who can say what wild thoughts surged through her breast as she stood
there in the snow beneath the starry heavens, alone in a vast hostile
wilderness?
Whatever they may have been, they at last urged her on at redoubled
speed. So, half walking, half running, she came at last to the brink of
the river. And there catastrophe befell her.
At this point on his long journey the hunchback had descended a sloping
bank of snow to travel for a time upon the river’s ice which was still
frozen to the bank. Since his passing, the ice had broken away. Many
yards of his trail had gone floating downstream.
Knowing nothing of this, the girl tried in vain to discover the way he
had gone.
“He can’t have taken to the river,” she told herself. “Still, there may
have been a boat. There—”
In leaning over the bank for a better look, she loosened the undermined
mass of snow and together they plunged into the racing river.
“It’s the end,” she told herself in despair as she felt the sting of icy
water. “No one can live in such a torrent.”
But what was this? Something touched her cheek. It was Tico. Seeing his
mistress adrift, he had plunged boldly in, determined to live or die with
her.
“Good old Tico!” Her voice choked. “We’ll die fighting.”
At that she put forth all her strength in an effort to regain the bank.
“But what’s the use?” she thought. “It’s only a steep bank of snow. No
one could scale it.”
With that thought, hoping against hope that something might come her way,
a log, a snag, an overhanging tree, she gave herself over to drifting and
quiet strokes that kept her afloat.