TROUBLE FOR PATSY
Hardly had Marian left camp when troubles began to pile up for Patsy.
Dawn had not yet come when she heard a strange ki-yi-ing that certainly
did not come from the herd collies, and she looked out and saw
approaching the most disreputable group of Eskimos she had ever seen.
Dressed in ragged parkas of rabbit skins, and driving the gauntest, most
vicious looking pack of wolf dogs, these people appeared to come from a
new and more savage world than hers. A rapid count told her there were
seven adults and five children.
“Enough of them to eat us out of everything, even to skin boots and
rawhide harness,” she groaned. “If they are determined to camp here,
who’s to prevent them?”
For a moment she stood there staring; then with a sudden resolve that she
must meet the situation, she exclaimed:
“I must send them on. Some way, I must. I can’t let them starve. They
must have food, but they must be sent on to some spot where they have
relatives who are able to feed them. The safety of the herd depends upon
that. With food gone we cannot hold our herders. With no herders we
cannot hold the deer. Marian explained that to me yesterday.”
Walking with all the dignity her sixteen years would permit, she
approached the spot where the strangers had halted their dogs and were
talking to old Terogloona. The dogs were acting strangely. Sawing at the
strong rawhide bonds that held them to the sleds, they reared up on their
haunches, ki-yi-ing for all they were worth.
“They smell our deer,” Patsy said to herself. “It’s a good thing our herd
is at the upper end of the range!” She remembered hearing Marian tell how
a whole herd of five thousand deer had been hopelessly stampeded by the
lusty ki-yi-ing of one wolf dog.
“The reindeer is their natural food,” Marian had explained. “If even one
of them gets loose when there is a reindeer about he will rush straight
at him and leap for his throat.”
“That’s one more reason why I must get these people to move on at once,”
Patsy whispered to herself.
To Terogloona she said: “What do they want?”
Terogloona turned to them with a simple: “_Suna-go-pezuk-peet?_” he
asked, “What do you want?”
With many guttural expressions and much waving of hands, the leader
explained their wishes.
“He say,” smiled Terogloona, “that in the hills about here are many
foxes, black fox, red fox, white, blue and cross fox. He say, that one,
want to camp here; want to set traps; want to catch foxes.”
“But what will they eat?” asked Patsy.
Terogloona, having interpreted the question, smiled again at their
answer:
“They will eat foxes,” he answered quietly and modestly.
For a moment Patsy looked into their staring, hungry, questioning eyes.
They were lying, and she knew it, but remembering a bit of advice of her
father’s: “Never quarrel with a hungry person—feed him,” she smiled as
she said to Terogloona:
“You tell them that this morning they shall eat breakfast with me; that
we will have pancakes and reindeer steak, and tea with plenty of sugar in
it.”
“_Capseta! Ali-ne-ca! Capseta!_” exclaimed one of the strangers who had
understood the word sugar and was passing it on in the native word,
_Capseta_, to his companions.
It was a busy morning for Patsy. There seemed no end to the appetites of
these half starved natives. Even Terogloona grumbled at the amount they
ate, but Patsy silenced him with the words:
“First they must be fed, then we will talk to them.”
Troubles seldom come singly. Hardly had the last pancake been devoured,
than Terogloona, looking up from his labors, uttered an exclamation of
surprise. A half mile up from the camp the tundra was brown with feeding
reindeer.
“Scarberry’s herd,” he hissed.
“Oh!” exclaimed Patsy. “They dare to do that? They dare to drive their
deer on our nearest and best pasture? And what can we do to stop them?
Must Marian’s mission be in vain? Must she go all that way for nothing?
If they remain, the range will be stripped long before she can return!”
Pressing her hands to her temples, she sat down unsteadily upon one of
the sleds of the strangers.
She was struggling in a wild endeavor to think of some way out. Then, of
a sudden, a wolfdog jumped up at her very feet and began to ki-yi in a
most distressing fashion.
Looking up, she saw that three of Scarberry’s deer, having strayed nearer
the camp than the others, had attracted the dog’s attention. Like a
flash, a possible solution to her problem popped into Patsy’s head.
With a cry of delight she sprang to her feet. The next instant she was
her usual, calm self.
“Terogloona,” she said steadily, “come into the tent for a moment. I have
something I wish to ask you.”
The task which Marian had set for herself, the scaling of the mountain to
the dark spot in its side, was no easy one. Packed by the beating blast
of a thousand gales, the snow was like white flint. It rang like steel to
the touch of her iron shod staff. It was impossible to make an impression
in its surface with the soft heel of her deerskin boots. The only way she
could make progress was by the aid of her staff. One slip of that staff,
one false step, and she would go gliding, faster, faster, ever faster, to
a terrible death far below.
Yet to falter now meant that death of another sort waited her; death in
the form of increasing cold and gathering storm.
Yet she made progress in spite of the cold that numbed her hands and
feet; in spite of her wildly beating heart; regardless of the terror that
gripped her. Now she had covered half the distance; now two-thirds; now
she could be scarcely a hundred yards away. And now she saw clearly. She
had not been mistaken. That black spot in the wall of snow was a yawning
hole in the side of the mountain, a refuge in the time of storm. Could
she but reach it, all would be well.
Could she do it? From her position the way up appeared steeper. She
thought of going back for the reindeer. Their knife-like hoofs, cutting
into the flinty snow, would carry them safely upward. She now regretted
that she had not driven one before her. Vain regret. To descend now was
more perilous than to go forward.
So, gripping her staff firmly, pressing her breast to still the wild
beating of her heart, and setting her eyes upon the goal lest they stray
to the depths below, she again began to climb.
Now she began going first to right, then to left. This zig-zag course,
though longer, was less steep. Up—up—up she struggled, until at last,
with an exultant cry of joy, she threw herself over a broad parapet of
snow and the next instant found herself looking down at a world which but
the moment before had appeared to be reaching up white menacing hands at
her. Then she turned to peer into the dark depths of the cave. She
shivered as she looked. Her old fancies of fairies and goblins, of
strange, wild people inhabiting these mountains, came sweeping back and
quite unnerved her.
The next moment she was herself again, and turning she called down to
Attatak:
“Who-hoo! Who-hoo! Bring the reindeer up. Here is shelter for the night.”
An inaudible answer came floating back to her. Then she saw the reindeer
turn about and begin the long, zig-zag course that in time would bring
them to the mouth of the newly discovered cave.
“And then,” Marian said softly to herself.
She was no longer afraid of the dark shadows behind her. In the place of
fear had come a great curiosity. The same questions which have come to
all people throughout all time upon discovering a strange cave in the
mountains, had come to her. “Am I,” she asked herself, “the first person
whose footsteps have echoed in those mysterious corridors of nature, or
have there been others? If there have been others, who were they? What
were they like? What did they leave behind that will tell the story of
their visit here?”
Marian tried to shake herself free from these questions. It was extremely
unlikely that any one, in all the hurrying centuries, had ever passed
this way. They were on the side of a mountain. She had never known of a
person crossing the range before. So she reasoned, but in the end found
herself hoping that this cave might yield to her adventure loving soul
some new and hitherto inexperienced thrill.
In the meantime she heard the labored breathing of the reindeer as they
toiled up the mountainside. They would soon be here. Then she and Attatak
would make camp, and safe from the cold and storm, they would sleep in
peace.
A great wave of thankfulness swept over her, and with the fervent
reverence of a child, she lifted her eyes to the stars and uttered a
prayer of thanksgiving.
When the wave of emotion had passed, curiosity again gripped her. She
wished to enter the cave, yet shrank from it. Like a child afraid of the
dark, she feared to go forward alone. So, drawing her parka hood close
about her face to protect it from the cold, she waited for Attatak’s
arrival.
Even as she waited there crept into her mind a disturbing question:
“I wonder,” she said aloud, “I do wonder how Patsy is getting along with
the herd?”