  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. |
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