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Updated: July 16, 2025
"Oh, mebby fifteen miles from here." "Do they live on the tundra as they used to?" "Yes." "Are there many of them?" "Not now. Many, one time. Now very few. Not many reindeer. Too much not moss. Plenty starve. Plenty die." "Ask the Chukche," Marian said eagerly, "if I may go home with him to see his people." The boy spoke for a moment with the grave-visaged stranger.
Lucile put this to her lips for a taste. The next instant she with great difficulty set the cup on the floor while all her face was distorted with loathing. "Rotten!" she sputtered. "A year old!" "Eh eh," grinned the chief, "always eat 'em so, Chukche." Thoroughly disheartened, she left the igloo. But on her way back she came upon a woman skinning a seal.
He was inclined to believe that he had had much to do with that harpoon episode as well as the murder attempted by the reindeer Chukches. "By Jove!" the American boy suddenly slapped his knee. "The knife, the two knives exactly alike. One he tried to use in the street fight at Vladivostok; the other he must have given to the reindeer Chukche to use on anyone who might follow him."
Pausing for a dash into an igloo, she emerged a moment later bearing under one arm a pile of fur garments and under the other some native hunting implements. Then she made a dash for the shore ice. It was at this juncture that the first Chukche emerged from the large igloo. At his heels roared the whole gang. Like a pack of bloodthirsty hounds, they strove each one to keep first place in the race.
With the air clear and wind light, the crossing might be made in safety. Even as he looked, Johnny saw a man leap the gap. Curiosity caused him to watch this man, whom he had taken for a Chukche hunter. Now he appeared, now disappeared, only to reappear again round an ice pile. But he behaved strangely for a hunter.
Whether she was a Japanese Johnny was not prepared to say, and that in spite of the fact that he had studied her carefully for five days. She might be a Chukche who, through some strange impulse, had been led south to seek culture and education. He doubted that. She might be an Eskimo from Alaska making her way north to cross Behring Strait in the spring. He doubted that also.
Johnny smiled as he sat before his igloo. Two signs of spring pleased him. Some tiny icicles had formed on the cliff above him, telling of the first thaw. An aged Chukche, toothless, and blind, had unwrapped his long-stemmed pipe to smoke in the sunshine. Johnny had seen the old man before and liked him. He was cheerful and interesting to talk to.
She drew maps on the deck to show the seamen that she was a member of the reindeer Chukche tribes, who spoke a different language from the hunting tribes, thus explaining why she could not converse freely with the veteran Arctic sailors who had learned Chukche on their many voyages. She was fortunate in immediately securing a cook's linen cap.
How many were following this man Johnny could not tell. As Johnny stood awaiting the arrival of the stranger, many wild misgivings raced through his mind. What if this man was but the forerunner of the whole Chukche tribe? Then indeed, for himself and the Japanese girl things were at an end. The newcomer was armed with a rifle.
The ugly shaved head of a Chukche it was; and in the intruder's hand was a knife. The knife startled Johnny. He could not believe his eyes. He thought he was seeing double; yet he did not move. Slowly, silently the arm of the native rose until it hung over Johnny's heart. In a second it would In that second something happened. There came a deadly thwack.
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