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Updated: May 12, 2025
Now you'll understand what's in my mind when I say that I'm coming along back when I've settled with Garstaing, or failed to locate him. If I've settled with him I'll be in a hurry. And I'm going up north north where no one can ever hope to follow me, with An-ina, and Marcel, and maybe Julyman and Oolak again, and I'm going to work this thing for the rest of my life for Marcel.
Steve was wiping his face with a bare hand. Julyman missed the movement in the darkness. "She mak' him break bimeby soon. Oh, yes." There was something almost heroic in the attempt Julyman made to throw confidence into his tone. But Steve needed no such support. He was preoccupied with his own discoveries. His bare hand was still wiping away the curiously moist snow that beat upon his face.
Back at the fire Oolak watched his companions retake their places. He had no questions to ask. He simply waited. That was his way. He seemed to live at all times with a mind absorbed. Steve pointed at the diminished pile of scrub wood. "Best make up the fire," he said, addressing Julyman. The Indian eyed him doubtfully. Their store of fuel was perilously low. "Sure," Steve nodded.
"Guess I'll eat right away, and after that we'll get along an' take a peek at these folks. The boys got the snow clear outside?" "Him dig much. Snow plenty gone." "Good. And little Marcel?" Steve enquired, with a tender smile. "Has he been digging?" The squaw's eyes lit. "Oh, yes, him boy dig. An' Julyman, an' him Oolak all laff. Boy dig all time, everywhere." An-ina laughed in her silent way.
"Him fire," said Oolak, wiping the grease from his lips on the sleeve of his furs. "Him big fires. Oolak know. Him not eat plenty. Him see this thing. The spirits show him so he know all time." Steve gulped his tea down, and set the pannikin on the ground. "That's crazy," he declared. "It's not spirits who show Oolak. It's as Julyman says. He eats plenty.
For a moment astonishment robbed Steve of speech. Julyman was, perhaps, less affected. He stood beside his boss grinning down at the apparition till his eyes were almost entirely hidden by their closing lids, and his copper skin was wrinkled into a maze of creases. Steve's ultimate effort was a responsive, "Hello!"
He was half buried in the drift, and the lash of the storm whipped his face mercilessly. For some moments he endured the assault, then his voice came back to the figures of his companions squatting moveless over the fire. "Ho, you, Julyman!" he called sharply. Moments later the Indian stood beside the white man, peering out into the desolation beyond. "She's not going to last a deal longer."
"He dream of Unaga him fire of Unaga! So!" Steve started. In a moment, at the challenge of Julyman, his mind had bridged a gulf of fourteen years. He was gazing upon a scene he had almost forgotten. A strange, magnificent scene in the heart of a white world where snow and ice held nature's wonderful creation buried deep in its crystal dungeons.
For the inspiration of Julyman had stirred his own inspiration beyond all reason. In a moment his mind was a surge of teeming thought, with Unaga the fires of Unaga the centre of a vivid, reckless imagination. For fourteen years a wealth of dogged effort had been expended in an accumulation of failure, as he had admitted to Lorson Harris only a few weeks back in Seal Bay.
When Oolak dropped over the side of a canyon, with most of the outfit the reindeer went with him. You see, we'd rid ourselves of the dogs. We couldn't feed 'em. Well, I guessed the end had come. But it hadn't. Julyman and An-ina took up the work of hauling, while I carried Marcel. Only they hauled Oolak instead of the outfit.
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