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"It's gettin' pretty serious," remarked the Colonel. "We can't afford to lose a pint o' syrup." "No, Siree, we can't; but there's one thing about Kaviak," said the Boy, "he always owns up. Look here, Kiddie: don't say no; don't shake your head till you've thought. Now, think hard." Kaviak's air of profound meditation seemed to fill every requirement.
Towards the end of dinner one day late in December, when everybody else had finished except for coffee and pipe, the aborigine held up his empty plate. "Haven't you had enough?" asked the Colonel mildly, surprised at Kaviak's bottomless capacity. "Maw." Still the plate was extended.
Kaviak's demand for some of the beverage reminded the Boy of the Christmas-tree. It had been intended as a climax to wind up the entertainment, but to produce it now might save the situation. He got up and pulled on his parki. "Back 'n a minute." But he was gone a long time. Benham looked down the toast-list and smiled inwardly, for it was Klondyked from top to bottom.
The Boy crowed long and loud: "'Effer ole wile rooster widder speckly tail Commer crowin' befoh de do', En yo got some comp'ny a'ready, Yo's gwinter have some mo'." Then he grunted, and went on all fours. "Kaviak!" he called, "you take warnin' "'Wen yo' see a pig agoin' along " Look here: Kaviak's never seen a pig! I call it a shame.
An avalanche of sound swept in a mighty howling and snarling and cracking of whips, and underneath the higher clamour, human voices and in dashes the Boy, powdered with snow, laughing and balancing carefully in his mittened hands a little Yukon spruce, every needle diamond-pointed, every sturdy branch white with frost crystals and soft woolly snow, and bearing its little harvest of curious fruit sweet-cake rings and stars and two gingerbread men hanging by pack-thread from the white and green branches, the Noah's Ark lodged in one crotch, the very amateur snow-shoes in another, and the lost toys wrapped up, transfigured in tobacco-foil, dangling merrily before Kaviak's incredulous eyes.
Mac picked the body up and held it head downwards; laid it flat again, and, stripping off the great sodden jacket, already beginning to freeze, fell to putting Kaviak through the action of artificial breathing. "We must get them up to the cabin first thing," said the Boy. But Mac seemed not to hear. "Don't you see Kaviak's face is freezing?" Still Mac paid no heed.
He was very angry when Potts and O'Flynn eavesdropped and roared at Kaviak's struggles with "Ow Farva." In fact, Kaviak did not shine as a student of civilisation, though that told less against him with O'Flynn, than the fact that he wasn't "jolly and jump about, like white children." Moreover, Jimmie, swore there was something "bogey" about the boy's intermittent knowledge of English.
And he took steps that it should be, for he began stealing away Kaviak's few cherished possessions his amulet, his top from under the bunk, his boats from out the water-bucket, wherewith to mitigate the barrenness of the Yukon tree, and to provide a pleasant surprise for the Esquimer who mourned his playthings as gone for ever.
"Do you remember the thing about the screech-owl and the weather signs?" said the Colonel, roused at last by the jig on his toes and the rattle of improvised "bones" almost in his face. "Reckon I do, honey," said the Boy, his feet still flying and flapping on the hard earthen floor. "'Wen de screech-owl light on de gable en' En holler, Who ool oh oh!" He danced up and hooted in Kaviak's face.
The travellers pledged each other in Oklahoma whisky, and making a common cause once more, the original Trio put in a night of it. The Boy and the Colonel turned into their bunks at eleven o'clock. They were roused in the small hours, by Kaviak's frightened crying, and the noise of angry voices. "You let the kid alone."
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