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Updated: May 23, 2025
He heard the deafening echoing explosions of splitting ice in the distance . . . With fierce ferocity he instinctively fastened one bleeding hand to an icy projection above him, with the other he held with grimly desperate determination to the sled . . . In the next dizzy instant he felt the icy floor beneath him lurch itself forward and downward . . . before his very eyes he saw Koolotah and his team not twenty feet below wiped from existence by the descending glacier to which he clung and in the hollow crevice of which he found security . . . In a second's space he caught a clear vision of tremendous masses of green and purple glaciers being ground to fine powder in their swift descent on all sides of him, . . . he saw the feathery ice fragments catch fire in the moonlight, . . . he heard the elemental roar and grinding crash of ice mountains sundering in a titanic convulsion . . . then he lost hearing . . . In that same sick bewildering moment of preternatural consciousness he thought wildly of Annadoah . . . he saw her appealing wan face amid the blur of white moonlight . . . he knew she needed food . . . and he felt an ache at his heart . . . he called upon the spirits of his ancestors.
Koolotah felt his heart choking him as it seemed to enlarge within; Ootah, in truth, was not entirely unafraid. Both knew that a slip of the foot would plunge them to instant death. As they ascended the trail, the gathering clouds surrounded them. They could no longer see their dogs. They could not even perceive the blackness of the chasm to their right.
Arranging themselves instinctively in single file, the traces slackening, the wonderful dogs, with feline caution, crept ahead. Lowering their bodies, each behind his sledge, Ootah and Koolotah began moving stealthily downward.
"That would be bad," Ootah replied. "I have left my mother forever," Koolotah wailed. "Be brave, lad; they need food; beseech the spirits of those who lived when men's sap was stronger, thy ancestors, for strength. Come!" Koolotah raised his head then uttered a low cry of alarm. He drew back, fearfully, pointing with a trembling arm to the mountain pass ahead.
They have quarrelled among themselves. And before the white men came, did they not reproach us, their wives and their betrothed, with thy name and the vaunted skill of thee? Thou art as the woman with an iron tail, she who killed men when they came to her, their skins flushed with love. Thou destroyest men! Thou didst send Ootah and Koolotah to the mountains! And they have perished! Ioh-h! Ioh-h!"
Koolotah's mother was dying; a desperate desire to save her stirred in his heart as he lifted his whip in the signal to start. The tribe cheered. "Huk! Huk!" he shouted, and his lean dogs followed Ootah's team. "Au-oo-au-oo!" called the natives. "Auoo-auoo!" the voices of Ootah and Koolotah returned. Over the snow-covered stretch of level shoreland the moon poured a flood of silver incandescence.
"And Koolotah did he not say two moons ago that Koolotah would depart on a long journey from which he should never return?" "And the wife of Kyutah did she not perish after his evil prophesy? And Piuaitsoq did not the spirit of the skin tents strike him when he lay asleep? And did not yon evil wretch tell of it long before?" A dozen voices angrily rose in assent.
Suddenly the dogs began to sniff the air and bark hungrily. "Ahmingmah!" Koolotah cried, joyfully. Ootah released the team the dogs made a misty black streak in their dash over the ice. The men followed. In the shelter of a cave they found five musk oxen. They were huddled together and half numb with cold.
Mile after mile swept under their feet. Their road often lay along the very edges of purple-black abysses. The echoes of their sharp gliding sleds cutting the ice, of the very patter of their dogs' feet, were magnified in volume in the clear air, and it seemed as though, in the hollow depths on every side, ghostly teams were following. Koolotah was white with fear. But Ootah encouraged him onward.
His team of eight lean dogs howled. "Tugto! Tugto!" he called. The dogs leaped into the air his sled shot forward. Ootah strode forward. In his desperate adventure Ootah was joined by one of the younger members of the tribe, Koolotah by name, a lad barely eighteen years of age. All the others had hung back.
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