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Her heart stood still, for who would look for him there; and then as he waved at her she gathered up her hindering skirts and ran down the hill to meet him. He rode in majestically, swaying about on his big mule; and behind him followed his pack-mule, weighed down with two kyacks of ore, and Good Luck was tied on the pack.
He dressed himself in white flannels with a silk shirt of delf blue and pale green stripes, and wished that there was a looking-glass in camp large enough to reflect all of him at once. Then, because his beard stubble did not harmonize, he shaved with one of the safety razors he found. After that he sorted and packed a careful wardrobe, and stored strange food into two canvas kyacks.
Hicks set methodically to work, gathering up the loose articles, thrusting them into sacks, lashing the sacks on the crossbuck saddle. At the end of a half-hour, he stepped back. "That might ride for a while," said Thorne. "I never pack without kyacks," said Hicks. "So I see. Well, sit down and watch the rest of them. Ware!" Thorne shouted.
The lookout from the mast-head saw some boats coming from the main-land, and presently three kyacks, an omien, and two whale-boats came alongside, bringing about fifty people, including men, women, and children. "Papa" was there also, and he, too, is one of the few savages that are thoroughly reliable in every respect. He was one of Captain Hall's party when he visited King William Land in 1868.
When the great procession had drifted past, with its braying clamor, its dogs, its men on muleback and afoot, the herders with their carbines, the camp rustlers with their burros, belled and laden with water casks and kyacks of grub, the sheep owners hustling about with an energy that was almost a mania, Hardy sat beneath the ramada of the ranch house with dog-fighting Tommy in his lap and pondered deeply upon the spectacle.
"Most of them will go a little slow. They're used to kyacks. But you'd have your specialty." "What would it be?" asked Amy curiously of Bob. The young man shook his head. "You haven't got some nice scrappy little job, have you?" he asked, "where I can tell people to hop high? That's about all I'm good for." "We might even have that," said Thorne, eyeing the young man's proportions.
In the dusk he saw that the room was empty save for a tarpaulin and a pair of rawhide kyacks such as the herders use. Examining the kyacks he found that they contained flour, beans, salt, sugar, and coffee. Evidently the herders had intended making the deserted ranch-house their headquarters. He wondered vaguely where the Mexicans were. The thought that they might return did not worry him.
There were two kinds of boats the long ones, for from twelve to twenty men, the little skiffs which Eskimos of the Atlantic call kyacks with two or three, seldom more, manholes. Over the whalebone frame was stretched the wet elastic hide of walrus or sea-lion.
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