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As it sprang past, he reached out, gripped its forelegs in mid-career, and sent it whirling earthward. Then he struck it a well-judged blow beneath the ear, and flung it to Sipsu. And while she clapped on the harness, he, with his axe, held the passage between the trees, till a shaggy flood of white teeth and glistening eyes surged and crested just beyond reach. Sipsu worked rapidly.
In this manner Hitchcock made the chief's lodge. For long he lay in the snow without, listening to the voices of the occupants and striving to locate Sipsu. Evidently there were many in the tent, and from the sounds they were in high excitement. At last he heard the girl's voice, and crawled around so that only the moose-hide divided them.
Sipsu seized it avidly. "Ootah goeth to the mountains," Maisanguaq said, panting for breath. The old man sneered bitterly: "He cannot brave the spirits. No man can live in the mountains. The breath of the spirits is death." "Yea, he goeth. He says that he knows where the ahmingmah abound. The air is still; the moon rises for ten sleeps. By then, so he saith, he can return with meat."
Yea, as he hateth all who are young, who are brave, and who find joy in their shadow." Their voices rose threateningly. Maisanguaq, chagrined and bitter at the old man, leered among the crowd. "Hath he not lived too long," he whispered softly. And the others suddenly shouted: "Let Sipsu die!" In a wild rush they bore down upon the angakoq's igloo. Screaming with rage they kicked in the sides.
The butt of Hitchcock's rifle drove him to his knees, whence he toppled over sideways. The witch doctor, running lustily, saw the blow fall. Hitchcock called to Sipsu to pull out. At her shrill "Chook!" the maddened brutes shot straight ahead, and the sled, bounding mightily, just missed unseating her.
That such a journey meant almost certain death he knew; but that did not deter him in the resolve to essay a feat no native had ever dared in many hundreds of years. The face of Sipsu, the angakoq, as I have said, resembled dried and wrinkled leather. He had been an old man when the eldest of the tribe were children.
"No man hath ever ventured there. The shadow of Perdlugssuaq is very dark." "Yea, may he smite Ootah!" exclaimed Maisanguaq. Sipsu laughed harshly. "Couldst thou cause the hill spirits to strike?" Maisanguaq asked eagerly. Sipsu faced Maisanguaq fiercely. "In my youth I went unto the mountains and I heard the hill spirits sing. Thereupon I became a great magician.
Did they not kill one Otaq, who hated Sipsu? Did Sipsu not go unto the lower land of the dead did he not speak to those who freeze in the dark? Yea, did Sipsu not learn how the world is kept up, and the souls of nature are bound together? And hath he not the power to separate them, yea, as a man from his shadow?" "Thou evil-tongued wretch, well doth Maisanguaq believe thee!
Sipsu arose and slipped into her snowshoes. "Good-by, O my man," she said to Hitchcock. But the man who had sat beside her on the sled gave no sign, nor lifted his head as they filed away into the white forest. Unlike many men, his faculty of adaptation, while large, had never suggested the expediency of an alliance with the women of the Northland.
"And how goes it, Sipsu?" he asked, talking, after her fashion, in broken English and bastard Chinook. "Is the hunger still mighty in the camp? and has the witch doctor yet found the cause wherefore game is scarce and no moose in the land?" "Yes; even so. There is little game, and we prepare to eat the dogs.
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