Arctic angels

A Story of the Northwest Mounted
By A. DeHerries Smith
Howls floated out on the thin Arctic air, filling rock-walled Kannequoq Inlet with dirge-like notes. A dozen gaunt huskies padded to and fro near the red boulders to which they were tied; they eyed one another in murderous speculation, straining uselessly at the tethering sticks fastened to their shaggy necks.
Occasionally one of the animals halted its ceaseless trotting, squatted and, elevating a long wolf snout, sent out another wail to echo and re-echo back from the granite cliffs.
“Rotten! Rotten! Rotten!” Sergeant Richard Cleaver muttered to himself, striding up and down the narrow confines of the Mounted Police detachment building. “That brute Scarth is torturing those dogs just for pure devilment; can’t be any other reason that I can see. For five cents I’d go down there and shoot up the whole works.”
Peering through one of the little windows, he gazed down at the trader’s roof, set on a lower rock ledge, and then at the whimpering blurs beyond. A moon faced halfbreed, lounging in the post doorway, glanced up at the huskies and spat contemptuously. Apparently the man saw something humorous in the situation. Yellow teeth showed momentarily when the native tore off another mouthful of tobacco from a black plug.
Thin columns of smoke continued to well up undisturbed from the huddle of skin tupiks , sheltering beneath the cliffs from the ever present winds. But beyond the curling smoke there was no movement; none of the Eskimo inhabitants took any notice of the starving animals’ plea for food.
With a curse, the sergeant swung away from the window to glare at Constable Timothy Noonan’s thick frame stretched on his bunk.
“Helluva lot you care, you fat lobster!” Cleaver threw out at the slumbering man’s round, freckled face. “You don’t give a hoot about the prestige of the service, do you? Said you’d never make a dog man, and that goes! Blah!”
An angelic smile stole across the sleeper’s features. He rolled over lazily, grunting his contentment. Sergeant Cleaver snorted and stamped out of the cabin, crashing the door behind him.