“Well if it wasn’t for the fact that you’d report it and I’d be replying to fool questions from headquarters for the next two years, I’d shoot your blasted huskies,” Cleaver rumbled.
He wheeled away, pacing up and down the post’s earthen floor, followed by two pairs of amused eyes. Only just enough dog feed left to keep the police huskies going until the supply ship got in, the Mountie reflected. Out of the question to feed Scarth’s animals on his team rations. And the hungry Eskimos had eaten their sled dogs long since.
“Hey!” Scarth’s thin voice came suddenly. “Lookit, Cleaver. That skin boat of your’n is the only thing left in Kannequoq that’ll float. There’s walrus out there on the floes. Red meat. Why don’t you go out an’ belt one down for the Esks? I’ll buy the scraps for the dogs. How’s that?”
Again Cleaver sensed thinly covered insult in the little man’s tones and again he ignored it. Under other conditions he would have quickly removed the sneer from that weasel face, but now only one thought pulsed through his brain—how to feed the Eskimos and those yowling brutes up on the rocks.
Followed by twin grins of satisfaction, the Mountie padded to the door to stare out across the ice filled inlet. Yes, there were walrus out on the float ice; he had seen them through the glasses. It was as much as a man’s life was worth, though, to venture out among those razor edged pans in a frail skin boat.
Cleaver clenched brown fists, swung away from the post and, padding across the ice polished rocks, reached the first of the tupiks.
For a moment he stood with one hand on the caribou skin that served for a door, his sunburned face wrinkled in disgust. Abominable odors floated out on the crisp air from the tupik; the stench of unwashed humans, half tanned deerskins, moldy furs.
Cleaver pulled out a handkerchief and, holding it across his mouth and nostrils, ducked his long body and came upright in the tupik. The foul smelling interior was littered with the Eskimos’ priceless possessions; they were too far gone now with the coast sickness to care. Wooden pans sewn with rawhide, and stone cooking pots were thrown about in confusion. The floor was a wild jumble of feverish natives rolling about on bearskins, sealing spears, snowshoes and mukluks.
“By Christopher, they’ve got to have red meat or they’ll all kick out,” the Mountie said to himself, staring down on the emaciated, yellow faces. “Guess I’ve got to do it.”