COLT
Shortly after we started, one of the dogs, called Whitey, lay down and refused to work. Poor old Whitey! He had given all there was in him and had worn himself out on the hard travelling from Shipwreck Camp to Wrangell Island and again across Long Strait to Siberia. I unharnessed him, finally, and put him on the sledge. We now had only three dogs left to pull the sledge and our progress was not very fast.
About two o’clock in the afternoon we came upon two more arangas. The native who lived in one of them proved to be a deer man who had hurt himself some time before and was just beginning to feel better. He had seven good dogs which excited my interest. I made signs to show him that we had had seven dogs but had lost all but four, of which one was already too weak to walk, that we were travelling all the way down to East Cape, which I indicated on the chart, and that I wanted some dogs. He was an intelligent man and understood what I was after. He and his household brought out tea, which was very refreshing and invigorating, together with frozen deer meat and walrus meat; Kataktovick ate the walrus meat and I the deer meat. Our host made clear to me that we could not reach another aranga before nightfall and invited us to stop with him. We accepted gladly.
The deer man was loath to part with any of his dogs. Finally he said he would not decide that night but would let me know in the morning. We were up with the first crack of dawn and had a breakfast of pemmican, frozen deer meat and tea; then I reopened the subject of the dogs. The Eskimo said that he would not sell me a dog but would let me take one if I would send it back from East Cape. I gave him a razor and promised to do so. Then he showed me his rifle, which was a Remington, and some cartridges, making signs to ask me if I had any cartridges to pay him for the use of the dog. I had no Remington cartridges, but took out the chart and showed him that after reaching East Cape I was going across to Nome and would send him some cartridges from there. He knew about Nome; evidently the trading motor-boats from Nome had been up along the Siberian coast. The dog, as I understood, I could send back from East Cape by travellers bound west, though the distance was at least three hundred miles as the crow flies. He told me that there was a white man at Koliuchin Bay and that Mr. Caraieff, who was a brother of the one I had met at Cape North, had a fur-trading station at East Cape.
The deer man was an honorable man as well as a trustful one. With the exception of a razor and a pickaxe which I gave him before we left, he received nothing but a promise made him in sign language, yet he let us have one of his best dogs. I asked the native who lived in the other aranga if he would not go with us as far as Koliuchin Bay. He replied that he could not leave his family for so long a journey, because they would probably get nothing to eat. I was sorry for this, but I had been so warmly welcomed here that I wanted to show my appreciation, so I gave him a tin of oil to use with the Primus stove that he had, for which he had had no oil for a long time.
I tried to write down the name of the native to whom I owed the cartridges but it defied spelling; even the experts in phonetic spelling would, I think, have had trouble with it. Later on, however, when I reached Koliuchin Bay I told Mr. Olsen, the American trader whom I found there, about the arrangement I had made and he easily identified the man. I am glad to say that I have every reason to believe that the cartridges which I sent him when I finally reached Alaska arrived safely.
With our new dog now harnessed to the sledge and Whitey still a passenger, we got away by the middle of the forenoon and by mid-afternoon reached another aranga, where we found two women. I tried to make them understand that I wanted to see the man of the house and buy a dog from him; there were several pretty good dogs running around outside the aranga. The women were not very talkative but they finally managed to make me understand that the men were away, gathering driftwood. We made ourselves some tea and waited. Kataktovick went into the aranga and presently returned to tell me that the women had some flour and were willing to give us some. I hardly knew what we could do with it and said so.
Kataktovick replied, “Me make flapjacks.”
He got some of the flour and mixed it with melted snow. Then he greased the cover of the tea boiler with walrus blubber, placed it over the Primus stove and cooked half a dozen flapjacks. They proved to be very good, and from that time on, whenever we got a chance, we had flapjacks; unfortunately chances like this were few and far between. The day was fine and clear and we had a good view of the hinterland, which, I found, resembled the coast of Grant Land, where I had been on my voyages with Peary in the Roosevelt.
Presently the men returned, an old man and his son. I asked him for a dog. He replied—we both, of course, talked in the Esperanto of signs—that he had only seven and did not care to part with any. I had a pair of binoculars which I offered him but could not tempt him, though he was very polite in his refusal to trade. I had with me a new forty-five calibre Colt revolver, with eighty-three cartridges left, which I had used to shoot seal. The boy was standing around while we were carrying on our conversation. I handed him the loaded revolver and made signs to him to try a shot with it. About thirty yards away was a stick, standing up in the snow. The boy fired at it and cut it in two the first shot. He showed his pride and satisfaction plainly and required little urging to try a shot at another stick a little farther away. This time he missed; with the next shot, however, he cut this stick in two. It was good shooting, especially as I do not think he had ever seen a revolver before.