It is no strange occurrence, when a dog gets vicious in the traces, for his driver to club him to death with the butt of his whip. But they usually obey implicitly. They have learned in this hard school that it pays. Wild hard conditions such as those under which the Eskimo lives breed brutality, but this brutality never extends to the Eskimo's family which he treats most tenderly.
Once they stopped in the lea of a cliff to eat some raw meat which was partly frozen and to rest the dog teams. But it was not for long. The dogs when in harness are always restless. If left too long, they get to fighting and tangle up the traces. So after a quarter of an hour the procession plunged on through the white silence.
There were few signs of life. They had seen some foxtracks, also some snowshoe rabbit tracks. A few ptarmigan had been flushed. But for the greater part it was just a mere waste of snow and jagged rocks, desolate beyond the power of words to paint.
Occasionally they scanned the landscape for Omingmong.
When they came to a high hill, some one of the party would climb to its very top and look in every direction for signs of Omingmong. But nothing was seen of him that day.
Toward the middle of the afternoon a terrible blizzard struck the little party. The snow blew so that the drivers could scarcely see the dog teams. It came so suddenly that they had no time to get to cover. For a few minutes they struggled blindly, Eiseeyou's bump of locality standing them in good stead. With great generalship he led the three sledges into a sheltered valley where the storm did not beat so badly. But even here it was difficult to see fifty feet away. The cold also increased, and the party decided that they could go no further that day.
So they tunneled into a hard snowbank and made a very comfortable snow house. That is, they thought it comfortable, for it sheltered them from the wind and kept out some of the cold.
The dogs also were quick to burrow in, and half an hour after they had decided to stop for the night only the three komatiks showed that a hunting party was hidden somewhere in the snow drifts.