"Sure," said the Boy.
The Ol' Chief was pulling the other parki over his head. Nicholas reappeared with the visitor's effects. Under the Boy's eyes, he calmly confiscated all the tea and tobacco. But nothing had been touched in the owner's absence.
"Look here: just leave me enough tea to last till I get home. I'll make it up to you."
Nicholas, after some reflection, agreed. Then he bustled about, gathered together an armful of things, and handed the Boy a tea-kettle and an axe.
"You bring—dogs all ready. Mush!" and he was gone.
To the Boy's surprise, while he and Muckluck were getting the food and presents together, the lively Ol' Chief—so lately dying—made off, in a fine new parki, on all fours, curious, no doubt, to watch the preparations without.
But not a bit of it. The Ol' Chief's was a more intimate concern in the expedition. When the Boy joined him, there he was sitting up in Nicholas's sled, appallingly emaciated, but brisk as you please, ordering the disposition of the axe and rifle along either side, the tea-kettle and grub between his feet, showing how the deer-skin blankets should be wrapped, and especially was he dictatorial about the lashing of the mahout.
"How far's he comin'?" asked the Boy, astonished.
"All the way," said Muckluck. "He want to be sure."
Several bucks came running down from the Kachime, and stood about, coughed and spat, and offered assistance or advice. When at last Ol' Chief was satisfied with the way the raw walrus-hide was laced and lashed, Nicholas cracked his whip and shouted, "Mush! God-damn! Mush!"