“Come down and see it tonight,” Ike invited.
“I will,” accepted the Shaman, “but it will be much better if I come alone. It is bad for the people to know too much about spirits.”
“Your dog team is as good as yours already,” whispered Ike as they turned away. “He will hold that team for you if he has to wait all winter, you understand. Once he hears that spirit box he’s going to want it badly.”
Alex grinned. “Put me next,” he begged. “I’m not wise to that spirit box stunt.”
“Say, you remember that cheap phonograph you boys bought for one of your trips and the heap of old cracked up records too? In Chicago the lot might be worth $5.00, but I doubt it. Here it’s worth a dog team, which costs nine hundred dollars, if you boys let me do the bargaining, you understand,” Ike enlightened him.
“Go to it,” exclaimed Alex joyously. “Hello, there’s something going on around that ant-hill over there. Let’s run over and see what the trouble is. Maybe it’s a fight.”
The two boys pushed through the little circle in front of the igloo just in time to see a litter carried by old men pass up from the burrow-like entrance. On the litter lay a skeleton-like figure of a young boy. His large, mournful-looking eyes looking out of a face on which the skin was pulled tightly over the bones.
“What’s the matter?” Alex demanded of a native, who happened to be Nicholas, the story teller.
“He plenty sick,” Nicholas replies. “He die pretty soon.”
“But why don’t they leave him in the hut?” Alex persisted.