“Makes me think of the games o’ hide-’n’-seek we used to play when we were kids, boy,” he said. “She used to tie her handkerchief over my eyes, ’n’ then I’d follow her all through the old orchard, and when I caught her it was a part of the game she’d have to let me kiss her. Once I bumped into an apple tree—”
The toe of his snow-shoe caught in an ice-hummock and sent him face downward into the snow. He picked himself up and went on.
“We played that game till we was grown-ups, old man,” he went on. “Last time we played it she was seventeen. Had her hair in a big brown braid, an’ it all came undone so that when I caught her an’ took off the handkerchief I could just see her eyes an’ her mouth laughing at me, and it was that time I hugged her up closer than ever and told her I was going out to make a home for us. Then I came up here.”
He stopped and rubbed his eyes; and for an hour after that, as he plodded onward, he mumbled things which neither Kazan nor any other living thing could have understood. But whatever delirium found its way into his voice, the fighting spark in his brain remained sane. The igloo and the starving woman whom Blake had abandoned formed the one living picture which he did not for a moment forget. He must find the igloo, and the igloo was close to the sea. He could not miss it— if he lived long enough to travel thirty miles. It did not occur to him that Blake might have lied— that the igloo was farther than he had said, or perhaps much nearer.
It was two o’clock when he stopped to make tea. He figured that he had traveled at least eighteen miles; the fact was he had gone but a little over half that distance. He was not hungry, and ate nothing, but he fed Kazan heartily of meat. The hot tea, strengthened with a little whisky, revived him for the time more than food would have done.
“Twelve miles more at the most,” he said to Kazan. “We’ll make it. Thank God, we’ll make it!”
If his eyes had been better he would have seen and recognized the huge snow-covered rock called the Blind Eskimo, which was just nine miles from the cabin. As it was, he went on, filled with hope. There were sharper pains in his head now, and his legs dragged wearily. Day ended at a little after two, but at this season there was not much change in light and darkness, and Pelliter scarcely noted the difference. The time came when the picture of the igloo and the dying woman came and went fitfully in his brain. There were dark spaces. The fighting spark was slowly giving way, and at last Pelliter dropped upon the sledge.
“Go on, Kazan!” he cried, weakly. “Mush it— go on!”
Kazan tugged, with gaping jaws; and Pelliter’s head dropped upon the food-filled pack.
What Kazan heard was a groan. He stopped and looked back, whining softly. For a time he sat on his haunches, sniffing a strange thing which had come to him in the air. Then he went on, straining a little faster at the sledge and still whining. If Pelliter had been conscious he would have urged him straight ahead. But old Kazan turned away from the sea. Twice in the next ten minutes he stopped and sniffed the air, and each time he changed his course a little. Half an hour later he came to a white mound that rose up out of the level waste of snow, and then he settled himself back on his haunches, lifted his shaggy head to the dark night sky, and for the second time that day he sent forth the weird, wailing, mourning death-howl.