The missionary was jubilant over these successes, and declared that with a dozen such helpers as Phil and Serge he could have every Indian on the Yukon in school within one year.
In the meantime our lads were not neglectful of their own affairs. With every able-bodied Indian procurable enlisted in the work, the new building was completed by the end of the first week, and for some days the Chimo’s crew found ample occupation in furnishing and storing it. Then, too, under instructions from Serge, Chitsah, or Kurilla, Phil spent every spare moment of daylight in learning the art of snow-shoeing, mastering the terrible Eskimo whip, and acquiring a vocabulary of dog-language.
He got many a tumble on his snow-shoes, and took ludicrous “headers” into many a deep drift, where he would flounder helplessly until rescued by some of the delighted spectators of his mishaps. The long whip, too, tried its best to strangle him by winding in snaky coils about his neck, or to tangle itself in bewildering knots around his legs. As for his vocabulary, it was enough to provoke laughter in the most sedate of sledge dogs, and created uproarious mirth among the human occupants of the Indian village. In spite of all difficulties, Phil persevered with unabated energy, until gradually his feet and the snow-shoes began to work together. He actually succeeded in cracking the snake-like whip so that the sound could be heard, and Kurilla’s fine team of bushy-tailed dogs began to prick up their sharp ears understandingly when he addressed them. Many a spin did he have on the river behind this lively team, with Kurilla running beside the sledge and cracking his mighty whip until its reports rattled like a fire of musketry. When at length Phil was allowed to run with the sledge instead of occupying it as a passenger, and the entire control of the team was intrusted to him, he felt prouder, as Jalap Coombs used to say, than was becoming to a mere mortal man.
But his pride was quickly humbled, for ere they had gone a mile the dogs discovered that they had no reason to fear his whip, and that his unintelligible commands might be treated with contemptuous indifference. Suddenly Musky, the leader, who had a grudge of long standing against Amook, one of the big steer-dogs, turned like a flash and darted furiously at his enemy. In an instant the whole team was rolling in a confused mass of yelping, snarling, snapping, and biting fur, with traces tangled in a thousand knots, sledge going to smash, and pandemonium reigning generally.
Phil stood by in helpless consternation, and not until Kurilla, running up in breathless haste, flung himself bodily into the mêlée, did he have the faintest hope that any dog would emerge alive from that savage conflict.
Another time, as he thought he was meeting with complete success in driving this same team, and was thoroughly enjoying a ride in the sledge, the dogs suddenly stopped short and refused to go on. They sat on their haunches, with wagging tails, and looked up at Phil with pleased expressions, as though rejoicing over the discovery that they needn’t work unless they chose. And there they sat, in spite of all their driver’s efforts to move them, until he was in despair, when with equal suddenness they sprang up and dashed away home with the empty sledge, leaving him to follow on foot as best he might.
His first real journey by dog-sledge was to the Eskimo village of Makagamoot, fifteen miles down the river, and was taken in company with the missionary, who was accustomed to visit this place once a month. They went in two sledges, with Chitsah as runner, and Phil took with him a small lot of goods. For these Gerald Hamer wished him to procure several suits of fur clothing, in making which the Eskimos greatly excel their Indian neighbors.
While the entire coast of Alaska north of the great peninsula is inhabited by Eskimos, they never penetrate far into the interior, and only for short distances along the principal rivers. Nor do the Indians of the interior ever occupy the coast territory. Thus in the present case Makagamoot was the last wholly Eskimo settlement, and Anvik the first in which Indians predominated, on the Yukon.
Makagamoot was a much more thrifty village than its next neighbor, though at first sight its eight or ten large houses looked only like so many great inverted bowls or hillocks of snow. These winter residences are in a great part below the surface of the ground, where they are neatly lined with wood or whalebone, and are extremely comfortable after their fashion. Thus only their snow-covered roofs appear above the surface, and in the centre of each is a square smoke-hole, that admits such daylight and outer air as find their way to the interior. Access to these dwellings is gained by means of tunnel-like approaches, through most of which a man must crawl on hands and knees.
Back of the dwellings rose twenty or thirty of what Phil had called log dove-cots, about six feet square and high, mounted on ten-foot posts. He now knew them to be provision caches or store-houses for the smoked or dried fish and meat that furnished the entire winter’s supply of food for the village. They are thus constructed to insure their contents against the horde of wolfish-looking dogs that ever gaze at them with hungry longings. For the same reason all sledges and skin-covered boats must be stored on scaffolds erected for the purpose.