"I certainly can, and, what's more, I will. And I'll register myself, too. There ain't goin' to be any accidents to me whatever."
Although the two men were pleased at the remote chance of catching the steamer, their ardor received a serious set-back when the trader came in with the head man of the village and a handful of hunters, for Emerson found that money was quite powerless to tempt them. Using the Russian as interpreter, he coaxed and wheedled, increasing his offer out of all proportion to the exigencies of the occasion; and still finding them obdurate, in despair he piled every coin he owned upon the counter. But the men only shook their heads and palavered among themselves.
"They say it's too cold," translated Petellin. "They will freeze, and money is no good to dead men." Another native spoke: "'It is very stormy this month,' they say. 'The waves would sink an open boat.'"
"Then they can put us across in bidarkas," insisted Emerson, who had noted the presence of several of these smaller crafts, which are nothing more than long walrus-hide canoes completely decked over, save for tiny cockpits wherein the paddlers sit. "They don't have to come back that way; they can wait at Uyak for the next trip of the steamer. Why, I'm offering them more pay than they can make in ten years."
"Better get them to do it," urged Big George. "You'll get the coin all back from them; they'll have to trade here." But Petellin's arguments were as ineffective as Emerson's, and after an hour's futile haggling the natives were about to leave when Emerson said:
"Ask them what they'll take to sell me a bidarka."
"One hundred dollars," Petellin told him, after an instant's parley.
Emerson turned to George. "Will you tackle it alone with me?"
The fisherman hesitated. "Two of us couldn't make it. Get a third man, and I'll go you." Accordingly Emerson resumed the subject with the Indians, but now their answer was short and decisive. Not one of them would venture forth unless accompanied by one of his own kind, in whose endurance and skill with a paddle he had confidence. It seemed as if fate had laid one final insurmountable obstacle in the path of the two white men, when "Fingerless" Fraser, who had been a silent witness of the whole scene, spoke up, in his voice a bitter complaint:
"Well, that puts it up to me, I suppose. I'm always the fall guy, damn it!"