But who could surely know? They must wait and see.
CHAPTER XVII
THE BLACK SEAL’S TOOTH
Florence stopped short in her tracks. It was early next morning. She had wandered some distance from camp. Bending over, she picked something from the snow. That something was brightly colored orange and green. It had shone out of the solid white of snow at her feet.
“Tracks,” she thought, “Eskimo tracks, and now this.” The thing she held in her hand was strange. A small leather packet, it was decorated with masses of bright beads. As she examined it she saw that it had been sewn up tight, but she could feel some small hard objects within.
“Gold nuggets, perhaps,” her imagination soared. Two bits of leather thong led out from the bag. That they had been one piece she knew at once. “Worn about the neck,” she concluded, “and the thong broke.”
Next instant she was calling, “At-a-tak!”
“Let’s see.” The Eskimo girl burst through a clump of evergreens. “Ah-ne-ca!” she exclaimed at sight of the little sack. “Came from Russia, this one. Not Eskimo, no! no! Chuckches from Russia. What you call it? Charm! Keep bad spirits away, think that, this Chuckche man.”
“Well,” said Florence, “it might keep bad spirits away, but it didn’t keep bad ideas out of his mind. He and his friends tried to steal five hundred of John Bowman’s reindeer, that’s plain.
“Now—” her tone changed, “looks as if these natives had become frightened, leaving us with the reindeer on our hands. Two hundred miles from anywhere. What are we going to do about it?”
“Yes,” said At-a-tak. What she meant was, ‘Yes, here’s a situation for you!’ And Florence agreed with her. Here they were on a golden quest, marching with dog teams and supplies into the uncharted North in search of a lost and hidden mine, and now of a sudden they found themselves encamped with a whole herd of reindeer belonging to a friend.