“They—they what?” Mary hopped out of the plane in her excitement.
“It’s a fact,” Bill Sparks insisted. “You see, Miss, this here’s Cape York. Cape Prince of Wales is only fifteen miles away. With them big dogs of mine, ’tain’t no drive at all!”
“Then you—” Mary began hopping up and down. “You—”
“Of course I’ll take you all over, Miss, and all them presents. Be glad to, Miss. Nothin’ I won’t do for the Eskimos. One of ’em brought me in when I’d went snow-blind once. I’d have died if it hadn’t a’ been for him! Wait—”
Putting two fingers to his lips, he blew a shrill blast and, to Mary’s terror, out from the dark hole piled the great gray pack of hounds.
“No need fer fear,” Bill Sparks laughed, as she started to climb back into the plane, “my friends are their friends.”
And so it happened that, just after the short day had faded and the Eskimos had gone to their little log and sod homes,—with sleighbells muffled—the happy flyers with Bill Sparks in the lead, his sled piled high with Christmas joy, stole round Cape Prince of Wales and right up to the schoolhouse door.
They managed to get there without being seen by a single Eskimo child.
It was Margaret, child of the schoolmaster, who opened the door in response to their knock.
“Merry Christmas!” Mary cried as the light came flooding out. “We’re here, and so’s Christmas!”