She looked at him in silent alarm. He too was strange. He was a white man with a back so straight you might have run a yard stick up it and made it touch at every point. He had a horse-like nose, very long and straight. There was something about his whole bearing that made Mary want to slap him. She would, too, had she felt that the occasion warranted it. She was little, was Mary, but her snapping black eyes could shoot fire. Those slender brown legs of hers, hidden for the moment by brown slacks, and her steel-spring-like arms were made for action.
Mary could, at times, be quite still as well. A cat is like that. Just now she stood quite still and waited.
“So you are Mister Il-ay-ok, now, eh, Tony?” The stranger stopped laughing to pucker his brow into a scowl that did not improve his appearance.
“Shouldn’t want to meet him in the dark!” the girl thought with another shudder.
“Want to know what he is, Miss?” the white man turned to Mary. “He’s an Eskimo.”
“Oh, an—” Mary was surprised and pleased. She was not allowed to go on.
“Yup, Miss, an Es-ki-mo.” The man filled his voice with suggestions of loathing and utmost contempt. “Just an oil-guzzling, blubber-eating, greasy Eskimo that lives in a hole in the ground. That’s what he is to me. But to you he’s Mister Il-ay-ok. Bah!” The man turned and walked away.
For a full moment nothing further was said. At last, in a steady, school-book voice the little man in black said, “Do you know what my people did to the first white man who visit our village?”
“No. What?” Mary stared.
“Shot him,” the little man’s voice dropped. “Shot him with a whale gun. Very big gun. Shoot big shell. Like this!” He held up a clenched fist. “Very bad man like this one. He talked too big,” the little man scowled.