Just at sunset the dog team plunged down a steep embankment and piled up, sled and all, forty feet below.
From that time until dark they went down. Down, down, down the trail ran until, as camping time came, they were surprised to find themselves in a narrow valley on a level with the river.
“Can he be mad enough to take to the river?” Gordon Duncan asked.
“Surely not,” Faye answered.
Gordon Duncan shook his head.
As for the Indians, they looked from Gordon Duncan to the girl, then back to Duncan again. Whatever thoughts passed through their primitive minds remained unexpressed.
CHAPTER XX
ADRIFT IN THE NIGHT
The ways of the savage and the highly civilized man are vastly different. One is tempted to believe at times that the savage has the better end of the bargain. Civilized man, from the time he enters school at six or seven, until he is able to work no longer because of old age, rises at a certain time each morning, goes at a stated hour to an appointed place, stays a specified number of hours for study or work, then returns to his home. This program is seldom varied.
The savage has no program. He rises one morning, comes upon the track of game, begins a hunt that may lead him far and consume two days and a night. The game at last run down and captured, he eats, then lies down to sleep while the sun goes round the earth and returns to shine again. Waking, he eats again. Then finding that some part of his hunting tog requires attention, he consumes unlimited hours on the task.
It was so with Omnakok, the hunchback. Johnny, lying propped up among the deer skins, watched him shaving away at the slab of tough wood for two hours before he realized what he was about.