In the midst of all this waiting and doubting an Eskimo had come running in from a long hunt in the distant hills. He had seen a band of caribou. They were coming.
“How many?” Johnny had asked eagerly.
“Desra! Desra!” (plenty! plenty!) The man had spread his arms wide.
At once all was noise and confusion. It had been with the greatest difficulty that Gordon Duncan had silenced their noisy chatter and had organized the hunt that was to mean life or death to the whole band.
Women and children were sent away into the hills. One band of men was stationed at the right of the lakes. These were to rush in at the proper time and urge the caribou on. A second group was concealed in a clump of willows close to the narrow neck of water which the caribou would expect to cross. These, at the proper time, would turn them to another course and force them to a swimming passage.
Carefully concealed in a second clump of willows on the opposite bank were the true hunters. Seven Eskimos, the older men who retained some skill with bow and arrow, were here. So too were the three whites.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Johnny told himself, “especially for the girl. We will be wading deep in stinging water. And these natives have been able to provide us with no waterproof skin garments for our protection. The sea Eskimos could have given us hip boots of sealskin.”
With this thought he was led to wonder that a people who had dwelt for so long a time upon the border of the sea should have come inland to live.
“It’s not so strange, after all,” he told himself. “It is so in other lands. In Borneo there are the sea dwellers and the mountain tribes. In Siberia are the Reindeer Chukchees and the Sea Hunting Chukchees. It seems—”
His thoughts were broken off by a sharp whispered,