“You must not judge them,” said Duncan slowly. “Let God do that. They are but children. To them every living creature and every dead one too has a spirit. If you offend the spirit of a dead caribou or a musk-ox or wolf, he may do you great harm. There are a hundred things you must do and a hundred others you must not do. You who have lived all your life in the light of civilization know little enough of the torment that comes from being a heathen. But we must sleep if we are to travel to-morrow.”
Faye Duncan realized the truth of these last words quite as well as her grandfather did. Yet, for some reason, as she lay among the deerskins with her grandfather breathing in peaceful slumber nearby, she found herself unable to sleep. The day had been an exciting and trying one. The great crisis, in so far as the Eskimos’ needs were concerned, had been reached and passed.
She was about to fall asleep when she thought again of Johnny’s strange experience with the young Eskimo and the hammer.
At that very moment she caught a slight sound outside the tent. The sound, coming as it did in the silence of the night, was disturbing. Parting the tent flaps, she looked out. The next moment she barely suppressed a scream. The tent in which Johnny slept was not ten feet from their own. Moonlight made all bright as day. At that very moment an Eskimo with a long knife in his hand was lifting the skins at the back of Johnny’s tent. As he turned half about the girl recognized the young Eskimo of the evening, he who had refused to accept the marrow bone crushed by Johnny’s hammer.
CHAPTER XI
THE DANCING SHADOW
The tent Johnny slept in was a small one. He slept in it alone. There could be no mistaking the intent of the Eskimo with the long knife.
“He will kill Johnny,” the girl told herself, gripping at her heart.
Her first impulse was to cry out. The cry was stifled by the thought that the whole village would be awakened.
“They might all turn upon us. Then what chance have we?”
All this flashed through the girl’s mind. The next instant she shot silently out of the tent. Her bare feet left tracks in the snow but made no sound.