"That's queer," perplexedly. "I didn't do anything to him that I know of. Wasn't thrown hard or anything."
He bent over to gather up a handful of snow with which to rub the native's brow, when he caught an old, familiar odor.
Just then the dog came limping up. "Rover, old boy," Phi smiled a queer sort of smile, "we're not beyond the reaches of the civilized white man. This fellow's drunk. Hooch. In other words, moonshine; I smell it on his breath. That's why he was throwing stones at us. Crazy drunk, that's all. Now he's gone dead on us, like a flivver run out of gas."
The dog smelled of the man and growled.
"Don't like it, do you? Most honest men and dogs don't. Moonshine's no good for anybody. And now, just for that, we're in for something of a task. This fellow'd lie here until he froze stiff as a mastodon tusk if we'd let him, but we can't afford to let him, even if he did pelt us with rocks. We've got to get him on his feet somehow and make him 'walk the dog' till he sweats some of that hooch out of him."
As he looked the man over for a knife which might prove dangerous once he was roused from his stupor. Phi realized that he was not on the mainland of America. This man's costume was quite unlike that of the Diomeders. He wore a shirt of eiderduck skins such as was never seen on the Little Diomede, and his outer garments of short-haired deerskin, instead of being composed of parka and trousers were all of one piece.
"Wherever we are," he said to the dog, "we'll know what's what in an hour or two."
* * * * * *
After witnessing the strange actions of the group of natives as they clustered in about the boarded-up house, with wildly beating hearts Lucile and Marian took their places back a little in the shadows, where they could not be seen but could still watch the wild antics of their strange visitors.
"What does it mean?" whispered Marian.