An hour was spent in consultation with old Terogloona. His face became very sober at the situation, but in the end, with the blood of youth coursing eternally in his veins, he sprang to his feet and exclaimed:
“Eh-eh!” (Yes-yes) “We will go. Before it is day we will be away. You go sleep. You must be very strong. In the morning Terogloona will have reindeer and sleds ready. We will call to the dogs. We will be away before the sun. We will shout ‘Kul-le-a-muck, Kul-le-a-muck’ (Hurry! Hurry!) to dogs and reindeer. We will beat that one Bill yet.
“You know what?” he exclaimed, his face darkening like a thundercloud, “You know that mean man, that one Bill Scarberry. Want my boy, So-queena, work for him. Want pay him reindeer. Give him bad rifle, very bad rifle. Want shoot, my boy So-queena. Shot at carabou, So-queena. Rifle go flash. Crooch! Just like that. Shoot back powder, that rifle. Came in So-queena’s eyes, that powder. Can’t see, that one. Almost lost to freeze, that one, So-queena. Bye’m bye find camp. Stay camp mebby five days. Can see, not very good. Bill, he say: ‘Go herd reindeer,’ So-queena, he say: ‘Can’t see. Mebby get lost. Mebby freeze’.
“He say Bill very mad. ‘Get out! No good, you! Go freeze. Who cares?’
“So-queena come my house—long way. Plenty starve. Plenty freeze. No give reindeer that one So-queena, that one Bill. Bad one, that Bill. So me think; beat Bill. Sell reindeer herd white man. Think very good. Work hard. Mebby beat that one Bill Scarberry.”
There came a look of determination to Patsy’s face such as Marian had never seen there.
“If that’s the kind of man he is; if he would send an Eskimo boy, half-blinded by his own worthless rifle, out into the snow and the cold, then we must beat him. We must! We must!” said Patsy vehemently.
“That’s exactly the kind of man he is,” said Marian soberly. “We must beat him if we can. But it will be a long, hard journey.”
They had hardly crept between their deerskins when Patsy was fast asleep. Not so Marian. The full responsibility of this perilous journey rested upon her shoulders. She knew too well the hardships and dangers they must face. They must pass through broad stretches of forest where food for the deer was scarce, and where lurking wolves, worn down to mere skeletons by the scarcity of food, might attack and scatter their herd beyond recovery.
They must cross high hills, from whose summits the snow at times poured like smoke from volcanoes in circling sweeps hundreds of feet in extent. Here there would be danger of losing their deer in some wild blizzard, or having them buried beneath the snows of some thundering avalanche.