“Do what?” Johnny stared.
“Pick on me for a fight. I never done you no wrong.”
“That’s why,” was Johnny’s astonishing reply. “It’s an old Eskimo custom.”
“What is?” They all stared at him.
“According to the Eskimo law,” Johnny went on soberly, “if you are going to be killed it has to be done by a near relative or very close friend. So-o—” he added with a spreading grin, “I thought you’d do as well as anyone. And you did—even better.”
“Anyway,” Blackie supplemented after their laugh was over, “folks in Matanuska Valley will know who among us can put up a good scrap and that always helps.”
When one is young he thinks only of the present and the future, never of the past. As the two boys walked home that night, they thought much of the future. The bond of friendship between them and Blackie Dawson was growing stronger every day. When spring came, would they go booming away with him on a Coast Guard boat in search of adventure in Bristol Bay? Who could tell?
In the meantime there was work to be done, plenty of it. Some twenty acres of land was yet to be cleared. In the spring stumps must be pulled. Without a tractor this would mean back-breaking labor.
“Perhaps we can get more foxes?” Lawrence said, thinking out loud.
“Yes, and other wild creatures,” Johnny added. “That country ‘back of the beyond’ has never even been explored. There must be wild life back there that’s never been seen. Peary found white reindeer on one of his expeditions. Who can tell what we’ll come upon if we keep up our search?”