“Kak, my boy, while I am watching the seal hole to-day, you may harness both dogs to the sled and go to the carcass over yonder and bring home some loads of whale flesh. The young bear I killed will not last forever, eh? And it is well to lay in food while the laying’s good.”
Had Kak been an English or American school-boy he would doubtless have mumbled, “All right, dad,” and gone on eating his breakfast without giving any visible sign of his thrill. But an Eskimo never learns to disguise his feelings, so Kak grinned all over his round face and cried:
“Bully! Bully! Me for it! Do you hear, Noashak? I’m to drive the team.”
And he began to dance and jump about and was so delighted and excited he quickly pulled on his fur shirt and his topcoat of reindeer skin, and dashed out to pat young Sapsuk, his favorite dog, and tell him what a fine day they were going to have together.
His mother gazed fondly on her son’s brown head as it disappeared through the hole in the floor.
“Is it not too much for him?” she asked doubtfully. “Will the boy be able to find his way?”
“Yes, he will be able to do it just as well as I. Kak is a smart lad and has plenty of sense; besides, they have only to follow the trail we broke last night.”
So Guninana, who thought her tall, active husband the best judge of everything in the world, beamed on him and said no more.
Kak was keeping up a fine game with the dogs. He was so overjoyed he could hardly stand still a minute. This seemed the greatest event in his whole life; not only had his father trusted him with a man-sized job for the first time, but it was the very job he loved best. Kak would rather harness both dogs to the light sled and drive like the wind than do anything else in the whole Arctic. He was so proud of his task and so anxious to do it all by himself, that he waited and put off and dilly-dallied about starting till his father had gone. Of course Taptuna observed this, but he understood. He thought: “The boy will be tired anyway when he has fetched two loads, so there is plenty of time.”
“Get busy, my lad. Kill meat while the light lasts,” he called for farewell, and waving his harpoon toward the already crimsoned horizon, trudged off leading the neighbor’s dog.