Kak, the Copper Eskimo

by Vilhjalmur Stefansson; Violet Irwin

As if he perfectly understood the question Sapsuk sat down on his bushy tail with his long, red tongue hanging out and his breath coming in heavy pants, while Kak looked about him. They ought to have been very nearly home; but the crazy driver could see no sign of the two little white domes that were his father’s house and Hitkoak’s. At first he failed to understand. The houses dropping out of sight seemed very odd indeed. Of course dogs and people move about and get lost if you take your eyes off them for five minutes; but a boy hardly expects his home to behave in that ridiculous way. And yet, peering in every direction as far as he could, which was not far on account of the darkness, Kak did not see a sign of a house. Then gradually he began to know it was not home that was lost, but himself and the dogs. His heart sank down, down, down like a stone cast into the sea. He remembered how in his panic to get away, followed by the reckless splendor of the run, he had forgotten all about direction, had left it to the frantic team to keep the trail. Examining the cause of their accident he felt sure there could not be any ice as rough as this lying between the whale carcass on the wind-swept sandspit and Taptuna’s home on the bay. They must have gone far past the houses; or maybe dashed off on a wrong line altogether.

Goodness, how the wind blew, now he tried to stand against it! The thought of returning into its teeth, slowly, painfully, following their own track was enough to make a hero weep. Perhaps they would have to go all the way back to the old whale before they picked up the true course. But Kak did not cry. He laughed. You see he had run right away from his fear: he really did not feel so upset as he should have done over being lost in the middle of an Arctic night. Retracing their steps seemed a perfectly simple and safe way of getting himself out of this scrape—but he counted without the wind. Racing before it none of the living things had guessed its strength. Now it beat upon them like a blizzard. Overhead, the sky hung dark with clouds, and close to the ground, where our boy had to bend to see their trail, the demon air was whirling snow in eddies, gathering up particles as sharp as sand to fling into his eyes. The dogs suffered also; but worse than these discomforts was the storm’s effect. Tearing over the open ground, grabbing a handful of snow here and scattering it there, that mighty blast soon hid their track. The farther back they went the less and less distinct it grew, till on the top of a small ice hill they lost it altogether. Poor Kak hunted and hunted, coaxing his team, straining his eyes for a glimpse of the house or the path.

When he had done every possible thing and quite made up his mind to abandon home, the boy felt relieved. Right down in the bottom of his heart he was not a bit keen about returning to that haunted neighborhood of dead meat. Wolves would have gathered there in numbers by now. Kak shivered. Spending a night in the open at a temperature of thirty-six below zero was not exactly inviting; still, he felt the whale carcass for five minutes would have been far worse. He sat down to think, hunched against the wind. A sealskin had been spread over the rungs forming the top of the sleigh, and when he righted his gear after the upset one piece of meat was found lying under it; the rest had gone spinning across the ice into darkness and he did not bother to hunt them up. Now this ridiculously small load reproached him, for the dogs would be hungry. He remembered dropping that dandy, ten-pound chunk in his crazy fear, and his face burned with shame over such cowardice. What a blessing the girls would never know! Crouching there he recollected wistfully his wrangling with Noashak that day, clear back to its little beginning. Ah! The snow knife!

With a rousing shout Kak leaped to his feet, and cut a caper before turning to unlash the thong holding his bully, big knife.

“In case I stay all night,” he had bravely boasted; so now he must act up to the boast.

“Right here I will build me a house!” the boy chuckled; and walked over the ground, leading the dogs, till he found a drift. To his soft, padding shoes this bank felt solid enough, but he did not dare to build till he had fallen on his knees and tested it by plunging his knife in here and there to make sure the snow was evenly packed.

“Seems all firm,” Kak decided, battling to brush the icy particles out of his eyes. With his face to the wind he cut his first blocks and built them up in a circle around where they were cut; each chunk as it came out lowered the floor a little and this helped considerably. But it was tough work for a lad; his short arms could only lift and place small pieces, which meant using ever so many more of them; still, he stuck to it like a man and as he worked the job grew easier for the rising walls of the house soon offered shelter from the cutting wind.

IT WAS TOUGH WORK FOR A LAD.

By and by he felt ravenous and called “time” for supper. The dogs, curled up on the snow with their faces buried under their paws, jumped from their sleep and answered, “Here,” with tail-wagging expectation. Kak tossed them morsels between bites. He enjoyed his meal of two-year-old whale meat, its gamy flavor was as delicious to his taste as pheasants seem to ours. The boy grew cheerier at every mouthful, and laughed aloud when his favorite snapped fierce jaws on a good bit thrown for Pikalu. Finally he sawed the chunk in halves and let the animals finish it while he finished his work.