“What! Do you like to frighten us, you mischief?”
“Course I do! It’s lots of fun. Being away is tiresome; but it’s grand getting home! Everybody gives you things—see. Here’s Okak’s charm against evil.” She held up a dried bumblebee hung in a bag on a sinew about her neck. “Mother says I look too much like a fawn and she has promised to make me a coat with bright red trimmings if we can get the ocher at Cape Bexley. Do you hear, Kak? I’m to have a new red coat! It’s so I shall never get lost any more. But I’d like to be lost sometimes if I could see all those caribou. Nobody believes I did see them. They say I dreamed it—but I really and truly did.”
“Bully for you! Stick to it,” Kak cried. “They were real, all right, and you saw them. Don’t let the villagers humbug you out of that. We saw them, too, and we killed one and ate it—that’s proof it was real!”
“Only one, worse luck!” Omialik exclaimed. “But now you are safe, miss, we’ll hurry back and lay in some meat. Where is your father?” he asked; for there would be need of all hands to skin and cut up the deer.
“Dad’s still looking for me, and your Eskimos are with him. I guess they’ll be pretty anxious by now.... Oh, I do hope they’ll come here soon so we can start to Cape Bexley—I do want my little red coat!”
CHAPTER X
Homeward Bound
All very well to talk so lightly about going to Cape Bexley; when it really came to the point, leaving meant taking leave and this was a bad business. Kak’s heart broke, for his friend, Omialik, stayed behind. It was the white man’s intention to return down Horton River to Franklin Bay and go from there to Banks Island—a long and dangerous journey into the unknown. The boy burned to accompany him.
“Later on, later on, when your legs are a bit longer for walking,” the explorer promised.
Kak tried to smile, tried not to show the hollow feeling this separation planted in the pit of his stomach; but it took moral force. He gulped.
“Brace up, old chap.” The Kabluna patted his shoulder. “I’m coming back, you know. You will see me in Victorialand again—unless by then you have gone to Herschel Island to learn to shoot.”