They were obliged to camp, as before, nor did the gale let up for three weeks. It was maddening, but there was no help for it. These terrific Arctic gales sometimes last for literal months, and they were fortunate to escape as they did.
They fed the dogs lightly during their enforced leisure, but even thus their provisions began to run low, and they were anxious. It began to look as if it would be months instead of weeks before they reached the Yukon, yet they were not discouraged. It was better to steadily, though slowly, progress toward home than to wait in inaction. When fair weather came, Joe decided that they must hunt before going farther. This they did for two days steadily, plunging round through the waist-deep snow, with a fox, a white owl, and several ptarmigan as the result, just about what they ate during that time. This was not worth while, and they struggled south again, with the fast lowering sun as a guide. Another week passed with slow progress, but the timber got thicker and ptarmigan became plentiful. There was hardly need to shoot these. They were tame enough to be knocked over with a stick.
It was weary work, and the last of their supplies was gone when they came out on a low bluff, the bank of a considerable river. Below them, on the river ice, was a winding mark through the snow. It might be a caribou trail, and they plunged eagerly down to it.
There were the footprints of moccasins and marks of a sled!
Harry felt much as he thought Robinson Crusoe must have when he saw the famous footprints in the sand. They had been so long without seeing human beings that it seemed as if the country must be utterly uninhabited, but this proved something different. They turned and followed this trail up river. Then they rounded a bluff, saw smoke and heard the barking of many dogs, and from a cluster of timber huts a group appeared, and a man came to greet them.
“Nagouruk, nagouruk,” shouted Joe, and greeted him in Eskimo, to which the other replied hesitatingly in a few words of the same language. Others, men, women, and children, poured out of the village and received the two adventurers hospitably.
“We’ll camp with these people for a while,” said Joe. “We must till we can get provisions enough to move on.”
Harry assented. Indeed, both boys were heartily tired of their struggle against the odds of snow and fast approaching darkness. They were assigned an empty igloo, but preferred to build one of their own out of wood, brush, and snow, which had the merit of being clean. Their new-found friends were generous, had plentiful supplies of dried fish and frozen meat, and the boys lingered with them at first to rest. Later, the midwinter blizzards made it impossible for them to travel.
The inland Indians of northern Alaska are few, but scattered villages of them may be found along the larger rivers. They are much like the Eskimos in their habits and dress, but are taller and of stronger build. Their dialect is different in many respects from that of their cousins of the coast, yet they have many words in common, and meet in trade often enough to be able to talk to one another. The boys learned that the river on which they dwelt flowed into the sea to the westward, and were convinced from their chart that they had reached the headwaters of the Kowak, which empties into Kotzebue Sound. When they talked of going on, the Indians told them it would be impossible. The snows, they said, were very deep, which the boys knew to be true. The country to the south was one of rugged mountains, which they would be unable to cross. Besides, they argued, what was the need? As soon as any one could travel in the spring, they themselves were going down river to meet the tribes of the great sandspit at the meeting of rivers with the sea. Thither, they said, came all the tribes of the coast to meet those of the rivers and exchange goods. Sometimes, too, ships appeared, and they would perhaps find white men there.