FullReads

“So be. When the noise was loudest, walrus hides booming and priests a-singing, I says, ‘Are you ready?’ Gawd! Not a start, not a shot of the eyes my way, not the twitch of a muscle. ‘I knew,’ she answers, slow and steady as a calm spring tide. ‘Where?’ ‘The high bank at the edge of the ice,’ I whispers back. ‘Jump out when I give the word.’

“Did I say there was no end of huskies? Well, there was no end. Here, there, everywhere, they were scattered about,–tame wolves and nothing less. When the strain runs thin they breed them in the bush with the wild, and they’re bitter fighters. Right at the toe of my moccasin lay a big brute, and by the heel another. I doubled the first one’s tail, quick, till it snapped in my grip. As his jaws clipped together where my hand should have been, I threw the second one by the scruff straight into his mouth. ‘Go!’ I cried to Tilly.

“You know how they fight. In the wink of an eye there was a raging hundred of them, top and bottom, ripping and tearing each other, kids and squaws tumbling which way, and the camp gone wild. Tilly’d slipped away, so I followed. But when I looked over my shoulder at the skirt of the crowd, the devil laid me by the heart, and I dropped the blanket and went back.

“By then the dogs’d been knocked apart and the crowd was untangling itself. Nobody was in proper place, so they didn’t note that Tilly’d gone. ‘Hello,’ I says, gripping Chief George by the hand. ‘May your potlach-smoke rise often, and the Sticks bring many furs with the spring.’

“Lord love me, Dick, but he was joyed to see me,–him with the upper hand and wedding Tilly. Chance to puff big over me. The tale that I was hot after her had spread through the camps, and my presence did him proud. All hands knew me, without my blanket, and set to grinning and giggling. It was rich, but I made it richer by playing unbeknowing.

“‘What’s the row?’ I asks. ‘Who’s getting married now?’

“‘Chief George,’ the shaman says, ducking his reverence to him.

“‘Thought he had two klooches.’

“‘Him takum more,–three,’ with another duck.

“‘Oh!’ And I turned away as though it didn’t interest me.

“But this wouldn’t do, and everybody begins singing out, ‘Killisnoo! Killisnoo!’

“‘Killisnoo what?’ I asked.

“‘Killisnoo, klooch, Chief George,’ they blathered. ‘Killisnoo, klooch.’

“I jumped and looked at Chief George. He nodded his head and threw out his chest.

“She’ll be no klooch of yours,’ I says solemnly. ‘No klooch of yours,’ I repeats, while his face went black and his hand began dropping to his hunting-knife.

“‘Look!’ I cries, striking an attitude. ‘Big Medicine. You watch my smoke.’

“I pulled off my mittens, rolled back my sleeves, and made half-a- dozen passes in the air.

“‘Killisnoo!’ I shouts. ‘Killisnoo! Killisnoo!’

“I was making medicine, and they began to scare. Every eye was on me; no time to find out that Tilly wasn’t there. Then I called Killisnoo three times again, and waited; and three times more. All for mystery and to make them nervous. Chief George couldn’t guess what I was up to, and wanted to put a stop to the foolery; but the shamans said to wait, and that they’d see me and go me one better, or words to that effect. Besides, he was a superstitious cuss, and I fancy a bit afraid of the white man’s magic.

“Then I called Killisnoo, long and soft like the howl of a wolf, till the women were all a-tremble and the bucks looking serious.

“‘Look!’ I sprang for’ard, pointing my finger into a bunch of squaws–easier to deceive women than men, you know. ‘Look!’ And I raised it aloft as though following the flight of a bird. Up, up, straight overhead, making to follow it with my eyes till it disappeared in the sky.