pull the sled over, over at last onto the crown of the ridge.
In the distance he could see the lights of the village from the ridge height. It was about ten miles away, but the night was clear and cold now, and almost still. The wind was dying off with the cold and darkness.
Knowing they would spend another night in their kennel the dogs picked up the speed, even with the weight of the deer, until they were moving in a steady easy lope that would cover the distance to the village in thirty minutes.
Russel was full of the night and the dogs as they ran and he felt himself go out to the dogs, out ahead. At first he didnât understand it, couldnât define it enough to give it form. But in moments the feeling grew and in his mind he gave it words, moving words, dog words.
Out before me they go
taking me home.
Out before me they go
I am the dogs.
He realized that it was part of a song, moving through the dark toward the village lights.
He wondered if it was part of his song and decided that it might be. He would make it grow.
Tonight in the village he would let it be known that he was a new person, not the old Russel, and he would tell the story to Oogruk and anybody who would listen, the story of how he took the deer with the arrow that flew across the dark.
And the telling would become part of the song.
4
Those white men came a long time ago. The white men who talked with rocks in their mouths. They came and took and took it all. They used our men as beasts and they took our women for their own and left us with no meat. Left us starving. They took all the fur and then they left. That is what I was told when I was young and in those villages they still donât like the white men who talk with rocks in their mouth.
Â
âEskimo speaking about the early Russian fur hunters who came for pelts.
S ea ice is not the same as fresh-water ice. The salt-water ice is stronger, more elastic, isnât as slippery. Also the sea ice moves all the time, even when it is thick. Sometimes whole cakes of the ice will go out to sea, miles across, sliding out to sea and taking anybody on the cake with it.
On the fourth day after taking the deer with the arrow Russel took the team out on the ice to find seals. Oogruk wanted oil for the lamp and he wanted some seal meat andfat to eat and he said these things in such a way that Russel felt it would be good to find a seal to take with the harpoon. It wasnât that he actually asked, or told Russel to go for seal, but he talked about how it was to hunt in the old days.
âOut on the edge of the ice, where it meets the sea but well back from the edge, sometimes there are seal holes. The seals come up through them and sit on the ice and if you are there when they come you can get the small harpoon point in them. That is the way it was done. Men would leave their dogs well back and pile a mound of snow in front of them and wait for the seal. Wait and wait.â Oogruk had scratched with his nails on the wall of the house. âWhen the seal starts to come there is a scratching sound and the hunter must be ready to put the point in then.â
âHow long must one wait?â Russel asked.
âThere is not a time. Waiting for seals is not something you measure. You get a seal, that is all. Some men go a whole winter and get none, some will get one right away. Hunting seals with the small point and the killing lance is part of the way to live.â
So Russel went out on the ice. He took the team away in the daylight and was twenty miles out, working heavily through pressure ridges, when the storm came off the sea.
He had seen many storms. In his years with the village, every winter brought violent storms off the sea, white walls of wind and driven snow. Twice he had been caught out on a snowmachine and had to run for the village ahead of the wall coming across the ice.
But with a dog team you did not run ahead of the wall. As he was crossing a pressure