Snow-blind
lived always so close to death as the people of the frozen seas,
naturally would put the lightest valuation on human life. The loss of a
few Yellow Knives to the world could not seem a very important matter to
Oogly. But if his own life were forfeit for a simple killing, that
wouldn’t be so dreadful either. He had showed clearly how he felt about
it. If he had done wrong, he wasn’t afraid to pay the penalty.
Kit would have arrested the man if he had had any evidence on which to
found a charge. But there was none. There can be no murder trial without
a coroner’s inquest, and there can be no inquest unless the coroner’s
jury has a victim’s body to sit upon. Legally he couldn’t do a thing
about it.
On the other hand, it was out of the question to allow an unrepentant
murderer to wander at large in the forest. Oogly might take it into his
queer head some day that others of the Indians were praying against him.
As Kit studied the Esquimau with a baffled frown, an idea struck him. If
Oogly could be impressed with the enormity of his offense he might try
to be a better man. There was nothing criminal or wicked in his flat,
round face. He was looking at Kit now with an eager, dog-like
friendliness in his uptilted eyes. There could be no doubt of his
anxiety to please the man who had saved him. Perhaps he might be shamed
into future good-behavior.
Kit stared uncertainly around the foggy room, and his glance lit on a
row of shelves in the corner. During his recent absence Diane had
unpacked the provisions he had left for her on his sledge and stored
them neatly away in their original bags and boxes and tins.
After a brief inspection of the shelves Kit picked out a small can which
was labeled “baking powder.” He took off the tin top and laid it on the
table. Using his heavy-bladed knife for a cutting edge and a billet of
wood as a hammer, he cut around the rim, and broke out from the center a
bright disc of metal.
The others grouped themselves behind him and watched with curiosity, but
nobody asked any questions.
With the point of his knife Kit began tracing printed letters across the
shiny surface of tin. He worked painstakingly with his tongue in his
cheek, and when he finished he had engraved the word “murderer” across
the smooth-faced disc. He punched a slot in the rim of metal, removed
the strap from his wrist-watch and threaded it through the hole. Then he
stood up at soldierly attention and faced Oogly sternly.
“Do you know who I am?” he demanded.
The Esquimau nodded. “Yup. You oneguy shoot-like-hell.”
“I’m the police,” said Kitchener severely. He tapped his chest, and then
swept out his arms in a gesture that was meant to take in a hundred
thousand miles of territory. “When I say anything it is the law
everywhere. It goes! You get that?”
Again Oogly nodded. He accepted the statement. He could readily believe
all of that.
“Look at me!” thundered Kit. “Straight! This is awful! This is a
terrible thing! I’m looking into the eyes of a murderer--a common
murderer who ought to be hanged!”
The Esquimau seemed to understand this too. He was watching Kit with
grave intensity, and by the pained screwing-up of his face he showed how
sorry and remorseful he was beginning to feel. His underlip hung out
tremulously, as though he were a little, penitent child who was suddenly
overcome by its own fearful wickedness.
Kitchener hastened on with the arraignment. “I hate to do this to you,
Oogly,” he said sadly. “But I’ve got to do it. You’re a pariah, an
outcast, a no-good man. People must know you for what you are. When they
meet you in the forest or on the barrens they’ll shrink from you,
they’ll shun you, they’ll hurry the other direction. They’ll be afraid
to speak to you, because they’ll know they’re looking at a scoundrel.
“Come here!” Kit crooked a relentless forefinger.
After an instant’s hesitation Oogly advanced a pace and waited uneasily.
Kitchener reached forward suddenly, and with the point of his knife cut
two narrow slits in the Esquimau’s skin shirt. He thrust the wrist-watch
strap through the opening and fastened the buckle. Then he stepped back
and regarded the man with judicial severity.
“If you can read,” he said, “you will see that the word ‘murderer’ is
written upon it. It is my order that you wear this all the time,
whatever you are doing, wherever you go. So that all men may be warned
and recognize you for what you are. It is the mark of crime, it is your
badge of shame.”
Oogly bent his head to look. Gingerly he raised his hand to finger the
dangling, mirror-like bit of tin. After a moment he looked up with shy,
anxious eyes. “Fo’ me?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“For you, Oogly.”
“This make people umfraid?”
“It’ll make them afraid. They’ll be filled with horror at the very sight
of you.”
“I keep um all time?”
“You’re never to take it off.”
Oogly turned to gaze at his wife, he glanced around towards the little
bundle that he had just put back in the bunk, and then he revolved
slowly to face Kit again. The look of respectful admiration that Kit had
read in the man’s eyes a moment ago had mellowed into rapt, slavish
devotion. Oogly’s head went up, the chest that wore the murderer’s medal
expanded by inches, an expression of pride and sheer happiness
overspread his wrinkled face.
“Thanks you!” he said fervidly.
“What?” Kitchener stared at the man with wilting features. “What do you
mean?”
He heard a snickering sound behind him and turned sharply to see Diane
Durand standing with a hand pressing against her ribs, almost doubled up
by the effort to keep her laughter to herself.
“Keep quiet!” he snapped.
“Your psychology is great,” said the girl, and stopped for an instant to
choke. “You had the right idea,” she finished, “only something went
awfully wrong with the psychology.”
“Will you kindly keep out of this?” he commanded, and gave her an ugly
look.
Instead of being dismayed Diane moved suddenly towards him, and before
he could move his head aside she put up an audacious forefinger to touch
his fiercely crooked eyebrow. “Hello, Cocky-bird!” she said demurely.
“Honestly--I think it’s cute.”
Kit tried to erase the scowl, and found himself scowling worse than
before. He was on the point of saying something disagreeable, but at
that instant he caught sight of Oogly’s strutting figure and honest,
beaming face. The ludicrousness of the affair struck him, and he was
forced to clutch suddenly at his own ribs and turn his back on the
Esquimau. Somehow his eyes encountered Diane’s elfish eyes, and before
he quite knew what had happened he was grinning at her.
“My gosh!” he gasped. “What have I done?”
“You’ve given out a decoration,” she said--“‘_pour valeur_’.”
“The poor idiot couldn’t be any more pleased if the King had come from
Windsor to pin him with the V.C.,” Kit groaned.
“You’d better do something about it,” said the girl seriously.
“Yes. I know.” Kitchener whirled abruptly to tower stiff and erect above
the Esquimau.
“Listen to me, Oogly!” he said crisply. “I don’t want to have any
misunderstanding. That medal is for only one murder. No more.”
The little Esquimau blinked and waited with flattering attentiveness.
“Do you get me?” demanded Kit. “If I hear of anybody else being
killed--good-by medal. I’ll take it away from you!”
Oogly was startled and worried. “Noum else?” he faltered.
“No. No one else. It’s only good for one. So please be careful. I
wouldn’t want to tell you that you can’t wear it any more. But that’s
what I’ll have to do if I hear of your killing another man. If you kill
another person I’ll take the medal and throw it in the creek and I’ll
never give you another one.”
Oogly’s mouth was twitching and for a moment it seemed almost as though
he were on the verge of tears. He was slow to think things out, but as
Kit waited uneasily he saw the bland, contented smile gradually reassert
itself. “Oright,” Oogly suddenly agreed. He touched his badge with
renewed satisfaction. “People see um an’ find out Oogly a good-murderer.
Get umfraid an’ no more come aroun’ for bothering. Nobody hav’ be killed
no more.”
“That’s exactly the idea,” agreed Kit, and breathed his relief. “But
don’t forget--if you ever lay a hand on a Yellow Knife, or anybody
else--you lose the medal.”
With a feeling that he had muddled through somehow, Kitchener dismissed
Oogly from his immediate worries. He went to the door, opened it a
crack, and peered out through the clearing. The silvery reflection of
the cold, wintry sun was beginning to lighten the sky above the gloom of
the forest. There were no Indians in sight, no sign of Giffard; the owls
had gone to roost.
Diane came to the door to observe the melancholy Christmas morning. “I
wasn’t laughing at _you_,” she said.
“Laugh all you like.” Kit closed and barred the door, and smiled
wearily. “If you can find anything funny in this heart-breaking hole, in
Heaven’s name laugh!”
“I was laughing,” she told him, “just at the dum-foolness of things. I
could have cried just as easily.
“If you want to know what I think,” she went on gravely, “I think you’re
doggone clever. You pulled a couple of fast ones this morning.”
“Laugh or cry, and think what you please,” he said ungraciously. “We’re
just where we started in the first place.”
“Mrs. Oogly and I,” said the girl, “wish to invite you to Christmas
dinner.” She made him a mocking little bow. “We hope you accept.”
“Sure. Thanks. I’ve got to stay until dark, anyhow. If Oogly or I step
out of here in the daylight, there’s an excellent chance of our being
popped off. I suspect those Yellow Knives have only taken a little
recess.”
The Esquimau family had arrived at the cabin well supplied with
provisions, the fruits of Oogly’s prowess with his fishing hooks and
iron-headed spear. They had brought with them a haunch of tender young
caribou, a dozen brace of ptarmigan, lots of frozen salmon and
whitefish, caught presumably during a lull in the Yellow-Knife praying,
and quantities of blueberries, which Mayauk had dried and compressed
into hard, black bricks.
By some necromancy of her own Mayauk persuaded the fireplace to stop
smoking, and, with the white girl acting as cook’s assistant, she
achieved a Christmas dinner which was palatable, although somewhat
greasy, and plentiful enough for famishing men. Diane’s personal
contribution was a great, soggy plum-pudding, made of white flour and
sugar and raisins and blueberries and caribou suet.
When Kitchener was invited to take his place at the table he could not
help wondering if anybody else in the world might be eating such an
outlandish Christmas dinner to-day with such strangely found companions.
He rather imagined that the championship for oddness went to this table.
He and Diane Durand called a truce for the afternoon. Kit tried to
forget that his sole object in life at present was to hunt the girl’s
criminal uncle, and she did her pathetic best to be amiable and cheerful
and to hide the harried look of anxiety that always came back to haunt
her restless eyes. Of the four Oogly and Mayauk alone joined with honest
good-will and untroubled laughter in a festive occasion which, to these
two pagans, was not really an occasion at all, but just another
bounteous meal to eat and another day of contentment to live.
Several times during the course of the dinner Kit excused himself to
saunter to the door and peek out across the sun-glistening clearing.
“As soon as it’s dark,” he remarked, “Oogly and I are going to make camp
down woods in the owlery. I don’t think it likely that any Yellow Knife
will go in there to look for us.”
“What about Mayauk and Uttaktuak?” asked Diane.
“Let ’em stay here with you. The Indians won’t bother them. They’re