Arctic angels

Sergeant Cleaver shrugged his khaki service tunic up on wide shoulders, staring across the inlet at the precipitous coastline beyond. Already the brown hillsides were showing red where the lichens were commencing to take on their summer hue. There was a faint hint of green at the blue white glacier’s foot. A brilliant sun shone down out of an amazingly blue sky.

“Spring, all right,” he mumbled to himself as gray eyes roved over the ice pans and bergs tinkling together in the bay. “Another eight months’ winter over, and I ought to be tickled pink. Damn Scarth and his dogs, anyhow!”

The supply ship would probably be coming in another month or so, but he couldn’t go out on leave with all these sick and starving Eskimos on his hands, the sergeant ruminated, when his gaze swung about to the huddle of tupiks. Had to look after the poor devils somehow.

“I’ll make him feed those dogs, at any rate,” he said with sudden decision.

Quick fingers fastened the glinting brass buttons of the faded tunic, as soft stepping sealskin boots carried him downward in long strides.

A sudden chorus of expectant howls broke out from the watching huskies when Cleaver passed Scarth’s fish cache, and swung in at the trader’s open door.

The sergeant’s keen ears picked up a low whistle when he stepped into the post’s dim interior and stood, motionless, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

“That you, Uluk?” he queried, blundering forward.

Twin grunts answered and, following the direction, he made out two lounging blurs behind the wood heater’s rounded shape.

“Look here, Scarth, you’ll have to feed those dogs,” Cleaver announced, pushing forward until he was looking down at the trader’s narrow face and flickering eyes.

“Huh—huh,” Scarth grunted, giving the faintly grinning Uluk a soft kick on the leg with his sealskin mukluks. “What the heck am I goin’ to feed ’em on, eh? You Arctic angels goin’ to tumble down a bunch of manna, eh?”

The trader’s narrow shoulders quivered slightly. To cover the motion he jumped erect, pulling up his ever slipping and dirty mackinaw shirt. A yellow hand waved toward his empty shelves.

“Yes, I know you’re traded out,” Sergeant Cleaver agreed, ignoring the tone as he followed the gesture. “No grub left. You can fish though, can’t you?”

“Nothin’ doin’,” Scarth laughed. “That’s a native’s job. Think I’m goin’ to have the Esks see me an’ lose my white man’s rep? Not so’s you’d notice it.”

“Well, what about Uluk?”

“Uluk?” Scarth replied, a note of feigned astonishment in his tone. “Why, the lad’s half white, ain’t he? Got to look after his rep too. Don’t want to have the Esks see him workin’. No, sir.”

The halfbreed grinned faintly in response to the trader’s nudge.

“Well if it wasn’t for the fact that you’d report it and I’d be replying to fool questions from headquarters for the next two years, I’d shoot your blasted huskies,” Cleaver rumbled.

He wheeled away, pacing up and down the post’s earthen floor, followed by two pairs of amused eyes. Only just enough dog feed left to keep the police huskies going until the supply ship got in, the Mountie reflected. Out of the question to feed Scarth’s animals on his team rations. And the hungry Eskimos had eaten their sled dogs long since.

“Hey!” Scarth’s thin voice came suddenly. “Lookit, Cleaver. That skin boat of your’n is the only thing left in Kannequoq that’ll float. There’s walrus out there on the floes. Red meat. Why don’t you go out an’ belt one down for the Esks? I’ll buy the scraps for the dogs. How’s that?”

Again Cleaver sensed thinly covered insult in the little man’s tones and again he ignored it. Under other conditions he would have quickly removed the sneer from that weasel face, but now only one thought pulsed through his brain—how to feed the Eskimos and those yowling brutes up on the rocks.

Followed by twin grins of satisfaction, the Mountie padded to the door to stare out across the ice filled inlet. Yes, there were walrus out on the float ice; he had seen them through the glasses. It was as much as a man’s life was worth, though, to venture out among those razor edged pans in a frail skin boat.

Cleaver clenched brown fists, swung away from the post and, padding across the ice polished rocks, reached the first of the tupiks.

For a moment he stood with one hand on the caribou skin that served for a door, his sunburned face wrinkled in disgust. Abominable odors floated out on the crisp air from the tupik; the stench of unwashed humans, half tanned deerskins, moldy furs.

Cleaver pulled out a handkerchief and, holding it across his mouth and nostrils, ducked his long body and came upright in the tupik. The foul smelling interior was littered with the Eskimos’ priceless possessions; they were too far gone now with the coast sickness to care. Wooden pans sewn with rawhide, and stone cooking pots were thrown about in confusion. The floor was a wild jumble of feverish natives rolling about on bearskins, sealing spears, snowshoes and mukluks.

“By Christopher, they’ve got to have red meat or they’ll all kick out,” the Mountie said to himself, staring down on the emaciated, yellow faces. “Guess I’ve got to do it.”

“Oh, Kanneyok,” Cleaver called in the Innuit tongue. “I come bearing a message. Listen well, O you people of the ice.”

Three tousled heads were elevated for a moment above the skins; a thin arm waved to signify that the message had been heard.

“Thus and thus,” the sergeant called in Innuit through his handkerchief. “There must be red meat or you will all pass to the shadow hills. Therefore, because the great white king does not forget his people, I and the fat one go to hunt walrus. With the new sun we bring meat. I have spoken.”

Faint clucking sounded when the Eskimos passed this satisfying information along. A chorus of grunts.

“That’s the way to shoot it to ’em,” Scarth’s nasal tones came suddenly from the doorway. “You police sure knows your onions. Fall for this white king stuff, don’t they? But, by cripes, you’d better make good, Cleaver, or the Esks’ll give you the hee-haw from Alaska to Greenland—”

“_Anumlatciaq tamna oomiak!_” a laughing voice broke in on Scarth in the Eskimo tongue.