'Where? Ever see me?' 'No; your partner, him priest, Pastilik,
long time ago. Him ask me if I see you, Malemute Kid. Him give me
grub. I no stop long. You hear him speak 'bout me?' 'Oh! you're
the fellow that traded the otter skins for the dogs?' The man
nodded, knocked out his pipe, and signified his disinclination
for conversation by rolling up in his furs. Malemute Kid blew out
the slush lamp and crawled under the blankets with Prince.
'Well, what is he?' 'Don't know--turned me off, somehow, and then
shut up like a clam.
'But he's a fellow to whet your curiosity. I've heard of him. All
the coast wondered about him eight years ago. Sort of mysterious,
you know. He came down out of the North in the dead of winter,
many a thousand miles from here, skirting Bering Sea and
traveling as though the devil were after him. No one ever learned
where he came from, but he must have come far. He was badly
travel-worn when he got food from the Swedish missionary on
Golovin Bay and asked the way south. We heard of all this
afterward. Then he abandoned the shore line, heading right across
Norton Sound. Terrible weather, snowstorms and high winds, but he
pulled through where a thousand other men would have died,
missing St.
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