Lighted Windows by Emilie Loring

Author:Emilie Loring [Loring, Emilie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

XII

Harcourt picked his way through the maze of the Eskimo camp, past rudely constructed shacks, canvas tents, shelters of walrus hide. He cleared a baby that crawled in front of him at a jump, only to land on a dog which slunk away with a howl. The atmosphere was heavy with the odors of simmering seal-blubber, wet fur, drying fish. Bead-like eyes peered at him from cavernous interiors. Malamute pups worried bones, or dug frenziedly at the ground to bury them. Swarthy children pulled at the blankets of women with jet-black braids of hair who slapped them, nursed at the brown breasts of women who cuddled them. Virile youths in high skin boots, mail-order trousers and shirts, stared at him sheepishly; girls with brilliant red lips smiled at him shyly. Shadowy figures scuttled in the background, like supers assembling for a chorus; witch-like old women, with stripes tattooed from lower lip to the point of the chin, stirred the boiling contents of pots over small fires. Outside a tumbledown shack, two men pounded with white rods on stretched-skin drums as big as dishpans. They crooned as they boomed in perfect time.

He stopped before a shack. Silence followed his knock. He opened the door. Under a light which hung from a rafter a little man with a face like a walnut-shell, bone button through the flesh near the edge of his upper lip, worked at a bench littered with tools and pieces of silver. Propped against a crude blower was the advertising page from a magazine. On pegs on the wall hung bracelets and chains beautifully carved. A number of silver dollars were stacked in one corner. His face cracked into a smile of welcome.

“Howdy, Boss! Buy somet’ing?”

“Not this morning, Ossa.” Harcourt looked at the design from which the man was working.

“Where did you get this?”

“Mees Secr’tary bring it. Say I might mak’ same. Ossa get beeg trade nex’ summer she t’ink. She kin’. She help squaws with papooses, teech ’em much.”

Harcourt’s brows contracted. Janice in the native camp! Why hadn’t some one told him? If he got her away from this wilderness safe and sound, he never would worry about anything again in all his life.

He stepped to the table, set near a window hermetically sealed. Kadyama stared at him from above a handful of greasy cards. The eyes of the three other men shifted from one face to another.

“Pasca told you that I wanted to talk with you, Kadyama. Why didn’t you come to the office?”

“I no work no more. I go huntin’. Much money huntin’.”

“You won’t go hunting till you have talked with me, get me? No one leaves headquarters for the next three days. The Commissioner and his men are coming.” He watched the four faces. “Mr. Hale was shot last night.” Stupefaction in three pair of eyes, into Kadyama’s triumph flamed.

“Klosh! Good! The damn black cat go. He go.”

Remembrance of the abduction of Blot, which had been submerged in the rush of events, flashed back into Harcourt’s mind.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.