The Snow Walker by Farley Mowat

Author:Farley Mowat [Mowat, Farley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77100-086-4
Publisher: D & M Publishers
Published: 2016-03-07T23:00:00+00:00

when the ice left the river, Itkut and I came back down to the coast. Kala was of the Sea People, so I took her bones out to that island which lies far from the shore. While I live I shall take gifts to her spirit each spring… in the spring, when the birds make love on the slopes and the does come back to our land, their bellies heavy with fawn.

The Woman and the Wolf

_______

The people built the little snowhouse and departed into the western lands. They went from the place singing laments for the dying, and they left nothing behind them except the old man. They took Arnuk, the dog, that being the old man’s wish, for Arnuk was the last gift an old man could make to his son and to his grandson and to his people.

It had been a hard time—those long, hungry months before the spring—and in the camp there had been the cries of children who were too young to know that starvation must be faced in silence. There had been death in the camp, not of men but of those who were of the utmost importance to the continuance of human life. The dogs had died, one by one, and as each was stilled so men’s hopes for the future shrank.

Though it had been a harsh time, no word had been spoken against the folly of feeding one old and useless human body. Maktuk, the son, had shared his own meagre rations equally between his aged father and his hungry child who also bore the name that linked the three together. But one dark April day the old man raised himself slowly from the sleeping ledge and gazed for a little while at his grandchild. Then out of the depths of a great love, and a greater courage, old Maktuk spoke:

“I have it in my heart,” he said, “that the deer await you at the Western Lakes, but I stay here. You shall take Arnuk with you so that in the years ahead you will remember me.”

The old man had his rights, and this was his final one. In the morning the people were gone, and behind young Maktuk’s sled the dog Arnuk tugged convulsively at her tether and turned her head backward to stare at a small white mound rising against the snow ridges. Arnuk had been born two winters earlier, but she was the ninth pup of the litter and so there was little food for her. If the old man had not taken it upon himself to feed and care for her, she would have died before her life truly began. With his help she saw warm days come and tasted the pleasures of long days romping with other young dogs by the side of the great river where the summer camp was pitched. When she grew tired she would come to the skin tent and push against the old man’s knees until he opened his eyes and smiled at her.

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