ARCTIC ANGELS

Howls floated out on the thin Arctic air, filling rock-walled Kannequoq Inlet with dirge-like notes. A dozen gaunt huskies padded to and fro near the red boulders to which they were tied; they eyed one another in murderous speculation, straining uselessly at the tethering sticks fastened to their shaggy necks.

Occasionally one of the animals halted its ceaseless trotting, squatted and, elevating a long wolf snout, sent out another wail to echo and re-echo back from the granite cliffs.

“Rotten! Rotten! Rotten!” Sergeant Richard Cleaver muttered to himself, striding up and down the narrow confines of the Mounted Police detachment building. “That brute Scarth is torturing those dogs just for pure devilment; can’t be any other reason that I can see. For five cents I’d go down there and shoot up the whole works.”

Peering through one of the little windows, he gazed down at the trader’s roof, set on a lower rock ledge, and then at the whimpering blurs beyond. A moon faced halfbreed, lounging in the post doorway, glanced up at the huskies and spat contemptuously. Apparently the man saw something humorous in the situation. Yellow teeth showed momentarily when the native tore off another mouthful of tobacco from a black plug.

Thin columns of smoke continued to well up undisturbed from the huddle of skin tupiks, sheltering beneath the cliffs from the ever present winds. But beyond the curling smoke there was no movement; none of the Eskimo inhabitants took any notice of the starving animals’ plea for food.

With a curse, the sergeant swung away from the window to glare at Constable Timothy Noonan’s thick frame stretched on his bunk.

“Helluva lot you care, you fat lobster!” Cleaver threw out at the slumbering man’s round, freckled face. “You don’t give a hoot about the prestige of the service, do you? Said you’d never make a dog man, and that goes! Blah!”

An angelic smile stole across the sleeper’s features. He rolled over lazily, grunting his contentment. Sergeant Cleaver snorted and stamped out of the cabin, crashing the door behind him.

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.

There followed a crisp oath from the trader, the sound of a blow, and a yelp from Uluk.

“Anumlatciaq tamna oomiak! The skin boat it never goes out!”

Cleaver translated the halfbreed’s phrase slowly, subconsciously aware that the sick Eskimos had heard and understood the words. Several of them were sitting upright, bony faces staring over at the door flap.

“By God, I’ve stood all I’m going to take from you and that grinning breed of yours!” the Mountie roared, gripped by long suppressed passion.

One leap carried him across the littered tupik. Two hard hands fastened on Scarth’s scrawny throat. The sergeant dragged the little man out into the glaring sunshine, shook him viciously for a long moment, and then sent him spinning with a well placed kick.

The trader was on his feet again in a moment, close set eyes darting fire. He opened his slit of a mouth; then thinking better of it, he wheeled away and padded off for the post, mumbling to himself.

Cleaver watched him pass out of sight; then once more he ducked back into the tupik, calling:

“Oh, Kanneyok, I have made a true talk; I am a redcoat and you are the children of the great white king. The skin boat goes out. There will be red meat before the sun comes again. I have spoken.”

“Ai! Ai!”

A chorus of grunts answered him, but Cleaver sensed that the natives’ tones lacked conviction. Swearing softly to himself, the Mountie plunged out into the clean air and made his way up to the detachment building.

“Ain’t no way for a buck to talk to his superior, but that was a damn’ fool play,” Constable Noonan offered from his perch on the bunk. “You got us in dutch, Sergeant dear. We’ll never be able to handle the Esks again if we falls down on this job, an’ I got a hunch that’s what Mr. Scarth is after. Suit his tradin’ fine if the natives go wild an’ woolly. I ain’t no Sherlock Holmes, but if this ain’t a plant I’m a Hindoo philosopher.”

“Oh, shut up!” Cleaver put in irritably. “I’ve got enough on my hands without scrapping with you. We’re going out in the skin boat in the morning, ice or no ice, and we’re going to bring back a walrus. I’ve given the king’s word for that. It’s getting dark. Any intention of feeding the dogs tonight?”

“Thought you said I weren’t no dog man—”

“You’ve got enough brains to feed them some tallow, at any rate,” the sergeant cut in on him. “Go out, Timothy Noonan, or I’ll throw you out!”

Constable Noonan dodged about the heater, grabbed his parka off a peg and slid through the door. Once outside he listened for a moment to the ice pans’ tinkling and the mournful wailing of Scarth’s huskies. Then with an expressive shoulder shrug, Noonan made his way up to the little storehouse.

The key grated in the lock, and with that well known sound eager whines burst from the dogs penned in the corral. Scarth’s starving brutes heard those expectant whimpers and filled the night air with agonized howling.

It was a good three hours later when Noonan pushed in the door of the detachment building and grinned over at his chief. Cleaver was stretched on his bunk, khaki shirted, body bathed in yellow lamplight, and deep in “Soldiers Three”. The sergeant threw the book down and glared at the rubicund face.

“Look here, you nighthawk,” he called. “Haven’t you got any savvy at all? You stay away from that girl, or I’ll—”

“Nix on the gentle sentiment tonight,” the constable broke in. “Love’s off; murder’s on. Been prowlin’. We won’t possess any skin boat in the mornin’; the Esks will have it that the great white king ain’t the caribou’s chin whiskers no longer, an’ Scarth will be known as the very strong man from here to Hoboken.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Cleaver boomed, jerking bolt upright. “Scarth wouldn’t dare break up that boat; not after that three months I got him for monkeying with our schooner last year.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised!” Noonan mocked his superior. “There’s more ways of killin’ a polar bear than choking it with chocolate eclairs. Climb into your parka an’ mukluks an’ we’ll take in the movie. It’s a real fifty cent show. Come on.”

Mumbling uncomplimentary things regarding his companion’s mentality, Cleaver vaulted off the bunk, pulled on his sealskin boots and parka, and followed Noonan’s squat figure out into the night.

A bright moon bathed Kannequoq Inlet, flooding the open spaces with soft radiance, softening the rugged coast’s raw contours. The two men stood motionless, ears filled with the subdued tinkling of the ice pans and the distant honking of some migrant geese seeking open water.

Noonan caught the other man’s sleeve and pointed down to Scarth’s trading post. Cleaver nodded. Yes, the lights were out—and for the first time in a month the unfortunate huskies had ceased howling. He turned to peer down at the constable, but Tim avoided the glance, padding off and beckoning his comrade to follow.

Swinging wide of the settlement below, the little man made his way over the moonlight bathed ridges until at length he arrived at one of the giant boulders that studded the beach. Beyond him, and less than a dozen yards away, the police skin boat lay overturned on the white sands.

“Well?” the sergeant’s glance read as he lowered himself to the cold shingle alongside his comrade.

Noonan made no offer to enlighten him, signaling for silence.

The sergeant and the constable lay motionless, staring up at the stars.

All at once the constable twisted over on his face, when Cleaver’s hard hand gripped his thick arm.

A new sound had been added to the faint night noises. Both Mounties knew what it was; the soft slithering of sealskin boots over the rocks.

Then suddenly two upright figures were blurred against the ice filled waters when Scarth and the halfbreed stepped down from the rocks and padded over to the skin boat. Each man was leading a number of the trader’s huskies.

“Pst!”

Noonan pulled Cleaver’s head down to him, whispering:

“You’ve seen hungry dogs up here chewin’ the rawhide lashings off sleds, ain’t you? You’ve seen ’em eatin’ the sides outa skin houses, an’ gnawin’ old sealskin boots? Sure. Well, now they’re changin’ the diet; goin’ to scoff our old skin boat.”

Cleaver’s right hand jerked back toward his revolver holster, but before it reached the weapon Tim’s fingers fastened on his wrist.

“Not yet! Not yet!” Tim Noonan urged. “See the whole show. Comic’s comin’. Savvy what it is, Dick? We’ve given the king’s word that there’ll be red meat for the sick Esks in the mornin’ an’ Scarth has passed the talk around that there won’t be any. If there ain’t no meat our name is mud, frozen mud at that. An’ how the heck can we get walrus without a boat?”

Cleaver glared down at the constable’s grinning face. What was he repeating that for, and why the blazes was he so happy about it?

The sergeant wrenched his hand free, thrusting the revolver forward. At the same moment a low oath sounded from one of the two men, and Cleaver’s trigger finger relaxed.

Scarth tugged the lines off the dogs he was leading, kicking one of the starving brutes toward the walrus hide covering the oomiak. But instead of rushing forward and tearing at the skin the dog squatted on the shingle, staring up at its master. Three more of the released huskies lay down and curled up for immediate sleep. Some of the others commenced to wander along the beach. None of the animals took the least notice of the skin boat.

Scarth’s rumbled cursing and the halfbreed’s clucking sounded dimly in the sergeant’s ears as he rolled over to stare in amazement at the bursting Noonan.

“Oh, my fat sides,” Tim groaned. “Seventeen dried fish, eleven tins of bully beef, five lumps of tallow, an’ a chunk of pemmican as big as a battleship. An’ they polished off the whole works. An’ now Scarth’s offerin’ ’em a dried up old walrus skin for dessert. A dog’s life, that’s what it is.”

Sudden realization stabbed Cleaver’s mind. Tim had sneaked out and fed Scarth’s starving huskies so that they would not attack the skin boat!

“Listen,” Noonan’s voice came again. “Yesterday a big floe grounded beyond the point. There was a walrus on it as big as the side of a house. Uluk shot it. Get the idea? With the skin boat gone we couldn’t pull the Arctic angel stuff, and when we fell down on the job Scarth would lug in his walrus an’ get the glad hand from the Esks. Cripes, you’re in a hurry, eh?”

Cleaver had vaulted from the icy ground with a catlike leap. As Noonan lumbered to his feet he heard Scarth’s surprised cry and the halfbreed’s yelp of dismay.

The trader threw himself face down on the beach when the white faced sergeant raced across the slippery shingle. A single lunge brought Scarth to his feet.

Then sounded the slithering of Noonan’s mukluks on the shingle as the little man raced after the grunting halfbreed.

“I take it all back about the dogs, Timsy,” Cleaver yelled at the flying figure. “Damn it, I’ll recommend you for corporal’s stripes for this!”

“Keep ’em!” Noonan’s voice panted. “I’m the detective sergeant of this man’s army, an’ that’s good enough for me. All right, you blubber chewer, try a taste of that!”

Whug! Whug!

Cleaver laughed softly, turning back to the squirming Scarth.

“Look here, you insignificant fragment of decayed whale meat,” he growled at the trader. “You’re too small to pound, but I have something nice in store for you. It’ll be daylight in an hour. You and the breed will cut up that walrus and bring it down here. Then you’ll keep on making soup for the Esks until they’re well again. On top of that you’re going to wash all their clothes and clean up the tupiks. That’s slow motion death, if you ask me. Not a word, you rat. Move!”

As he shoved Scarth forward, Cleaver saw his comrade come upright and fan himself vigorously. Surrounding him were four of the satiated huskies. They sniffed gratefully at Noonan’s legs.