One morning he was watching in somber fascination as I dissected a particularly pest-ridden old buck. I always tried to explain what I was doing so that he would understand the nature of my studies, and this seemed to be as good a time as any to brief him on the subject of parasitization. Hauling a bladder cyst about the size of a golfball out of the caribou’s liver, I explained that this was the inactive form of a tapeworm, and that, if eaten by a carnivore, it would eventually develop into several segmented creatures about thirty feet in length, coiled neatly in the new host’s intestines.

Ootek looked sick.

“You mean when it is eaten by a wolf?” he asked hopefully.

“Nahk,” I replied, exercising my growing Eskimo vocabulary. “Foxes, wolves, even people will do. It will grow in any of them, though perhaps not as well in people.”

Ootek shuddered and began to scratch his stomach as if conscious of an itching sensation in that region.

“I do not like liver, fortunately,” he said, greatly relieved now that he had remembered this fact.

“Oh, these worms are found all through the caribou,” I explained, with the enthusiasm of an expert enlightening a layman. “Look here. See these spots in the rump meat? White men call this ‘measled meat.’ These are the resting forms of another kind of worm. I do not know for sure if it will grow in people. But these—” and here I deftly extracted some threadlike nematode worms, each ten or more inches in length, from the dissected lungs— “these have been found in men: in fact enough of them will choke a man to death in a very little while.”

Ootek coughed convulsively and his mahogany-dark face grew wan again.

“That is enough,” he pleaded when he had got his breath back. “Tell me no more! I go now, back to the camp, and there I will think hard of many things and I will forget what you have told me. You are not kind. For if these things be true, then surely I will have to eat fish like an otter, or else starve to death. But perhaps this is a white man’s joke?”

There was such a pathetic note of hope in his question that it roused me from my professor’s trance and I belatedly realized what I was doing to the man.

I laughed, if in a somewhat artificial manner.

“Eema, Ootek. It is a joke on you. Only a joke. Now go you back to camp and cook our supper of big steaks. Only,” and in spite of myself I could not restrain the adjuration, “make damn’ sure you cook them well!”

21

School Days

BY MID-SEPTEMBER the tundra plains burned somberly in the subdued glow of russet and umber where the early frosts had touched the ground cover of low shrubbery. The muskeg pastures about Wolf House Bay were fretted with fresh roads made by the southbound herds of caribou, and the pattern of the wolves’ lives had changed again.

The pups had left the summer den and, though they could not keep up with Angeline and the two males on prolonged hunts, they could and did go along on shorter expeditions. They had begun to explore their world, and those autumnal months must have been among the happiest of their lives.

When Ootek and I returned to Wolf House Bay after our travels through the central plains, we found that our wolf family was ranging widely through its territory and spending the days wherever the hunt might take it.

Within the limits imposed upon me by my physical abilities and human needs, I tried to share that wandering life, and I too enjoyed it immensely. The flies were all gone. Though there were sometimes frosts at night, the days were usually warm under a clear sun.

On one such warm and sunlit day I made my way north from the den esker, along the crest of a range of hills which overlooked a great valley, rich in forage, and much used by the caribou as a highway south.

A soot-flecking of black specks hung in the pallid sky above the valley—flocks of ravens following the deer herds. Families of ptarmigan cackled at me from clumps of dwarf shrub. Flocks of Old Squaw ducks, almost ready to be off for distant places, swirled in the tundra ponds.

Below me in the valley rolled a sluggish stream of caribou, herd after herd grazing toward the south, unconscious, yet directly driven by a knowledge that was old before we ever knew what knowledge was.

Some miles from the den esker I found a niche at the top of a high cliff overlooking the valley, and here I settled myself in comfort, my back against the rough but sun-warmed rock, my knees drawn up under my chin, and my binoculars leveled at the living stream below me.

I was hoping to see the wolves and they did not disappoint me. Shortly before noon two of them came into sight on the crest of a transverse ridge some distance to the north. A few moments later two more adults and the four pups appeared. There was some frisking, much nose smelling and tail wagging, and then most of the wolves lay down and took their ease, while the others sat idly watching the caribou streaming by on either side only a few hundred feet away.

I easily recognized Angeline and George. One of the other two adults looked like Uncle Albert; but the fourth, a rangy dark-gray beast, was a total stranger to me. I never did learn who he was or where he came from, but for the rest of the time I was in the country he remained a member of the band.

Of all the wolves, indeed of all the animals in view including the caribou and myself, only George seemed to feel any desire to be active. While the rest of us sprawled blissfully in the sun, or grazed lethargically amongst the lichens, George began to wander restlessly back and forth along the top of the ridge. Once or twice he stopped in front of Angeline but she paid him no attention other than to flop her tail lazily a few times.

Drowsily I watched a doe caribou grazing her way up the ridge on which the wolves were resting. She had evidently found a rich patch of lichens and, though she must have seen the wolves, she continued to graze toward them until not twenty yards separated her from one of the pups. This pup watched her carefully until, to my delight, he got to his feet, stared uneasily over his shoulder to see what the rest of the family was doing, then turned and slunk toward them with his tail actually between his legs.

Not even the restless George, who now came slowly toward the doe, his nose outthrust as he tasted her scent, seemed to disturb her equanimity until the big male wolf, perhaps hurt in his dignity by her unconcern, made a quick feint in her direction. At that she flung her head high, spun on her ungainly legs and gallumphed back down the ridge apparently more indignant than afraid.

Time slipped past, the river of deer continued to flow, and I expected to observe nothing more exciting than this brief interlude between the doe and the wolves, for I guessed that the wolves had already fed, and that this was the usual after-dinner siesta. I was wrong, for George had something on his mind.

A third time he went over to Angeline, who was now stretched out on her side, and this time he would not take “no” for an answer. I have no idea what he said, but it must have been pertinent, for she scrambled to her feet, shook herself, and bounced amiably after him as he went to sniff at the slumbering forms of Uncle Albert and the Stranger. They too got the message and rose to their feet. The pups, never slow to join in something new, also roused and galloped over to join their elders. Standing in a rough circle, the whole group of wolves now raised their muzzles and began to howl, exactly as they used to do at the den esker before starting on a hunt.

I was surprised that they should be preparing for a hunt so early in the day, but I was more surprised by the lack of reaction to the wolf chorus on the part of the caribou. Hardly a deer within hearing even bothered to lift its head, and those few who did contented themselves with a brief, incurious look toward the ridge before returning to their placid grazing. I had no time to ponder the matter, for Angeline, Albert and the Stranger now started off, leaving the pups sitting disconsolately in a row on the crest, with George standing just ahead of them. When one of the youngsters made an attempt to follow the three adults, George turned on him, and the pup hurriedly rejoined his brothers and sisters.