Where the Sun Swings North | Page 3

run. High
above the others rose a squeaky Scandinavian protest:
"By yingo, ven ay ban cook on Soofie Suderlant ve sing it so dis
vay----"
"Close yore mouth, Silvertip." As a whale would swallow a minnow so
Kayak Bill's drawling tones engulfed the thin, high accents of the
one-time cook of the Sophie Sutherland. "I ain't no nature for Swedes
a-devilin' o' me. I been singin' that song for nigh on to ten yars, and by
the roarin' Jasus, I reckon I know how to sing it. Come on boys--now
all together!"

Joining the again raised bass of Kayak Bill, several voices took up the
rollicking strain, among them the high, easily recognizable tenor of
Silvertip, and the voice of another, a baritone of startling mellowness
and purity, having in it a timbre of youth and recklessness:
"Up into the Polar Seas, Where the Innuit maidens be, There's a fat,
bright-eyed va-hee-ney A-waitin' there for me. She's sittin' in her igloo
cold, Chewing on a muckluck sole, And the sun comes up at midnight
From an ice-pack round the Pole."
At the sound of the baritone, the White Chief hitched his shoulders
with a movement of satisfaction. Add-'em-up Sam's successor, the
bookkeeper, was bidding fair to follow in the sodden footsteps of his
predecessor. Given a little more time and this baritone-singing
cheechako[2] would be where the White Chief need have no anxiety as
to the accounts rendered the Company's new president, whom Kilbuck
had never seen. A little more time, a little more hootch, and he would
also have settled the case of Na-lee-nah.
The thought of the Thlinget girl's soft brown eyes brought a momentary
pang. The white plague permitted few native women to become old.
Twice now Naleenah had lost her voice, and only last night he had
noticed behind her soft, her singularly beautiful little ears, the peculiar
drawn look that to his practiced eye spelled tuberculosis. She would
last two years more, perhaps, but in the meantime he must protect
himself--he stirred uneasily. The bookkeeper must be made to take her
off his hands.
His musing was broken into by another burst of song:
"Oh-o-o-o! I am a jolly rover And I lead a jolly life! I have my hootch
and salmon And a little squaw to wife."
Simultaneously the door of Kayak Bill's cabin opened and the owner, a
tatterdemalion figure, stood for a moment on the doorstep. Stretching
his arms above his head, he yawned prodigiously, and then, espying
Kilbuck, sauntered across the courtyard toward him.

An old sombrero curved jauntily on red-grey hair that was overly long.
A wavy beard of auburn-grey spread over the front of his blue flannel
shirt. Hanging loosely from his shoulders a hair-seal waistcoat, brightly
trimmed with red flannel, served as a coat above faded blue overalls,
and from the knees down Kayak Bill was finished off with hip rubber
boots, the turned-down tops of which flapped with every step, lending a
swashbuckling air to his rolling gait.
He seated himself leisurely on the steps below the platform in front of
the trading-post door.
"By hell, Chief," he drawled, drawing a huge clasp-knife from his
pocket, "I been grazin' on this here Alasky range nigh on to twenty yars,
and so help me Hannah, I never did find a place so wild or a bunch o'
hombres so tough but what sooner or later all hands starts a-singin' o'
the female sect." With a movement of his thumb Kayak Bill released
the formidable blade of the knife, and nonchalantly, dexterously, began
using it as a toothpick.
"Yas," he said slowly, in answer to the other's silence, "a-talkin' and
a-singin' o' women and love. . . . Now, I hearn tell a heap about love
and women in my time, but neither o' them things has affected my heart
ever, though one time a spell back, tobaccy did. Still, Chief, with all
respects to yore sentiments regardin' them Chocolate Drops what
inhabits yore harem, . . . still, it sort o' roils me up to hear a white man
a-talkin' and a-singin' o' takin' a squaw to wife."
There was an involuntary contraction of the hand that was hooked
under Paul Kilbuck's belt. Not another man from Dixon's Entrance to
Point Barrow would have dared to hint at the White Chief's domestic
arrangements in that gentleman's hearing, but there was something in
the soft twinkle of Kayak Bill's hazel eye, something in the crude,
whimsical philosophy distilled in the old hootch-maker's heart, that
amused, while it piqued the trader at Katleean. He sat down now on the
steps beside his visitor.
"Kayak," he said, almost gently, "when an old fellow like you begins to
talk about squaws I have to smile. A man past sixty--! But how about

twenty-five years ago?