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conflicting thoughts. With this new emi-
nence added to Lemik’s prowess as a
hunter was not the giant liable to threaten
his own security and position with the
tribe? Through the crooked brain of the
medicine man flashed a bold course of
action.

As the-guttural roar of acclaim sub-
sided, Neuktuk informed his greasy ad-
herents that he was going to perform
still another miracle. He was going—like
Jesus—to raise the dead to life. Thought
turned to Muniak, the blind man. “No!
we will not disturb the sleep of Muniak,”
croaked the imposter, reading their

thoughts. Quick as lightning he snatched
up the rifle, swung the muzzle on the slow-
thinking hunter still scrawling spidery
pot-hooks with childish glee upon the
paper. “Lemik must die and be restored
to life again.” He yanked the trigger.
As the explosion rocked the igloo, Bible
and pencil slipped from the nerveless
fingers of the hunter. Writhing in agony
from a gaping wound in his stomach,
Lemik rolled, squirming, upon the floor.
Then, as the death-rattle and drumming

heels announced the departure of the

hunter’s spirit, the astonished audience
waited for the miracle.

Instead, Neuktuk proceeded to go into
a trance. With returning animation he
gazed into the veiled eyes of the fanatics
about him. “Lemik is too full of virtue
to encumber this sinful earth,” he told
them. “That’s why he was able to read
and write. If he’d stayed alive he might
become bad inside and fall from grace.
The spirits want him as he is.” Waving
his wooden cross over the corpse of his
credulous victim, he signed to his disciples
and the body of Lemik the hunter was
consigned to the icy morgue, fast filling
with the victims of the blood-crazed
“Messiah”.

For the first time the full enormity of
their crazed leader’s pretensions seemed
to dawn on his bewildered converts.
Doubts, once stirred, commenced to crys-
tallize into growing anger. With smoul-
dering eyes, Kidlappik watched the self-
elected: “God” as he recommenced his
posturing and haranguing, his sinewy
hand creeping closer and closer around
the haft of his harpoon.

2K * *

At the diminutive frame barracks of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at
Pangnirtung, deep buried beneath snow
blocks to protect it from the polar blasts
and biting blizzards that swirled across
the frozen sea, Inspector H. A- Joy gazed
out over the lonely land of utter desolation
and the snake-like figure of a dog-team
writhing and twisting between monster
icebergs anchored in the icefields. Across
the wind-flailed Land of Cain echoed the

wi)

staccato crack of a five-fathom walrys.
hide whip the Eskimo driver plied with,
unceasing vigour about the  slant-eyed
huskies toiling at the fan-shaped traces.
Every action of the swiftly approaching
native indicated haste that was unusual
with the Eskimo. ;

“T wonder,’ Joy turned a seamed and
weatherbeaten face to Corp. McInnes,
“what that Huskie’s got on his mind. Sure
seems in one infernal hurry.”

In a tangle of walrus-hide harness,
snapping canines, guttural shouts and
bared fangs, the dog-team cascaded to a
halt before the barracks. A moment later
a scared Eskimo, his frost-scarred face
the colour of dirty parchment, was ges.
ticulating wildly, pouring out a torrent of
guttural Iglulik, his eyes the size of
saucers.

“All right, Joe,” Joy turned to the
interpreter, “what's it all about?”

“Him say,’ the interpreter’s hands
were trembling, “Huskies at Kevetukmuit
all same clazy. Say one Huskie, him tink
him- ‘God’ and kill’'um plenty oder Hus-
kie. Say him people *fraid dis ‘God’ come
dere an kill’um too.”

It was a story of murder run riot. Of
a crazed medicine man who’d abrogated to
his greasy person the divine powers of the
white man’s God and, with the craftiness
of the aboriginal witch-doctor, was ridding |
the snow village of Home Bay of all
enemies and “unbelievers”. Havuk, the
Eskimo, hadn’t been there himself, but.
frightened Eskimos, fearing death, had
sneaked overland in the Arctic and were
telling of the macabre happenings that
were making a shambles of the Home Bay
village.

PoLicE REMEMBER SIMILAR CASES

As the Inspector listened to the gut-
tural story of the frightened Eskimo, his
mind swept back to that other Eskimo
murder that had sent him, three years
before, from Ottawa, three thousand miles
to the southward, on a patrol across the
roof of the world in search of the Eskimo
slayers of Captain Robert Janes. It had
been a tough assignment, an assignment

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