CHAPTER XXV 



OLE AND I GO HUNTING 



ON our midsummer hunt into the interior Storkerson and I were 

 absent about twenty days from the coast and from Ole, who 

 was there alone with three of the dogs, guarding our dried 

 meat and skins. Most people would think he would have found this 

 rather a lonesome job, and so should I had I not known him well. 



My jQrst meeting with Ole was in 1912 in the spring when I 

 was making a journey west along the north coast of Canada near 

 the Mackenzie River. I found him in a trapping camp alone, 

 where he told me he had been alone all winter. I remember ask- 

 ing him then whether he did not find it lonesome. He replied that 

 there was no reason why he should. There was always something 

 happening; sometimes the weather would be so bad that he could 

 not go outdoors, and being housebound constituted a sort of ad- 

 venture; another day the weather was exceptionally good and then 

 he could go out and visit his traps, sometimes finding them full 

 and other times empty. There must be something wrong, he 

 thought, with any one who hankered for more variety than that. 

 But even to this was added a monthly visit from his brother who 

 came with a fast dog team from the winter base of the Star twenty 

 or thirty miles away, and who usually stayed two or three hours, 

 returning home at night. "And then," Ole said, "there is scarcely 

 a month some Eskimo does not come, and sometimes they stay 

 overnight." 



There was no affectation about this with Ole. He was always 

 glad to see visitors, but never lonesome between the visits. I can- 

 not say that I ever quite understood this frame of mind, although 

 I objectively realized it to be a fact that Ole would not mind in 

 the least having Storkerson and me stay away a month if it suited 

 us. 



The third week of our stay inland we had already been farther 

 east and had returned to a point about twenty miles from the 

 coast where we had killed and spread out to dry a good deal of fat 

 caribou meat. After some discussion, we had come to the conclu- 

 sion that polar bears were very rare if not absent on Banks Island, 

 at least at this season, and that it might be safe to leave our food 



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