AND KAYAK 167 



anxious. &quot; Unet,&quot; they said as if to say, 

 &quot; Just don t you bother your head about 

 Johannes ; you can t lose him, we all know 

 that. He s safe enough.&quot; 



Next day was stormy again, and there was 

 no Johannes. I thought of search parties, but 

 the people only smiled ; and, when the weather 

 cleared, off they went again with their dogs 

 and their sleds, with never a word about the 

 missing man. For ten days nothing happened ; 

 then the women waiting on the hill yelled 

 &quot; Kemmutsit, kemmutsit &quot; (a sled, a sled), and 

 I climbed the hill and saw a dot of a sled and 

 a tiny blur of dogs with an active little ant 

 of a driver slipping slowly down from the 

 woods at the mouth of the big river to the 

 wood-cutter s track over the ice. 



&quot; Johannes, immakka,&quot; they said, and 

 strolled down the hill to meet him. And 

 Johannes it was, smiling and happy, and 

 brown and well ; proudly shoving at a sled 

 piled high with meat and skins, and shouting 

 and cooing and chuckling to the toiling dogs. 



Willing women tore the pile to pieces, and 

 carried it into the hut ; an army of small 

 boys fought for the privilege of unharnessing 

 the dogs no doubt to the huge disgust of the 

 poor dogs, which had to wait with what 

 patience they could muster until the scuffling 



