THE DEAD OF WINTER 177 



by instinct, and to know him at heart you had 

 to look in his eyes, eyes that were dark almost to 

 blackness yet alive with light and activity ; to 

 know him still better you had to go with him out 

 on the trail and marvel at the skill and resource 

 of this primitive man, while realising how far 

 his education and intelligence were ahead of your 

 own in reading every mood of the wilderness — the 

 elements and the creature things — on which the 

 welfare of white man or red wholly depend if 

 they are to exist in his country. . . . 



About noon on the previous day I had landed 

 at Gullfoot's cabin greeted by the fierce barking 

 of his dozen sled-dogs, whose clamour he came 

 out to quell while welcoming me in. It was then 

 bitterly cold — zero weather, with a strong wind 

 blowing from the north-west. Sun-dogs, or par- 

 helion, a bright mark of short perpendicular 

 lines of softly hazed, luminous rainbow tints of 

 almost similar radiance to the sun, had been 

 showing in the morning sky on either side of the 

 low winter sun at wide but equal intervals from 

 it ; phenomenon peculiar to the dead of winter. 

 And it was indeed that season — the Dead of 

 Winter : Gullfoot, the following morning, quaintly 

 showed me his record that it was so, in pointing 

 to the rising sun where it struck through the 

 window into the very corner in the north-east 

 interior of his cabin. It was thus in his home 

 that he measured the shortest days, and the 

 longest days : in the height of summer, he told, 

 " it reaches away to that axe-notch in the centre 

 of the north wall." 



Gullfoot made me welcome, and I was glad of 



