C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

82 THE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RATslurred. Often, he would roll his tongue with zest round a chosen epithet, sometimesyou could watch the deliberate movement and then the pride of ownershiplighting up those cold blue eyes as he uttered some telling phrase. Yet there werenever any adjectival, flowing periods, nor was there a superfluous word. Hisemphasis was gained by insight, not by labour or emotion or reiteration. His ownhardness had shorn off flowery adjuncts but his cuteness had unearthed wordsthat bit into the subject and lingered in the memory. Sometimes they were directas a punch in the midriff, sometimes they sounded like a breaking wave with anechoing backwash. I doubt if either the Greek or the French orator could haveadded point to his favourite story, the yarn of the corpse and the missionary."There was a corpse frozen into the snow once when I was living at HerschelIsland, unburied it was and the foxes came sniffing around. Best fox-bait in theworld is a half-gone corpse, didn't you know that? Well, the missionary he settraps to protect the corpse until the thaw came. I soon had the yarn going that thesky-pilot was making a good job of trapping with corpse-bait. That yarn travel?Like hell-fire. Silent and happy like a clam in the ooze I was."Curiously enough the day before we left Aklavik we heard him for the first timegive expression to his reasoned philosophy oflife. He was talking of the North, asa freeholder might show off his little property with pride, backing it against allother lands that the heart of a man could desire."A man comes in from outside once in a while and goes around asking foremployment. Employment!" He uttered the word scornfully. "Give away oneman's work to another when everyone has his own job. There's none of that here.We put it square to him. 'Now look here; if you've not a cent, pull out up theriver, build yourself a cabin and set some traps.' Well, he takes mebbe a dozentraps and sets some deadfalls too. Deadfalls? Why, they are just timber proppedup over a run; they hit the animal on the head-no expense-made right there inthe country. Well, in a few days he gets four or five pelts, and there's a hundreddollars straight away. Good pay for a man's work and a man's his own boss too.That's the North. If you go outside and meet a pal in the city you accost him:'Come and have a yarn.' He pulls out his watch and begins to reckon; he's got tocatch a streetcar or get to bed at a certain time so as to be at the office bright andearly, or else he'll lose hisjob. Up here a man don't reckon nor hurry, he's got allthe time there is; time cuts no ice in the North. Then it may be he feels off colourand wants to lie around for a day or two. Well, there's nothing against that, a manis liable to fluctuations same as a river falls and rises. But outside -you've no