The Haunted Igloo (2 page)

The three boys roared with laughter.

“
Go away,” Jean-Paul said. “Pa will
come—”

Chinook brushed snow from
his hair. “And your pa will say, ‘What very nice friends you have,
Jean-Paul, dear!’”

Tears sprang into
Jean-Paul’s eyes, but he looked at the ground so they wouldn’t see.
Then the pup yelped.

Nanuk moved quickly and
yanked open Jean-Paul’s parka. The pup jumped out and landed in the
snow. Aiverk picked up the squirming ball of fluff.

“
Just a pup!” His eyes narrowed, and
he tried to look mean. “Where did you steal the pup,
Okalerk
?”

“
I didn’t steal her!” Jean-Paul
reached for the pup, but Aiverk jerked it away. “Please, Aiverk,
give her back! I didn’t steal her, she’s mine.”

Chinook scratched the pup’s
head. “Nice dog, Jean-Paul. You must have taken it from someone.
Why else would you hide it?”

Jean-Paul was really crying
now, and he didn’t care who saw.

“
I—I was just keeping her warm,” he
said. “I didn’t want her to get cold.” He reached out again. “I
want my dog back, Aiverk!”

“
Give the baby his dog,” said Nanuk.
“We got better things to do.”

Aiverk gave the wiggly pup
back to Jean-Paul. “Here, take your stolen dog,
Okalerk
. I don’t want to be caught
with something you stole.”

“
If you were bigger and meaner and
stronger,” said Nanuk with a laugh, “you could join the Ice Patrol.
But we don’t want a crying sissy in our club, right
guys?”

“
Frozen Eyeballs would be a good name
for him,” chuckled Aiverk. “Frozen
Okalerk
Eyeballs!”

Jean-Paul tried to ignore their taunts. He
put the pup back inside his coat and turned to leave. Having his
father find him with the dog would be better than being teased to
death.

From the direction of the river came the
sudden roar of an engine. It sputtered a few times, then died.
Finally, it caught and raced up powerfully.

Chinook shouted, “Hey it’s
the plane! Come on, let’s go watch it take off!”

Jean-Paul had also wished
to see the aircraft lift off from its runway on the frozen river,
but he sighed with relief as the boys tore off around the corner of
the building. For one thing, they wouldn’t tease him any more that
day. For another, it had started snowing a few weeks before. Soon
it would be nearly impossible to fly into or out of the Northwest
Territories.

“
You’re safe,” he told the pup. “I’m
going to take care of you now.”

It was nearly dark when
Jean-Paul left his hiding place. He hadn’t meant to stay away so
long, but he also hadn’t planned to return to the trading post
until he was sure the traders were gone.

The main street of Aklavik
was almost deserted. As he walked back to the Hudson’s Bay trading
post, a sickening feeling nudged into Jean-Paul’s throat. He had
never lied to his father. But he had already thought up a good
one.

Jean-Paul did not have to
look far for Cordell. The tall, wide-shouldered man with thick
black hair and a bushy beard tromped down the steps of the trading
post. He strode quickly to his son and faced him with his huge
hands on his hips. It was almost too dark to see the man’s eyes,
but Jean-Paul knew they’d be flashing fire.

“
Where have you been?” Cordell
roared.

Knowing how angry and worried his father
must be, Jean-Paul could do nothing but stare at the ground. He
shuffled the toes of his boots in the snow. Words got stuck in his
throat.

Cordell knelt and took
Jean-Paul’s shoulders. “Jean-Paul, son, look at me!” At that
moment, Cordell saw Jean-Paul’s parka move. “Eh? What have you got
in there?”

“
This little old pup…” Jean-Paul
whispered. “This here little pup got away. And—and I had to go find
her.”

The awful lie was out.

Jean-Paul tried to struggle
away from his father, but Cordell held tightly to one shoulder.
With the other hand, he unfastened his son’s parka and looked down
at the ball of silvery fur that poked a fuzzy head out.

Cordell stared at the
animal for a moment without speaking. He reached down and scratched
a soft little ear. He looked back at Jean-Paul. “The runt, eh?”
Cordell released Jean-Paul’s shoulder and scratched his beard
thoughtfully. “Son, you know the money from this pup would have
brought us a meal for some cold, dark night.”

“
But she was running away, Pa! And you
said yourself she won’t make a good sled dog. You said she’s too
small. You said so!”

Jean-Paul set the squirming pup on the
ground, and she promptly made a yellow, wet spot in the snow. He
picked her up again before she could wander off, cuddling her
beneath his chin.

Cordell rose and put an arm
around Jean-Paul. He led him to the freight sled, which was already
loaded with supplies from the trading post. “I suspect that pup
never ran away,” Cordell said. “I think you wanted to keep her for
a pet, eh?”

“
Yes, sir.” Jean-Paul was relieved. It
hadn’t been as bad as he had thought it would be. Still, he felt
awful about the lie. It wasn’t much fun having your stomach churn,
and waiting in fear for someone to find out. Now it was
over.

Cordell looked sternly at
Jean-Paul as he settled him onto the sled with the pup in his lap.
“There’s not much we can do about it now, eh? I suppose you heard
the plane take off.”

“
Yes, sir, I heard
something.”

“
I suppose you planned it that
way.”

Jean-Paul was tired of
lying. He crossed his fingers and said quietly, “Yes, I did that,
Pa. I’m sorry.”

The sledge was fully
loaded, with barely enough room for Jean-Paul. Cordell tucked the
robe around the boy’s shoulders. “You’ve got a pup for the winter,”
he said. “But when the traders return next spring, she’ll have to
go.”

Jean-Paul nodded, clutching the pup tightly
against his chest.

Cordell checked the traces
running from the sled to the dog team. Then he went to the back of
the sled and picked up his long leather whip. With a flip of his
wrist, he cracked it sharply overhead. The whip unfurled and flew
through the cold air, touching down just inches from Tork’s
nose.

The
zing
of the whip brought Tork to his
feet with a joyful yelp. He threw back his great black head and
howled, then turned to look at Cordell and Jean-Paul with what
appeared to be a nice, wide smile on his muzzle. Dozing one moment,
he was now wide awake. The whip meant work, and work was what Tork
knew best. Siko and Lishta also sprang to their feet to dance
around in the snow. They, too, raised their voices to the wind,
impatient to be off. Cordell snapped the whip again.
“
Hah
!
Hah
!
Go, you huskies!”

The powerful dogs leaped
out ahead of their harnesses, straining against their breast bands.
The sled began moving, slowly at first, then faster and faster on
the slick runners that Cordell had iced earlier that
morning.

After the first hard jolt,
which nearly threw him off the sled, Jean-Paul leaned back to enjoy
the ride. As Cordell pushed off, the sled gave way to a speeding
ride over slippery, well-worn trails that wound through the main
street of Aklavik, past the hospital, the trading post, the
boarding house. Soon, it headed into open country, away from the
tree line and the three large branches of the Mackenzie River.
Traveling westward, the sound of runners
slishing
over snow was the only sound
heard in the vast, frozen quiet. Once in a while, Cordell whistled
or yelled at the team. Sometimes he ran beside the sled. Other
times he rode on the back so he could operate the hand
brake.

Those were sounds Jean-Paul loved to hear.
One day, unless his lameness prevented it, he, too, would be
captain of his own team and run behind a sled.

Now, the pup tried to free herself, twisting
her pointed ears sideways like small radio antennae, to listen. She
whined.

“
You’d like to run with them!”
Jean-Paul laughed. “It’s in your blood to run!” He rubbed a silky
ear as he spoke. The pup looked into his face, her pale blue eyes
alert and intelligent. Jean-Paul hugged her closely as darkness
fell.

Strange dark shapes of snow
banks and drifts slid past on each side. Ahead lay endless miles of
untamed land, broken only by occasional sledge tracks. Stretching
as far as the eye could see, toward Yukon Territory, were mounds of
crusty snow that reminded Jean-Paul of frosted peaks on a birthday
cake.

Night brought a loneliness that only those
living near the top of the world can know. The snow had stopped
falling. The air was crisp and clear. There was a closed-in feeling
beneath a black dome of sky, as though someone had turned a bowl of
stars upside down.

Up ahead lay an enormous
igloo that had suddenly appeared one day. Jean-Paul didn’t know who
had built it.

“
It’s haunted by an old man and six
wolves,” Chinook had said one day in school. “He builds it every
year, but no one has ever seen him.”

“
Then how do you know he’s there,”
Jean-Paul had asked Chinook, “if no one has ever seen
him?”

“
We just do,” Chinook replied. “It’s
something you have to believe—if you want to keep your
head.
” He zipped a finger
across his throat like a knife. “They say the wolves are
two-hundred pounds each, with bloody fangs six inches
long.”

“
You’re just trying to scare me!”
Jean-Paul had said. As far as he knew, there were no wolves that
big.

And Nanuk had said,
“Sometimes you can hear those ghost wolves howling!
Owoooo-o-o-o
! But you’re
too scared to go in there, Jean-Paul
Okalerk
!
”

Well, that part was true.
But Jean-Paul had answered, “I’m no more scared than you guys
are!”

Sometimes, while passing the igloo on a
bitterly cold and windy night with his father, Jean-Paul thought he
really could hear those wolves howling. If only he were as brave as
the other boys!

Now, as Cordell’s team
raced by the haunted igloo, a wolf howl filled the night
air.
Owoo-o-o-o
.
On a clear night above the Arctic
Circle, sound travels for many miles. Tork, Siko, and Lishta took
up the cry till they were well past the haunted igloo. But this
night Jean-Paul did not feel lonely or afraid. His father was in
command, and he was too happy to worry. He snuggled inside the warm
polar bear robe and whispered to the pup.

“
Don’t worry. I won’t let them take
you when spring comes. By that time you’ll be pulling in harness as
well as your mother.”

Jean-Paul yawned and
glanced up at the sky just in time to see the silvery trail of a
star disappear over the horizon. Last night he had seen the dancing
green phantoms of the Northern Lights, flashing and shifting
mysteriously in the night sky. The two coming one after the other
could be a good sign.

Chapter 2

“
W
hat did you expect?” Lise asked Cordell. Jean-Paul’s mother
hugged him. From the corner of her eye she watched the pup
investigate a bag of supplies Cordell had placed near the door.
“Jean-Paul hasn’t much company,” she said softly. “Can one small
puppy hurt?”

Jean-Paul had inherited his
size from his mother, for she was no more than five feet tall. A
small-boned woman with soft golden hair and large gray eyes, Lise
had the trusting look of a child. But this tiny woman was not as
fragile as she appeared. In fact, just last spring, she had waded
into icy water along with her husband to rescue their dog team and
sled when it broke through the ice. She had worked round the clock
trying to save a female husky. But the animal had died, and Lise
had wept. Jean-Paul knew his mother was a blend of soft and
tough.

Cordell’s dark eyes moved
toward Lise’s long wool skirt. But he saw no difference yet—the
child within her body had not been growing long.

“
The pup will take food meant for you
and the little one.” He placed a box on the table and opened the
cover. “Here, see if I missed anything.”

“
The pup won’t eat much.” Lise peered
into the box. “Good, you remembered the salt ...
coffee…”

“
Kapik
,
” said
Cordell.

Lise looked up.
“What?”

“
Kapik
. Coffee, in
Inuktitut
.”

“
So?
Kapik
.” Lise shrugged and went back to
the box, laying items out on the table as she came to them.
“Raisins, rice, beans . . .” She glanced up with a frown. “Sick,
sick, sick of beans!” She continued placing food staples in a neat
row. “What I wouldn’t give for a nice crisp head of lettuce!” Then,
with a yelp of joy she removed a small package and held it up. “Ah!
Chocolate! My one and only weakness!”