Free The Snow Walker by Farley Mowat

lake stretching far into the forests. Here they made camp.
    Each morning thereafter the men drove south on the ice of the lake to where good timber grew on its shores. Before dark they would return to the travel camp where the women would greet them with trays of hot soup and boiled meat. At first some men stayed at the camp during the day to guard it, but when no signs of Itkilit were seen these men went also to help with the cutting.
    On the sixth day, while the Innuit men were far down the lake, a band of Itkilit came running on snowshoes out of the small woods near the camp. When the Innuit men returned again in the evening, they found three women and three boys, Hekwaw among them, dead in the snow.
    Kiliktuk and his companions did not pursue the Itkilit into the thick cover of the forests, knowing they would be helpless against the long bows, spitting their arrows from hiding. They were afraid that the slaughter of their women and children was planned to draw them into an ambush. So they wrapped the remains of the dead ones in caribou skins, loaded the sleds, and started north.
    The sounds of their lamentings were heard in the river camps even before the dog teams were seen. It is remembered that when Kiliktuk entered Koonar’s igloo he took an iron knife Koonar had given him and thrust it partway into his own chest, inviting Koonar to drive it home into his heart.
    The fury of Koonar at the loss of his son was of a kind unknown to my people. It was of a kind unknown in our land. Koonar did not lament his dead, as my people did; he burned and roared in the grip of madness, and so terrifying was he that none dared come near him for the space of many days and nights. Then he grew silent… silent and cold, with a chill more dreadful than his fury. At last he ordered the people to bring him muskox horns, the best and hardest dry wood, plaited caribou sinews, and some other things.
    He worked in his snowhouse for three days and when he was done he held in his hand the father of this bow which I have made—although what I have done is but the crude work of a child compared to what Koonar wrought.
    For a long time after that he ordered the lives of the people in the camp as if they were no more than dogs. He drove each hunter to make a crossbow. If a man did not make it well enough, Koonar struck him and forced him to do it again. It is unthinkable for one of us to strike another, for to do so is to show that you are truly a madman; yet the people endured Koonar’s madness, for their awe of him was the awe one has of a devil.
    When each man had a crossbow and a supply of bolts, Koonar dragged himself out of the snowhouse and made them set up targets and practise shooting, day after day. Although it is not in my people’s nature to give themselves in this way to such a task, they were afraid to resist.
    With the coming of the long night which is the heart of winter, Kiliktuk, obeying Koonar’s will, chose the ten best marksmen and ordered them to prepare dogs and gear for a long journey. Six teams were hitched to six sleds and the chosen men left the camps, heading south along the frozen river. Kiliktuk was in the lead, and on his sled lay Koonar, well wrapped in muskox robes against the brittle cold.
    It is told how these men boldly drove into the forests, Koonar having banished both fear and caution from their hearts. For seven days they drove southward among the trees, and in the evening of the seventh day they came in sight of the smoking tents of a big band of Itkilit upon a lake shore.
    The Innuit would have preferred to draw back and wait for dawn before attacking, but Koonar would allow no delay. The sleds spread out and were driven at full speed across the intervening ice straight into the heart of the Itkilit camp. They came so swiftly, the Itkilit dogs hardly had time to howl an alarm before the sleds halted in a line and the Innuit men jumped off, bows in hand.
    Many of the Itkilit came spilling out of their