Free People of the Deer by Farley Mowat

and arms that had been flung out from the body in the last convulsive efforts of its life. He could not move his wife and so, for the little time which remained to him, he could look down upon the bloody face of one whom he had loved so greatly that he had dared remain on at this place, instead of following the faint hope that had taken all the other People to the east.
    A dog had also died that night, so it was eaten. The children ate the dry and bitter meat of the dog that died of hunger, and Angleyalak ate just enough to keep his strength in hand for what remained. A week passed and the other dogs were killed before they grew so thin that they became completely useless to the living. March passed into April and at long last the winds retired and in the daytime the sun shone clearly, growing higher in the winter-faded sky.
    The last of the dog meat was eaten and one morning Angleyalak took his old rifle and crawled out the door tunnel into the light of day. The hunter was going hunting once again. Dragging the rifle behind him, he crawled weakly over the ice-hard snow and he had gone perhaps a hundred yards, his eyes half-blinded by the glare, when he saw movement on a ridge ahead of him. Trembling with weakness and with hope, he raised his ancient gun, steadied it briefly and fired at the miraculous vision of the caribou that stood watchfully before him.
    The children, huddled together in the igloo, heard no shot for none was fired. They ate no meat that day—for there had been no deer. And in the white brilliance of the day, the thing that was Angleyalak grew stiff, beside the old and useless gun which still pointed to the unblemished drifts where the hunter had seen the last of all his deer.
    It was just after dawn of the following day when Franz reached Ootek’s Lake. He made at once for Ootek’s igloo, but when he found its tunnel drifted in with snow he knew the People had gone elsewhere, perhaps to Halo’s Lake, and so he prepared to travel south again to his own distant camp. He swung his dogs along the shore, but when one of them raised its head and howled, Franz glanced off to the side and saw a brown, shapeless hummock on the snow. At first he thought it was a wolverine and he slipped his rifle free of its case. But the brown thing did not stir and when Franz reached it, he recognized the man.
    Franz feared the dead, for his Indian blood runs strongly through the imagery of his white man’s mind. He did not touch the frozen corpse, but turned his dogs back until he came to the igloo of Angleyalak. The passageway was open, though only a narrow cleft remained free of drifts. Fearful of what lay under the still dome, Franz called aloud, but got no answer. He would have turned and fled from the place then, but faintly he heard a sound, as of an animal that has been maimed and left for dead.
    Franz tied his dogs. Then, summoning all his courage, he wormed his way down the long passage that was nearly filled with drifted snow. He came in time to save the younger children. They were both awake, and waiting for their father. Now dimly they saw that he returned, and the whimpers of the little girl grew louder.
    Franz covered Pama’s frozen corpse and the horrible body of Iktuk with some skins taken from the ledge, and then he stayed a full day in that igloo. He fed the two bony things he had found on soup, cooked on his Primus stove—and he waited patiently while the two children retched it up again; then he once more fed them soup until their rebellious stomachs would accept the nourishment. He kept the tiny stove going at full heat until the igloo’s dull walls brightened and filmed with ice, as the temperature rose rapidly. The little girl held out her hands to him, trembling little talons that were white with frost, and Franz massaged them gently till some warmth returned.
    By the next day the children were already displaying the incredible resilience of the very young. Franz did not