Free People of the Deer by Farley Mowat Page A

dare linger any longer for he had no dog feed on his sled, and little enough food for himself. Also there were the presences of Iktuk, Pama and Angleyalak. A hundred miles lay between Franz and Windy Camp and he was anxious to begin the trek.
    He unloaded and cached the frozen corpses of a dozen white foxes from his sled, and in their place he spread out his own robes with the two children carefully wrapped amongst them. Then he drove south from Ootek’s Lake, and in two days was lighting a wood fire in the stove by Windy Bay.
    Hans came in from his trap line a short time afterwards, and if he was surprised to find the children at the cabin, he did not show it. In a few days he found himself left alone with the orphans, for Franz had forgotten his old anger against the People, and he had forgotten his impatience with their improvident ways. The finding of Kunee and Anoteelik had wrought a great change in him and as soon as he was satisfied that the children would be secure during his absence, he hitched up his dogs again and drove back to the Little Hills.
    At Katelo’s igloo, on the banks of Kakumee Lake, he found starvation had reached the ultimate limits before death intervenes. Franz distributed part of the flour and meat that he had brought with him, then drove on to all the occupied igloos he could find, giving to the family in each enough food to prevent immediate disaster. At Ootek Lake and at Halo Lake there was still no sign of life and Franz had no knowledge of what had happened to the families who had once been there.
    When the food was distributed—and it was only a miserable handout, though it was all Franz had—he returned at once to Windy Bay and after one day’s rest, drove southward on the three-hundred-mile journey to the nearest outpost of white men. This was a tiny trading post at Deer Lake, run by a young half-breed manager who was himself completely isolated from the world in winter, except that he had an ancient short-wave radio over which it was sometimes possible to transmit his halting signals in Morse code.
    Franz reached Deer Lake in seven days, and of those seven, he spent three fighting a spring blizzard. Once at the post, he and the manager labored over a message that would tell the outside world of the plight of the Ihalmiut. It was a message of great importance—for it was to be the first message ever to go out from the inland plains; the first cry for help in all the centuries that the People had lived their hidden lives within the land. Franz was the first of those—traders, trappers or missionaries who had heard of the People and their plight—to take it on himself to seek help for them. He was the first to care.
    The message went out slowly, each word tapped out two or three times. At Churchill the big radio station picked it up and relayed it south. The days were passing and Franz waited at Deer Lake for the answer which was so long delayed. The days were passing.
    As to what happened to the message—who can say? At first, no doubt, the authorities were skeptical of its validity, and in any case one must investigate before one spends the funds of government. Also it was the first time that the authorities had been called on to help the inland People—“Why should they need help now, after all these years?” But at last the wheels began to turn. A message was dispatched to The Pas. An aircraft was hired and a flight was made. That flight failed. A second flight was made and a plane landed at the extreme south end of Nueltin and unloaded its supplies.
    Meanwhile Franz had been expecting an aircraft from Churchill, the direct and shortest route, and when he heard that someone had sent a plane from The Pas instead, he left Deer Lake to find the cache which had been made over two hundred miles short of its destination. Time was running out.
    Franz traveled over a hundred miles to find the cache, and when he found it he discovered that it