Free Dogsong by Gary Paulsen Page B

carcasses on the sled.
    He pulled the hood on, tightened it against the coming wind and called the dogs up. In minutes he was out of sight of the camp area, heading still north. Out. Into the sweeps.
    Today was different—as Russel knew all days are different in the north. It was so cold his spit bounced—white men would call it forty below zero—and the air caught in his throat as he warmed it.
    The color was new as well. Yesterday had been blue. Today was almost a deep purple with stringers of clouds shooting acrossthe dimly lighted sky, fingers aimed away from an advancing storm.
    Russel knew weather as all Eskimos know weather. The storm would come in two days, maybe a little less, but it would not be too bad. Some wind and cold, nothing more. He could ride it out easily.
    But there was a strange unease driving him and at first he thought it was the dream. It had been so real-seeming. He could still smell the inside of the dreamigloo-tent, the stink of the mammoth voiding itself in death, the heat of its blood down the shaft of the lance.
    He had killed the beast and yet something was pushing him, making him drive the team. They were new now, a new team. It wasn’t that the dogs had changed; and yet they were not the same dogs that he’d first seen at Oogruk’s. They changed with him, or at least so it seemed, changed with his mind.
    It was as if they had gone out of themselves and become more than dogs, more than animal.
    They ran to his mind, out and out before him. With bellies full of deer meat, rich guts and stomach linings, the dogs were strong and driving, had great power, and wanted to run.
    He let them run and they seemed to want to head the same way he wanted to go and that, too, became part of his thinking.
    Did they know him?
    Did they know his mind and run to it the way the wolf-dogs had run to the man’s mind in the dream?
    And if that were so, which he believed since he seemed to see his thoughts going out ahead, with the lead dog—if that were so, did the dogs know where they were going? Did they know when he didn’t know?
    And more, did they know why they were heading north?
    â€œWhy do we run?” he asked aloud and the sudden words broke the silence and startled the dogs. They kept running but broke stride for a few steps before regaining rhythm.
    They did not answer.
    Twice he looked back but saw nothing and after that he didn’t look to the rear again. Out ahead was everything, out ahead was where they were going and he let the dogs decide because that was the same as his deciding.
    The snow was right for speed, didn’t have the cold-weather scrubbing sound it sometimes did which pulled at the runners, and they ran the daylight out without losing pace.
    For five, maybe six, hours he let them run and as the gray dusk was gathering before dark he saw off to the right a small valley between two hills where there was some brush which might make a fire.
    He said nothing to the team but they knew and they curved off to the right to head for the valley. There was still light as they came to it. He stopped them near some dried brush, dead in the wind and snow, but the dogs kept pulling forward and he let them go again. Further up there was an overhanging ledge of stone, a shelf, with a place under it to make a shelter. The dogs stopped when they reached the overhang.
    He used one skin to shield the opening and scraped enough snow to secure it to the ledge. Then he cut a set of front shoulders up and threw the pieces to the dogs and pulled a second carcass into the lean-to. With the other skins he fashioned a bed and went out and collected bits of brushwood until he had enough to last the night and a little extra.
    It was a perfect camp.
    He brought the wood into the shelter and pulled the flap down. Using a bit of moss he started a small fire and in moments it was warm inside the shelter. He took his parka off and turned it inside out and put it back outside to