Then some dogs and a little Eskimo sledge were bought for her, with a knife and some biscuit and coffee, and a snug little box, just large enough for her to sit in, fastened on the sledge. After that AH-NI-GHI´-TO had a sleigh-ride every day. You should have seen her team, with their bright eyes, sharp pointed ears, and big bushy tails. There was “Lassie,” and “Lady,” and sometimes steady old black Panikpah, who had been far to the north here, across the “great ice,” and had eaten musk-ox meat.
Sometimes they would walk along with heads and tails up, every now and then looking round at the baby.
Then at the crack of the whip they would dash off at a gallop, with the driver running beside the sledge and guiding it past the rocks and lumps of ice.
But they always seemed to understand that they were drawing a little baby, for they never attempted to run away, as they often did with their Eskimo masters.
It was very, very cold now, colder even than during the long winter night; but, wrapped up in her warm furs, little AH-NI-GHI´-TO did not feel it.
[Illustration: “_The Women kissed her Hands_”]
A great many of the natives came to see the little white girl. The women kissed her hands, and she made friends with all the queer little brown babies sticking their heads out of their mothers’ hoods, for the Eskimo babies have no cradles or anything of the kind, but are just carried all the time by their mothers in great fur hoods on their backs.
Soon AH-NI-GHI´-TO began to talk Eskimo, and would say “Ta´koo” (look), “Atu´do” (more), and she never said yes and no, but “Ah´-py” and “Nag´-ga.”
Then she had a playmate, a little Eskimo boy about five or six years old, whose father had been killed by a savage walrus which he had harpooned and which had dragged him into the water and drowned him. His mother, too, was dead.
His name was Nip-San-Gwah, though every one called him Kood-Look´-Too, which means “the little orphan boy.”
He was very fond of AH-NI-GHI´-TO and would try to follow her when she went in her sledge. How queer he looked with his little round fat face, bright black eyes, and little short bearskin trousers. Then he would make little snow igloos, or houses, for her, just like the one his father and mother had lived in, and would get a whip and try to show her how he would drive her dogs for her after he got a little larger.