His Cheery Voice, At My Tent Door Every Morning, Was The
Signal That Billy Had The Breakfast Within Ten Minutes Of Ready.
"Okimow, To" (Chief, here is water), he would say as he set down
the water for my bath and wondered what in the name of common sense
should make the Okimow need washing every morning.
He himself was
of a cleaner kind, having needed no bath during the whole term of
our acquaintance.
There were two peculiarities of the old man that should make him
a good guide for the next party going northward. First, he never
forgot a place once he had been there, and could afterward go to
it direct from any other place. Second, he had the most wonderful
nose for firewood; no keen-eyed raven or starving wolf could go more
surely to a marrow-bone in cache, than could Weeso to the little
sticks in far away hollows or granite clefts. Again and again,
when we landed on the level or rocky shore and all hands set out
to pick up the few pencil-thick stems of creeping birch, roots
of annual plants, or wisps of grass to boil the kettle, old Weeso
would wander off by himself and in five minutes return with an
armful of the most amazingly acceptable firewood conjured out of
the absolutely timberless, unpromising waste. I never yet saw the
camp where he could not find wood. So he proved good stuff; I was
glad we had brought him along.
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