The world outside was
turning dark. The sky was growing thick and low. In half an hour a
storm would break. The Eskimos had foreseen that storm. They knew
that the trail taken in their flight, after they had possessed
themselves of the girl, would very soon be hidden from the eyes of
Bram and the keen scent of his wolves. So they had taken the
chance--the chance to make Celie their prisoner before Bram
returned.
And why, Philip asked himself, did these savage little barbarians
of the north want HER? The fighting she had pictured for him had
not startled him. For a long time the Kogmollocks had been making
trouble. In the last year they had killed a dozen white men along
the upper coast, including two American explorers and a
missionary. Three patrols had been sent to Coronation Gulf and
Bathurst Inlet since August. With the first of those patrols,
headed by Olaf Anderson, the Swede, he had come within an ace of
going himself. A rumor had come down to Churchill just before he
left for the Barrens that Olaf's party of five men had been wiped
out.
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