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Chapter One

Kapugen, The Hunter

A wolf howled. He began on a note lower than a bear's growl, then climbed the scale to the highest pitch of the wind and held it there.

The cry traveled across the snowy tundra and was heard by a young girl standing at the door of a small green house. The wooden structure sat on the edge of an Eskimo village on the bank of the frozen Avalik River in Alaska. She pushed, back the halo of fur that framed her lovely face and listened. The wolf was telling her to come with him.She did not answer.

Julie Edwards Miyax Kapugen knew the wolf well. He had shared food with her when she had been lost on the endless tundra. He had run and played with her. He had rested in her tent while she had nursed him back to health from his bullet wounds. Now he was trying to locate her. He must not find her. He must go away, far away. After many years of separation, Julie was going home to her father,Kapugen, and he, she knew, would kill the wolf.

"That is how it is, " she whispered to the howler. "If you come near Kapugen, he will shoot you. He is like all Eskimo hunters. He will say, 'The wolf gave himself to me.'"

The howl rose and fell.

Julie squinted toward the distant caller. "Stay away, beloved Kapu. I am going home."

She waited. The wolf she had named Kapu after her father, the great hunter and leader, did not call again. Quickly she opened and dosed the first door that led into Kapugen's house. She walked into the qanitchaq, an entry room designed to keep out the cold. Its walls were hung with parkas and boots, and onthe floor stood paddles, guns, and gasoline cans. She put down her pack, took off her sealskin parka and maklaks, or boots, and hung them on pegs. She stepped to the second door, which opened into the living room, and hesitated.

She thought of her childhood on the Eskimo island of Nunivak in the Bering Sea, and of her maidenhood in Barrow on the Arctic Ocean. Then she thought of the day she had left that town desperate to end an arranged marriage. She had gone out on the tundra planning to walk to Point Hope and take a boat to San Francisco to meet her pen pal, Amy.

On the tundra wilderness she had become hopelessly lost.

She tried not to think about the lovable wolf pack that had felled a caribou and saved her life. She must put them in the past. She had found her beloved father and was going home to him.

Yesterday, he had welcomed her in this very house. Her heart had lightened and her burden of loneliness had fallen away. Her head had danced with joyful thoughts.

Her happiness had not lasted long. Within a short time she had realized Kapugen was not the same father who had taken her hunting and fishing with the seasons on Nunivak.

He was not the father who had lived in grace with the sea and land. Kapugen had changed. He had a white-American wife, a gussak. He had radios, a telephone, and a modern stove. Julie could have accepted these things had not her eyes fallen on Kapugen's airplane pilot helmet and goggles. She had seen them on the man in the airplane window who had shot Amaroq, the magnificent leader of her wolf pack. This she could not reconcile. When Kapugen had left the house, she had put on her pack and returned to her camp along the barren river.

There, alone in the crackling Arctic night with the hoarfrost spangling her tent with ice ferns, she knew she must return. No matter what he had done, Kapugen was her father, and she loved him.

"We do not judge our people," she heard the Eskimo elders say, and Julie pointed her boots toward Kapugen.

Now, only a wooden door stood between them. She opened it and stepped inside. Kapugen was home. He was seated on a caribou skin on the floor sharpening his man's knife. He was alone.

He did not look up, although Julie knew he had heard her enter. She tiptoed to the iglek, a pile of furs stacked into a couch almost as tall as she. She climbed up on it, sat, and folded her hands in her lap.

Kapugen sighted along his knife to see if it was satisfactorily sharp. Julie picked a thread from her woolen sock. Kapugen selected a section of beardedseat hide and cut a slender thong from it. He tied the thong around his boot. Julie sat quietly.

Presently Kapugen looked out the window at the marine-blue sky of the sunless winter day.

"The wind has died down," he said. "That is good."

"The stars are bright," Julie added.

"That is good," said Kapugen.

A silence followed. Kapugen tightened the boot thong and at last looked at her.

"Did vou hear the wolf?" he asked, looking into her eyes.

"I heard the wolf," she answered.

Another silence ensued. Kapugen did not take his eyes from her eyes. Julie knew he was speaking to her in the manner of the Eskimo hunter who communicates without sound. His eyes were saying that a wolf did not give that call of friendship very often.

Julie did not answer. She studied her father.

Kapugen was a stocky man with a broad back and powerful arms. His face was burned brown from the Arctic wind and sun, and his hands were blackened by frostbite. His hair was shorter than she remembered, but his chin was still smooth and plucked hairless. A faint mustache darkened his upper lip. He sat with his legs straight out before him.

"The wolf knows you." He spoke slowly and thoughtfully

"He does," Julie answered.