A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 24: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

24 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY his desire to get there was so great, he was willing to work for very little in the way of hire. Also, he had a dog, I could see the dog for myself, and it was clear that I had no other like it, neither did any other man in Alaska have such a dog. I asked him if his dog worked well in a team, and at this, he laughed—less like an Indian, again, than a disdainful white who knows more than you do. Rotten manners the white race has, compared to any unspoiled native. When he finished laughing, he said that if I hitched up my eight dogs and put his white brute in the lead, his: leader would pull.as much as all the rest of the team. And as for food, he would eat one of the other dogs every fifth day, and so, at the end of forty days, there would be an end of the rest of the dogs, and the white leader would have cost no food at all, and the sled would be many hundreds of miles on the journey. On the whole, I thought that this was one of the neatest little bits of exaggera- tion that I had ever heard. Then he demonstrated how the dog could work, and thet, I must say, was a sight worth watching. Without a word, just with movements of his head and hand, and very slight movements at that, he sent the big white beast out running over the snow, and worked him here and there, and back and forth. He stopped that dog, and sent him on again, and swung him right and left, and all the while he worked, the dog was at top speed, running with a long, swinging gallop that reminded me of the gait of a thoroughbred. Then he was brought in and gave a lick or two to the snow and lay down at the feet of his mas- ter. He was not winded by all of this running. He was just breathing easily, with his eyes half closed, as though he liked this sort of business. Yes, that was a dog in a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand. I thought more of the deg, and more of the master for owning such an animal, On a long in- land voyage such as I intended making, a brute of that capacity would be match- less. I leaned over and looked at his pads, and they were big enough for two. One of them was canted a little, so that the toes spread, and I saw that those toes were webbed almost to the nails! Not with a thin pink filament, but with fur-covere hide! I still was staring at that webbed foot when I asked the stranger if his dog could swim. “Swim?” said he. “When you come to open water, he will catch his own fish!” I was more and more interested. We had finished eating and were drink- ing tea. And I put some sugar into the stranger’s tin. It was exactly as though I had fed him whisky. His spirits rose with a bound. I’ve seen the same thing happen more than once with people who are unaccustomed to anything but a meat diet. When he was at the peak, I asked him where he lived. And he waved his hand to the north. “Away out!” said he. “But away out,” said I, “there’s noth- ing but sea ice!” The stranger, at this, drew his head back into his neck furs and squinted at me in an ugly fashion; he said nothing. AN? this was the moment when my other boy laid hold of him, laughing as I have said, and cried out, “Oh-ho, then he comes from the Smoking Land! The Smoking Land!” And he laughed again, as though his foolish sides would crack. For, you must understand, everyone who had had much to do with me in the far north was always prepared to hitch up every unusual idea with the Smoking Land. Ifa strange fish were hauled in on the line, it came ob- viously from the Smoking Land; and if a queer bird sailed through the sky, it was bred in the Smoking Land, also. I was sick of the sound of those words. But the same phrase had an odd effect upon our stranger. He did not laugh. In- stead, he showed a set of strong white teeth through his beard, and he snarled, “You say the thing that is not! You say the thing that is not!” My boy was fairly rolling in the snow, by this time, but he sat up, gaping and choking like an idiot, now, and pointed with both hands, and shouted, “He comes from the Smoking Land!” I was smiling a little myself, simply be- cause laughter is infectious, not because I appreciated that stale, worthless joke es oe _ Fist ae mIEbooKksS': sh pe ateion ~ 4 ae poe ss (E(0)