The young man did not go down to stand in the sea or try to lift the great tree as the other men did. Instead, he stayed in the village and helped the elders. He brought them water and cut firewood to keep their fires burning. He slept by the fire and his skin was black from the ash and soot. The other men thought he was weak and lazy and they made fun of him. They didn’t know that every night Blackskin went down to the icy sea and stayed in longer than any of them, and he lifted great rocks over his head. AFTER DRIVING THE THREE MILES between his grandparents’ cabin and the small, sleepy village, Johnny Least-Weasel turned from the main trail that ran along the river and stopped his snowmobile in front of a cabin where several other machines were already parked in the yard. The log house looked like many of the other cabins in the village—snow-beaten and weathered—driven into the ground by the heavy loads of too many winters. A dozen sled dogs barked from the roofs of their small plywood houses until they saw who it was, recognized the figure, then settled down and curled back upon themselves.
