Lost in the Barrens (12 page)

 

CHAPTER 19

Gifts from the Dead

T
HE PRESENCE OF WOLVERINES AT
Stone Igloo Camp was enough to make the boys anxious to see all their food supplies recached within sight and sound of the cabin. The inexplicable and frightening tracks made them doubly anxious to clean out the caches by the deer fence so that there would be no further need to visit the place.

In the next three days they made three round trips, bringing back heavy loads of meat and fish each time. The
journeys were uneventful—for which the boys were thankful—but they were ordeals of backbreaking labor. The trips home, dragging the heavily laden sled up the long slopes to Hidden Valley, became a nightmare.

By the time they had started home for the fourth time they were so exhausted that they could only pull the sled a few hundred yards at a time before being forced to stop and rest. Seeking an easier route, they had stayed close to the lake shore this time, intending to circle north, then back to the entrance of the valley, and so avoid the snow-free rock ridges in between. This route took them farther north than they had ever been before and they stared about them, as they rested, with particular interest. It was Awasin's keen eye that first caught sight of a strange object on a ridge ahead.

He pointed toward the crest of a long finger-ridge that ran out at right angles from the hills which cradled Hidden Valley. “What's that queer bulge on the hilltop?” he asked.

Jamie stared in the direction Awasin was pointing. The sun on the snow was blinding, but after a time he made out something that might have been a mound of stones on the very crest of the ridge.

“It looks like any other pile of rocks to me,” he said.

“Not any pile,” Awasin replied sharply. “Whatever it is, it was made by men.”

Despite his fatigue, Jamie grew interested. “We could leave the sled and walk on a way for a better look,” he suggested.

Rather warily they went forward. As they approached the ridge, the shape on its summit grew more distinct. Jamie's curiosity mounted and he burst out with, “Looks like the Stone House on the Kazon!” He could have bitten his tongue out the next instant, for Awasin reacted as Jamie might have known he would.

Stopping abruptly, Awasin said, “Let's get out of here!”

If the boys had not been so weary, Jamie might have agreed. But he was tired and irritable. And having come this far, he was determined to climb the ridge and see for himself what the mysterious object was. “Come on!” he said shortly. “A bunch of rocks can't hurt you.”

Awasin's mouth set stubbornly. He did not like the implication that he was afraid, but he was not going to give in.

“Go ahead if you want,” he said, and there was an overtone of anger in his voice. “I'll wait.”

Without a word Jamie turned his back on Awasin and walked on. He did not want to go alone, but he was too stubborn to admit that he also felt uneasy. After going a hundred yards he paused and looked back. Awasin was sitting on a rock, watching him.

“Come back, Jamie!” he called. “It's getting late and we've got a long pull yet to the cabin.”

Awasin's words gave Jamie a chance to back down gracefully, but he chose to ignore the opportunity. Stubbornly he resumed the climb.

In fifteen minutes he had gained the ridge and found it swept clear of snow by the north wind. Directly ahead of
him was a beehive-shaped mound of rocks, and on the reverse slope of the hill were three more similar mounds.

Feeling even more uneasy, Jamie examined the nearest mound. It was about three feet high and perhaps five feet across the base. Lying near it in the windswept gravel were many fragments of gray and weathered wood. They were hard and brittle as old bones. Jamie picked up a length that was about the thickness of a pencil, and as he pulled it free of the gravel his eye caught a flash of green. He knelt down and a few moments later he was holding an arrowhead in his gloved hand It was obviously of copper that had turned green with the years. Diamond-shaped, it had been sharpened on all four edges and even now it looked deadly.

Jamie dropped it into his carrying bag and began to scrutinize the ground closely. In a few minutes he had discovered a copper axhead, and a whole series of bone tools and ornaments that were so old they crumbled into dust as he tried to pick them up. There were other implements of copper as well, many of them in odd shapes.

His curiosity had now overcome his uneasiness, even though he suspected that he had stumbled on an ancient graveyard of some forgotten native tribe—perhaps primitive Eskimos of long ago. Jamie knew that it was the custom of the northern natives to place all of a man's possessions on his grave so they could be used by the spirit in the next world. Clearly the tools lying in the gravel had been intended for men whose bones probably lay under the rock mounds.

Jamie glanced down the slope to where Awasin waited and he felt more at ease. Rapidly he circled the grave mounds. Beside one of them he found a squarish block of stone that had been hollowed out and smoothed to a high finish. Further search revealed three more of these stone “pots,” and Jamie placed them all in his bag.

A gust of wind struck the exposed crest and drove eddies of snow up the north slope like fantastic shapes of unreal beings. Despite himself Jamie shivered, and turning away from the graves made his way quickly down the hill to where Awasin waited for him.

“Well?” Awasin asked. “What was it?”

Cautiously Jamie replied. “Oh, just an old campsite of Eskimos, I guess. All cluttered up with queer stone tools and copper gadgets. I picked some of them up. We can look them over tonight when we get home.”

Awasin was not fooled. He had guessed the real nature of the “campsite” and there was a grim, unfriendly look on his face as he led the way back to the sled. He said not a word all the rest of the weary way home, and the silence between him and Jamie was strained and unhappy.

The cabin was bitter cold when they arrived but soon the fire was roaring and supper was cooking. Jamie bustled about making tea and trying to break through his friend's stubborn silence. He knew perfectly well that Awasin all his life had heard men speak of ghosts and devils as if they really did exist. Superstition or not, Awasin was only obeying the laws of his people when he shrank from any contact with the dead. And Jamie knew that out of
sheer stubbornness he had needlessly disturbed his friend.

Trying hard to break through Awasin's mood, Jamie dumped the contents of his carrying bag on the floor and said cheerfully, “Let's have a look at the stuff. Some of it might be useful.”

It was the wrong thing to do. The sight of the objects taken from the graves made Awasin's face darken. He lay down on his bunk. “Robbing the dead is evil,” he muttered and turned his face to the wall.

Jamie felt as if an unseen barrier had fallen between them. It was a frightening feeling. All of a sudden the immense weight of the loneliness of life in this desolate place seemed to fall upon him. He could not stand it.

He walked to the bunk and put his hand on his friend's shoulder.

“I'm sorry, Awasin,” he said. “Maybe you're right the way you think. Maybe there
are
things out there that we don't know much about, and that don't like to be disturbed. I won't do it again.”

Awasin rolled over and looked at Jamie. He smiled suddenly. “No!” he said firmly. “
I'm
the one who should be sorry. All this about ghosts! Let's have a look at what you found.”

The barrier had vanished. The frightening gap between the two boys, born of their first serious quarrel, was closed. Happily they bent their heads over the assortment of things Jamie had dumped out of his bag.

Awasin picked up one of the stone dishes and examined it closely. He ran a thumbnail down the side of it and
found it was soft and soapy to the touch. Absently Awasin handled the dish but he was thinking hard.

At length he spoke. “The other night you wished we had a lamp, Jamie,” he said. “Well, I think we've got one!”

Jamie looked surprised. “That old thing?”

“Wait,” Awasin replied. He got up and pulled a handful of moss out of a crack in the cabin wall. Expertly he twisted it between his fingers until he had what looked like a three-inch length of rope. Next he took a piece of deer suet, melted it in the frying pan, and poured the grease into the stone vessel. Taking a chip of wood he fastened the “wick” to the chip and put it into the lamp. The wood kept the tip of the wick floating in the hot grease. “Let's have a light,” he said to Jamie, who had been watching, fascinated.

Jamie handed him a bit of burning wood from the fire and Awasin touched it to the top of the wick. A fat yellow flame leaped up, smoked hard, and then began to die down.

“I'll have to trim it,” Awasin said. He adjusted the wick into a flat, broad strip and relit it. This time the flame burned steadily and hardly smoked at all. The interior of the little cabin was transformed as if by magic. After having been without any real source of light for months, Jamie felt as if someone had switched on a dozen electric light bulbs.

He was delighted. “That
really
makes this place feel like home,” he said with enthusiasm.

Awasin grinned with pleasure at his own success. For
getting his distaste for using things taken from graves, he began to dig through the rest of the relics. His interest focused on one of the copper arrowheads. “This is a queer shape,” he said. “It looks as if it was held to the shaft with pegs of bone. There's still a peg left in this one.”

“I wonder if
we
could make a bow and arrow that would work,” said Jamie.

“We could try,” Awasin replied. “I counted the shells yesterday and we only have twenty left. We can't use them on anything except big game. But if we had a bow we could kill ptarmigan and hares.”

“The first day we get the chance we'll try and make one,” Jamie said. “But not tonight. I'm done for. Let's go to bed.”

Sleepily the boys climbed into their robes without bothering to blow out the little lamp. In a few moments they were asleep.

The fire burned down, and from the table shone the gleam of a light that had been reborn after a hundred years of darkness. Once an Eskimo woman must have treasured the little soapstone lamp and over its moss wick cooked food for her family. Now it lived again. And the arrow points that had belonged to some long-forgotten hunter of the dim and dusty past were also ready for new life.

The dead out on that lonely, wind-swept ridge were friendly spirits. They had made gifts to the living of another race, across a century of time.

 

CHAPTER 20

Winter Strikes

S
OMETHING COLD AND WET SWISHING
across his face brought Jamie out of the depths of a heavy sleep. He groaned and thrust out his hand. His fingers closed on the stiff, hairy mat of the little fawn's forehead and unwillingly he opened his eyes.

The cabin was as cold as death and almost as dark as night. The lamp had long since burned out, and the fire had sunk away to a few glowing coals. The fawn Otanak was standing by Jamie's bed grunting anxiously, and as
Jamie lay still, the fawn thrust its head forward and slapped its tongue over his face a second time.

Jamie sat up abruptly and pushed the little deer away. “Ugh!” he said, wiping his face. “Lay off that stuff!”

He was fully awake now and he began to realize that the usual silence of Hidden Valley had been broken. To his ears there came a steady, roaring sound as if there were a waterfall near the cabin.

Though it was dark, Jamie's stomach—and the fact that the fire had almost burned out—told him it was morning. He jumped out of bed and pulled on his clothes. The cold was terrible and he was blue with it by the time he reached the fire and had begun heaping fresh kindling on the coals. The fawn followed him, nuzzling his back until Jamie in some irritation gave it a shove. “What's eating you, anyway?” he asked.

The fire flared up and Jamie walked to the door to have a look outside and find what was responsible for the rising blare of sound that seemed to be pouring into the cabin from all directions.

He opened the door and a gust of wind almost tore it out of his hands. Snow drove into his face so hard it almost blinded him. He could see nothing except a gray, swirling haze of driven snow, and even the nearby spruce trees were completely obscured. Jamie stumbled back into the cabin gasping for breath.

He shook Awasin awake. “Get up!” he cried. “The granddaddy of all blizzards is blowing. I never saw anything so bad!”

Jamie's description of the blizzard did not do it justice. Roaring down over the darkened plains from the arctic seas, the first real gale of winter had come upon the land. Screaming in wild rage, it hurled itself with the force of a hurricane across the Barrenlands. It scoured the hard-packed drifts, lifting the frozen particles of ice and whirling them into frenzied motion. The snow drove with the force of a sandblast and nothing could face its fury. Wolves and foxes had long ago sought shelter and crouched shivering in holes dug deep under the drifts. Even the ptarmigan were huddled forlornly in rock crevices in order to escape the fury of the gale. No living thing dared stir upon the tortured face of the plains that day.

In Hidden Valley the full force of the blizzard was held back by the protecting mountains, but even in this sheltered place the storm was more than a man could face. The shrieking of the wind across the crests of the surrounding hills was like the constant screaming of unleashed demons. The boys soon found that their cabin refused to warm up until they had blocked the air vent in the floor and spent an hour repacking all the cracks between the logs with moss taken from their mattresses.

Fortunately they had a good supply of firewood laid in with which to fight the cold that they figured had dropped to thirty or forty degrees below zero. They had the fat lamp too, with which to drive away the darkness that the storm brought with it.

After much hurried activity they finally had the cabin snug and almost warm again, and could relax and listen to
the fury of the gale outside as it beat its way through the moaning branches of the spruces.

“Imagine what it would have been like if we'd stayed at Stone Igloo Camp,” Jamie said, shivering at the thought.

“I'd rather not,” replied his friend. “It's bad enough here. But we can take it, as long as our food and wood hold out. And one thing, no wolverines are going to bother our caches in this weather!”

Throughout that day and the next night, the blizzard raged unabated. By the second morning the boys were feeling its effects. Restlessness was upon them, and the constant whine of the gale had begun to irritate their nerves. Jamie felt as if he were trapped under an avalanche, and he could not sit still in one place for more than a few moments.

“I wish we had more things to do,” he burst out suddenly. “This sitting around drives me crazy. If we only had some books or games, it wouldn't be so bad.”

Awasin had busied himself making some new moccasins and he glanced up at his friend. “Why not have a try at the bow and arrows?” he suggested.

Jamie brightened. It was something to occupy his mind, and moreover it was a challenge to his ingenuity. There were half a dozen spruce saplings that had been cut for the sled and not used which were piled beside the door. Jamie carried them to the fire and looked them over. Finally he chose one about six feet long and two inches thick that appeared to be free of serious knots.

“Do you know how to make a bow?” Awasin asked.

“I've never made one, but I've used them at school for archery practice,” Jamie replied. “Don't you know how?”

Rather shamefacedly Awasin replied that he didn't. “You see,” he explained, “my people haven't used bows for fifty years—not since they got guns. Sometimes we boys used to make them just for fun but they never worked. It's funny you should know how when we've forgotten.”

“I didn't
say
I knew how,” said Jamie cautiously. “But I can try at least.”

Before he could begin work there was an interruption. Jamie felt a cold blast of air strike the back of his neck, and he turned around to see Otanak happily munching a wad of moss that he had pulled from the wall. The gale whirled in through the crevice and at once the cabin became colder.

Jamie jumped to his feet, shouting angrily, and ran to plug the hole. Otanak skipped nimbly out of the way, and a burst of laughter from Awasin made Jamie turn in time to see the fawn cheerfully yank a patch of moss from the opposite wall.

Even Jamie could not resist grinning. The fawn had resolutely refused to go outside into the storm, and not unnaturally it was getting hungry. It glanced slyly at the boys out of the corners of its eyes, perfectly aware that it was up to devilment—but daring them to try and stop it.

“I guess we have to feed the beast or freeze to death,” Awasin said. “Somebody's mattress is going to disappear.”

“Toss you for it,” Jamie replied, and taking one of the copper arrowheads, he made a scratch on one side and flipped it into the air.

Jamie won, and a few minutes later Awasin looked sadly on as the fawn began a big breakfast on the soft moss which had once been Awasin's mattress.

With Otanak occupied, Jamie went back to his bow making.

Using the hatchet, he rough-shaped the stave to about an inch and a half in diameter at the center and half an inch at the ends. He flattened the outside surface, but left the inside curved so that the bow—in cross section—was half-round. With the rough work done, he took a knife and finished off the shaping, being very careful to keep both ends of the bow the same thickness and length so that it would be balanced. Finally he took a piece of sandstone and smoothed off all the rough places.

This job took him most of the day, and he was so engrossed in it that he quite forgot to notice the steady beat of the blizzard.

After dinner Jamie notched the ends of the bow, and placing one end on the floor, he put his weight against the other to test its spring. It bent far more easily than he had expected and he lost his balance. There was a sharp crack, and Jamie sat on the floor with the bow—broken neatly in half—lying beside him. The accident made him feel so disgusted that he almost cried.

“Green spruce isn't very good wood for a bow,” Awasin said in an effort to cheer Jamie up a little. “I think my peo
ple used to use birch or some other wood they got from the south. But perhaps we could use spruce if we strengthened it some way.”

“The heck with it!” Jamie replied. But before he went to bed his stubborn streak and his pride had made him reconsider Awasin's idea. Already Jamie was planning another try.

By the third morning the blizzard had fallen off a little, though it was still too strong to allow the boys to venture out. Jamie began work on a new bowstave while Awasin watched him thoughtfully. In Awasin's hand was a piece of the tough sinew with which he had been sewing moccasins. He stretched it idly; then an idea began to take form in his head.

“Jamie,” he said suddenly, “I've got an idea. I remember hearing that the Chipeweyans made spruce bows—it was the only kind of wood they had—and strengthened them somehow with sinew. It's strong stuff and elastic. Want to try it?”

“Sure,” Jamie replied. “Why not?”

Now both boys went to work. After much discussion they decided to fix several inch-wide bands of sinew along the outside curve of the bow, then lash the strips firmly to the wood for the bow's full length. They wet the sinew first, and after it was in place on the new bowstave they dried it carefully before the fire.

The results were excellent. The bow was much more resistant, and it took a good strong push on one end to bend it.

“It may work yet,” Jamie said hopefully as he tested it. “But what do we do for a bowstring?”

“That's easy,” Awasin replied. “I'll braid you one.”

Taking a dozen long sinew threads he went to work, and before suppertime he presented Jamie with a braided sinew string so strong that neither boy could break it. Jamie tied a loop at each end of the string, bent the bow, and strung it.

“Try,” he said proudly to Awasin.

The Indian boy took it carefully, and drew the string back with all his power. Then he let it go and it twanged against the wood with a really satisfactory snap. He grinned. “The ptarmigan had better watch out,” he said. “
After
we learn to shoot. And
after
we make some arrows.”

For a moment Jamie looked downcast. “I forgot about the arrows,” he said. “We'll have to wait for the next trip to Stone Igloo. There are some willows in the igloo there that should be fine for arrow shafts. Meanwhile I guess we stick to the rifle.”

Pleased with themselves all the same for having at least made the bow, the boys turned in. When they woke the next morning, Otanak was anxious to get outside and so they knew that their first winter blizzard had come to an end. The silence that followed the death of the long wind was so complete it made the boys feel like whispering.

Freed from the captivity in the cabin, they could hardly wait to put on their heavy fur clothing and make a journey. With breakfast finished they hurriedly gathered their gear together and prepared for another sled trip to Stone Igloo Camp.