The Shaman/Chapter 17

Jack and I ran to the hall and seized our rifles from the antlers, but Malitka hastily restrained us.

“No! No!” she cried. “You must not appear with firearms! You must not. It might precipitate matters. Let me speak to them. I can control them, I am certain.”

She threw the door open and stepped out, and Jack muttered, “Well, she shan't go alone. We must be close at hand.”

We followed her outside, and at sight of us the leader of the mob shouted in a great bellowing voice that could be heard above the chorus of angry murmurs, “There they are! The white dogs who brought trouble!”

In but a few strides more they halted in front of us, some visibly angry, others merely sullen, and some few on the outskirts who stood doubtfully as if questioning the wisdom of their action.

“You, Barseek! What is the meaning of this?” Malitka cried out in her clear voice.

“You know as well as we!” the man replied without any sign of respect. “Your heart has softened for these white men of your race. You would have sent them away alive to return here with an army of miners, seeking gold of which these brought news! You and Peluk would have betrayed us. He tried to blind every one and get them away until he found that more than twoscore of us were following on his trail to make an end of these white men; and then he fooled us again, and when that would no longer serve, killed the man we had chosen as chief. Peluk shall die! These white men shall die! If you give them over to us, your life shall be spared. We waste no time!”

His voice had arisen as he spoke until it reached a shrill scream. Malitka never proved her metal more than then; for she laughed in a way that could only exasperate him more. She lifted a hand and pointed to the mob of natives behind him.

“And you?” she demanded. “You whom I have made what you are, what have you to say for yourselves? Whence came this Barseek? He is not of your tribe. He is an outlander from the Koyukuk whom Peluk found starving on a game trail. And Peluk saved his life. Now he would murder Peluk and my friends. What have you to say for yourselves?”

Some of the foremost Indians shifted uneasily on their feet and averted their eyes, and she scanned them one by one; but a voice in the midst of the crowd shouted, “Don't let her blind you with palaver! We can talk to her after we have finished what we came to do.”

An angry growl of approval convinced me that the situation was far more desperate than Malitka reckoned, and I edged a little farther forward to be in position to defend her if there came a rush. It was too late to possess ourselves of the rifles that by her request we had left behind, and I regretted our acquiescence to her wish.

“Blind you with my palaver?” she answered readily enough and in the same calm voice. “When have I ever tried to blind you? What were you before I came? What are you now? Does that look as if I would betray you? Answer that, you men who have known me since first I came and you others who were taken in after this was no longer a hungry tribe, living in igloos, starving when the game trailed northward, and dying when the Great Spirit scourged.” Her words had a palpable effect. She waited for a moment to give them time to consider, and then spoke again in a voice that, to me at least, had a note of sorrowful appeal. “Oh, my people, that it should have come to this!” she cried. “That you whom I have cured when ill and taught to live should lose faith in me because you have been led astray by false counsels!”

I thought for an instant that her words were having favorable effect. I have no doubt that with a few sentences more she would have calmed the majority of her hearers and won them to reason; but the man Barseek, savage that he was, was no fool. Sensing that the swing of the pendulum was against him he abruptly turned and lifting both arms above his head, cried:

“Hold! Be not bewitched! Listen to wisdom. The reason why ye have all these comforts is not because of her or Peluk, but because ye worked with your own hands and slew those who came from the far lands outside. Let but one white man know that gold is in the earth up there in our hills and woe shall fall upon you even as twilight in winter! Let but one white man go from here and”

He got no further in what promised to be a persuasive speech, for a deep, booming voice cried:

“Barseek! Turn this way!”

Barseek whirled on his feet as did we. There in the doorway stood the shaman with his blue shirt opened beneath his massive throat and exposing the white bandages across his chest, his bare head thrown back, his eyes aflame. He appeared to fill the doorway with his great bulk, as he stood there with arms folded across his great breast and his pillarlike legs widely planted.

With an incredible rapidity and confusion the scene changed. I was aware that with a single swift movement Barseek brought from beneath his denim parka a pistol and fired even before I could spring forward to check him. And so quickly afterward that the reverberations sounded almost as one there was another shot. Barseek at that moment had my gaze, and he lunged forward and fell so close to my feet that one of his outthrown hands rested on my moccasin, where it twitched and clawed as if to the last he sought to pull me down. Shocked by the unexpected I leaped back and turned around.

The shaman stood in the doorway, as if planted there, but his arms were no longer folded. One hand held close to his hip clutched my revolver, and a faint wreath of dissipating blue smoke told its tale. A white splinter of torn wood in the weather-beaten frame of the door alongside his head proved how narrow had been his escape. In the momentary paralysis of awe that inevitably succeeds that of unexpected tragedy there was something horrifying and terrible in his sudden loud rumble of laughter.

“Barseek whose life I saved in sentimental folly,” he called out, “seems to be but carrion! He has gone to his fathers. Are—are there others who wish to cut the thongs of life? Come. Be not slow to speak. The sled dogs that carry the souls of the dead to the beyond are harnessed—waiting! Surely those hunters who seek the chase in the land of the spirit steppes could ask no better opportunity than this! I, Peluk, stand here ready and waiting to unlock one or many doors. You hesitate? Or have you decided it best to remain here a while longer and endure the life you have so comfortably led?”

He moved painfully out until he reached the veranda post and clung to it as if for support. He lifted the hand holding the pistol and gestured with it, and men shrank back as it was directed toward them.

“Your heads are those of children,” he said. “You know nothing of that outside world or the men who dwell therein. In the wolf pack is always one which leads. When the caribou herd beats a deep white trail there is one which always breaks the way. When the white geese fly there is but one that heads the wide-flung wedge that cleaves the sky. There is never more than one to show the way. If that one be right those who follow survive. If that one be wrong they perish.”

Standing there on the edge of the elevated veranda he looked down upon their upturned faces and, with a single contemptuous movement threw the pistol out into their midst.

“If I am wrong,” he said as the tiny swirl of those who had eluded the missile closed in again, “then it is yours to say so and to slay. If I am no longer worthy to lead then let me have a speedy end. Death is very quick and but a pang. Life is but a struggle over a long, obscure trail. We sweep constantly falling snows away in the hope of finding beneath them older and guiding sled tracks to guide us on our way. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail. And so, if you think I have failed to guide you well, I submit myself unresisting. I am well tired of the need of killing others that the things which I believe good for them may survive!”

Before we could assist or prevent him he staggered weakly downward into their midst with outstretched arms, weaving to and fro as if he could no longer see. Stumbling across a corpse of his own slaying, helpless, unarmed, he cast himself into their hands.

They, like us, stood spellbound by his barbaric magnificence, his gallant disregard of results. And then they, as we, surged forward to support him. Our animosities, our partisanships, our fears and hopes, were all swept aside. Our hundred hands stretched out, pityingly, to lift him from the snow upon which he had pitched inert in his last and heroic effort. Our hundred feet, some of which had never before crossed the thresh old of the austere house, pattered and slipped and crowded as we carried him and laid him upon the bed from which, fighting to the last, he had arisen. From the confusion I caught one bitter cry in my own tongue, and recognized Jack's voice.

“By God! They've killed him as surely as if they had shot!”

I don't know who forced them out or how they went. But I do know that it was I who, breathless, stood with my back against the door that had closed upon them, and saw Jack panting by my side, and the running figure of Malitka. We followed her to where the shaman had been laid. Already she had pulled open his shirt and was twisting broken bandages back into position. Some of their borders were stained with vivid red. A curious silence fell.

Malitka bent above him and, heedless of his blood, pressed an ear to his brawny chest. He lay very quiet, very still. I suffered a great fear that he was dead until Malitka lifted her head, motioned to us and fell to chafing his listless hands and feet. We worked with her and did not cease our efforts when she began removing the bandages from over his most serious wound.

“He has lost enough blood in the last few days to kill an ordinary man,” she said. “But his heart beats feebly.”

It was not until Malitka had done all she could and we had trickled stimulants down the shaman's throat that we thought of anything other than the invisible but threatening shadow of death that seemed watching our puny efforts.

“Great heavens! Do you suppose he anticipated what effect throwing that pistol and then himself into their midst was going to have on that mob of Indians?” Jack asked in an awed voice.

“Of course,” I answered. “Moreover I'm positive that he thought that this was his last chance to save us. He may even have thought that if they killed him they would be satisfied—for a time at least.”

“He must have known that his wounds were opened again,” Malitka said, “and that it was suicidal to make that final exertion. I'm afraid it was his last.”

I stood there at the foot of his bed for a long time alone, a little later, looking down upon him watchful for a change and thinking of his rough greatness, of his prodigious sense of the dramatic, of his gift for swaying the minds of his own people and of his inexorable and terrifying ruthlessness when aroused. Surely the spirit of some ancient conqueror and leader of men, some unchristianized Charlemagne or less ferocious Tamerlane had returned after ages to dwell again for a brief span in this extraordinary mart. I could not help thinking of what this man might have become under more fortunate conditions of breeding and opportunity. Studying him more closely than I had ever done before I could see but little of the Indian in his cranial formation or features. Save for his complexion and the color of his eyes he could have passed readily enough for a full-blooded Russian of the great rugged De Witte type. I have often wondered since who and what his father was. Unanswerable questions these. But—I wonder!

It was two hours later when Jack came tiptoeing into the room and relieved my watch. He whispered to me “Is there any change?”

“No,” I said. “He has not moved but seems breathing more strongly. Malitka's instructions were that he was not to be disturbed for the purpose of giving more of the stimulant. If he wakens he is to have more but not otherwise. I can't tell whether he's asleep or unconscious.”

When I reached the living room Malitka was not there. I walked across to the window and looked down upon the village. Its streets were untenanted, peaceful, the smoke was still spiraling straight upward from its chimneys and it was difficult to believe that so short a time before it had been murderously seething. No visible evidence of the latter phase was left save the solidly trampled and beaten snow in front of the Great House.

Suddenly the door of one of the larger houses opened and more than a dozen men appeared and tramped stolidly away toward the east. A dull flash of metal showed that the foremost carried an ax and then flash after flash disclosed that each of the pedestrians was similarly equipped. The village cemetery lay out there to the eastward. I had often loitered there scanning the strange scaffoldings upon each of which rested the remains of the dead, surrounded by their weapons of chase or war and equipment for the trail into the shadowy beyond. I was puzzled by the fact that so many men went to prepare but one resting place in the borders of a forest so profuse, where the few requisite timbers were so easily accessible. Could it be possible that they were going to prepare resting places for us? The thought was not soothing. I went to the hallway and took therefrom all the rifles, brought them into the living room and was carefully cleaning, oiling and loading them when Malitka unexpectedly returned. She smiled sadly as she saw what I was doing.

“No, my friend,” she said as she divested herself of fur parka and cap and bent over to unlace her out-of-door moccasins; “weapons will not be needed. The rebellion is over. And yet I wish—I wish—it could have ended otherwise. When I reached the council house it was too late. A pity! Horrible!”

“What has happened?” I demanded, resting a rifle that I had been oiling across my knee.

She picked up the discarded parka and cap and stood with them across her arm close beside the door as she answered, “The rebellion is ended.” She stood still for a moment more, moved to the door and out into the hall and I heard her sigh as she hung her garments upon the antlers that served as a hall rack. When she returned she said, “Wait here a moment. I must first see the shaman,” and again was gone.

“There is one ray of light in all our gloom,” she remarked when she reëntered the room, closed the door, and stood beside the center table. “The shaman is not unconscious but asleep. What a marvelous vitality! Sleep has more virtues than ever the master of your English tongue, Shakespeare, could express. It cures where all else fails. It's a ministration of a greater physician than the sorry world has ever produced—God's healing. I have hopes, now, that Peluk will survive.”

She appeared to have forgotten in this new satisfaction my eagerness to learn of the morning's events, and then recalled them.

“Oh! About—other things,” she said as she sought and found a chair, “after we had done all we could for the shaman, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to go into the village and talk to the natives and try to bring them back to reason. I can't blame myself for the delay because Peluk demanded first attention, but—I am sorry I could not have been there sooner. It was a great pity! One cannot teach these natives deliberation. They act so swiftly, so impetuously, so surely.”

She stared out of the window for a moment with troubled eyes and then again at me. For the first time I saw in her the hurt child, the shocked woman.

“After they had helped us carry the shaman in they picked up the body of Barseek and went to the Council House. There they heard all that Barseek's followers had to say in self-defense. One of his men admitted that Barseek was behind all—everything—that has gone wrong. He was a savage. Nothing more! It was Barseek who inflamed against you and Peluk the ones who followed you out on the trail—which of course was why Peluk turned back with you so suddenly to escape them. And then, with native craftiness, it was Barseek who, in the gold camp, insisted upon your and Peluk's death. Evidently some of his followers distrusted him, for when he wished to be elected chief, they chose a man of their own. The shaman killed that man—back up there in the gold camp. Barseek made one more effort when he had some of his men follow you after you escaped. You know how that ended.

“Then he made his last attempt. And you know how that, too, ended—in Barseek's death. The natives tried the dead man and his two principal supporters. And they” she twisted her fingers together, and looked sorrowfully away, then concluded in a hushed voice—“condemned those two followers, fell upon them with knives and killed them there in the Council House. They were there, dead upon the earthen floor, when I arrived. I was too late. But I told them all that was in mind! They listened. I think some of them were sorry. I think that possibly I said harsher words to them than I might have used under less stress. But that is neither here nor there. At once they pledged themselves to future obedience to Peluk and to me. They named a burial party. And—I came away! That was all. But I cannot forget the three dead men on the floor.”

She sat with drooping head and moist eyes; I cannot admit that I joined in her sympathy or her mourning. I suppose that she looked upon them all as foster children of hers, whom she must protect and elevate from a state of savagery or barbarism to something more worthy. Candidly, I was glad that they were dead and beyond power to inflict death or injury upon us or others. I foresaw victory for us.