The Shaman/Chapter 5

I shall never be certain what the outcome of our visit to Madame Malitka's village might have been had her prediction that my partner's eyes would recover within a few days been fulfilled; for, considerably to my alarm, it developed into something like iritis. I could do nothing to assist or relieve him; but madame's ministrations never ceased, as if beneath her calm and habitual coldness there dwelt a full and womanly sympathy. Time hung heavily on my hands, for have never been one who can long content himself with books, but who craves outdoor activity.

I became a commonplace object to the natives, to their children, to the very dogs. I wandered at will, and there were at least a score of houses in that settlement that at some time I entered. The evident distrust that at first marked the demeanor of the shaman's people gave way to tolerance, as if being accepted by both madame and him were sufficient.

One brilliant moonlight night I was awakened by the clamor of the village dogs, and the barking of others in response. So keen becomes one's curiosity and interest in trifling things under such humdrum conditions that I climbed from my bed and went to the window. It opened to the rear of the great house, looking out across a considerable clearing to the foremost phalanxes of the great dark forest and to the chill, jagged mountain peaks that stood sentinel in the far distance over this secluded valley. I saw coming out of the dense forest where I had never surmised there could be any trail a dog team of the great strong beasts that were so carefully bred in this settlement. They were harnessed in doubles, with a huge, gaunt, wolf-crossed leader at their head—nine in all, while on the sled I made out the dark figure of a man at rest while an other ran behind at the handlebars.

They came rapidly, the dogs running in the long wolf trot as if eager to gain a known home. Then with another swirl there emerged another identical team, and, to my further curiosity, two more, all racing inward. They passed almost beneath my window, so close that I could see the sharp steam of panting breaths, the little skirl of frozen snow dust arising from the hurrying pads and the lolling tongues.

I turned toward Jack, expecting him to have been aroused by the night sounds; but I presume that madame had given him a potion to ease his pain, for he slept, and I did not disturb him. For a long time I lay in my bed, staring at the dimness of the moonlit room and puzzled by what I had seen. It was evident that teams such as these were used for heavy hauling and not for speed; that they had come from some place unloaded and that their journey had been one of many miles, for otherwise they would not have traveled so late into the night.

After a time the faint noises, and the barking of village dogs died away into that profound silence that never seems so compact, so deathly, as in the great North. I heard as if far back in the forest from which these ghostly travelers came the long-drawn cry of timber wolves, as if they had accompanied them in that journey, and now, baffled, feared to venture beyond the darkness of the forest in the hope of prey.

In this strange refuge of ours I learned discretion; but it was difficult when we three were seated at breakfast not to mention the happening of the night. Madame, calm, neat, competent as usual, seemed unusually silent. It was not until she was pouring the coffee, which was a table task she intrusted to none other, that she said, “I trust you were not disturbed in the night by—by anything?”

It was that instant's hesitation that put me on guard. I looked up at her and found her eyes directed to mine with more interest than her words had implied.

“I thought, I heard wolves in the night,” I said. “But perhaps I merely dreamed of them. I have never before heard any—that is, since we came here.”

I thought I discerned a look of relief in her inscrutable eyes,

“Yes,” she said, bestowing calm attention to her coffeepot, and shifting her regard, “it must have been a dream. There are wolves sometimes, I am told, in the depths of the forest behind us, but they seldom venture this far. The villagers have no occasion to go that way, so I suppose that whenever a wandering pack comes it remains unmolested.”

She paused, and then with unwonted volubility said that the great game regions lay in the opposite direction, and discoursed on the reasons therefor.

“The younger men of the village then, I take it, go that way for their hunting and trapping?” I said, as if not much interested.

“Yes, meat as well as furs for trading must be had somewhere,” she said in an equally casual manner. “Of course, in the summer season they lay in catches of salmon which they smoke for storage, and in the fall seasons they take grayling in quantities. The fish you are eating have been frozen for more than three months.”

“How far distant is the nearest trading post?” I asked, and saw her slowly raise her eyes as if questioning whether there could be anything concealed in my words.

“Oh, a long way from here, to the northwest,” she answered evasively, and immediately addressed Jack as if to end my inquisitiveness.

But the thought ran through my head as I sat in silence and enjoying a most excellent breakfast, that the dog teams I had seen in the night came from due south. Long after the meal was concluded I sat pretending to read, but thinking. I recalled seeing my snowshoes, whose worn webs had been repaired during our enforced rest, hanging on a wooden peg out at the end of the house.

I said nothing to Jack after she had left for what I knew was her daily round of inspection, but slipped quietly out and took the familiar long frames from their hooks. I kept the house between me and the village, slipped my feet into the new thongs, and then, as if merely curious to try them, lest some of the servants in the house be watching, trudged away toward the south east, making pretense now and then to readjust a thong and thus finally gained the edge of the forest into which I leisurely moved until screened from sight. I plunged into it for some hundreds of yards, and then turned due west on my course, and with long, free strides traveled a mile or more before I came to a greater surprise.

I saw, cut through the woods, a clean, narrow roadway leading southward, and in its middle lay the new tracks of the sleds I had seen the night before—snows trampled by the paws of many dogs and interlaced here and there with the marks of moccasined feet. I fell back into the forest and for more than two hours skirted that beaten trail; but never once did I venture out to where my own traces in the snow might conflict, or lead to detection.

I came to a place where the forest thinned, and saw that the worn trail was now ascending and leading to a pass in the high mountains that could not have been seen from the village, so abrupt and sharp was its opening. I was mystified by this matter. I wished that I had time to follow it farther; but time was already spent if I wished to return so that my absence might not attract attention. And so, reluctantly, I swung back and retraced my course, thinking of some excuse I might offer that would account for my considerable outing. I remembered then that we had several times had upon the table the pine hen of the North, a game bird that properly cooked is most edible. I decided that this might prove my pretext.

That afternoon I loitered with the shaman, but found him strangely occupied and aloof, and eager to have me go. Deciding that I was in his way, for some reason or another, I returned to the house and did actually become interested in a novel that twice before I had attempted to read. We played chess, madame and I, that evening, and as usual she beat me. But now and then I thought she prolonged the game as if to keep me absorbed. It was late when we retired but, thinking over the mysteries I had encountered, I could not sleep. It must have been nearly midnight when I heard outside a single “woof” of protest, as if a dog had come in contact with another, and jumping from my bed I again stood at my window.

In all that day I had seen in the village no sign of anything unusual—not a strange dog, a strange sled, or a strange man. But now laboring through the moonlight I saw the teams straining into harness, pulling heavy loads, while in front of each walked a man, and behind each another clung to and steadied the sled handles. Again they passed, ghostly, slowly, until the blackness of the trees outlined against the snow-clad clearing swallowed them from sight. They were off into the unknown trail that I had traced for so many miles. Of their goal I was curious; but again my reason told me that either their destination was very distant, or so close at hand that they expected to reach it before the wane of the moon. The latter seemed most probable.

I resolved to wait another day that any lurking suspicion might be allayed, and then to learn, if I could, whither that trail went and why. Such knowledge might eventually prove vital for our escape. My pretext of being ennuied by lack of movement and my announcement that I proposed to travel eastward into the rolling highlands to spend a whole day shooting pine hens was accepted without comment. I took the precaution to tell the shaman, who grinned and said that they could most likely be flushed on the ridge that he pointed out. That, too, was eastward, quite away from that southern trail. He offered to go with me as guide and companion; but when I told him that it wasn't worth while, and that maybe I shouldn't go as far as the ridge, he relaxed into fat contentment and crudely philosophized on the follies of exerting one's self in a temperature of thirty degrees below zero when it was possible to remain warmly sheltered.

I was off at as early an hour in the morning as I dared, and swung out again in a false direction. I lost no time, after the forest had hidden me, in turning westward, and settled myself to do my best in what might prove a long chase.

The trail, when reached, I found too cut and lumpy to permit of as rapid progress as I could make on its sides, and so, “letting myself out” to the utmost, enjoying the movement in the cold, pure air, and strong after my rest, I made most excellent time until I reached the point where I had abandoned the chase on my first visit. The trail now led through a narrow valley, bordered with high rolling hills. Its ascent became much steeper and harder.

It turned upward to one side and passed completely over a foothill, thence downward a short distance and into what I judged to be in summer a watercourse. The rolling hills gave way to savage mountains, rough, tortuous, and reaching coldly upward like innumerable Titanic needles thrust into the sky. In some places the trail passed between cliffs high and sheer and with a cleft so narrow that one could almost stretch his hands cut and touch the opposing walls of rock. The windings were so frequent that seldom was it possible to see more than thirty or forty yards ahead, where nothing but interminable walls were visible as if there the passage must end; but invariably on coming to these places another narrow way would be exposed, up which the laden sleds had been toilfully dragged. I understood now the necessity for two men and such splendid teams for each outfit.

Up, up, through gorge after gorge, each successive one seeming steeper, I climbed until I reached one where the signs disclosed that the laden sleds had been unpacked, the contents carried piecemeal by hand, and even the empty sleds pulled upward by main force. The place was almost as steep as the pitched roof of a house and could be scaled only by the employment of hands as well as feet. For a hundred yards it bored upward through a cleft that was at no time more than ten or twenty feet in width and whose black walls were so sheer that not even light-falling snow had found lodgment to soften their rugged faces. The outlet appeared to end abruptly in the blue sky between two walls, exactly as if one stared through an enormous gateway to the heavens.

It was difficult for me, traveling light and carrying nothing but shotgun and snowshoes across my back, to make that final ascent, and I was panting heavily when I reached the top, where I halted in swift amazement. I jumped backward impulsively, threw myself on my belly and rested. When my breathing had returned to normal I first divested myself of snowshoes and gun, took off my cap and powdered it white with snow from the trail, likewise my shoulders, and edged upward again until I could rest there and look.

In front of me the trail led downward over a descent almost as abrupt and steep as the one I had just climbed. I beheld its end, a veritable cup in the mountains far beneath me—perhaps a thousand feet below. But that was not the strangest part! I looked down upon the snow-laden roofs of cabins from whose chimneys smoke, gray and pale, curled lazily upward. The cabins appeared, from the distance, to be of the same substantial log structural form that distinguished the village from which I had come. Of these houses there were a score, one being much larger than the others and with chimneys at each end.

The presence of this secret camp was instantly explained to an experienced eye by several great black heaps some hundreds of yards beyond it. No snow was on these, and near each stood the familiar form of a windlass, at two of which men toiled and twisted, hoisting the pay dirt from shafts in the earth. A great pile of sluice boxes carefully stacked, probably at the end of the previous season's work, added further proof that here was gold placer mining on a considerable scale.

As I rested, there flashed through my mind the danger of the position in which my curiosity had placed me. I had ventured into the lion's mouth if ever any man had. Here was the explanation of many peculiarities and mysteries that were integral parts of Madame Malitka's domain; the evasiveness regarding hunting, trapping, and trading relations; the extravagant evidences of thrift and wealth in every Indian's domicile as well as her own; the rigid discipline of the inhabitants who were not even permitted to wander into the great barren beyond without special permission and then, doubtless, only when such journeys became imperatively necessary. It explained the establishing of a ghostly legend filling the superstitious minds of those natives who had heard of the place with dread and causing them to avoid mentioning it, visiting it, or approaching it. It gave the reason for the reception we two white men, starving, had endured when we blundered into this native stronghold and—yes—the interrogations to which we had been compelled to submit before being reluctantly succored!

It was but too plain now that, had we been merely wandering prospectors or explorers, sorely stricken though we were on that hour of our arrival, we would have been driven forth again into the great hopeless mercilessness of the steppes to certain death. Nothing could have saved us from that tortured end save the stern kindness of the shaman's men whom he would probably have sent after us to speed our demise.

For a moment, lying there on the snow, I cursed that strange, tyrannical ruler of this tribe; and then another recollection calmed my hatred, the thought that she had accepted our given pledges that never after our departure would we make known to living man what we had learned, or ever return. She had accepted us as men of honor,

It was a highly embarrassing thought. Honor? That implied that we as her unwelcome, but received guests, could not be expected to spy upon her doings or her motives. And here was I, skin-clad, snow-powdered, prone upon a hidden trail, and spying upon the great secret she strove to maintain! I, one of her guests, permitted to wander at will because she had trusted this honor of mine, although perhaps deeming it impossible that I might discover that which she so inexorably hid. I loathed my discovery and regretted that it had been made.

It was in this state of mind that I quickly crawled backward until detection from any wandering eye in the village below—eyes that are so quick to detect the merest, small movement in spaces so devoid of change—was rendered impossible. And then I resumed my light burden of snowshoes thrown across my shoulders and of shotgun in the crook of my arm and slithered back over the descent. I took pains to obliterate any stray mark of my passage. I took it for granted that in the great confusion of trampled snow any footprint leading upward would pass unobserved, and heeded only the effacement of my downward steps.

The way was very long and the work arduous before I came, in the dusk of the short arctic winter day, to a place where I could leave the trail and plunge into the shadows of the forest. Finally I reached the great belt of pine and fir forest which, owing to its density, was already dark. Here no faint light of moon or star might penetrate and here, off to one side, I heard the abrupt and warning howl of a great timber wolf, disturbed in its quest, uttering the far-reaching call of the pack and of the hunt! No casual wail of protest to the moon, this, but the fierce call that comes in the early dusk when unexpected prey has been sighted and hunger lends desperate courage to attack.

The hour was still early, when measured by hours in lower latitudes where now it could have been but mid-afternoon. But here, in this winter month on whose most benevolent day the sun barely approached the edge of the horizon, and then, unseen, slipped away as from an inhospitable land, it was late.

Once, some years before, I had heard that wolf cry in Siberia when going from one village to another in midday. And now I ran! Of what service to me the shotgun now lashed upon my back, when in my pockets were shells loaded with nothing more heavy than light shot!

It was well for me in that afternoon that I was trained as no athlete can be save through trail and stress, that I was physically endowed as but few athletes are, and that I was bodily replenished and fit. The first pack call came from the left; within a few minutes it was answered from the right. The first lean, dark shape I saw was to my right and running almost abreast. The wolf tactics, unless driven to that extremity of hunger where ferocity creates individual courage, are ever the same—to assemble the pack before making an attack upon man kind.

As I ran, panting but steady, a new and disturbing feature of my situation came to mind, which was that, inasmuch as my only chance for life rested in my reaching the village before I could be overwhelmed, I must take the most direct way which must inevitably bring me out near where the gold trail entered the clearing. It would be impossible for me to extend the chase through the forest and bear eastward so that I might emerge from the direction in which I had that morning started. Furthermore, if at last I were driven to fire, the report of my shotgun would in itself betray the direction of my course.

The wolf pack seemed to be aware of my intent and to know that if I reached the clearing first in that terrible race its prey would be lost; for now the animals closed in more recklessly as if preparing to spring. There was nothing for it but to fire. I surprised them by suddenly swerving closer toward them, and discharged both barrels at a great gray beast that led the pack. I surmised that the pellets could do him small injury even if capable of penetrating his coat of winter fur; but fortune favored me in that both charges must have found muzzle and eyes; my shots were answered with a loud howl of pain, the brute stopped and fell into the snow where it began writhing, and the pack, stunned by the explosion and for the moment terrified, hesitated.

Leaping away I ejected the empty shells and threw in two more cartridges. I do not know whether the beasts fell upon their fallen leader and canniballike devoured him, or whether they were for a few moments terrified into halt; but the thinning light be tokening the edge of the clearing was plain ahead of me before they again came with a rush—and this time I fired one barrel after the other without halting. In a moment more I was out into the clearing, the dogs of the village in an enormous pack were giving tongue and bounding in my direction, doors were opening and natives were rushing forth with rifles and the habitual stillness gave way to a fierce clamor.

So ravenous was the wolf pack that it dared follow me a little way into the clearing, and again I was compelled to fire. The village dogs, brave to a certain point but themselves terrified of the great wolves that make no more of killing a dog than a rabbit, stopped. Their Indian masters with shouts came on. Spurts of flame and the whistling of well-aimed bullets, made possible in that broader light of the clearing, were followed by the shrill howling of stricken animals. For an instant the wolves milled round in confusion, and then turned and fled back to the forest shadows, leaving two or three that gnashed and twisted in agony on the snow. The natives rushed in and dispatched these before any one addressed me. A larger shape that ran heavily, as if unable to race to my rescue as quickly as his younger companions, reached me and I recognized the shaman.

“You very good luck. Me tell you! No can unnerstan' so many wolves. Many years since him pack thees way so close village. Mus' be caribou scarce. Sorry not know wolves in mountains here. Then tell you better not go shootum pine hen. Too bad. But all right now. Ummh?”

The end of the great house was but a hundred yards away, and now I saw emerge from it madame, who came forward to investigate the cause of so much excitement.

“Ah, it is you,” she said, and glancing around observed, “I see you have had a narrow escape from a wolf pack. Most unusual! It is the first time to my knowledge that they have ever appeared in numbers in this valley. I wonder”

She stopped as if suddenly alarmed by some thought and, turning from me, spoke quietly and rapidly to the shaman in his own tongue.

He, too, manifested signs of uneasiness, and I saw him glance in the direction of the gold trail. I knew then that both madame and he were apprehensive for the safety of that supply train that had gone forth but a couple of nights previous; wondering if the wolf pack had been sufficiently formidable to attack and destroy the gold workers in some of the distant reaches that I had that day seen. I could have answered their queries, allayed their fears; told them that the sled trails ran uninterrupted and true to that mining camp up behind in the rugged mountains. It was on the tip of my tongue to do so.

I wished afterward that I had. But I stood silent. And I maintained that silence after the excitement was gone and I found myself back in madame's stronghold, comfortable in body but perplexed in mind.