CHAPTER IX.
We were somewhat surprised by Peluk's generosity in bringing two native runners with him, for we had expected that they would leave us and return after a run of perhaps a few miles; but they did not, and took turns in tirelessly leading the way. It is one of the characteristics of even first-class dog teams that they will travel faster when a runner is ahead, exactly as if this human pacemaker stimulates them to greater effort. The shaman for the greater part of the time rode in princely state, lolling back in the rear end of his sled upon our tent and wrapped in a great red fox robe, blanket lined. Now and then when the “going was good,” it was possible for Jack or I to ride while the others ran behind clinging to the handlebars.
We had not expected to halt, due to the late hour of our starting, until we reached our proposed camping site; but promptly at one o'clock the shaman uttered a loud shout that brought us to a standstill, and tumbled out of his sled. It was in a small clump of timber where fuel was easily obtainable and his two followers immediately began making preparations to start a file.
“No good hurry go fast,” Peluk explained. “Make camp early. Very good rest hour. Have tea. Good smoke. Good eat.”
And so we contented ourselves as best we could, although the shaman prolonged our stop to nearly an hour and a half, gossiping in fragmentary English sentences, but never addressing the two natives who throughout the halt spoke scarcely a word to him or each other, preserving a stony silence. And yet, when we resumed our march and traveled through the afternoon, we were not sorry when we came to our camping place at an early hour, for our muscles had not come back to long endurance. We were glad to halt in the shadow of the great trees.
Here again the shaman's foresight was proven by the fact that it was scarcely necessary to unpack all our sled to make the camp complete. With that celerity and order that is learned only through the making of many camps, in less than twenty minutes the tent was pitched, fragrant pine boughs deeply laid over the snow for a carpet, the stove up and roaring, and the shaman cooking our supper. One of his men fell to cutting dead wood outside and the other to caring for the two dog teams that swarmed round his legs as he opened the dog salmon and partitioned it out, watchful that each animal got its share.
The shaman was in his most jovial, kindly mood as he squatted over the stove watchful of kettle, frying pan and coffeepot.
“Sometimes,” he said reminiscently, as he poked the fire, “think like take long game trail again. When li'l boy go many trails, many sleeps. But now—mebbe too fat, ummh?” he laughed and looked up at us with his sharp black eyes full of amusement. “Pant all same old fat dog! No can run fast. Much better like ride.” He regarded me appraisingly and flattered me with, “You heap strong. Run good. No get too tired. Old man, too. Got gray head. Wise head. Same as old fox, ummh?”
I sat thinking hopefully of the possibilities of inducing him to either continue with us farther or letting me know how I could reach the place where the white man with the scarred face had met his end; but my calculated, careful efforts to lead the conversation in that direction were futile. Patiently I recurred to the subject of the long trails again and again, even while we ate supper with keen appetites, and the shaman's two followers squatted in the corners of the crowded little tent silently stowing away their food; but I gained nothing. I persevered after the meal was over and we lounged on the outspread blankets and furs and smoked. I tried to exercise diplomacy.
“Peluk,” I suggested, “maybe if you went with us a day or two more, you could find game of some sort—perhaps caribou, maybe moose. Why not come farther?”
“Me like go. But” he began, and then stopped and fell to staring at the candle burning in its cleft stick, at the ridge pole of the tent, at the vent hole of the stove that blazed like a huge round eye full upon his massive, rugged face.
I fell to persuasion, and Jack did his best to assist my argument.
“We like your company, old sport,” he said, and the shaman smiled at him as if appreciating his friendliness.
“No,” he said at last. “No can always do what mebbe like to do. Lady Malitka speak, and—must do what lady say do. She say can come one sleep. No can come two or many more sleeps.”
As if the mention of her name recalled other thoughts to Jack, he said no more, his eyes took on the vacant stare of abstraction, and he in turn stared at the glowing vent of the stove. I think that on me also her name had an effect, the effect of an unwelcome intrusion. I had been so secretly rejoiced at the ease of our escape, in the hope of being again freed from her menace and domination, that all day I had traveled in a state of relief. Probably the silence was longer than I appreciated, as we sat there, each absorbed in thought, Jack resting at length on a sleeping bag with his hands pillowing his head, the shaman squatted like an inanimate shapeless object, I sitting cross-legged on a fur robe, and, always in the dim corners of the tent nearest the fly those two mute and still figures of Peluk's followers. I recall that Peluk's voice aroused me with the shock of something unexpected.
“But think mebbe we can travel one day more together—that right word? Ummh? Together? Speak very good English, but—that word mean so; like this—ummh?”
He held his stubby powerful fingers out in a bunch, and when I agreed that this was the meaning of the word that to him was foreign, he complacently gestured with both hands and said, “Me speak very good English, ummh? Big word—that—together. So, mebbe can take trail one day more—together!”
He gloated over that simple word with an almost childish vanity; prodigiously proud of his accomplishment in our tongue. He rambled off his subject and asserted that many white men had told him that no other Indian in Juneau and Kadiak could speak so well. “Here!” he cried. “Know more as that. Lissun! Ah, bay, cay, day, eeah, ef, djhay, haitch, and” he hesitated, perplexed and studious, and then gradually waved to one side the entire alphabet that he had threatened to inflict on us with a boast—“Can do all. All! Almos' can read white man's talk signs! Ummh? Me very big shaman. Very wise. One, two, free, four, faive, seex, seben”
He threatened to count numerals perhaps up into the hundreds, but I interrupted him with, “Good! Very good! And so you will go with us to-morrow?”
“Yes,” he said, somewhat crestfallen at my lack of appreciation. “Go to-morrow. That, too, good word. To-morrow!” slurring his R's until they sounded like lame L's.
I had gained one step, at least, I thought as I spread the blankets out and prepared for sleep. I was secretly exultant over that slight gain, and—I was tired. The shaman yawned, crept on hands and knees to the opposite corner of the tent where his great fur robe was thrown, stretched himself out upon it, and rolled over and over until it was wrapped about him like a mummy case. His two men lifted themselves slightly, took from beneath them long parkas of the thin, flexible and not overly warm squirrel skins, pulled them over their heads like nightshirts, drew the “Sunburst” hoods, fox tail broidered, around their faces, sat down inside them, and resumed that josslike attitude of repose in their corners. The shaman's arm disengaged itself from his wrappings, stretched upward, and his practical fingers with a single deft grasp seized and extinguished the candle's flame. The round, staring, flickering blaze from the stove made a great shadow upon the grimy white wall of the tent.
Soundless the forest, the outer and frozen world. So soundless that the slipping of a handful of snow from the overburdened and overcome branch of a pine tree was distinctly, sharply audible. The faint and final crack of an ember in the sheet-metal stove was magnified to explosiveness. Jack breathed deeply. The shaman snored. I felt for the fold of a blanket, and wished that I had chosen my sleeping bag instead, and fell asleep dreaming that I was once again in the blackness of a Berber tent in the Sahara Desert and gravely considering the condition of camels' worn and spongy pads.
I don't know exactly how long I slept, but it was certainly several hours, when, as if pounced upon by nightmare, I awoke terrified, struggling, fighting, and clutching two relentless hands that encircled my throat. I could not release them. I twisted legs and arms and body fiercely. Powerful hands held my feet; sinewy hands caught my arms. Not a human whisper could be heard. I might have been in the depths of the deepest seas and grasped relentlessly by an octopus. My arms were deftly pinioned to my sides. My feet were bound together, my knees tied, and I was so cunningly bandaged round my mouth that I was as dumb as if I had never uttered a sound. I was neither battered nor physically harmed, simply rendered helpless. Silence continued after my long-drawn sigh of surrender. I was left alone.
Straining my eyes I glared in the gloom. I could finally, though dimly, descry three shapes that, breathing heavily, rested and stared down upon me to make certain of my defeat. They moved, appeared to confer by signs, took positions and suddenly bent to their work over my friend who had slept serenely throughout that noiseless preceding struggle. I could even discern their method of attack—the figure that bent above the heedless and unprotected throat, his signal to the other two who had stationed themselves at head and feet—the swift pouncing of the hands to throat, and the equally darting clutch upon feet and hands at either end. I tried to roll over sufficiently to intrude my body between them and their victim, to so hamper their movements or distract their attention that Jack might have at least a fighting chance. They paid no more heed to my efforts than they might have bestowed upon the wild and impotent writhing of a fish thrown out of water upon the banks of a stream.
My partner was a far more powerful man physically than I. By some prodigious effort he tore loose the fingers that strove to throttle him, cast aside the hands that endeavored to bind his arms, kicked loose those that strove to encircle his feet. Once he got to his knees and elbows crying to me an alarm, shouting to me to help him and struggling desperately. The shadows melted into one confused blur. Jack lifted himself upward to his knees, and then, as a weight lifter might heave, gained his feet. Striving to throw off his assailants, he hove backward and forward, shouting, cursing, and swinging them around.
They clung to him like bear hounds. He shifted them, tried to strike, and they trampled over me as I lay. They tripped and fell as a single swirling mass came in contact with the edge of the tent, ripped through its frail canvas side while it rocked and tottered from ridge pole to peg, rolled outward, still struggling, and then the disturbed canvas fell cutting off my sight.
I rolled toward it, bruised by their feet and weight, intent on passing through after them and doing all that lay in my power to assist my enraged and desperate partner. The fallen folds of canvas impeded me. They would not give way. I heard a shrill voice exclaim in the native tongue, “He will have it! I'll make him quiet!” And then there was the sound of dull impact of delivered blow and for an instant all was still. Sled dogs aroused from their snowy nests barked and growled, surging forward as if to a fray and a kill with the instinct of the wolf uppermost. There could be no mistaking the voice that sharply drove them back. It was the shaman's; the voice that had languidly replied to mine so many times, but now pitched in a different and troublous key, and speaking his own language.
“Bind his hands and feet. He will soon be all right,” he said. “Come! Take down the tent. Pack the sleds. We have far to go!”
An instant later I was seized by shoulders and feet, thrust into a sleeping bag, lifted, and deposited on the snow. Jack lay quiet and inert and they straightway thrust him also into his sleeping bag, one of the men commenting that if we had only retired in them that night instead of lying on top of them covered by blankets, we should have saved them considerable trouble.
In but a few minutes the tent was down, everything—including Jack and me—packed aboard the two sleds, the dogs harnessed in, and we swung back over what I surmised was the homeward trail; but now we no longer lagged. Our previous day's travel had been orderly, leisurely, with no attempt at haste; but now men and dogs urged forward as if speed were a consideration. The shaman ran behind my sled clinging to the handlebars, panting but running lightly for one who pretended that he was all fat and too old for the trails.
Most of the time he ran voicelessly, save when now and then he cried to the runner ahead to speed up. This continued for nearly an hour, when I heard the native behind Jack's sled shout that the latter had regained consciousness and was trying to lift himself to a sitting posture. The shaman called a halt and went back to where Jack was struggling. The dogs, glad for a breathing spell, threw themselves on the snow, panting. I could hear the shaman's voice very distinctly.
“You be good! If not keep quiet, mus' tie you down. No like do that. You be good, no get hurt. You be not good, get hurt heap more.”
“You old scoundrel! Where's my partner?” Jack demanded.
“He in other sled. Very nice. No hurt.”
“Well, if you'll prove that to me I'll keep quiet. Let me talk to him,” Jack insisted.
“Good!” said the shaman, and I heard him returning to my sled. He bent over and removed the bandages that rendered me mute. “Mos' forgetum,” he apologized. “Very sorry. Now can talk.”
My jaws were uncomfortably stiff from the long restraint, but I shouted lustily. “Are you all right, Jack? Are you badly hurt?”
“No,” he replied; “but that old Judas hit me a jolt that was a knock-out and I'm as sore as a boil. Are you unhurt?”
“Except for a bruise or two where you all trampled my ribs when you put up your fight. They already had me fast. I tried to help, but it was no good.”
“Nope. No good!” the shaman interjected with a chuckle.
Knowing more of the shaman's remorselessness where human life was concerned than did Jack, I thought it wise to advise the latter.
“See here,” I called to him. “We're in no shape to put up a fight. I think it best to submit. Even if we were free, we've got no firearms.”
“Yes, me catchum very nice peestol some sleeps ago,” I heard the shaman chuckle, and now I understood his cunning in possessing himself of the only small weapon we had, and of which he stood in fear. The grinning old devil must have had our subjugation in view when he made that liberal trade. His chuckle suddenly stopped and his oily voice had a new quality when he said sharply, “You white mans—lissen! You be good, no hurt. But you be bad, and me kill you both, sure! No like killum you two mans, but mus' killum if no other way, unnerstan', ummh? Now what say?”
I did not give Jack a chance to refuse or anger the shaman by impotent curses. I knew the latter too well to take such risks. Moreover I knew that it would pay better to take matters philosophically and do our utmost to conciliate our captor.
“Jack,” I called, “I'm sure Peluk talks with a straight tongue, and that he doesn't want to hurt either of us if he can avoid it. He and I are pretty good friends, I hope, or at least were until to-night.”
“Very good friends! Very good!” the shaman asserted standing midway between the two sleds, and I could not be certain whether he spoke candidly or sarcastically. “Me like Hathaway good. No like have killum. So, we go now, all very nice, ummh? Me sorry white mans no can walk. If get cold, me findum more blankets. Bimeby grub.”
“All right, old sport. Go to it!” Jack called, and with a grunt of approval the shaman turned to his men and told them to get under way again, and we were off.