TREACHERY IN THE NIGHT
“I hear them! They are coming! Oh, Grandfather! Johnny Thompson! They are
coming! The caribou are coming!”
As on that other occasion, the girl’s words were uttered in a low
whisper, yet so tense were her feelings that her whispered words left in
Johnny Thompson’s mind the impression of a sharp, shrill cry.
At once the boy’s mind was in a whirl. Had she heard them? Were they
truly coming? Faye Duncan’s ears were keen as a fox’s. Her imagination
also was keen. Had imagination deceived her? He had heard nothing.
“If they are coming, they may not pass this way.” This he whispered to
the girl. “We must not hope too much.”
“No, we must not,” she answered quietly. “But I did hear it distinctly,
the crack-crack of their hoofs! The wind brought in the sound. It’s died
down now. I can hear it no longer. But,” she whispered tensely, “they
must come! They must!”
To this Johnny agreed. Three days had passed since they arrived at the
Eskimo camp. In that time, enheartened and strengthened by the white
man’s caribou meat, the Eskimo had killed with bow and arrow five
rabbits, three foxes and eight ptarmigan. But what were these among so
many? The caribou meat was gone. Rabbit, fox, ptarmigan, all were gone,
and starvation stared both Eskimos and whites in the face.
As the caribou had delayed their coming, there had been grumbling among
the Eskimos. An aged witch doctor had said that the presence of the white
men in the village had offended the spirits of all dead caribou and that
they had told the living caribou to go north over some other route.
“We shall all starve,” the Eskimo had said, shaking with fear of the
future.
“If only they were not such children!” the old Scot had said to Johnny.
“If they had more courage and determination they might live a long time
on small game. But, having become accustomed to living upon game taken by
the rifle, they see only death ahead when no ammunition is to be had.”
In the midst of all this waiting and doubting an Eskimo had come running
in from a long hunt in the distant hills. He had seen a band of caribou.
They were coming.
“How many?” Johnny had asked eagerly.
“Desra! Desra!” (plenty! plenty!) The man had spread his arms wide.
At once all was noise and confusion. It had been with the greatest
difficulty that Gordon Duncan had silenced their noisy chatter and had
organized the hunt that was to mean life or death to the whole band.
Women and children were sent away into the hills. One band of men was
stationed at the right of the lakes. These were to rush in at the proper
time and urge the caribou on. A second group was concealed in a clump of
willows close to the narrow neck of water which the caribou would expect
to cross. These, at the proper time, would turn them to another course
and force them to a swimming passage.
Carefully concealed in a second clump of willows on the opposite bank
were the true hunters. Seven Eskimos, the older men who retained some
skill with bow and arrow, were here. So too were the three whites.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Johnny told himself, “especially for the
girl. We will be wading deep in stinging water. And these natives have
been able to provide us with no waterproof skin garments for our
protection. The sea Eskimos could have given us hip boots of sealskin.”
With this thought he was led to wonder that a people who had dwelt for so
long a time upon the border of the sea should have come inland to live.
“It’s not so strange, after all,” he told himself. “It is so in other
lands. In Borneo there are the sea dwellers and the mountain tribes. In
Siberia are the Reindeer Chukchees and the Sea Hunting Chukchees. It
seems—”
His thoughts were broken off by a sharp whispered,
“There! There! Don’t you hear them?”
Johnny listened and, as he held his breath, above the dry rustle of dead
willow leaves, he did catch the unmistakable crash and rattle of an
oncoming army of caribou.
“God grant that they may not turn back!” said Gordon Duncan as he
whispered a fervent prayer to his God that He might prove that day that
He, the great Father, and not the spirit of some dead animal, directed
the flight of wild birds and the courses of the herds of all wild
creatures.
Johnny thought again of the chilling water where a film of thin ice was
forming, and shuddered.
Knowing that their wait might be long, he had spent much time in
preparing a comfortable place of concealment. He had cut armfuls of
slender willow shoots to which the dry leaves still clung. From these he
had made a soft cushioned resting place. About this he had built a tight
wall of leafed branches. This wall kept out the wind. Here, huddled close
together, they were comfortable indeed. Compared to this, the very
thought of the sweeping north wind and the cold black water sent a chill
to his very marrow.
“Perhaps,” he whispered hesitatingly, “perhaps it might be that you’d do
well to stay here.” He was speaking to the girl.
“Stay here?” The girl’s tone showed surprise.
“It—it’s going to be hard out there, and—and a bit dangerous. There are
enough native hunters. We have supplied them with weapons.”
“I—” The girl hesitated. There can be no doubt but that there was an
angry retort upon her lips. She, after all, was but human, and the
moments that had just passed had been tense ones.
One look at Johnny’s honest, earnest face, and the remark died unuttered.
“I would not be worthy of my Scotch ancestry,” she said after a moment of
silence, “nor of my grandfather, if I did not go when the call comes.”
After that, for a long time, as the click of hoofs and clash of antlers
grew louder, there was silence in the place of hiding. As the girl sat
half hidden by willow branches the dry leaves rustled to the time of her
wildly beating heart.
“There!” Johnny whispered at last. “There! They have taken to the water.
Now is the time.”
Creeping through the bushes until they were at the brink of the water,
they plunged silently in.
“Good!” Johnny exclaimed hoarsely, “The Eskimos are doing their part
nobly.”
It was true. A thin line of hunters, hip deep in the water, stood
awaiting the great drove of caribou who had come too far to turn back.
A half minute more, and an arrow sped; another and yet another. Came a
great splashing and thrashing of waters. In his dying frenzy a caribou
beat an Eskimo into the freezing water. The Eskimo, bow in hand, was up
in an instant and drawing to shoot again.
So went the battle. Drenched to the skin by water thrown upon him by the
rushing herd, the vanguard of which had even now reached the bank, the
old Scot stood his ground and drew such a bow as never in his life had he
drawn before, while back to back with him the girl did her part.
Ten minutes of nerve wrecking strain, and all was over. Not, however,
until food for many a long moon was supplied for every member of the
strange little band.
“We-e-l-l,” said the old Scot as a half hour later, dressed in dry fur
garments, loaned him by an Eskimo, he sat beside a willow bush fire,
“with God’s help we won. And our God must be thanked.”
At that he dropped upon his knees and offered up a prayer of thanks to
the God who provides all that is good. The Eskimos saw and marveled,
though perhaps not one of them all understood. To this remote tribe no
missionary had ever come.
It was during the feast following the hunt that a surprising and
disturbing drama was played out before the great roasting fire of the
tribe.
A hammer of perfectly good American make lay upon the ground at Johnny’s
feet. He sat munching a delicious bit of broiled steak and wondering how
that hammer had come all the way to these barren lands, what dog team or
boat had brought it, how many fox skins it had cost the Eskimo owner, and
what use it had ever been put to in a land where there are neither boards
nor nails, when of a sudden he conceived of an immediate use for it. A
young Eskimo was attempting to obtain the juicy marrow from the bones of
a roast leg of caribou. He was pounding the bone with a round stone. The
stone slipped from his grip. The bone did not break. Again he tried
without success.
“Here, let me have it.” Seizing the bone, Johnny laid it upon a flat rock
and crushed it with a single blow of the hammer.
But what was this? As Johnny glanced about him, he found a dark frown
upon the face of every Eskimo. As he offered the broken bone with its
rich marrow exposed to the Eskimo boy, who a moment before had appeared
so eager to possess it, he was met with a sudden;
“No me! No me!” Then the boy turned and walked away.
It was strange. Johnny could not fathom the mystery of the tribe’s
actions. From that very moment they stood aloof. The joyous noise and
chatter of feasting was at an end. They gathered in little groups, to
speak to one another in mumbled gutturals. Soon they went to their tents,
leaving only the three whites by the dying embers of the feast fire.
“What did I do?” Johnny asked. “Crushed a bone with a hammer, tried to do
the boy a kindness, that was all.”
“You may never know,” the old Scot’s tone was low and serious. “We’d
better be getting away. Morning will do. We’ll sleep. Then we’ll go.”
“It’s a queer way to treat us,” Johnny grumbled. “Here we have saved
their lives, helped them secure food to tide them over, and at once they
turn their backs upon us.”
“You must not judge them,” said Duncan slowly. “Let God do that. They are
but children. To them every living creature and every dead one too has a
spirit. If you offend the spirit of a dead caribou or a musk-ox or wolf,
he may do you great harm. There are a hundred things you must do and a
hundred others you must not do. You who have lived all your life in the
light of civilization know little enough of the torment that comes from
being a heathen. But we must sleep if we are to travel to-morrow.”
Faye Duncan realized the truth of these last words quite as well as her
grandfather did. Yet, for some reason, as she lay among the deerskins
with her grandfather breathing in peaceful slumber nearby, she found
herself unable to sleep. The day had been an exciting and trying one. The
great crisis, in so far as the Eskimos’ needs were concerned, had been
reached and passed.
She was about to fall asleep when she thought again of Johnny’s strange
experience with the young Eskimo and the hammer.
At that very moment she caught a slight sound outside the tent. The
sound, coming as it did in the silence of the night, was disturbing.
Parting the tent flaps, she looked out. The next moment she barely
suppressed a scream. The tent in which Johnny slept was not ten feet from
their own. Moonlight made all bright as day. At that very moment an
Eskimo with a long knife in his hand was lifting the skins at the back of
Johnny’s tent. As he turned half about the girl recognized the young
Eskimo of the evening, he who had refused to accept the marrow bone
crushed by Johnny’s hammer.