When Ungava Bob was gone, Shad Trowbridge returned to the deerskin
lodge to think. Now that he was alone with the Indians, he was not at
all sure that he did not regret his decision to remain with them and
share their uncertain fortunes.
For a moment the thought occurred to him that he might even yet follow
Bob's trail and overtake him in his night camp. But he thrust the
impulse aside at once as unworthy consideration. He had come to his
decision, and he was determined to remain and play the game to a
finish.
He craved action and excitement, and the glamour of romance that
surrounded the Indians and their nomadic life had attracted him. It
was this, together with the human instinct to play at games of chance,
and the primordial instinct slumbering in every strong man's breast to
throw off restraint and, untrammelled, match his brains and strength
against the forces of untamed nature, that had led Shad to adopt the
red man's life for a period which he believed would not exceed three
or four weeks at most.
In preparation for departure the following day, the Indians erected
upon an elevated flat rock, which winds had swept bare of snow, a log
shelter some five feet square and five feet high. After lining the
bottom and sides of this shelter with spruce boughs, a quantity of
jerked venison and dried fish was deposited in it, the top covered
with boughs, and the roof, consisting of logs laid closely side by
side and weighted with stones, was placed in position. This precaution
was taken to protect the cache from marauding animals.
In the dim light of the cold December morning the deerskin covering of
the wigwam was stripped from the poles, folded and packed upon the
toboggans, together with the simple housekeeping equipment of the
Indians, and a sufficient quantity of fresh bear's meat and jerked
venison to sustain them for a fortnight.
Immediately the march was begun toward the Lake of Willows,
Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn in turn taking the lead and breaking the
trail, the others following, single file.
Day after day they pushed on and still on through scattered forests,
across wide barrens and over frozen lakes, always on the alert for
caribou but always disappointed.
Once a small flock of ptarmigans was seen along the willow brush that
lined a stream. Shad drew his shotgun from his toboggan, but the
Indians would not permit him to use it, and in disgust he returned it
to its place while he watched Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn kill the
birds with bows and arrows. He marvelled at their skill. Indeed, he
did not observe a single arrow go astray of its mark.
Eleven birds were secured in this way--the first game they had seen,
and the last they were to see for several days.
A dead, awful cold settled upon the earth. The very atmosphere was
frozen. Rime in shimmering, glittering particles hung suspended in
space, and covered bushes, trees, and rocks--scintillating in the
sunlight and seeming to intensify the cold.
The few brief hours of sunshine were disregarded. The sun rose only to
tantalise. For three or four hours each day it hung close to the
horizon, then dropped again below the southwestern hills; and its rays
gave out no warmth.
No sign of game was seen near the Lake of Willows, and no halt was
made. The life of the Indians depended upon the killing of caribou.
The little cache of jerked venison and fish left near the Great Lake
would scarcely have sustained them a month. The few ptarmigans killed
now and again were of small assistance. The food they hauled was
nearly exhausted.
Then came a period of storm. For a week snow fell and gales blew with
such terrific fury that no living thing could have existed in the
open, and during this period a halt was unavoidable.
Once a day a small ration was doled out--pitifully small--enough to
tantalise appetite, but not to still hunger. Shad was consumed with a
craving for food. He could think of nothing but food. His days on the
trails and in the tilts with the trappers were remembered as days of
luxury and feasting. He wondered if Bob and the others had thought of
him when they ate their Christmas dinner of geese and ptarmigans. "Oh,
for one delicious meal of pork and camp bread. Oh, for one night of
the luxurious warmth of the river tilt!"
When the storm abated sufficiently to permit them to continue their
journey, he moved his legs mechanically, even forgetting at last that
the effort was painful. An insidious weakness was taking possession of
him. It was an effort to draw his lightly-laden toboggan. It made him
dizzy to swing an axe when he assisted Manikawan to cut wood for the
fire. His knees gave way under him when he sat down.
Manikawan's plump cheeks were sunken. Her eyes were growing big and
staring. Her mother had lost half her bulk, and Sishetakushin and
Mookoomahn were also noticeably affected. They no longer laughed and
seldom spoke.
As one performing a duty that must not under any circumstance or
condition be neglected, Manikawan conscientiously looked after Shad's
welfare; but still she treated him with the same degree of dignity and
reserve, if not aloofness, that she had always maintained toward him.
He realised that what she did for him she did because he was the
friend of her beloved White Brother of the Snow, and not for his own
sake--as a dog will guard the thing which its master directs it to
guard, faithfully and untiringly, for the master's sake, but with no
other attachment for the thing itself.
He wondered why they did not return to their cache on the Great Lake
after the long storm, and then it occurred to him that probably their
destination was the trading post at Ungava, of which Bob had told him.
On the afternoon of the second day after the storm, they came upon a
single wigwam. Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn looked into it and passed
on. Shad raised the flap, and peering in saw the emaciated figure of
an old Indian. He was quite stark and dead, his wide-open eyes staring
vacantly into space. He had been abandoned to die.
That evening Shad stumbled over an object in the snow. He stooped to
examine it in the starlight, and was horrified to discover the dead
body of a woman.
The following morning, as they plodded wearily forward under the faint
light of the stars, they came suddenly upon a group of wigwams. Men,
women, and children came out to meet them--an emaciated, starved,
unkempt horde that had more the appearance of ghouls and skeletons
than human beings. Some of them tottered as they walked, some fell in
the snow and with difficulty regained their feet.
"Atuk! Atuk! Have you found the atuk?" was the cry from all--a
hopeless cry of desperation, as they crowded around the travellers.
"We have not found the atuk," answered Sishetakushin.
Some heard him stoically, others staggered hopelessly away to their
wigwams, others wailed:
"The Great Spirit of the Sky is angry. He has sent all the spirits to
destroy us. The Spirit of Hunger--the Gaunt Gray Wolf--is at our back.
The raven, the Black Spirit of Death, is ready to attack us. The
Spirit of the Tempest torments us. The Spirits of the Forest and of
the Barrens mock us. The Great Spirit of the Sky has driven away the
atuk, and our people are starving. Many of our people are dead. Four
of our hunters now lie dead in their lodges."
Shad Trowbridge could not understand what was said, but he could not
fail to understand the situation.
For some inexplicable reason the caribou, upon which the Indians
depended for food, had disappeared from the land. All living things
save these starving wretches had vanished.
For twenty-four hours not a mouthful of food had passed Shad's own
lips, and a sickening dread engulfed his soul.
[Footnote: This was the winter of 1890-1891, known as "the year of
starvation," when for some unknown reason the caribou failed to appear
in their accustomed haunts, and as a result one out of every three of
the Indians of northern Labrador perished of starvation.]