Shad Trowbridge stood dazed, as one in a dream--a horrid, awful dream.
He looked through a haze, and what he saw was distorted, unreal,
terrible. The suffering creatures about him were spectral phantoms of
the nether world, the shimmering rime, a symbol of death, the endless
snow the white robe of the grave quickly to cover them all.
A sudden stillness fell upon the camp, to be presently broken by the
agonised scream of a woman, shrill and startling, followed by wailings
and melancholy moans. The Spirit of Death had snatched away her
favourite son.
A sickening nausea overtook Shad, and he sank upon his toboggan, faint
and dizzy with an overpowering weakness. His imagination was getting
the better of him.
It is always dangerous and sometimes fatal for one to permit the
imagination to assert itself in seasons of peril. Will power to put
away thoughts of to-morrow, to think only of to-day, to do to-day the
thing which necessity requires, coupled with a determination never to
abandon hope, is a paramount essential for the successful explorer to
possess.
In this moment of hopeless surrender Shad felt Manikawan's hand rest
lightly upon his shoulder for an instant, and looking up he saw her
standing before him, tall, straight, commanding, and as she looked
that day on the river bank when she bade him and Bob wait for her
return to free them from their island prison.
"The friend of White Brother of the Snow is not a coward. He is not
afraid of the Spirit of Hunger. He is not afraid of the Spirit of
Death. He is brave. He once outwitted the Matchi Manitu of the River.
He will outwit the Spirit of Hunger. He will outwit the Spirit of
Death. The friend of White Brother of the Snow is brave. He is not
afraid to die."
The words were unintelligible to him, but their import was
unmistakable. She, a young Indian maiden, was offering him
encouragement, and recalling him to his manhood.
He arose to his feet, ashamed that she had read his mind, ashamed that
she had found it necessary to recall him from a lapse into his foolish
weakness which must have seemed to her like cowardice.
But he remembered now that he was a man--a white man--and because he
was a white man, the physical equal and mental superior of any savage
there. Looking into Manikawan's eyes, he made an unspoken vow that she
should never again have cause to chide him.
Dawn was breaking, and in the growing light a half-dozen lodges were
to be seen. At one side and alone stood a deerskin tent of peculiar
form. It was a high tent of exceedingly small circumference, and where
the smoke opening was provided and the poles protruded at the top of
the ordinary wigwam, this was tightly closed. It was the medicine
lodge of the shaman.
Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn had entered one of the lodges immediately
after the tumult caused by their arrival had subsided, and Manikawan
now followed her mother into another lodge. There were no Indians
visible. The moans of the grief-stricken mother, rising above the
voices of men in the lodge which Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn had
entered, were the only sounds.
The air was bitterly cold, but the tragedy enacting around him had for
a time rendered Shad quite insensible to it. When he did finally
realise that, standing inactive, he was numbed and chilled, he still
lingered a little before joining Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn,
dreading to enter the famine-stricken lodges.
At last, however, necessity drove him to do so, and within the lodge
he discovered that a council was in progress. In the centre a fire
burned, and around it the men, solemn and dignified, sat in a circle.
One after another of the Indians spoke in earnest debate. They were
considering what action they should take to preserve their lives, and
Shad, as deeply interested as any, felt aggrieved that he could not
immediately learn the final result of the conference, which came to an
end as the sun cast its first feeble rays over the barren ranges that
marked the southeastern horizon.
When the council closed the Indians filed out of the lodge, and one, a
tall old man, fantastically attired in skins, entered the medicine
lodge alone, carefully closing the entrance after him to exclude any
ray of light.
Immediately drum beats were heard within the tent, accompanied by a
low groaning and moaning, which gradually increased in volume and
pitch until presently it became a high, penetrating, blood-curdling
screech. This continued for perhaps half an hour, the drum beats never
ceasing their monotonous rat-tat-tat.
The shaman, or medicine man, thus working himself into a frenzy, at
length believed he saw within the lodge the ghostly form of the
particular Matchi Manitu, or evil spirit, responsible for the
disappearance of the caribou and the resulting famine.
This spirit's wrath it was believed had for some reason unknown to the
Indians been aroused against them. Only the shaman could get into
communication with the spirit, and learn from it what course the
Indians would be required to pursue to placate its wrath, and remove
its curse.
When the appearance of the spirit was announced, the shaman began to
supplicate and implore the Matchi Manitu to withdraw from the people
the pursuit of Famine; to return the caribou to the land; and to
preserve the lives of the dying.
Presently in tones of joy the shaman announced that he had succeeded
in enlisting the services of the Matchi Manitu, and with the
announcement the din within the lodge ceased, and for several minutes
mysterious whisperings were heard.
Suddenly the shaman threw over the lodge, and in a state of exhaustion
tottered forward. Still under the influence of the paroxysms into
which he had worked himself, he delivered in a wandering, disconnected
jumble of meaningless sentences the demands of the Matchi Manitu.
These consisted of many unreasonable and impossible feats that the
people were required to accomplish before the Spirit of
Starvation--the Gaunt Gray Wolf--would cease to follow upon their
trail.
The Indians began at once to break camp. Sishetakushin had reported no
caribou to the southward. Their only remaining hope was to reach the
haven of Ungava post to the northward; and they were to begin the
life-and-death struggle northward at once--a struggle in which many
were to fall.
A sense of vast relief was experienced by Shad when Sishetakushin
resumed the march. Famished and weak as he was, this was inexpressibly
preferable to a continuance with the starving crowd, and he turned his
back upon the camp, little caring whence their trail led.
For a while they continued northward upon the frozen bed of a stream,
which they had been following for several days, then a sharp turn was
made to the eastward, and as the sun was setting they came upon the
ice of a wide lake.
At the end of a half-hour of slow plodding across an arm of the lake,
they entered the edge of sparsely wooded forest and halted.
Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn began at once to remove the snow from the
top of what appeared to be a high drift, and a little below the
surface uncovered the roof of a cache similar to the one they had made
on the shores of the Great Lake of the Indians, where Shad and Ungava
Bob had found them.
Shad's heart gave a bound when the object of the journey was revealed
to him. Here was food and promise of life! And Bob's words, so often
repeated when they were stranded on the island, flashed into his mind:
"It's th' Lard's way. He's watchin' you when you thinks He's losin'
track o' you. He's takin' care o' you an' you does your best t' take
care o' yourself."
Manikawan and her mother stretched the deerskin cover upon wigwam
poles used the previous summer and still standing near the lake, and
Shad cleared the snow from the interior of the wigwam, while the women
broke boughs and laid the bed.
In the meantime, Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn opened the cache and
transferred its precious contents to the wigwam. A fire was kindled,
and in the cosy warmth of their shelter they broke their fast, which
had now extended over a period of thirty-six hours.
The small portion of dried caribou meat doled out to each was far from
satisfying. Some of the tea which Ungava Bob had given the Indians
still remained. A kettle of this was brewed, and it served to
stimulate and warm them. Then they lighted their pipes and for a time
smoked in silence.
At length Sishetakushin, turning to Mookoomahn, began:
"On the Lake of the Beaver to the northward we have a small store of
atuk weas (deer's meat). We also have there the cover of a lodge.
Three suns will pass before we can reach this store of food. On the
Great Lake we have another store.
"Sishetakushin and the woman will travel to the Lake of the Beaver.
With the store of provisions and the lodge which we find on the Lake
of the Beaver we will travel northward to the lodge of the white man,
where the water of the river joins the big sea water, and where we
shall find food.
"Mookoomahn and the maiden, with the friend of White Brother of the
Snow, will travel southward to the Great Lake. Mookoomahn will show
the white man the way to the lodge of White Brother of the Snow. Then
he will return to the Great Lake and trap the marten and the mink.
"When the sun grows strong, and drives away the Spirit of the Frost,
Mookoomahn will travel northward to the Lake of the Beaver. There he
will find Sishetakushin and the woman to welcome him. He will take his
food from the waters as he travels.
"The maiden will remain in the lodge of White Brother of the Snow.
Sishetakushin gives her to White Brother of the Snow. She is his.
White Brother of the Snow is of our people. He will be glad, and the
maiden will be glad. White Brother of the Snow has white man's food in
great store. Mookoomahn will not be hungry."
"Mookoomahn will do as Sishetakushin directs," answered Mookoomahn.
For a time all smoked in silence, then Sishetakushin resumed:
"Of the dried meat on the toboggan Mookoomahn and those who are with
him will eat but once during each sun. They will eat little. If they
eat much, the meat will soon be gone, and the Spirit of Starvation
will overtake them and destroy them."
"Mookoomahn and those that are with him will do as Sishetakushin
directs," said Mookoomahn.
A series of signs and pantomime conveyed to Shad the substance of
Sishetakushin's remarks. He understood that on the morrow the party
was to separate. That he with Mookoomahn and Manikawan were to return
to the Great Lake, and that they had been cautioned to husband their
provisions.
He surveyed the small bundle of jerked venison with misgivings. Even
with one light meal a day he calculated that it could not last them
above three weeks. Their journey from the cache on the Great Lake to
their present position had consumed a month, including a period of one
week when they were stormbound.
Should they be fortunate and encounter no storms, the food, sparingly
doled out, might serve to sustain them. If storms delayed them, it
certainly would not.
In any case their lives must hang in the balance until the cache was
reached, unless game were encountered in the meantime, which seemed
highly improbable.
A meagre meal was served at an early hour the following morning. As
usual, camp was broken long before day, and then came the farewells.
The parting between Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn was affecting, that
between the women more stoical. Shad regretfully shook the hands of
the old Indian and his wife. They had been friends to him, and he had
no expectation that he should ever see them again.
Then Shad and his companions turned southward into the wide wastes of
frozen desolation that lay between him and his friends. It was to be a
journey of tragic experiences--a journey that was to try his metal as
it had never yet been tried.