People of the Deer (19 page)

Now from a valley ahead there came the discordant wailing of dogs. Alekahaw's team broke into a gallop and the man leaped from the sled to run limping beside it, shouting the time-honored greeting of the Ihalmiut at the top of his lungs.

“Aija!”
he cried. “Look up you of the People and see us! For we come from the right side—from the right side of the ridge!”

And from the domes of three igloos men and women crawled out into the thin light of day and waved their arms and shouted cheerfully at the newcomers.

The dogs threw their necks against the thongs and the big komatik bounced wickedly over the drifts, to be halted only when Alekahaw jumped on the back and threw out the brake. This was a section of caribou antler, cut in such a way that its prongs could be pressed into the snow with one's foot and so bring the sled to a halt.

The brother of the woman Kaluk, whose name was Katelo, now dragged his sister from under the hides and she rolled, shrieking happily, in the snow while her stiff limbs recovered their powers of motion. Her two children crawled out from under the robes and dashed for the entrance of an igloo, like rabbits caught in the open by hounds.

A second man took the dogs and led them off to the picketing place, while Alekahaw went with Katelo to a thick, packed bank of hard snow nearby. Here Alekahaw thrust his long, willowy snow probe into the drift, feeling the firmness of the snow underneath. He tested, then he laughed with satisfaction and drew out his snow knife.

The place was noisy with voices, for those in the camp had gathered to greet the recent arrivals. Onekwaw's wife was shouting to all of them to come and eat in her igloo. Alekahaw answered that his belly could wait, for there was work to be done. The rest of the people gathered under the low dome of Onekwaw's igloo and heard the new gossip which was to be told.

Meanwhile Alekahaw and his brother-in-law dug out a circular pit in the chosen part of the drift. Alekahaw stood in this hollow while Katelo cut thin blocks of hard snow, beveled them at top and bottom, and handed them to Alekahaw, who used them to build the first circular tier of the wall. He began with one triangular block and as his second row reached this block it was slanted upward so that the work formed a continuous spiral. It went very quickly and as the tiers rose, the beveled edges of the blocks slanted them inward until a dome began to shape.

In less than an hour Alekahaw stood under the dome and carefully trimmed the key block so it slid into place at the top of the igloo. When it was done, he took his snow knife and cut a door in the south side of the dome and crawled out to help Katelo stuff up the chinks with soft snow and to build a long, arched tunnel of snow blocks away from the door.

A high, keening sound in the air was growing steadily louder, and the two men hurried to finish their work. They built up the sleeping ledge that covered half the floor space of the igloo, and they brought in Alekahaw's scanty belongings.

The sun was now only a memory and no twilight showed. Overhead the green shimmer of the aurora flickered nervously, and the high, distant note of the blizzard grew louder. It struck with no warning of wind, except for a distant whine. But in the instant of striking it transfigured the land with a mad, roaring agony. The drifts which had appeared to be as hard as the rocks they covered were scoured by the wind until they gave up sand-like fragments of snow which whirled and cut at the two men who stood by the new igloo with their backs to the gale.

White darkness closed in on the camp. The two men bent double against the wind and worked their way to the tunnel of Onekwaw's igloo, and there they stripped off their outer garments and placed them in a niche.

The broad sleeping ledge of Onekwaw's home was crowded with people, for there were three families in the camp, and all three were here to welcome the family of Alekahaw. There had been much drinking of cold soup, and much talk, while the feeble fat lamp flickered from a ledge beside the tunnel entrance. But the best talk was yet to come, for Alekahaw had driven for many days over the Barrens from the camp of Hekwaw the great hunter, and he had a remarkable tale to relate.

With a soup bowl of muskox horn on his lap, Alekahaw settled himself on the ledge. Outside the igloo, the gale snarled and shrieked, but inside the gale was only a shadow, less than a shadow, over the minds of the People. There was talk, there was laughter, until after a while Alekahaw shouted:

“I have a tale to tell!”

And the many voices fell silent, and Alekahaw's voice contended alone with the scurrilous fury of the wind's voice outside the igloo.

“Well, now,” he said, “that was indeed very good soup as my belly will tell you”—and he burped loudly to show what he meant—“and perhaps it is too good for a fool like me. But listen, for I shall tell you about this fool, Alekahaw, who sits on the fine sleeping ledge of Onekwaw and his wife.” He paused and looked around the igloo, which was a sphere of darkness with a thick, white, luminous cover. He began:

You have all heard how Bellikari, the son of Hekwaw, found the Black Spirit of Air in the fall of the year that is gone? Well, I too heard the story from old Hekwaw himself, but you know, I have a powerful spirit of my own called Atinhuit who looks more like a bear than a man, and who I always thought was stronger than any bird spirit could be.

Now when Kaluk, this woman my wife, and I decided to travel north to your camp, old Hekwaw asked if I wanted the good wishes of Kaila, the God of All Weather, to help us along. One does not refuse such a thing, so I asked Hekwaw to speak to Kaila through the spirits he knows, but the old man instead called on Bellikari, his son, to speak to Kaila for me.

Being very much of a fool, I didn't think so highly of that, for Bellikari is not yet a shaman like his father, old Hekwaw. But I was a polite fool, and so it happened that Bellikari was called to the task of his father. He stood in the center of the igloo and he called loudly to the Black One of Air, the Raven, and after a while he collapsed on the floor and, to my surprise, the great harsh voice of the Raven came out of his throat, and it called five times. I was a little afraid, but still I did not think the Black One was as strong as Atinhuit, my own personal spirit.

When Bellikari recovered himself he said that he had not spoken to Kaila at all! Only that he had seen the Raven Spirit and it had warned him not to travel out on the plains for the space of five days, else he would meet the great winds of Kaila and not return to his igloo again.

It was all clear enough, but then I am a fool. I thought that if the boy had not spoken to Kaila, then his spirit must have been weak. I trusted in Atinhuit,
my
spirit, and that very day we packed up and drove off for the north, though old Hekwaw was angry when we ignored the words of his son.

As we drove off, Bellikari gave me a wing-feather of the Raven and he told me that if I came into trouble, I should ask it for aid. And he passed his amulet belt under my arms and spoke to the sky, saying:

“Watch this man who is blood of our blood! Speak to him with thy voice, which is as harsh as the rocks, if he has need! Come to his eyes and show him the way he must go, if he calls for your help!”

Then away we went northward, and we had traveled the lifeless plains for only a single day when we were met by the great wind of Kaila, as the Raven Spirit had said. We tried to make camp but we could find no snow fit for an igloo and at last I turned the dogs out of the mouth of the wind and let them run straight before it, while we all sat on the sled to keep each other from freezing.

But that wind was a real devil wind and it changed its direction so many times that I, being very much of a fool, was quite lost on the plains. At last we were forced to make a rough camp in the lee of the sled, and here we hungered and froze for the five days of that wind. Really, I was frightened, for we had only a little food left. But then when the storm at last came to an end, this woman here, my wife, remembered what the boy Bellikari had said, and she told me to go stand on a hill and speak to the Black One and ask him for aid.

I was frightened, so I went and stood on the hill and I could see nothing I knew in all the land, and that made me more frightened. Atinhuit had not offered to help me, so I cried:

“Listen, you Black One of Air! Listen to the cry of a fool who is lost, and come from your place in the dark sky and show him the way!”

There was no answer in all the land that was so still after the blizzard, so I turned and walked down toward the place where my dogs and my wife waited. But suddenly Kaluk screamed out to me, “Look over your shoulder!” and when I looked, there was a great black-winged Raven and it flew straight toward the horizon from the hill where I had stood!

Well, we turned our dogs and we followed the way of the bird and in two days we came over the Little Hills to your camps. And so you see what manner of fool is this fellow Alekahaw! But not so much of a fool that he will forget to give a small gift to the ravens when the deer again come to the land!

After the story was told, everyone in the igloo spoke at length of the thing which had happened, and all were pleased with the tale. And many resolved, in their hearts, to give a small gift to the ravens when spring brought the return of the deer.

Then Onekwaw brought out his drum and someone took it and the singing began; and it lasted until the new day dawned feebly over the land. The gale was dead and forgotten and the sun again hung coldly on the rim of the winter sky. And so the second day that I tell of came to its end.

Now that was the first winter Bellikari trapped foxes all on his own, and his father had given him five traps to set where he chose. Since it was his first season as a trapper, he made his mistakes, and not the least of these was that he delayed too long in the late winter months and could not pick up his traps before the spring thaws had come to the land.

It had been a bad winter. Before spring there were deaths in some of the camps, though in Hekwaw's igloo there was enough food for life. It had been particularly hard for the woman Eput, wife of old Hekwaw, for in the time when food was the scarcest, she gave birth to a son who was the brother of Bellikari.

The birth was hard. Bellikari watched it and he was frightened. He watched while one woman grasped his mother's outstretched arms as she lay in her agony there on the ledge. He watched as the second midwife grasped Eput about her broad belly and forced the unborn one down out of the womb.

Then there had been a month when Eput was unclean after the birth, and neither Bellikari nor his father could enter the igloo at all. For a month, Eput could not be permitted to leave the snow walls of her prison and all her food had to be prepared out of doors and brought to the mother and child in special vessels which no one else dared to use. The man and his son Bellikari had known what real hunger was during that time, until the days suddenly changed and grew warm and spring returned out of the south.

Now the winter was done with and on the third day of my story Bellikari had gone to reclaim his traps, to spring them and to cache them high on the hills where he could find them when another winter had come.

It was June as we walked over the long roll of the hills which lie to the north of the river. Bellikari carried enough food for a week; that is to say he carried a handful of dried meat. But it was enough, for already the birds were flocking into the plains and the little streams of the muskegs were thronged with fat suckers, anxious to spawn. This was the fourth day of Bellikari's journey and it had taken him that long to cover, on foot, a distance dog teams in winter could have covered in half a day. There was a particularly rocky ridge which lay between two little lakes and in this place, the boulders were so huge that an igloo would have been dwarfed beside them. Winding among these great rocks were the trails of the deer and it was beside these trails that Bellikari had set some of his traps.

His sodden skin boots slipped on the rocks as he climbed the steaming slope of the sun-drenched ridge. Behind him the wet plains wavered and shook under the heat waves. Green mosses flared on the boulders and the lichens were thrusting their gray-blue fingers out of the gravel.

Bellikari came to his first trap and found it had been sprung. A wisp of white fur told him he had caught a fox but the tracks on the sand showed that a hungry wolf had come past after the trap had been sprung.

The second trap lay as the boy had set it. Now he tripped it, put it in his pack and went on. Ahead of him the great rocks had parted to form a deep gully, and as Bellikari passed into its mouth, two big arctic hares leaped from the darkness under a rock and fled like gray wraiths out of sight of the boy. Bellikari was angry that he had not been prepared for them, so he slipped his bow out of its case, fitted an arrow to it and was about to go forward when the voice of the Black One spoke out of the warm silence ahead.

The Spirit spoke in the tongue of the bird, a harsh, terrified croaking so charged with alarm that it needed no words to carry its message of fear into the heart of the boy.