People of the Deer (24 page)

It was only three weeks before breakup was due when the Eskimo left the post for the North. He drove his well-fed dogs up the river and he carried a brand-new .44-40 rifle strapped to his back. The sled was so heavily laden that he could not ride on it but had to walk ahead or behind. This small thing gives some indication of the man's depth of purpose, for it is almost axiomatic that an Eskimo will not walk when he can ride, even if it means jettisoning part of his load.

Kakumee jettisoned nothing—and walked.

The great sled creaked heavily over the rough ridge ice of the lakes on the river, and the dogs spread out in the harness and stretched forward with their heads almost touching the snow under foot. Progress was desperately slow, but Kakumee cared nothing for that. He was not afraid any more, not even of the ghosts of the forests, for did he not carry the amulets of the bearded white man? He was not afraid of the Indians, for did he not carry a fine rifle strapped to his back? He sang the songs of the shaman as he walked to the north, and there was a fierce exultation that sat in his heart and burned as hotly as the passion for wealth had burned in his soul. His devil—his Tornrak—was a great devil indeed, and the man was as great as his devil.

No one knows for certain, for the Indians never spoke of the affair afterward, whether the five toboggan-like carioles, which went north a few days after Kakumee, were driven by men with an evil purpose in their minds. Probably not, for these were good children of the white priest and they would have heeded his warning not to injure the Eskimo.

Still, it is possible that the five young Indians intended to take some of the wealth from this outlander who had come empty-handed into their land and was leaving it richer than even the chiefs of the Idthen Eldeli. I do not believe they carried murder in their hands, though they may have had it deep in their hearts, for the blood feud between the two races is more ancient than any man knows.

I can only guess at their intentions. But this is what happened.

Kakumee traveled upriver, and he left a clear track. He built great fires at night and gorged on the unfamiliar foodstuffs he carried on his sled. He had no fear of the land, of its spirits or of its people, and so he traveled with no caution at all.

Ten days away from the post he came to the south shores of Nu-elthin-tua (Nueltin, we call it) which in the Indian tongue means Lake of the Island That Sleeps Like a Man. Kakumee camped on the wooded foreshore and not on the barren rock of an inlet. Before he lay down to sleep he made careful beds of spruce boughs for each of his dogs, since his power to carry his fabulous wealth depended on the well-being of the beasts. Then as the fire burned down, the man stretched out under his robes. Even in sleep he was aware of the hard, powerful presence of the rifle which lay with him under the skins. It was more wonderful than a woman, and Kakumee's contentment was as great as if he were sleeping with his wife.

The fire was still smoldering when five dog teams came down the dark and blue-shadowed shore of the lake. Kakumee's dogs heard the approach and howled their alarm and surprise, but the man, secure in the fantastic riot of his wild dreams, did not heed the cries of his dogs. He thought they were merely howling at wolves.

He awoke only when the five carioles careened off the ice, up the low shore and into the camp. Five dark, lithe men leaped from the carioles and came quickly up to the fire. Only one carried his rifle, for they expected no trouble from a lone man.

Kakumee did not understand the guttural words they addressed to him as he sat up and stared at the strangers. He did not move but sat like a frozen image of death, and the Indians did not understand what was in the image's eyes.

One of the Indians started to unhitch his team while the others walked over to the spruce beds which the Eskimo had made for his dogs, and pushed the Innuit dogs to one side so the lean mongrels of the Indians might have the beds. For an instant no eyes were watching Kakumee, and in that instant he acted.

The .44-40 was out and red flame was in its mouth before it was seen by the Indians; and three of them were crumpled up on the snow before they knew what had happened. The heavy lead slugs of the rifle caught them before they could move, and a man who is hit by the massive bullet of such a rifle does not move again.

The two men who were lucky ran frantically to their carioles and were away down the lake in the instant, with the dull roar of the rifle still in their ears, and the high whistle of the lead slugs splitting the frozen stillness of the lake.

In the morning Kakumee moved on. Three lightly loaded toboggans and dog teams followed on a lead rope behind him. But three men slept by the black coals of the fire on the shores of Nu-elthin-tua, the Lake of the Island That Sleeps Like a Man. Thrown carelessly on top of their bodies were three or four little images, cast in soft metal, for Kakumee had noticed that each of the dead men wore such an image about his neck; and so Kakumee plucked the amulets which the priest had given him from his belt, and flung them with contempt on the bodies. The charms of the priest had not protected these men from the fury which was the gift of the Tornrak of the shaman.

Kakumee drove on, and that day he left the forests behind and headed out into the rolling plains. He did not care that he had killed out of fear for his wealth and not for his life.

13. The Breaker of Law

The first days of thaw had brought wet dissolution into the land before Kakumee and his train of dog teams came again to the River of Men. He crossed the cold surface water which lay above the old ice of the river and he came in sight of the igloos he had left behind months before.

A child saw him first, and ran screaming into an igloo, crying:

“Itkilit! Itkilit kiyai!”
(The Indians come!)

It was an ancient warning, which had not found a use for a generation of men but was still preserved in the bloody tales of those days when the Itkilit bands used to fall on isolated Ihalmiut camps and butcher the People.

Now the old cry brought men tumbling out of their igloos, fitting arrows to bows and tearing the rawhide caps from the sharp points of deer spears. They came out to meet a great danger and a sudden attack. What they saw was no band of Itkilit, but only a single man clad in the skins of the People, and they lowered their bows, and let the spears sink to the ground, for they did not know that the danger which was coming upon them was more to be feared than the attacks of the Itkilit had ever been. And they were partly reassured by the familiar formula the stranger called out.

“I come from the right side—from the right side of the ridge!” Some of the men recognized the voice of Kakumee, who had disappeared so suddenly in the early days of the winter. Kakut had said then that the Tornrak of Kakumee had come for him in the night, and had carried him into the life beyond life. Now those who recognized the voice grew afraid, and the huddle of men on the high bank overlooking the river grew tighter. One whispered the thoughts of them all.

“
Ino!
A ghost comes on the river! The spirit of him who is dead—what do we do?”

Kakumee saw the knot of armed men, and so he cried, “
Ai!
You on the bank! It is only Kakumee who comes! And I return from the lands of Kablunait, bearing gifts for the People!”

It was to have been his great moment of triumph. He who had dared the indescribable terrors of that long journey was returning laden with much more wealth than even the white man who had visited the river had carried in his canoes.

Again and again he called out, but the cluster of men stood silently on the bank and no one acknowledged the hail of Kakumee. Women peered furtively from holes melted in the igloos by the thaw. The huskies stood about, growling deep in their throats, for they had caught the unfamiliar scent of the Indian dogs and they too were alarmed.

Then Kakut came from his igloo, which stood apart from the rest. Kakut, the shaman, was a wise man, wiser than many of the old ones in the camp, though he himself was still young in years. He stood on the shore looking steadily at his brother, who had halted a few hundred feet from the shore. At last he turned to the men who watched from the cliff and chided them for their fears.

“This is the
man,
my brother, and not his spirit! When did you ever hear of a ghost who drove dog teams up the River of Men?”

The tension dissolved. Women and children poured out of the igloos and their hurrying feet rustled over the brown clumps of brittle, dead moss on the snow. The dogs broke into long wavering howls as the camp came alive. Kakumee reached the edge of the shore and a dozen men sprang down to untether his dogs as he stepped forward and solemnly touched noses with Kakut, his brother.

People clustered about the man who had returned from the dead, and they cast curious glances at the long, skin-covered sled which held the balance of the wealth he had brought. Now he cut the thong lashings of the skins covering the load. It was his moment, and the cries of amazement as the People looked on the fabulous things on the sled were sweet in the ears of Kakumee.

Five rifles, a case of black powder, a box of bar lead, a shotgun, three cases of tea, bags of flour, salt and white sugar, bolts of cloth, axes, snow knives, and kettles—these were but a part of the load. It was wealth unbelievable. For a few moments fear returned to the hearts of the People. It was beyond comprehension how a mere man could have come by such things.

Yet flesh and blood is real enough to the touch. Kakumee was real beyond doubt. The things on his sled were real too, and fear ebbed away from the People to be replaced by a mounting excitement, and an overwhelming curiosity. The close circle of men, women and children began to give free rein to the fascination which gripped them. They closed in on the sled as one person, and their curious hands clutched, tore, picked up and discarded the things which they saw. Things were passed from hand to hand, boxes were pried open, things were spilled and dropped in the snow. It was carelessness that caused a sack of flour to spill; it was not envy that made men handle the rifles, and it was with no thought of possession that they exclaimed over the razor-sharp steel of the short-handled axes.

Kakumee must have realized all this, for he had been gone from the river for only five months of his life. Yet if he did realize what this attack on his sled really meant, the realization was not enough to stifle the unease of his devil.

He fought his way into the center of the excited mob of his People and tried to restore his things to the sled. But as fast as something was returned, someone else would seize it and pass it about, and Kakumee, working at an impossible task, began to lose his control. He kicked a child who plunged its finger into the torn sack of flour, and only because the excitement was great did this unforgivable act go unchallenged. Desperation rose in the mind of Kakumee. He forgot that these things were to be traded for furs. He knew only that the hands of other men were grasping what was his—
his!
His bargain with the white trader was forever forgotten. He screamed imprecations into the unheeding ears of the People, and his face was set in the mask of rage which was never to leave it again.

Then it happened.

Kakut, who had been quietly watching from a few feet away, now stepped forward and picked up a rifle. He looked at it with pleasure and then, with the nonchalance of a man who knows the law and respects it, he turned from the sled and began to walk off to his igloo with the rifle held in the crook of his arm.

It was no more than his right. A rifle would be of great aid to him in supporting a family swollen by the addition of the wife and child of Kakumee. Kakumee himself had a rifle—five rifles, in fact—and a man has no need or desire for more things than he can use with his own hands. It was the creed of the People that what a man had he shared with his neighbors.

Kakut had not taken more than a dozen steps when Kakumee saw what had happened. He acted with such speed that no one could have stopped him, had any dared to try. He seized one of the axes and, leaping after his brother, caught him a slashing blow on the shoulder with the keen edge of the ax.

Kakut spun about and his free hand clutched the wound while blood poured out between the gaps of his fingers. He stared into the face of his brother and for a long moment there was a terrible silence. The mob by the sled was stricken into a quietness which was heavy with foreboding. There was no sound but the labored breathing of Kakumee.

Then he cried out in a great voice so all the People might hear, and these were his words:

“All this that I have is mine—and mine only! Hear me well, Kakut, for if I must argue with you about this, then I shall argue with a man who is dead!”

Now a sense of sacrilege possessed the watching People, for they were beholding the flagrant violation of a law as old as life. This thing was without precedent in the memory of the Ihalmiut. Yet not only was the law of material things being openly flouted but Kakumee had also broken another law, for he had struck a man in anger, and that man was his brother. This was madness!

Kakut was a brave man and one who did not shrink from danger. Perhaps it was an awareness of the madness of Kakumee that made him act as he did. Or perhaps, since he was a shaman, he knew the true strength of the devil shining from the eyes of his brother. Kakut let the rifle slide to the snow and walked slowly away to his igloo. The devil had won. Now it was free of all need to hide behind the face of Kakumee. It was free now to work its full will on the People by the River of Men.

When Kakumee came back with the rifle, he did not seem to notice that the People had all disappeared and the shore was deserted. Carefully he packed up the scattered things and replaced them on the sled. He hitched up his dog teams and when all was ready turned his leader out on the ice and drove his teams up the river. Behind him in a silent camp fear was beginning to quicken.

Of all living things, the Ihalmiut most fear a madman, and it is the rule that such a one must die, and his name must never again be spoken by living lips. But in the camp of Kakut there could be no such easy release from the danger of one who was mad. Kakumee was a shaman who could not easily be harmed by human hands. Moreover he had gone from the camp and not even Kakut had the courage to follow and to face the evil spirits Kakumee would unleash against a pursuer.

Yet if men could not follow, words could. Early the next day the word began to pass up and down the length of the river, as dog teams drove out from the camps of Kakut. “Kakumee, son of Ajut, has come back to the land—and he is filled with the madness!” These words branded the shaman as an outcast. A wave of uneasiness swept through those camps where there dwelt over a thousand men, women and children who now heard of Kakumee's return, and feared for the evil that he might do.

It was barely two weeks before those fears were realized. A strange sickness broke out in the camp of Kakut. Three women sickened at once, complaining of a Great Pain that sat on their chests and denied them air for their lungs. The magic of Kakut was helpless against this new evil and in a little time those women died. Then the Great Pain, as it was called, swept on up the river, into the hidden camps by the lakes, and all over the face of the land.

Before the end of that spring more than a third of the People were dead, and the disease had broken the People. In many camps by the river no living men were left to bury the dead. The wolverines, foxes and even the dogs which had been abandoned by death grew fat on the flesh of the Ihalmiut. Only small, fleeing groups of living men remained, and those were scattered out over the length and breadth of the plains in their attempts to escape from the killer against which they had no defense. In those isolated places, cut off from their fellows by fear, the survivors waited for death and cursed the name of Kakumee.

The winter before the coming of the Great Pain had been a hard one, for it had been long protracted. But there had been no deaths from hunger that winter, though the Ihalmiut had been weak and lacking in strength, when the coming of spring, and Kakumee, brought the plague to their land. The killer which Kakumee had brought with him from the place of the white men, perhaps even from that little cabin where he had believed he looked on the frozen face of his devil, struck down the hungry folk of the Barrens.

When summer was old, the land was not as it had been in the first days of spring. The River of Men was deserted, and only hasty graves on its banks remained to mark the habitations of men. In the years to follow, the river never again saw the great camps of the Ihalmiut, for now it had changed its nature, and had become the River of Ghosts.

Though men sickened and died in all the camps, Kakumee, who had brought the Great Pain, did not sicken, for he was well fed and lacked for nothing. When he saw what had happened and knew that all living men laid the blame at his feet, then he was filled with the savage pride of a man who knows he is a master of life. He came out of hiding and passed through the tents of the dying like a spirit himself. He went without fear into those camps where the stench of death filled his nostrils, and as he passed, he took all things he desired, even unto the belongings of the dead which had been placed on the new graves by the survivors. He took three women, and these came with him without struggle, for their fear of the man stifled all thoughts of resistance. His wife, who had gone to Kakut, had been one of the first to die of the disease, and Kakumee was glad it was so and to his new wives he sang songs of the power of the devil who was his Tornrak.

That year, just after the turn of the century, was the most evil year in all the time of the Ihalmiut, nor will it be forgotten while men still live in the Barrens. Yet it does not stand alone, for, in the years which followed, disaster after disaster came to the People who had survived the Great Pain.

Along Tulemaliguak Ku, a little river which leads into the immense Lake of the Heaped-Up Rib Bones, were five igloos in the third winter after the plague; but by spring all five of those igloos were empty, for the deer had not come that way in the fall. It is told how a man came there in the days before spring to visit his brother. He found only naked, frozen bodies of the people he sought, and these were scattered far out from the igloos. This happened because of a merciful madness which sometimes intervenes to bridge the last gap between starvation and death. Then the dying ones tear off their clothing and, with the last of their strength, run into the snows that their death may be quick and the long agony ended.