The Great Alone (15 page)

But it was more than his appearance that made this Cossack, Andrei Nikolaivich Tolstykh, different from the others who had landed at the place now called Massacre Bay. He treated the Aleuts fairly and punished any of his men who tried to cheat them. He paid for the services of those natives who hunted for him, and traded iron for otter skins. Among the children who were placed in his care were Walks Straight and his half sister, Tasha. They were treated kindly and taught to speak the Cossack tongue. Leaders had promised others before them that they would teach them their language, yet rarely had anyone learned more than a smattering of words.

From Andrei Nikolaivich Tolstykh, the Aleuts of Massacre Bay learned that the great woman ruler of his country had been greatly displeased when she heard about the murders committed by the first Cossacks to land on Attu, and that the guilty ones had been punished for their crimes against the Aleuts. He instructed the Aleuts to come to him if any of his men abused them or treated them unfairly, and he would see that they were punished.

The Aleuts did much hunting for him because of this. And there was peace on the island. They were sad when his boat left the following summer, loaded with more than five thousand sea otter pelts. Tasha was sorry to see him leave, too, but the Cossacks always left. Many said they’d come back, but few did.

As always, more Cossacks arrived to take the place of those who left. So it went.

For as long as Tasha could remember, there had been Cossacks on the island, although her mother had told her of the days when it was not so. She’d heard the story of Strong Man’s death many times, the man who was the father of her half brother, Walks Straight. Somehow she thought the Cossacks who had killed Strong Man must have been very different from many of the ones she knew. She admitted that some cheated the Aleut hunters and some beat the women, but they had always been kind to her and fascinated by her round black eyes that slanted ever so slightly. She remembered them playing and laughing with her, letting her chase them or pretend to serve them food. And her memory was colored by the man Andrei.

They said she was Creole—half Cossack and half Aleut. Now, at fifteen summers, she was tall like her mother, and she had her mother’s strong cheekbones and smooth skin. But her face was more slender and her features not so broad. Near the corners of her lips, there were two faint scars where labrets had been inserted when she was a child. Long, long ago a Cossack had insisted that her mother, Winter Swan, remove them and let the skin grow shut.

Tasha entered the village carrying a basket of sea urchins she’d gathered on the tideflats. A group of Cossacks lounged outside a barabara they’d built, with an opening in the side instead of the top. They saw her coming and turned to watch.

“What do you have in your basket, Tasha?” one of them called.

“Sea urchins. Young, tender ones, too,” she answered.

“Is that the way you like them, Fedor Petrovich? Young and tender?” Another laughed and poked the Cossack who stared at her so intently. The one called Fedor lashed out with a swing of his arm.

Tasha walked on to her own barabara. She was aware of the interest Fedor showed in her. So far he hadn’t offered any presents for her, but she expected he would soon. She was of the age to take a husband.

“Why do you speak to those Cossacks?” The sudden demand from her half brother, Walks Straight, took her by surprise. She hadn’t noticed him sprawled on the lee slope of the barabara.

“They asked me a question and I answered it,” she replied.

Walks Straight rolled to his feet in a quick fluid movement. The proud, erect carriage that had marked him as a youngster characterized him as a full-grown man of twenty-one summers. Beneath the bird-skin parka, his chest and shoulder muscles were highly developed, the result of a hunter’s long hours paddling his bidarka at sea. Straight black hair, shiny as a raven’s wing, hung to the standing collar of his parka and framed his tanned flat-boned face. He had the keen eyes of a hunter, too, observant of every detail, including the greedy way the Cossacks looked at his sister. It was one more reason to resent them. They were always taking from the Aleut. Filled with a young man’s pride, he was offended by their actions and could not understand why his people accepted it so meekly.

“You talk to them too much, Tasha.” He followed as she walked past the salmon-drying racks.

“They are my friends.” She stopped near their mother and the old white-haired Weaver Woman. The two women were busy smoothing the inner skins of cormorants with an abrader, taking care not to damage the feathers on the other side. The skins were for a new parka, and the garment would belong to a Cossack. The knowledge further irritated Walks Straight.

“They are not our friends. Look how our mother labors for them.” He was conscious of his mother’s glance, but he avoided the admonishing look.

“They pay her for it.” Tasha sat down on the ground near the working pair to begin cleaning the sea urchins to remove the tender meat inside.

“Maybe they will. They told me they would give me a piece of iron for ten sea otter pelts. All week I have hunted. But when I bring them the ten skins today, they refused to give me the iron. They say they wanted twelve.” His jaws clenched as he recalled the incident. “They took my ten pelts, then told me I must bring twelve more to have the iron. When I tried to say I must only bring them two more, they laughed at me. They said I must have twelve all at once. They have my skins and the iron. They cheated me and I could do nothing.”

“Not all Cossacks are like that,” Tasha asserted. “Remember Andrei Tolstykh. He was honest.”

“He collected tribute,” Walks Straight retorted. “Why should we give pelts to some woman ruler who lives far away across the waters? They say if we do, she will protect us. I say it is another trick to cheat us out of our furs.”

“It is the way they live,” his mother, Winter Swan, inserted quietly, attempting to calm him. “We must respect that.”

Walks Straight swung on her, then paused to stare for an instant at the strands of gray in her hair. It pained him sometimes that she could not understand his resentment of the Cossacks. Yet always in his mind the words of the storyteller sang, recalling his father’s great strength and the day of the great battle when Strong Man had bent the Cossack’s iron thunderstick with the power of his bare hands. His father had died resisting the Cossacks. Walks Straight was proud of that. Yet his mother thought of that time only with sorrow. He did not wish to hurt her more with his anger at the Cossacks, but he must say what he believed if he was to honor his father’s memory.

For her sake, he tempered his words. “Can we respect their ways and still respect ourselves? Our people lived on this island long before they came. We should make them leave.”

“We have always made visitors welcome,” she reminded him.

“Even visitors who steal from us?” Walks Straight challenged. “Dancing Boy took a necklace of beads and they whipped him until his back was raw. Why do we allow them to take what is ours?”

“It does no good to punish someone for a wrong.” She shook her head firmly. “It does not restore peace.”

“I know it isn’t the way of our people to punish a man for a single wrong act. But if he continues to repeat the offense, then something is done to stop him.” He observed his mother faintly lowering her head, a silent admission that he was right. “We should punish the Cossacks for their wrongs.”

Winter Swan paused in her labors, holding the pumice abrader in her hand. “The Cossacks are too many. They are too strong. We have no weapon to match the thunderstick they call a musket. We must maintain peace.”

“If we had their muskets, we could fight them. I know how to make it shoot the round balls. I have watched them many times and have seen how much black powder they use to make the musket go off.”

“They will never let you have one,” Tasha declared. “No matter how many sea otter pelts you offered, they would not trade one of their muskets for them. I have seen others try.”

Walks Straight knew this was so. “Someday I will have one.”

“Do nothing foolish, my son.” Winter Swan looked at him worriedly.

It was useless to argue, he realized. A woman did not feel the things in her heart that he did. “No,” he said at last.

His hunter’s eye was drawn to the sea. A pair of sails broke the flatness of the horizon. Walks Straight stiffened, resenting the presence of yet another Cossack boat in his waters. He watched the ship turn into the bay.

“More come. When will they stop?” he wondered.

Others in the village observed the shitik sailing into the bay. Curiosity and the custom of greeting visitors to the island drew Cossack and Aleut alike to the beach. The cormorant skins and sea urchins were set aside for the time being as Tasha hurried ahead while Walks Straight hung back with his mother and the old, slow-moving Weaver Woman.

Tasha watched the sails come down and saw the splash of an anchor being dropped into the water. Soon a yawl was lowered into the water and several Cossacks climbed into it and rowed toward shore. The man seated at the prow looked vaguely familiar to Tasha. She stared intently at him as the boat drew nearer to the beach. There was something about his angular features and the beardless, slanted jawline that jogged her memory, but the silver wings in his brown hair were distinctive, and she couldn’t recall having seen a man with hair like that before.

When the boat nosed into shallow water, two Cossacks hopped out to haul it onto the sand with the aid of two Aleuts. People kept getting in her way, making it difficult for Tasha to have a clear look at the man. He stood up, briefly towering over the heads of others, and Tasha noticed his eyes—blue like the sky.

“Look!” she cried and moved quickly through the crowd to her mother’s side. “Look who it is! Andrei Tolstykh. He comes back!”

Barely able to contain her excitement, she hurried forward and worked through the crowd until she reached the inner circle of onlookers. Except for the silver-gray of a gull’s wings in his hair, Andrei Tolstykh had changed little in the five summers since she’d last seen him. His build was tall and lean, not nearly as muscled as an Aleut’s. He dressed differently. Instead of the mantles, hooded hats, and trousers of the other Cossack hunters, he wore a black square-tailed coat that buttoned at the waist and tight-fitting knee breeches that showed the muscles in his legs. There was a quiet vigor about him, and a calmness—as now when he stepped forward to greet the villagers.

“Where is your chief?” he inquired in Aleut.

“He died two summers ago,” Many Whiskers replied. “I am Many Whiskers, the headman of the village now.”

Tolstykh switched to the Cossack tongue. “He was a good friend to me. I regret to hear that he is no longer with us. Five years ago he gave me permission to hunt on Attu. We knew peace together.”

“I remember you, Andrei Tolstykh.” Many Whiskers nodded his head. “You lived in peace with us and traded fairly for our skins.”

“I have come again to your island to seek permission to hunt so that we may live together once again in peace and fellowship.”

Many Whiskers slowly shook his head. “I cannot give you permission to hunt. Already there are three boats of Cossacks on Attu. We have room for no more. You must go to another island.”

Tasha reacted with dismay to the pronouncement. She knew that Walks Straight had often complained how much more difficult it had become to find and kill the dwindling number of sea otter. More hunters would mean there would be even more competition. Yet knowing it didn’t lessen her disappointment that Many Whiskers was sending away the Cossack who had once been so kind to her.

Although Andrei Tolstykh appealed the decision, Many Whiskers remained adamant. “Would you permit us to anchor in your bay for several days?” Andrei then asked. “My men are tired after our long sea voyage and are in need of rest. Our supply of food and fresh water is low. If we are to continue to another island, we will need to replenish them.”

“You may stay, and you may gather food. But you are not permitted to hunt,” Many Whiskers stressed.

“Please accept these gifts I have brought for you as a token of my good will.” Andrei signaled to his men to bring the presents forward.

In addition to the large cast-iron kettle and boots of goatskin for Many Whiskers, there were enough cloth for each Aleut to have two shirts, fifteen pounds of rye flour, needles, four heavy jackets, warm mittens for winter and light gloves for summer, and a sash for every man in the village.

Such generosity from the Cossacks was uncommon. When a request was refused, the gifts were usually taken back. Many Whiskers was moved by the gesture. Tasha wished he could send one of the other vessels away and allow Andrei Tolstykh to stay, but permission had already been granted to the others and couldn’t be rescinded.

“I regret that I don’t speak your Aleut language very well. Unfortunately none of my men do either. Since we will be journeying to a new island where the natives will not know our language either, I will need Aleut interpreters. Perhaps you could allow two or three of your villagers to accompany us and translate our words to your neighbors.”

“I will consider your request,” Many Whiskers replied cautiously.

“We want the natives to know we come in peace—to trade and hunt with them. Interpreters would assist us greatly.” Andrei Tolstykh inclined his head. “I will await your answer. In the meantime I will return to my vessel and send some of my men back for water.”