The Shaman/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
As I stood there turning my head this way and that and frowning at the recognized shapes a voice behind me said quietly, “Yes. You know. That's why I had to bring you back, ummh?”
I shifted around and met the shaman's steady eyes that seemed glitteringly malevolent in the light of the waning moon. I did not know what reply to make, and he took a step closer until his face was not far from mine and added, “One other white man see this place. That white man with scar on face. That man the one what we follow nine sleeps on trail and—kill! Unnerstan' now why mus' bring you back?”
I was not only alarmed as a man may be when confronted with deadly peril, but also angry. His enormous duplicity and cold blooded cunning were suddenly revealed to me.
“So you found out I had been up here, did you, Peluk?” I asked.
“Find out nex' day after you make shoot pine hens and wolf nearly catchum you. Sorry. Mebbe better wolves catchum that time. Save me heap trouble, because me like you. But no white mans ever see place where catchum gold and live. No can do. Sorry!”
“Then why in the devil didn't you kill us there in our camp instead of bringing us here?” I demanded, gathering hope from this point.
“That what my young men say. Me say no. Have very hard time keep young men from killum you; but think mebbe can keep live by bringum you here. No can tell. Mus' try. Me friend you. No like osser white man. Me very sad. Very sad man, me. No can see'what mus' do!”
There was no doubting his sincerity.
I pulled off a mitten, saw that no one was watching us, and held out my hand to him. For a moment I thought he wasn't going to accept it.
“Thanks, Peluk!” I said. “And listen. No harm shall ever come to you through us if I can help it—no matter what happens.”
“Very good you to say that,” he muttered, and his hand met mine. “Very sorry no can do more. Do my best. Me very sad man.”
“But anyhow, friend, we're still alive,” I said. “That is something.”
I should have liked to question him more but he checked me with a slight hiss of warning, and I discovered that one of his runners had finished his task and was watching us. I wasn't certain that he had seen us cross hands, but decided that inasmuch as my back had been turned to him, somewhat screening the shaman from view, he had not. Fortunately that proved to be true, for we were treading close to the edge where the slightest thing might topple us over, the shaman perhaps, as well as Jack and myself. It flashed through my mind that I could best assist our sole friend by a pretense of enmity.
With my back to the watching native I winked and grinned at the stolid shaman, and then burst into loud expostulations, shaking my fists and stamping the ground. Peluk instantly replied with a storm of invective and threats and shook his fists at me. He did it so well that for an instant I was terrified by the fear that he had misunderstood my move and had accepted it as earnest. He put my momentary alarm to rest by shouting to the other natives, one of whom had unslung a rifle and was moving hurriedly in our direction.
“This white man wants to camp!” he cried. “Ugh! They have no guts for a long trail. They are weaklings without strong hearts like we have. But I will make him go on if he dies. If he does not, with my own hands I will kill him here. Keep back, you two. Leave him to me.”
“I make pretend you no want to go any more,” he muttered rapidly to me in English. “Wise old fox, you. See bes' makeum Injun think me and you not friends at all. That help me.”
And all the time while he was explaining what I already knew, he kept up a most ferocious shaking of one fist, and with the other fumbled under his parka as if seeking his hunting knife. Jack was starting to close in but I shouted to him, “For God's sake, keep back! It's all right!”
Bewildered and nonplused, he hesitated for a moment and obeyed. It saved his life, for the native at the head of the dog team had suddenly shifted his rifle into his hands, ready and eager to fire.
I walked over and seized the sled handles indicating that I was willing to proceed.
“He will go now,” cried the shaman in his own tongue. “His heart is water. He knows that I, your chief, am his master. The same as if he were my dog. Move!”
The great dog team, rested, stretched itself out, its leader straining wearily into the collar and bringing taut the sled rope like a rigid line extending between each pair of dogs. The sled started again, and we were once more on our way—but upon a trail that I knew. I wished that I could find some pretext to talk to Jack, but the situation was too dangerous to dare such risk. Once he called to me, “I say, Jim! Where's this thing going to end? I'm about all in. Can't you get the old sport to tell you?”
“Quiet, you!” roared the shaman with an anger that I feared was not entirely assumed.
“Yes, say nothing, Jack,” I called, and the shaman volleyed native invective upon me in turn, whereupon I, too, fell to silence and the trail. It was morning when we began what I knew was the most difficult and final ascent, up which men and dogs, all panting alike and all straining, clutching, clawing, fought their way. Slipping, seizing handholds, struggling ever upward, we came to the great natural gateway through which so short a time before, to our eventual undoing, I had first beheld the secret gold camp. The smoke of the newly started fires crept lazily upward from the chimneys. Jack's exclamation of astonishment came roaring backward between the walls.
“We're coming to a village,” he cried. “Looks a biggish place—away down below us.”
The spent dogs, scenting smoke and rejoicing in the probability of rest, broke into a wild chorus of ululation and surged recklessly forward. The two runners got to their heads and thrust them back, restraining them. At a shout of warning from Peluk both Jack and I sprang to his assistance and, digging our heels into the snow, held the sled back with all our strength. Even then we tobogganed down a mere mountain shelf winding along the edge of a sheer precipice, to fall over which would have meant death hundreds of feet below. We swung around spurs of rock that, needle like, reared themselves upward above the perilous trail, and had no time for anything but our task, seeing nothing of the beauties of that enormous mountain cup beneath. Our descent was rapid and, to me, confused.
Dogs of the village that we were approaching took up the cry, rushed to meet us, and came to us as we slipped out into the bottom of that terrifying declivity. Doors of cabins swung open and men emerged, followed by women and children. Undoubtedly they had been forewarned, were expectant, and, the most menacing feature of all, were silent, save for the mumbled mutterings of the squaws.
In an atmosphere of deadly hatred we passed between them to the first and near-by cabin. Once more I could observe an excellence of architecture, Russian in its form, indicating that this, too, was no mere native hovel. The camp might have been a section torn from Madame Malitka's orderly town, but dropped heedlessly, hit-or-miss, with no regularity, in this hole bordered by impregnable mountain peaks. I know of no similar place on earth; but had the Jungfrau, Monk, and Eiger of the Wengen Alps in Switzerland been completed in a solid round by the juxtaposition of similar mountain giants, and a village erected in their guarded hollow, a similarity might have been established. No other place could have been more isolated, more guarded from an outside world.
“Stop here,” the shaman's voice announced in English, and then to his subjects he cried, in their own tongue, “Unharness the dogs and feed them well. We have traveled far. We have brought those for whom we went. Leave them to me. Go you about your work. I, your chief, can guard them, for from here they cannot escape. You know that.”
He turned to Jack and me and beckoned us to follow him. We passed through the door of the Russianlike house, and when we had entered, he shut it behind us. An old woman stood to one side and glared at us as we passed. He did not speak to her but with a single gesture sent her away. She walked to a doorway and stopped.
“Bring food,” he demanded. “We are tired. We would eat, and then sleep. All night we have traveled fast. Hasten!”
She disappeared, mumbling as she went, and the door closed leaving us three alone, while Peluk began stripping his parka up ward over his head.
“Some place—what?” Jack remarked, staring at our surroundings.
And it was “some place.” I have entered homes in Moscow and Nijni Novgorod that were no better. Its log walls were closely joined, well smoothed with deft adzmanship such as a ship's carpenter might use in constructing a well-made hull. It had a great fireplace of country rock, a solid and smooth timber floor and substantial furniture. Here, as in every house I had ever visited in Malitka's village, were valuable skins thrown upon the floor to serve as rugs, and pelts thrown across the backs and over the arms of heavily constructed chairs in lieu of other upholstery. Undoubtedly effort, knowledge, and care had been bestowed upon this dwelling.
Standing there in the center of the room beneath its well-hewn and darkened beams, I sensed a touch with one who had come from that great and distant outer world, of one who sought for his own comfort to reproduce and surround himself with makeshift ease. This might have been the hunting lodge of a king. Above the stone fireplace hung the most magnificent antlers of a moose that I have ever seen—wide-spreading, perfectly webbed, gracefully mushrooming into broad fans. Polished tusks, ungraven, hung beneath. The ultimate impression, in general, was one of bodily ease, means, and well being.
Peluk shouted for the squaw and she came obediently inward.
“Bring dry moccasins for all three of us,” he ordered, and she disappeared for but a moment to return with dry footgear. It was a great relief to pull them on over our tired feet. The shaman stood up, glanced at us, said, “Bimeby grub. Stay here,” and trudged out of the room, closing the door behind him. I seized the opportunity to whisper rapidly to Jack.
“Whatever you do, don't ask any questions or talk in front of him about any thing connected with this or Madame Malitka's camp. I can explain most of it when we are alone; but to talk now is dangerous! Mighty dangerous—as you will know when I find a chance to tell you everything. Take everything good-humoredly and try to make friends with the shaman. He is our sole hope!”
“He hit me an awful crack, just the same!” said Jack. “And I'd like to have as good a chance at him. I'd knock his head-”
The shaman opened the door and called to us.
“Come! Show place wash up.”
We followed him across the hallway and into a room comfortably equipped as a sleeping chamber, and here again were evidences that it had been fitted by some one who esteemed his personal comfort. It had but one bed, but this was amply large for two and well equipped. On a washstand at the side stood an enameled hand basin, a copper kettle filled with steaming water, and two clean towels were thrown across a rack. We lost no time in putting them to use.
That there was no intention of inflicting any unnecessary hardship upon us was further evidenced by the quality and plenitude of the meal to which we shortly after sat down with the shaman. This remarkable man acted as if he was neither tired nor perplexed, or as if there was anything at all peculiar in our situation. He even smiled and discussed anything except ourselves. He called attention to the fossil ivory of a long extinct mammoth and declared wistfully that if he could but get one such he would carve figures on it. I thought to myself that there was something of the artist, after all, in this heartless old barbarian!
“Like to carve big hunt; plenty dogs; plenty hunting mans and some sleds;” he ruminated. “Make picture of kill on big end so have heap room for trees, ummh? You think good?”
And then before I could answer, for he invariably ignored Jack and addressed himself to me, he suddenly lifted his head, dropped his knife and fork, and glared at the window. Glancing in that direction I saw that three or four squaws and children's faces were flattened against it, peering in upon us. The shaman was on his feet and at the door with a single bound. He wrenched open the outer door and poured forth a stream of invective in his own tongue, so rapidly, so harshly that despite the loud booming of his voice I could catch but a few words here and there. Through the window I had a glimpse of squaws and children scampering away like a flock of frightened partridges.
When he returned he was entirely unruffled, and resumed his sculptorial theme as if he had suffered no interruption. He was urbanity itself when, our meal and smoke finished, he suggested that perhaps if we slept for an hour or two we might feel rested.
“You going to sleep too, Peluk?” I asked.
A shade of anxiety flitted across his eyes as he answered, “Nope. Me no sleep. Mus' do—osser things. Mus' talk my people. Bes' you no go out until me say can go out. Unnerstan'? Bimeby mebbe can walk out. Me no can tell yet!”
“All right,” I assented for both Jack and myself. “We'll not go out of this cabin until you say we can. Is that good enough, friend?”
A single gleam of his eyes, kindly but suggesting pity, responded to my use of the final word.
“Yes. That good. You unnerstan' that to go out no good. If me said, 'Go! Run fas'!'—that no good. In mebbe one minute, mebbe one hour, young men catchum, killum you! If you get away one, two, t'ree, four, mebbe ten whole days, ten whole sleeps—catchum you jus' same. Run away no good. No can do. Me do bes' can.”
I watched him through the window after he had left us, and as he trudged away over the snow toward the other cabins I saw that he was directing his steps toward the largest cabin—no—house—in the village. Also I observed, with some growing disquietude, that other men, but neither squaws nor children, were proceeding in that direction as if to a meeting place.
“Well, Jack,” I said, “I may as well tell you—and I wish I had taken a chance and told you long ago—that I've seen this place before. Do you remember that day I was chased by wolves?”
“Yes,” he said, staring at me incredulously.
And then, reserving nothing, and explaining the reasons why I had not disturbed him by imparting what I had learned, I told him the whole story. He received it with better grace than I had anticipated. For some minutes after I had ceased talking he pondered.
“Then you think that all these natives are of a somewhat superior and clever class; that they know the value of gold; that they are aware that if white men knew of its existence, these, the natives, would succumb, go to pot—be wiped out. And—Malitka? What part do you think she has in all this?”
“I think,” I declared deliberately, “that it. is she who has brought these natives up to this standard; that for some private reason of her own she has no ambitions outside of those involved in this gold camp, no desire to leave it—and, what is more, doesn't intend to suffer any interruption. And—Jack—I'm more afraid of her than all the others! She has ordered the death of every one who purposely or accidentally intruded into this kingdom of hers. I don't know why we were spared in the first place. The shaman doesn't know, I am certain.”
“Good heavens!” he gasped. “You don't mean to say you think it was Malitka who set the shaman after us, who condemned us either to death or—whatever's coming to us?”
“I'm afraid that's about the only conclusion I can make," I replied. “I studied her pretty closely from my viewpoint, and I'm afraid that if she considered it necessary to wipe out merely two men, to guard what she considers to be the happiness and welfare of several hundreds of natives that she has brought into something like a state of civilization, it would be done. I don't say that I believe she would make such a decision callously, or mercilessly, but that—she'd see it through without flinching. She's got that quality which many historically known personages have possessed, and if she had by chance been an empress in a greater sphere, would have acted as she now acts toward us. Yes, I'm afraid that it was madame who sent the shaman out with us to destroy.”
“But,” he protested, “if she decided that we must die, that there was no other course, why didn't she have us made away with right there in the village?”
“Old man,” I said, surmising something of what was in his mind, “one time a pet horse of mine broke its leg. I loved that horse. It trusted me. But I knew that it must die. I couldn't do the job myself. I hadn't the heart! I hired a man to do it, and asked him to wait fifteen minutes. In that fifteen minutes I ran out into the edge of a desert and sat down with my hands over my ears. I couldn't bear to hear the shot that must kill. I think—Madame Malitka liked you, but to hear the shot was too much.”
He suddenly bent forward and groaned and rested one elbow on his knee, supporting his bent head with a hand tightly clutched across his brow.
I watched him, not as a doctor studies a tormented patient, but as one watches, pitying, a stricken friend whom he cannot succor. For a long time he sat thus, voiceless, and then dropped his hands and lifted hurt eyes to seek mine as if appealing for sympathy.
“Jim,” he said, stopped, hesitated, repeated that nickname of long familiarity, and then flung out both hands toward me, palms upward, in a pathetic admission of helplessness. “Jim, I loved her!” And then, as if he had heaved aside barriers, he got to his feet and walked to and fro in that quaint, inexplicable room, with his head nearly touching the beams above, his hands now and then uplifted in fierce protest and despair, and poured forth his heart. “I couldn't see her for so long! While I was blind I got to listening to the music of her voice, to the soft, warm, smooth rippling of her garments when she moved; to the steady fall of her feet. Then, after so long waiting and eager craving, I first saw her. I lifted the bandages from my eyes when she wasn't looking.
“She was sitting there by the big fireplace. It was dusk, but the light shone on the side of her face—on her hair—on her hands. I hadn't thought she could be so beautiful! I forgot to put back the bandages until my eyes hurt with the leap of the firelight. I—I couldn't be the same after that! I haven't been! You told me many things, but—I haven't told you all this before—that I wanted her to love me. That I dared not tell her so, because I was afraid of her reply; that on the night before we left I begged her to let me communicate with her after we had gone on this mission of ours.”
He stopped in front of the window for a time and did not look round when, in a dull voice, he resumed.
“I think she hesitated. I think she wanted to. And then, as if she had thrown up a wall between us, a thing to completely cut us off, she said, 'Impossible!' and hurried out of the big room. It seems incredible that she should”
“I wish it were incredible,” I interrupted, “but it is exactly the opposite. You haven't seen as I have how completely, how inflexibly she dominates not only the lives but the minds of those natives of hers. I believe she is their religion, a sort of Mohammed in female form! She may have expected the shaman to do the job at once, but the old chap hates to finish, and puts it off, because he struck up a friendship with me. All we can do is to hang on to that and trust to luck to find some way to finally escape—if we can survive until the snow is gone. There's one thing in our favor—I have learned their tongue until I can understand practically everything that is said.”
Jack was still brooding over his disillusionment when the shaman returned.
The latter, as if his affairs also had gone awry, sat down in gloomy silence and stared at the fire. I wondered what had upset him, for I could not doubt that it had something to do with us, and perhaps our final disposition.