The Shaman/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
The short arctic day was gone long before I had finished my welcome change into cleanliness; and then, leading my partner, I emerged and wondered whether I should be permitted to return to the living room with out an invitation. It is a fact that I was still perplexed by this strange woman's demeanor. Despite her attention and hospitality she radiated a chill aloofness, amounting almost to an expression of dislike, and quite as if whatever she had done for us was through sheer impulse of humanity and nothing more. Yet it seemed impossible that in that land so unknown, so remote, any human being would not gladly and eagerly welcome another, particularly if that other came from the distant outside world and spoke the tongue of civilization. In all my varied wanderings, for I was a habituated explorer, I had never before come upon such a peculiar, preposterous situation as this in which Jack and I found ourselves.
While I stood there in the hallway, hesitating, the door of the big living room opened as if Madame Malitka had heard our approach, and she appeared to reassure us.
“You will come this way,” she said, more as if accustomed to giving orders than invitations.
We followed her into the room and took seats, suffering embarrassment through the slightly prolonged silence that ensued. She had seated herself beside the fireplace whose roaring flames furnished the sole light in the great room, making across the heavy-beamed ceiling constantly shifting and flickering shadows. Heavy curtains had been drawn across the windows, lending an air of profound seclusion. Yet here in this big, comfortable, well-furnished room, it was difficult to realize that we were not dwellers in the midst of a hundred other similar dwellings, rubbing elbows with erudition and within reach of the entire populated world. It seemed incredible that thousands of unmapped miles of mountain waste, barren, snow-clad plains, and cold Northern seas intervened between us and the nearest touch that we might make to all that teeming life of the lower latitudes.
Madame Malitka had changed her garb. I have wondered many times since that night whether it was through a vanity that could not be entirely subjugated, or a fixed habit of clinging to that slight but rigid hold upon self-respect which every being who has known civilized forms can never quite abandon and lose.
She sat beside us, silent, staring at the fire as if perplexed by some untoward event, clad in a simple blouse of some white woolen material, a skirt of regulation length that fell in plain folds to meet the tops of regulation shoes. I use the word “regulation” because I can think of no other to signify such an astounding factor of importance as the sight of a pair of woman's leather shoes in such a place. In any great city on earth they might have been deemed coarse, perhaps unfashionable, but here, in the heart of remoteness, they became pregnant with meaning. Plain leather shoes of calfskin in a land thousands of miles from where the skins of beef calves are tanned or produced!
The woman wore none of the ornaments customary to her sex. Her delicately shaped ears bore no jewels, and stood white and clear against the masses of her black hair. Her face, in profile to me, with the light of the fire illuminating one white side, was Minervalike in its chiseled outline, clean cut, cold, judicial, and yet capable of many nobilities. It was the profile of a face that might soften into summer's warmth with love, yet might harden to winter's chill with hatred. It suggested tragedies; dead ambitions; betrayed confidences; conquered hopes!
As she made a slight movement with her slender, yet capable hands, my inquisitive eyes caught a glint of gold, and I saw upon one of her fingers a wedding ring.
“You are feeling better?” she questioned, and both Jack and I, not knowing which of us she addressed, told her that we were, and each in turn thanked her.
“Snow blindness,” she said, without shifting her gaze from the fire, “passes swiftly with care and treatment.” She paused and then, turning toward me, asked, “Where did you come from—up here?”
“From a village that I think the natives call Thluckstova,” I replied. “We had hoped to get food there. They were starving.”
“Doubtless! she said, and repeated, “doubtless. The Indians of this country lack foresight. And so, when the warmest seasons cause the game to go far northward, they—pay the penalty. Death teaches much—too late!”
I turned and stared at her. My partner, lifting bandaged eyes, also faced her as if wondering what peculiar place this might be and how peculiar this hostess of ours.
“The natives of this place that you call Thluckstova—I think it lies many days' journey to the southeast—they gave you directions how to reach this place?”
I cannot to this day tell what there was in her voice, rather than in her words of mere idle gossip and inquiry, that put me on guard. I answered evasively:
“No, madame. The natives of that village did not tell us how to reach you. We could not understand their tongue, but we gathered from their vague signs that somewhere in this direction might live those who would help us. We could not have found you save for a random trail of sled runners upon snow which we followed.”
“I must find out who made them,” she muttered as if speaking to herself. “The unforeseen chance—one in a thousand—the detail overlooked! Others might see the same and”
With a quick, sharp movement she faced me as if about to ask something more, met my eyes, and then turned away.
“Well,” she said, “you are here, and safe. The chance in a thousand. Do you know how far you must have gone to the northwest to find another human being? More than two hundred miles!”
“We should have died,” I admitted.
“Then,” she said., suddenly facing me again, and staring at me across the firelit space, “you acknowledge some obligation? That which I impose upon you is secrecy. For certain reasons which are not to be questioned I, and those who live in this village, desire to remain undisturbed, unknown. Is it agreed that if you leave here, you will tell no one of this place?”
I did not immediately answer; but Braith, deep-voiced, intent as none but a blind man can be, swung toward her and said, “Of course! Does one betray that other who saves him? Madame, or miss, whatever you may be, I call you to mark that my friend and I are gentlemen. To such the wish of a woman who has saved them is a command.”
I saw her turn and study him, as if an unexpected and vital being had interposed in her orbit. His bandaged eyes were directed toward hers by instinct. It was as if they stared at each other.
“For some reason that neither of us can question,” he continued while she considered speech, “you request silence. And so, when we pass from here, we forget. Your motives we cannot question. That is a fair compact. Is it not?”
She nodded her head as if his sightless eyes could discern her acceptance, regarded him for a moment more and then, as if recalling my presence, turned toward me and said, “Perhaps it would be better to light the lamp. Will you favor me—no—I”
“Permit me,” I said' and took from her hand a box of matches and, after a period of fumbling, lighted the Russian lamp that hung from a beam above the center table.
Both Jack and I hoped that she was about to vouchsafe some explanation of herself, her strange village, or her desire for secrecy. This was not her intention; for she fell to cross-questioning me regarding our mission, and I suspected that before beginning this examination she wished the light full on my face as if to gather possible ocular evidence that I was telling the whole truth. I saw no reason why I should evade, for neither Jack nor I had the slightest ulterior motive, nor any mission other than that of which I had told her.
“A man named Harris Barnes,” I explained, upon discovering that she expected me to give a full and explicit account of ourselves, “if alive, is sole heir to property in Boston valued at about a quarter of a million dollars. A considerable number of years ago—about twelve as I remember it—he had a quarrel and final estrangement with his father who never saw him again and never again communicated with him. Barnes, the elder, died nearly two years ago; but before doing so, and conceiving the quarrel to have been due to his own irascibility of temper, he made a will in which he sought to make amends to his son.
“He not only left him the entire property, but added thereto a perfectly legal but peculiar codicil in which he laid upon his executors the obligation of administering the property intact for a period of five years in which they were to exhaust every possible effort to locate Harris Barnes, or to find acceptable and authentic proof of his death. In the latter event, if Harris Barnes had in the meantime left a widow, she, on proof of good character and worthiness, was to come into possession of one hundred thousand dollars, and the remainder of the estate was to be divided among certain distant kinsmen of the family and numerous charities.
“The charitable associations have the most to gain. One or two of them are in need of funds and have been most active in the matter. The executors, but one of whom ever knew the younger Barnes personally, are all men of means and prominence and disinterested. I have met them and believe them honest men, although perhaps they are of an older-fashioned and rather—I am inclined to think—well, to put it baldly, a strait-laced, puritanical type. They lay considerable stress on that clause pertaining to the past, moral reputation and so forth, of the widow, if there be such. They are the kind of men who would far rather see the money all go to charitable institutions and churches than into the possession of a woman who was not up to their rather harsh ideals.”
Madame Malitka had sat thus far without interruption, steadily eying me, and evincing nothing more than listening attention; but now, as I paused, she commented in a mirthless bitter voice, “There are many such men in the world from which you come. I have known and—yes, suffered!—from such. Narrow-mindedness, injustice! These are the curses one finds in the world that make isolated spots such as my village seem a paradise of contentment!”
Her suppressed vehemence for an instant shocked me by its appalling fervor, as if she had exposed one hot glimpse of the smoldering volcano of hatred against civilization seething in her brain—the civilization of which, it could not be doubted, she must at some time have been a part. Nor could one doubt that her place had been one of refinement in that dead life, for her every movement and attitude proved it. There was a suggestion of the imperial in all that I had observed of her demeanor that could not possibly have been gained through the sole experience of dominating, directing, and dictating to a mere village inhabited by natives.
I was aroused from a momentary abstraction, and a lull of silence that may have lasted a full minute, by her voice asking, “Well, and what then? You have not explained your presence here.”
“Oh,” I replied, “as-to that Ummh! Where was I? Yes, I have told of the Eastern situation. Well, the younger Barnes was traced until most of his movements were known with the exception of an interim of some two or three years which were of no importance, for he returned to his previous haunt, Seattle, and from there he sailed aboard the Merman, a sailing schooner which he had chartered for Katmai, on Shelikof Straits, Alaska. She was laden with trading supplies and there was no attempt on Barnes' part to conceal the fact that his intention was to found one or perhaps a chain of trading posts for furs in this country.
“The Merman never returned to port. She was lost with all hands; but it was learned through a half-breed native of the tiny village of Katmai that she came there and landed her cargo; that Barnes bought scores of dogs there and transported others from Kadiak, which is a large settlement, and with native drivers and guides set off into the unknown interior which no white man was ever known to have invaded.”
I was thinking of that backward trail when Jack spoke.
“Madame,” he said, “my friend seems to believe that he has told all there is to tell. You have asked for an explanation. It is your right. But an explanation, to be worth while, must be complete. Shall I finish it, or is what he has told sufficient?”
Glancing at our hostess, I could not be certain whether it was the story that interested her, or merely a desire to hear him speak that caused her to reply.
“Yes, I should like to hear the remainder.”
“When the inquiries had reached that point,” Jack said, turning his bandaged eyes toward her, as if despite his temporary blindness he could see through the wrappings, “those men in Boston, whom I have never met, sought a man of some reputation who was qualified to undertake the task that was left them. An absurd task! One that could never have been contemplated save through ignorance. Good Lord! Think of it! Trying to find one man in an unmapped country a third the size of the United States of America, bigger than half the dinky principalities, some of the dukedoms, and half the kingdoms of Europe! This partner of mine has crossed Africa, Tibet, and mapped the Cordilleras. He can use letters after his name. Under that hard old gray head of his are many memories and that which is learned by much experience. He's not old—though if you didn't know his age you might think so. His hair turned white because of the places he had fought into and out of. He knows wild lands and how to live in them. So when this Boston bunch came to an end of their trail at Katmai, they went after him to finish the job. We had been together in Africa and—some pretty tough times, Jim, eh? And I had been in the arctic.
“There was money in this venture. He wrote to me to join him. Partners are that way, once they understand each other, and always know just what the other will do if it comes to hard trails and a bad pinch. So we took on the job. Partly because men such as we always need money, partly because it gave an excuse to travel into a country which was unknown. There's always something interesting in places that are unmapped. We've tried some of them, my friend and I—for just that reason!”
He laughed quietly as if at the absurdity of our characteristics, and ran his hand upward across his bearded, strong, and not unhandsome face; for this partner of mine was of the viking type.
Madame Malitka sat quietly in the depths of her chair with one hand supporting her firm chin and regarding him with a fixed and almost disinterested immobility.
“It seems that some of the Barnes outfit—most of them—died there on Katmai Pass. A wind-swept place of torture. It's—it's an awful place—a frigid hell! The natives don't tackle it very often. They come to its foot and camp. Sometimes for days and days at a time they watch the tip of one high and mighty peak off in the distance. If above it there comes a swirl of snow that makes a cloud, they will not dare. Sometimes, day after day, there comes that cloud. They loaf in their camp. Then comes a day when the sky is topaz, the air sharp and keen as a knife, the white peaks reaching up and up as if in contact with God, and—they rush to throw the packs on the sleds, to lash the trail canvas over them, to gather and harness the dogs. The men take a last look at the camp to see that nothing has been left behind or half buried in the trodden snow, and then—'Mush! March on!' every one cries and there is a race.
“It runs upward, downward, skirts great white swales, clings to narrow places where if a sled were to skid or sway, both sled, men, and panting dogs might fall a thousand feet. And always their eyes are on that far peak. A funnel of the world this! A place where if comes a wrathful wind it sweeps men, dogs, sleds, everything to eternity. Natives have died on that pass within a hundred yards of security. It's a known fact that an iron teakettle weighing pounds was lost off the wreck of a sled owned by an early explorer, Colonel Ebereley, of Tacoma, Washington, and was blown across a hollow a mile in width, up over a rolling mountain more than two hundred feet high and later recovered in a valley beyond that hill.
“A storm must have overtaken the Barnes expedition when it was in the midst of that enormous funnel in the tops of the miles-long hills. Nobody knows who escaped. The few who did never returned to Katmai. The bodies of those who were lost, a big portion of Barnes' stock in trade, and dead dogs were found in that mountain pass a year later. We learned all this, my partner and I, from Petalin, the half-breed trader at Katmai.
“But we learned something else; that there was a rumor among the natives that Barnes survived and with the remnant of his natives and dog teams pressed on into the interior. I've an idea that he was all man. At Sevenoski, an Indian village on the banks of Lake Illiac, they tell of a white man who, with but a few natives and dogs, came and went, heading northwest. They say these men made a camp on Lake Illiac, to rest and recuperate, and then disappeared. Going on, you understand, northward, seeking some indefinite goal.
“That country is hard. Natives in there used to have tribal wars. They were unfriendly. A guide might take a traveler just so far and no farther, if travelers there were. Bethel wasn't known then; but there are natives in that hinterland who say that the first and only white man they had ever seen came through, passed, was gone. That man could have been no other than Barnes.
“My friend and I are on that long-obliterated trail; looking for a man who may be dead or alive. The game has gone northward because the season is milder than usual. The natives for more than a hundred miles southward starve. We have starved, too. Had we not accidentally found you, we must have died, I think, unless there is another native village beyond on which we might have stumbled.”
Madame Malitka, whose gaze had never for an instant wavered from his face, lifted her hands and with a decidedly foreign gesture snapped both thumbs and fingers, as if dismissing something of which she knew.
“Another native village? Beyond this to the northwest or northward? There is none for more than two hundred miles, as I told you.”
“Then, that being so,” Jack said, bending forward, “we have been fortunate in finding you. There is, after all, something in the mercy of God bestowed upon the lost. A something bigger and greater, madame, than I would wish you who have been so kind to us may ever require. Perhaps you have never wanted it. If so you can't understand what it is worth.”
It is quite impossible for me to make clear all that I had discerned in this strange woman, that sense of aloofness that encircled her like an invisible shroud, that inhuman, uncanny expression of being entirely foreign to ordinary emotions; so that I was actually surprised when I saw her white hands lift upward in a gesture of impulse, half reach toward Jack, and then fall limply back as if vanquished and helpless. I think that in that moment she might have told us much save for the intrusion of her native servant who opened the door, hastened to the table, and with the air of a trained menial made preparations for our evening meal.