by Sue Harrison
He looked into her face and then slipped under the hide with her, lifted some of its weight to his own shoulders.
The men were talking, trying to decide whether to go back to the village or to stay where they were.
“Did the boys make any signal as to which direction the caribou were coming?” the hunter named Sky Watcher asked.
“No.”
“You know the signs?” Sok asked.
Yaa dropped her eyes. “Only a few.”
“A walking stick held high and swept in one direction or another. Did they make such a sign?”
Yaa closed her eyes and tried to see the boys again as they came. “They were running,” she said. “They put their sticks up in the air, made three swings down and forward, toward the camp.” She opened her eyes and looked at Sok.
“We should go to the women, tell them what to expect,” said Sky Watcher.
“I am the slowest,” Chakliux said. “I will stay and take care of what is here. Ghaden can help me.”
Then all the men were busy, each gathering weapons and supplies. They had left the dogs with the women, even Biter, so Yaa waited to see if Chakliux wanted her to help carry any of the supplies the other hunters left.
She squatted down, pulled the hide over her hair and watched until Ghaden tugged at Chakliux’s arm, lifted his chin in her direction. She saw Chakliux’s surprise.
“I thought you had left,” he called to her. “Return to the women. There are things here you should not see.”
Yaa sighed, stood and hauled the hide up around her shoulders as best she could. At least this time she did not have to run.
Aqamdax worked quickly, cutting meat, retouching or exchanging her knife blade when it dulled, then cutting again. With each animal, she slit the belly first, removed liver, heart and kidneys, then the skirt of fat that covered the intestines. The stomach, roasted whole, full of the sedges and grasses eaten by the caribou, was a feast in itself, and the intestines, cleaned and scraped, made good carrying tubes for drinking water or to store a mix of fat, meat and dried berries. The women would boil the heads into a rich soup and cook the bones for marrow fat.
The heavy straps of sinew along the backbone made the best thread, and the women would save bones and antlers for tools and weapons, cooking utensils, scrapers, needles and awls. The hooves were good for glue and dance rattlers, the teeth for ornaments. It was a useful animal, the caribou, though Aqamdax did not think its fat was as good as sea lion fat, its teeth as beautiful as seal teeth.
Star had wandered off, leaving Aqamdax and Twisted Stalk to work without her. Twisted Stalk had begun to mutter angrily under her tongue, words of disgust about Star, but Aqamdax acted as though she did not hear them. She was already Star’s sister through marriage, and soon would be her sister-wife. She did not want to add to the problem by criticizing the woman, though everyone knew Star was lazy.
Then suddenly the dogs were barking and the men were coming, all but Take More running. Night Man came to Aqamdax, told her Yaa had found them, that the caribou were coming toward the camp. The women continued to work, though Star began to wail about Chakliux. Where was he? Had he been hurt? Was he killed in the hunt? And where also was her son Ghaden?
Night Man called to his sister, told her that Chakliux was coming, and Ghaden as well. Aqamdax kept her head lowered, tried not to let her relief show in her eyes.
Twisted Stalk chanted a quick praise song, then said, “Your husband, Night Man, he is good to you. I know you grieve for your son, but sometimes women do not understand the ways of men.”
And though her anger at Night Man pushed words of disdain into her mouth, Aqamdax kept her teeth clamped tight and said nothing at all as her knife sliced and cut.
The boys said the caribou came from the north, a large herd of so many animals they could not see the end of it, even from the tallest trees. The caribou split around the spruce ridges and those that went east did not cross the river, but instead followed it east. The group that went west of the ridges stopped at the bank just upriver from the Cousin People’s camp and stayed there. A few animals began to cross but came back, then they all lay down, chewing old grass they coughed up from their stomachs.
It was as though they knew the people needed time to prepare for them, Twisted Stalk said, and men and women worked together, butchering caribou and packing dogs, even floating some of the meat upstream, wrapped in the haired hides, to the hunting camp. Once everyone was at the camp, the women worked all night, taking short breaks to sleep, then cutting and cutting, grateful that the men were there to retouch knife blades and help with the heavy hides.
In the morning, when the caribou seemed ready to move, the women cached whatever meat was not yet on drying racks, and were grateful that the days were cold enough so the raw meat would keep.
The boys and Yaa were left to tend the drying fires and guard the meat from wolves and scavengers, and the women again walked downriver to catch those caribou that gave themselves to the men’s spears.
THE NEAR RIVER CAMP
River Ice Dancer straggled into camp long after the other young men had returned. Anaay spoke to him in disgust, asked what had kept him so long. Had he found a woman somewhere out there on the tundra?
Anaay expected an angry retort, but River Ice Dancer only shrugged and said, “I see you do not want to know what I have to tell you.”
He went to Sun Caller. The old man was sitting outside his tent using a hammerstone and antler tine to break slices of chert from a core stone.
“The other watchers,” River Ice Dancer asked, “did they see caribou?”
Sun Caller shook his head. “None, and no s-sign of them.”
River Ice Dancer puffed out his chest. “I did,” he said. “A herd crossed the river where the Cousin men hunt.”
Anaay had followed River Ice Dancer to Sun Caller’s lean-to, and now, as though he had given no insult, he asked, “And are the Cousin hunters there?”
“They are, and they took many caribou.”
“Those are the ones I heard in my dreaming.”
Least Weasel, one of Sun Caller’s sons, joined them, listened to Anaay and said, “If they are the caribou you heard, then all your fasting and prayers did us little good. Or were you praying for the Cousin People rather than us? For years the Cousin have hunted that river, and we have chosen to hunt the tundra. Why have you brought us here? So we could watch others get their caribou while ours pass in some other place?”
Anaay, sputtering his outrage at Least Weasel’s insolence, began to defend his caribou dreams, but River Ice Dancer interrupted to say, “The second herd was much larger.”
“What herd?” Least Weasel asked.
“The one that followed the first. They came half a day later, split to go around a ridge. Some went west and others east. I found a tall tree on that ridge and climbed it. From there I could make out the Cousin camp on the other side of the river. It looked as though they had chosen to follow those that went west, though the greatest number of caribou went east.”
“Those caribou that honor the sun will also honor our hunters,” Anaay said, his words loud and strong above the voices of the men. “Our spears will take many. Go now and prepare to hunt. We leave as soon as River Ice Dancer has a chance to rest and eat. He will show us the way, and we will take caribou.”
He went into his tent and did not listen to those men who lifted their voices to ask who among them knew how to hunt caribou in rivers. How could they hunt without the help of brush fences to direct the animals to their spears? How could they hunt in water? Wouldn’t the river carry them away?
Chapter Twenty-three
THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP
AQAMDAX WRAPPED HERSELF IN bedding furs and closed her eyes. She could never remember being so tired. The second hunt had brought in twice as many caribou as the first. When the killing was finished, the men had joined the women, floated and carried the prepared meat to the main camp, but the women stayed at the but
chering site, removing hides, gutting carcasses, slicing off bits of the raw meat to eat as they worked so they did not have to stop except to change or sharpen knives.
At the end of the second day, the men came once more and helped take the rest of the meat back to camp. Again, they decided to float it upstream in hides, though when Take More lost a whole hide filled with boned meat, the women in their tiredness screamed out their fury.
The meat was a gift to the river, Sok told them, and Take More was wise rather than clumsy. Most of the women decided Sok was right, but Twisted Stalk continued to grumble. She had been the one to butcher that meat, and the hide had been particularly fine, with broad white bands down the sides of the animal. She had planned to use it for a parka that winter.
A few newly killed caribou always escaped the women’s hands to float downstream, Twisted Stalk said. Wasn’t that enough? How greedy was this river?
She complained until all the women hurried past her, eyes averted. Aqamdax hummed apologies under her breath, hoping whatever the river did to Twisted Stalk for her insolence, the curse would not spread to others in the camp.
Finally Chakliux had to remind Twisted Stalk that worse things might happen if she continued her complaints. Then they walked in silence, loaded with meat, most women too tired to talk, too tired even to offer thanksgiving chants for meat that would keep them living through another winter.
THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE
Dii rejoiced to travel again toward the Caribou River, but a part of her grieved as she remembered her mother and father, her brothers and uncle. Only the year before, they had been alive. Only the year before, she and her friends had no concerns but the small problems that came to all girls. She and her cousin Awl had giggled behind splayed fingers about the hunters who led them. Now most of those hunters were dead, and her friends were wives or slaves to Near River men.
Dii reminded herself that she could not complain about how Anaay treated her. Her cousin Awl was also fortunate in her new husband.
Dii looked ahead to where Anaay walked. Besides his walking stick, he carried only weapons, as did most of the men, while the women carried heavy loads. At least Anaay had three strong dogs, and they helped much.
K’os was wise with dogs. She had suggested that they split the load between two travois and allow one dog to carry only a light pack, then switch the dogs, giving each a time to rest.
“Too bad Gull Beak did not come,” Dii had joked to K’os. “Then Anaay’s women could also take turns in carrying light and heavy loads.”
She thought the comment would make K’os laugh, but K’os only lifted her chin and slitted her eyes as though she were angry.
They walked a day and into a night before setting up camp. The young men sent out as scouts had found a good ridge, dry and with a line of trees to break the wind.
Anaay chose several hunters to go on ahead, to seek those caribou that River Ice Dancer had seen. The men and women who remained in camp stayed in separate tents. Why chance that a wife would ruin her husband’s hunting luck? Perhaps even the breath from her throat would do that. Who could risk such a thing?
By morning, the scouts had returned. The caribou were close, they said, only a half day’s walk, even less. Dii, sure that the men would tell the women to walk downriver of the herd while they walked east, repacked the dogs’ travois and her own pack and set them outside the camp, toward the west.
But Anaay said they would all go together, traveling east to stop the herd’s progress, then scouts would circle and force the caribou toward them, make the animals cross the river.
Dii saw the eyes of the Cousin women open wide in surprise, heard their whispers.
How would the caribou react when they saw women with the hunters? What greater insult could be given? And when the animals were killed in the water, who would catch them if the women were upstream with the men?
“I could speak to my husband,” Dii said to K’os, but K’os shook her head.
“You think he would listen? You think any of these men will listen? Are we the hunters?”
Dii saw the burden of that knowledge in each Cousin woman’s eyes, and as they broke camp, they worked in silence.
Twice during that half-day walk, Dii tried to approach Anaay, to tell him what she knew about river hunting, but each time other men turned her away. Finally she called out, crying her husband’s name. Anaay looked back at her, and when she raised her hands in supplication, he strode to where she stood among the women. In relief, Dii began to explain that the women must be downstream, out of sight of the men during the hunt, but when she ventured to look up into Anaay’s face, she saw that his cheeks were red in anger, the scar that ran from brow to jaw as stark as snow.
He raised his walking stick, and she ducked, but he caught her across the shoulders. Her pack took the brunt of the blow, and the force of it knocked her to the ground. He slashed the stick against her arms and legs until finally she curled herself into a ball, her pack like the hard shell of a clam, protecting the soft flesh beneath. When his anger was spent, Anaay walked away, and Dii slowly pushed herself to her feet. She took her place again beside K’os, tried to make her aching legs keep up with K’os’s long strides.
“Why do you try to help him?” K’os asked. “He is a fool. Let him stay a fool. It is best for us to keep our mouths shut, to stand back and let others take the punishment that Fox Barking’s wisdom will bring them.”
That evening Dii and K’os set their tent apart from the others. K’os brought stones to make a separate hearth, and none of the other wives came near.
In the night, the singing again found Dii’s bones. In her dreams, she heard the caribou, knew they were close. When the thunder of their passing shook her awake, she scrambled from her bed and woke up K’os. They had slept in parkas, leggings and boots, so did not have to dress before they crawled outside. To the east, the sky was lightening with the promise of sun, but to the west Dii saw a moving darkness. Caribou.
Men called from the river. Kills had been made, but other hunters milled in confusion in the dark of early morning. Dii listened until she heard Anaay’s voice telling the women to move downstream.
How did Anaay expect them to get around the herd? Dii wondered. They could not walk through.
Then Dii saw that the Near River women carried peeled willow sticks, and some had white hare fur blankets. Men came with weapons, stood beside their wives, watched as the women waved the blankets, raised the sticks, forced the caribou at the edges of the herd to turn in toward the center of the group.
Suddenly one of the women was screaming, crying out for her small daughter. Then, as though the caribou had caught the woman’s panic, they turned from the river and ran toward the camp.
K’os cut their dogs loose, then she and Dii left everything and ran. They stumbled over tussocks, filling hands with xos cogh spines, but they got up, ran again.
A large caribou bull came so close that Dii was sure it would trample her. He ran with his head up, eyes rimmed with white, foam flying from his mouth. Dii thrust out her arms, tightened her muscles, and pushed with all her strength. He pressed against her, and she felt her legs begin to give way, then suddenly he was past, cows with calves following in his wake, their breath like smoke in the darkness.
It is a dream, Dii told herself, but still she ran. In her heavy parka she began to sweat, though the air was cold enough to cloud her breath, frost her brows and lashes. Her braids twisted loose, and her hair was pushed into her face by the edges of her parka hood. Her lungs ached, and her legs grew tired, but she ran.
The sky was light with dawn when she realized that the thunder was behind her.
She stopped, fell to her knees. When she could breathe again, she noticed K’os, sitting on the ground some distance back.
“K’os!” Dii called, and though K’os did not answer, she lifted one arm, then let it drop, as though even that was too much for the strength she had left.
Dii looked down at
her feet. They were bleeding through her boots, coloring the tundra plants, but the cold of the ground had numbed their pain, so first she began to pull the xos cogh spines from her hands.
THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP
Ghaden tried to push Biter out of the tent. He had been fed too much, that dog, and now was so lazy he did not want to do anything but sleep.
“Biter,” Ghaden said in a loud whisper, “it’s our turn to watch the meat. Get out!”
Biter rolled to his back, but when Ghaden stepped over him, the dog got up, shook himself and followed Ghaden to the river. They stopped at a shallow place where sand had made a gradual slope from bank to riverbed. Ghaden yanked up his leggings and waded in, leaned over to drink, then splashed his face with water.
He turned toward the bushes to urinate, but then saw something floating just beyond his reach. Had someone killed a caribou this morning? He thought all the men were in the camp. Perhaps a herd had crossed far upriver and wolves had killed one, lost it in the current. He waded out until he was able to catch the carcass, but it was heavier than he had thought, and it started to carry him downstream.
Biter began to bark, and Ghaden yelled for Chakliux and Sok, then for the boys he was supposed to relieve at the drying racks.
Black Stick came running down the bank, told him to let go, but Ghaden could not touch bottom, and hanging on to the caribou, at least he floated.
“Get Chakliux!” Ghaden said. “Get Sok!”
As Black Stick ran back toward the camp, Ghaden felt his arms grow weak with fear. What if Black Stick did not return in time? His hands were already numb. Then suddenly Biter was with him in the river. Ghaden let go of the caribou and lunged for the thick fur at the scruff of Biter’s neck.
Black Stick screamed out his words so quickly that Chakliux had to make him start again.
“Ghaden,” Black Stick panted, and Chakliux’s heart froze.
The boy pointed toward the river. “He’s there, in the river. There was a caribou floating—”