Otherwise

by Farley Mowat

  ”I guess if anyone ever digs up old Eskimo Charley’s bones they’re going to wonder … what kind of a thing was he, anyhow?”

  There remains a question as to why all the skulls were found inside the cabin. I think it was because Eskimo Charley had been preparing to take them with him to his ultimate refuge at the lake called Kamilikuak when Death forestalled him.

  – 23 –

  TUKTU

  Although our explorations of the twin-lakes country revealed no deer the country was by no means lifeless. Loons were abundant. Three kinds shared the lakes – red-necked, black-throated, and yellow-billed – and they were everywhere. We could hear their cries at all hours of the long days and short nights.

  There were few ravens (we supposed because most would have been travelling with the deer herds) but many raptors. Rough-legged hawks circled close overhead waiting to pounce on ground squirrels whose insatiable curiosity about us had brought them out of their secure burrows. Peregrine falcons and long-tailed jaegers hunting for lemmings sometimes made use of us as involuntary ”beaters.” And we had a spectacular encounter with a pair of ghost-white gyrfalcons who had an eyrie on a shoreside cliff. Their nest held three almost full-fledged young. The adults would not allow us a close approach, diving fiercely upon us.

  Although we saw no living deer, shed antlers and white bones testified that, in due season, this was very much their country. At some time in the not-too-distant past they had shared it with even larger creatures. Twice we found muskox skulls, one with its curved horns still intact. And once we came upon the skull of a Barren Lands grizzly, the largest carnivore on the continent. The incisors were almost three inches long, curved and pointed like scimitars. I took a bear’s tooth back to camp and gave it to Ohoto, who accepted it with reverence, slipping it into a deerskin amulet bag he wore around his neck.

  Andy and I were still asleep early one morning when Ohoto came bursting into the tent shouting that the deer had come. We scrambled out in time to see him with our .30-30 in hand running along the isthmus toward the northern skyline, where seven does with seven fawns stood silhouetted. We dressed and hurried in pursuit but long before we could reach him he had begun shooting. Three does and a fawn went down.

  I might have called Ohoto to account for such butchery had I not been aware he could claim to have killed on our behalf – to help Andy and me in our mysterious purposes, one of which was ”to procure and dissect at least fifty caribou to provide scientific data upon which plans for the future management of the herds” could be based.

  So three does and a fawn lay bleeding on the tundra while two surviving fawns stood a few yards off, grunting in their peculiarly plaintive way, not knowing whether to follow the fleeing remnant of their little herd or stay close to their slaughtered mothers.

  While Andy was busy measuring the corpses and Ohoto was skinning and butchering a doe for meat, I tried to chase the surviving fawns away. They went reluctantly, perhaps aware (as I certainly was) that their chances of survival on their own were slim indeed.

  Returning to camp laden with bloody bundles, we squandered our hoarded firewood to fuel a roaring blaze, thrust enormous chunks of meat into the coals, hauled them out again when they were charred, scraped off the charcoal, and gorged ourselves on the pink and steaming flesh beneath.

  Having subsisted too long on a diet of flour, tea, and lean fish, our craving for red meat was exceeded only by our craving for fat. At this season of the year, does carried very little fat but there was still marrow in their leg bones. So we roasted the long bones, cracked them open, and gulped down steaming hot strips of juicy marrow.

  It was astonishing how much meat we were able to eat. During the subsequent forty-eight hours, the three of us and Tegpa consumed most of an entire doe, including the heart, liver, kidneys, and tongue.

  As ”senior scientist,” Andy was responsible for dissecting the carcasses, a task that kept him busy with scalpels, knives, scissors, and forceps for two full days, looking for parasites and pathogens while turning the patch of tundra where the deer had died into an abattoir of bloody fragments.

  Ohoto scavenged what meat was useable, some of which he buried in the permafrost beneath the moss, where it would remain fresh for many days. The rest he sliced into paper-thin strips and spread over the upper branches of bushes to dry in wind and sun. This was nipku – jerky – which, he assured us, was excellent and would keep for years.

  Although I spent most of my time looking for live caribou, the great flood of southbound does and fawns Ohoto had assured us was just beyond the horizon failed to materialize. When I asked him why, he explained reasonably enough:

  ”Schweenak [bad] to camp in the deer path. Tuktu may wait for us to go away. Or look for way around. Better we move.”

  He suggested we shift camp to the southeast shore of Nowleye, but Andy and I felt it would be more convenient to stay put.

  During the next few days a scattering of fawns and does drifted past us. They were wary and skittish but we were encouraged to stick to our decision by flights of ravens soaring in the pale skies and by occasional glimpses of wolves – signs we took to be indicative of the near presence of la foule.

  Wolves being my particular scientific responsibility I busily collected wolf feces, old or new, and analyzed their contents; which proved to be mainly fragments of caribou bones embedded in a stiff matrix of caribou hair.

  Ohoto watched intently as I dissected the wolf ”scats,” and I could imagine the sardonic pleasure he would get from someday telling his friends how deeply the kablunait were enamoured of wolf shit.

  When there was nothing better to do Ohoto would make string figures for my entertainment. Using both hands, he would weave and interweave a loop of string between his fingers to create representations of plants, spirits, and animals. He made these abstract forms move in weirdly lifelike ways, each illustrating some particular aspect in the lives of the creatures represented. The figures were compelling, both in themselves and for what they had to tell me about wolves, lemmings, caribou, people, and other inhabitants of the Barren Lands.

  Andy considered string figures child’s play and thought them frivolous, but I was becoming increasingly sceptical about the ability of science to define, explain, and illuminate the nature of nearly everything. When I defended the string figures as a valid source of information Andy would have none of it. ”Only facts can reveal the truth” was his unyielding dictum.

  August was now well advanced and the scarcity of deer had become our major worry. One day Ohoto confronted Andy and me with the blunt accusation that the absence of great herds was our fault. If we had not insisted on camping on the isthmus, he told us, the herds would certainly have come that way. We had blocked their chosen path so they had probably gone south across the plains behind our Angikuni camp. Ohoto insisted that if we were to find the herds we must return to Angikuni.

  We did not require much persuasion.

  Tuesday: Up and away at 0700 heading back to Angikuni. Dead calm day, hot and clear, though there was a frost last night. I sat in the bow with plane-table and compass, mapping the south shore of Nowleye while to save gas Andy and Ohoto paddled. Tegpa snoozed in the sunshine. It was a bit like a Sunday picnic excursion to Toronto Island, only without girls or booze. Alas.

  Near the east end of Nowleye Ohoto spotted a big buck on shore. First buck we’ve seen and he had a magnificent spread of antlers. Andy wanted him so Ohoto took him with one shot and I was sorry. He looked so magnificent against a crimson evening sky. There was no pleasure in seeing him suddenly fling himself into the air then crumple backward on his haunches with bloody foam flecking his wide nostrils. But I have to admit to the pleasure of sinking my teeth into a strip of his back meat, with an inch of fat on it, roasted poneass-style on an open fire after Andy had got his measurements and checked his guts for parasites. He tasted a hell of a lot better than the maggoty nipku I’d been chewing on all day.

  We went ashore to check out
the first big Kuwee rapid, which we had portaged on the way west. The main chute is about 250 yards long and 40 wide. A stinker, full of white water and three-foot back waves. Ohoto wouldn’t run it and didn’t want us to, but Andy and I were in a what-the-hell mood. We unloaded most of the gear for Ohoto to carry around the rapid, then pushed out into the slick current at its head. As was usually the case when once committed, doubt and irresolution vanished and we shot into the spume in a state of high excitement that lasted till we were spat out at about 20 mph into the pool at the foot of the rapid. Ohoto, watching, shook his head and pointedly didn’t congratulate us.

  Thursday: Up at dawn, to find a major miracle has taken place. The flies are gone! Utterly vanished! There seems no logical explanation for this. It’s a dead-calm day, hot and clear and no frost last night. I timidly stripped off and took a bath in a pond. Still no flies so I spent about an hour splashing about in the nude while Tegpa and Ohoto both tried to get me to come out. Neither Eskimos nor Eskimo dogs believe in swimming or in bathing.

  Ohoto has been keeping a diary. He and I have this in common – both of us have trouble reading what we write,but I have the edge because I’m using the Roman alphabet. He’s apparently using one he made up himself.

  Andy doing another autopsy this evening. Not many deer around but heavy tracks on both sides of Kuwee show where they’ve been crossing. In some places the banks are churned into muck for hundreds of yards. And below some rapids the hair shed while swimming is matted so thick along the shore you can shovel it up with a paddle. No doubt about it, for whatever reason the big herds of cows and fawns avoided the isthmus this year and crossed Kuwee instead. Too damn bad we missed them, but Ohoto says not to worry, the bucks are still to come and once back at Angikuni we’ll be on hand to greet them.

  A piping hot pile of marrow bones for supper, with steak and kidney stew. Ohoto says that Eskimos eat five meals a day and snack in between. On the trail they get by with only three meals! He mentioned that a good way to get next to a girl is to give her a bundle of marrow bones. He says results are usually immediate and satisfying, which is more than we kablunait can claim for bouquets of roses.

  We came down Kuwee like shit through a goose, running all the rapids, sometimes with the kicker going full blast to give us steerage way in the tight spots. Scary stuff! But wonderfully stimulating, though Ohoto looks worried and shakes his head and Tegpa sticks his head under a packsack when the going gets really wet. Ah well, boys will be boys and we are on the home stretch.

  We still had some gas so we decided to use it up finding out how big the nameless lake northwest of Angikuni is. Well, we never did find out. It goes on and on, one stretch of water leading into another. It was such a maze it was impossible to map it or figure where we were, but we must have got to within a few miles of another huge lake Tyrrell heard about from the Eskimos and stuck on his map in dotted lines: Tulemaliguetna – Little Dubawnt. There’s supposed to be a river from it running north to Baker Lake and we could maybe go out that way to Hudson Bay if we have to. There seems to be no bloody end to where you could go in this country in a canoe if you had the time and inclination.

  Last day on the trail. At dusk we paddled, because now out of gas, through the strait separating Tyrrell Bay from Kinetua Bay, and our old wall tent came into view. It looked as insignificant as a splash of gull shit against the awesome backdrop of the Angikuni plateau but was sure and hell a more encouraging sight than an empty tent ring!

  We spent the next morning settling in but after lunch I climbed the escarpment behind camp to see if there might be deer on the plateau. Might be? When I looked west it seemed as if the entire wide sweep of tundra had come alive! La foule was here at last.

  The deer were mostly bulls in strings of a dozen to a hundred or more, but so many strings oozing implacably southward that the entire countryside appeared to be rippling in slow motion. My range of vision was about ten miles and everywhere within view, west, south, and north, deer were drifting along, grazing as they went. Every ridge line was roughened by their antler-crowned silhouettes, and the lowlands were scarred by flagellation of intertwining paths.

  It was such a compelling sight that only with difficulty could I break free and race back to camp with the electrifying news. Then the three of us trotted up the escarpment; Andy and I to record the spectacle and Ohoto simply to revel in it.

  Andy counted 1,347 bucks passing within a mile of us during half an hour’s observation. They seemed to be moving at slightly more than a mile an hour. We calculated that between eight and ten thousand were in sight on the entire sweep of tundra at any given moment and estimated that as many as thirty thousand were probably passing through our field of view every twenty-four hours.

  After a time I grew tired of calculations and slipped away by myself to a distant rock pile where I could watch the passing show close up.

  A superb day with a pale opal sky, a blinding sun, a light breeze to cool me off, and not a single blackfly. This world seemed freshly reborn with the arrival of the deer.

  Those I met en route to the rock pile showed little interest in me. Not quite correct – a typical reaction of those passing at close range was to take a wide-eyed look, snort incred ulously, then, spreading both back legs in a most undig nified sort of half-squat, have a huge piss. They might then circle me fifty or a hundred feet distant until they got my wind. At which they sometimes sneezed then, loping off a few yards, would ignore me. At no time did they appear to have any fear of me. The experience was humbling.

  One yearling seemed to think I might make an acceptable companion and followed along close at my heel. I hadn’t a clue what was on his mind but was afraid he might draw too much attention to me so I tried getting rid of him by howling at him, wolf-style. Whereupon, I swear, he edged even closer. Finally I pelted him with handfuls of bog, whereat he snorted and departed in high dudgeon.

  So I wandered through the grazing herds, to take a seat amongst the boulders of the rock pile and remained there until dusk, moving as little as possible … watching, smelling, and hearing the passage of la foule.

  Smelling? Yes, because the gentle breeze carried the sweetish odour of cow barn. And all the time I was hearing the soft rumble of caribou guts digesting moss and lichens and gently farting, all to the rhythm of a steady click-clack made by their ankle joints. The truth was, the caribou were not just part of the landscape – they were the landscape!

  The immense antlers borne by the bigger bucks seemed impossibly ponderous, swollen by the velvet coating which most of them had not yet shed. Younger bucks with lesser antlers made way for their elders. Some individuals noticed my presence and came right up to the rock pile, thrusting their big muzzles toward me and snuffling wetly. One young buck essayed a tentative lick and when I waved him off, leapt back on all four legs at once with a great who-o-o-o-f of astonishment or indignation.

  There was a tiny pond nearby and all the while the deer were streaming past and around it (sometimes pausing to drink), a pair of old squaw ducks and eight or ten half-grown young swam about as contentedly as if they and the deer all belonged to one big happy family.

  Clouds began rolling in from the south and when the sun was briefly obscured by a thunderhead, paralysis seemed to grip the deer. Each became motionless, standing statue-like, heads down and all facing north as if in some obscure act of obeisance. Most held their positions until the sun shone out again, at which they resumed their southward plodding and grazing as if nothing had happened. It all seemed most peculiar and somewhat ominous, although when I swept the horizon with my binoculars I could see nothing untoward.

  Occasionally an individual broke out in an insane sort of gallop, running at top speed, weaving and twisting, sometimes slipping and falling down, only to leap to its feet and be off again. At least I knew what this was all about. Although too far away for me to see, I knew a bumble-bee lookalike, a warble fly or botfly, was trying to lay its eggs on some victim, which fled from this lit
tle nemesis in panic terror. Justifiable terror, for I have found a fist-sized mass of botfly maggots clogging the throat and nostrils of an emaciated and exhausted deer, and have counted as many as a hundred bullet-sized holes in a deer hide: holes drilled through the living skin by the emerging larvae of warble flies.

  As the evening drew down, the strings of bucks dissolved into individual animals spreading out on every side. A short-eared owl flew by, bat-like, and so close to my head that I felt the wind of its passing and it roused me from what must have been a nearly hypnotic trance.

  Stiffly I got to my feet and headed back to camp carrying an indelible vision of la foule. I wonder, though, will these enormous herds survive even in the memory of the next generation of mankind? Maybe by then la foule will become as mythical as the earth-shaking multitudes of prairie buffalo have become. As for me, I’m convinced the Eskimos have got it right when they claim tuktu gives the world a special aura of vitality – one that enters into the being of every watcher, man or beast, and makes the hearts of all beat stronger.

  Two days later there came a lull in the flow of deer across the plateau behind our camp so we paddled to the inlet of the Kazan where, on an earlier visit, we had found evidence of a major caribou crossing of great antiquity.

  It was again in use.

  Both banks had been freshly torn to shreds by deer hooves but few deer were to be seen so we pushed on upstream under the slopes of Kinetua to Tyrrell’s Turning Lake. Here we met the herds again. They were crossing the Kazan in a nearly solid stream and the effect was as if two rivers, one of water and one of flesh and bone, were intersecting.