by Harold Lamb
No one came. The herd edged about restlessly, seeking moss under the snow. Their flanks were beginning to fall lean. They had been driven hard. All their instincts led them to follow blindly after the one who happened to be the leader.
“Well, they will carry their skins a good way for us yet,” remarked Petrovan the next morning as the men were preparing to mount. “We can get a good price for the skins.”
“We might have had the white buck,” grumbled Orani, “if you had attended to the old man of the mountain that night in his yurt.”
He had had his vigil for nothing. Even Orani—who had attended to more than one man who was in his way—would not try to ambush three riders in daylight. And Maak, who had only a bow, could never attempt it now. Moreover, on the snowbound steppe not a rabbit could hide.
“Gr-rh!” hissed Petrovan. “The river will be cold—look at the ice on the bank!”
He was glad that they would not have to swim their horses more than halfway over the ford. Even the shaggy steppe ponies did not relish the embrace of the black Irkut; but the reindeer scarce heeded it as Orani drove the herd down, crashing through the border of thin ice, out on the ford.
Petrovan hitched up his knees and yelled for the Mongol to wait with the pack animals until the reindeer had crossed. He had fortified himself with black tea and brandy, and the blood raced through his stout body, well protected by the mink coat.
“Hey,” he shouted to the servant, “take care of those packs or I’ll send you to trim the ——’s corns!”
Now that he was leaving the Syansk behind his mood was pleasant. Not that he had been alarmed by the Mongol’s remark that Maak was perhaps making magic, sitting on one of the peaks of his hills, talking to his tengeri, spirits. But Petrovan had feared that even in the snowstorm the reindeer keeper might find his herd and cut it out.
“He is like the reindeer after all,” Petrovan thought. “He is a khada-ulan-obokhod, an old man of the mountain. Where he is driven, he will go.”
Then the Siberian scowled. His horse was swimming, and in spite of his efforts to keep dry the man was wet to his waist. An icy chill shot through his nerves.
“What in the fiend’s name are you about?” he roared at Orani.
The half-breed, almost across the Irkut, had let the reindeer get out of hand. The leaders of the herd had no sooner gained footing on the farther bank than they about faced, throwing the great mass of animals into confusion.
Orani bellowed and waved his arms to no avail. The herd churned the water, tossing their horns. Then they started back toward the Mongol and Petrovan.
At the same instant Petrovan stopped cursing and Orani ceased his unavailing shouts. A white buck paced down the farther bank to the river edge, and on the white buck was Maak.
They had heard the reindeer keeper give no command, but the herd went before him as he splashed into the water. They could see that his face had changed. Fasting had thinned it, and it wore a fixed smile.
Orani’s musket cracked. He had pulled it forward from his back where it had been slung. His pony, however, was flustered by the reindeer, and the bullet carried wide.
Hastily the half-breed reloaded and settled himself in the saddle. Maak’s white buck was swimming toward him steadily, not twenty paces away. Ten paces. Orani held his shot, sure of his aim this time.
Maak was leaning forward, one hand on the antlers of his beast. The water was up to his belly.
“Ho!” he shouted.
His free right hand went back to his shoulder. An arrow flashed in it; the bow held on his other hand twanged and as the musket of Orani flashed the reindeer keeper threw himself sidewise into the water.
“Hide of the ——!” muttered Petrovan.
He could see the arrow sticking in Orani’s throat. The half-breed slumped into the black surface of the Irkut.
“They are both dead,” thought the trader. “Well, that is not so bad.”
Nevertheless his nerves were running chill, and he turned his horse’s head back to the Syansk shore, in the midst of the herd. The reindeer could be brought under control, and Orani’s wages were clear profit.
These calculations were ended by a glance over his shoulder. Close behind him the antlers of the white buck were gaining on his tired horse. Beside the black muzzle of the reindeer was Maak’s fur-tipped head.
The eyes of the reindeer keeper were fixed on the trader. One hand gripped the antlers of the white buck. His bow had disappeared, rendered useless in any event by submergence in the river.
The teeth of Petrovan clinked together and his jaw quivered as he reached vainly for the musket slung to his back. He was a bulky man, and the sling was tight. Moreover the pony under him, nearly exhausted, was unsteady.
Petrovan was up to his chest in water. Cold fingers gripped at his groin, and his teeth chattered harder than ever.
“Keep away!” he shrieked. “I swear I will pay—pay for your herd.”
Still Maak smiled.
“By the mercy of God,” the trader’s cry went on, “I swear I will pay twice over. The herd is yours—you hear? Yours!”
It did not occur to him in his fright that Maak did not understand Russian and knew not what he was saying. The other’s silence wrought on Petrovan’s mounting fear, and he snatched out his pistol from his belt, which was now under water.
Maak’s head was only a man’s length away, and the trader twisted in his unstable seat to pull the trigger as swiftly as his chilled fingers permitted. The flint clicked harmlessly on the steel that could not ignite the wet powder.
Shifting the man’s weight caused the pony to sink and lurch. Petrovan was in the water where sharp hoofs struck and darted on every side. One split his cheek open. The heavy coat, water-soaked, and the musket weighed him down. An icy cold strangled the breath in his throat and numbed his heart.
But the panic that gripped him was from the man who floated after him, the man who walked forward against gunshots, who smiled at the weapon in Petrovan’s hand and whom the deadly cold of the river could not hurt.
Petrovan clutched wildly at the antlers of a reindeer swimming by, missed and was struck again by a hoof. His arms moved weakly now, and his head went under.
Maak, numbed and helpless from submergence in the water, could only cling to the antlers of the white buck. As impotent to aid Petrovan as to harm him, the reindeer keeper was drawn into shoal water and to the shore.
Turning here, he saw Petrovan’s bare head an instant at the edge of the shore ice. Then the trader went down. Maak grunted and glanced at the Mongol, his hand moving toward the knife in his belt.
But the erstwhile servant of Petrovan was building a fire on the ashes of the old campfire. The Mongol, who was trembling a little, motioned for Maak to draw near and warm himself. Then he pointed out the pack animals, saying that they were Maak’s and that he—the Mongol—had never had aught but peace in his heart toward a khala-uban-obokhod.
Not until Maak had dried himself and eaten a little of the bread and tea of the other did he respond. Then he said that the packs and the ponies could go with the Mongol. Maak did not want them. He had his herd again.
“It was a strong ijin—magic spell—that you made on the mountain heights. It bewitched the guns and slew the Russian pig without a blow. Is not that the truth?”
So spoke the Mongol.
“Nay.”
Maak shook his head.
“I went to the mountain top to see the camp of the thieves when the snow ceased. Otherwise I could not have seen it.”
The Mongol was silent. He was in no mood to contradict his guest. But later among the Buriats he voiced the thought in his mind.
“Maak has looked into the spirit gate. When he sat on the mountain looking for his enemies the gate in the sky was open. He talked with the Qoren Vairgin and his spirit ancestors.”
And the Mongol spoke truth, though not in the way he thought. The urge to do battle for the herd that was dearer to Maak than his
own life was a heritage of forgotten ancestors.
Maak had looked through the gate in the sky.
THE NET (1922)
Kam knew that the long night of winter was nearly over. He knew it by the wisdom of his six years. His wolf dog no longer burrowed so deep in the snow of twilights and the ice of the river was cracking.
For Father Yenesei was rising out of his long sleep, throwing off the white coverlet of ice and snow. At his headquarters in the Syansk Mountains far to the south the snow was melting and the black water was rushing down with the ice floes toward the bend in the Yenesei where the hills of Mongolia meet the plain of Siberia—still called Muscovy in that year of the late seventeenth century—where was the hut of Kam.
Well did little Kam know the moods of Father Yenesei. Kam himself had no father; he lived with old Ostak, the blind fisherman at the bend of the river.
During the past winter the boy had played with the treasures of Ostak, a walrus head on which the skin was wrinkled like the skin of a dried apple, a bit of carved ivory, a silver talisman, cast up from the wreck of some trader’s vessel, and a long iron whaling spear.
For Ostak, in the time before the light went from his eyes had been a man of the North, a killer of animals on the edge of the White Sea, a man largely thewed and savage of temper. Kam played on the skin of a polar bear. Kam was no longer a child. He played at killing the walrus head with the spear.
“Tchai!” he cried. “Soon I will run upon the walrus herds. I have already speared a salmon in the river. You know it, Uncle Ostak.”
“Aye,” the old Buriat murmured, “you are a rare young buck. You are the eyes of Ostak, just as your sister Aina is my hand.”
It was Kam’s task to lead the blind fisher to the skiff, to find him his nets, to carry the cleaned fish to the village some miles away. His hours of work were long, for Ostak moved slowly and toiled painfully. The need of work and of guiding the blind had made Kam alert and shrewd for his age.
When the ice would be gone, and the labors of the day done, Kam would play with his wolf dog on the bank of Father Yenesei, watching the reflection of the pines in the water of the round bay by which the hut was built. He would count the ships passing up or down, traders’ luggers, the sailing skiffs that bore black-robed priests from Muscovy, who wore strange, square hats and gave presents—sometimes.
But on this warm day in the Month of the Fox, when the silver sun of the past months was turning to gold and the snow was damp under foot, the only vessel within Kam’s range of vision was an ice-bound lugger a mile upstream, and he was watching the approach of three men with a dog sledge.
Kam knew the three. They were Muscovites, distinguished personages who owned the sailing ship that had been winter-bound in the upper reaches of the river by an early freezing of Father Yenesei.
Frequently Kam had seen them in the Buriat village nearby. Their presence had added zest to the dull winter for him. From the inn door he had listened while they sang gigantic songs and kicked on the floor. At times they played with an assortment of small colored pictures upon a table and emptied mugs of vodka at a great rate.
They brought wonderful, painted dolls and bead work, with colored cloths to exchange at the inn for food and vodka. When they danced with the Buriat woman to the two-stringed fiddles, the sweat flew from their faces and the floor shook under their boots, so high did they jump.
In short they were demigods, capital fellows, regular batyrs, or heroes. Kam scrutinized their approach to his hut with emotion, and his black eyes opened wide at the guttural oaths that announced the trio had missed their way in heading back to the lugger from the village.
“Give us a drink to warm our gullets, uncle,” they shouted at Ostak, who was feeding fish fins to his dogs.
Kam was lost in admiration. The faces of the demigods were red as the crimson of the northern lights at the time when the merry dancers3 were leaping in the air above the horizon. Their breath was as fragrant as wine. So it was, in fact. Their beards were like horses’ manes, compared to the long white mustache of Ostak that was like the fangs of a walrus.
“Kam,” grunted Ostak as if he had observed the men, “go and bid your sister draw tarasun from the cask and give these to drink.”
“Nay,” responded the boy eagerly, “Aina is down at the ice, the hole in the ice, spear fishing.”
“Draw the tarasun yourself. Give to each of these strangers for they thirst. I can not see their number.”
The leader of the three emptied the bowl of fermented mare’s milk at a gulp.
“So, you are blind, uncle. Well,” he laughed, tossing the bowl to Kam, “you will behold the angels in Heaven, so don’t weep about it. Come along, Fedor and Lak— —— take your Finnish name—Lakumainen.”
He waved goodbye to the impassive Ostak and whipped up the dogs that drew the sledge slowly over the heavy snow. When they could not start the sledge, instead of giving it a push, he kicked the dogs until, snarling, they got under way.
Kam was surprised that a demigod should beat dogs. Ostak, despite his surly moods, always cared for his few wolf-breeds.
When Fedor, the smaller of the two Russians, and the gigantic Finn trailed after the sledge, Kam brought up the rear. Having given the exalted strangers to drink he felt that he had earned the privilege of following them a while.
“Lift up your heels, my lads,” sang out the leader of the sailors. “We’ve got this food to stow away and the ice may break loose any day now. You’ll have to step a measure, then, because Father Yenesei isn’t any smooth maiden to handle, you know.”
Nevertheless he did not head directly for the distant vessel, but circled to go by the hole in the ice where Aina stood with her spear. Several salmon, already frozen, lay by her.
Fedor and the Finn followed, accompanied by Kam, who tried to swagger or rather lurch as they did.
Aina did not look up, she had already scanned them carefully. She was a slender Buriat, with a tiny mouth and sharp, black eyes with curving lids. In her fox skins and horsehide boots she looked much like a boy, except for the moonlike roundness of her cheeks.
“Hai, little seal,” called out Stolkei, leader of the sailors, “give’s a fish—kish. Pretty little Aina, a kiss.”
He tossed a silver coin on the ice after long fumbling with his leather mitt in the flat looking wallet at his belt. Signing to the Finn to stow the salmon on the sledge, he essayed a bear-like clutch at the girl, who slipped away around the water hole.
“Nay,” she said, “begone!”
Stolkei tried to follow the alert girl around the black gap in the ice, failed and began to mutter—
“Hai, hai, Aina, my lass!”
Shaking his head he moved off again while Lak beat the dogs into motion. Kam paused to stare admiringly at the torn, cloth cap of the Russian skipper, the soiled, embroidered blue shirt that showed where he had flung open his bearskin svitza. Stolkei was roaring a song that had come into his head:
“Hai, hai, Aina, lass,
Is wild, is furious wild!
Hai, hai, Aina lass—
Don’t get wild, my child!”
Lak, grinning, tried to take up the song. Only Fedor was silent, and cast a long glance over his shoulder at the watching girl.
Kam, pleased, began to dance around his sister, repeating—
“Don’t get wild, my child!” until she boxed his ears roundly.
“Ow,” he cried. “I like the song. I like those masters of the river. I wish we had them for uncles instead of old Ostak.”
“Be quiet!” She added reflectively— “They won’t ever pass through the dog-world in kanun-kotan, the sky-heaven, if they thrash their dogs like that.
Both children had spent many an evening in the dark listening to old Ostak telling of the sky-worlds. Even Kam knew that sunyesun, the soul, was caught up by the nets that came down from the sky, and thus left the body of a man.
Although he looked hard he had never seen the nets, nor the cloud p
eople, the people of ancient times who lowered the nets and caught up the souls of men. But the sky-world was plainly to be seen, or rather its gate might be seen. Almost every clear night it stood there, the great arch of soft white flame in the northern sky.
Through this arch the soul must pass, riding a horse if the animal slain on the grave of the dead man was fat and strong; or leading it, if the horse were thin and weak. The soul must have a warm suit of clothes laid on the grave, for it was very cold in the kanun-kotan.
And the soul must pass through the sky-worlds of dogs, and those of the reindeer and the horse, and other beasts. And if the man in life had mistreated a dog or reindeer or horse, he would be bitten or hurt on his long journey through the kanun-kotan.
Also, if he brought with him anything that had been stolen on earth, the thing would be claimed by the sunyesun of its owner in the sky.
Kam thought to himself that when his time came he would ride regally through all the sky-worlds on a pony. All his garments would be of the richest sable and fox. All the beasts in each world would let him pass friendlily, and his wolf dog would be there to bark a greeting.
Everything that went with Kam in the net that came down from the kanun-kotan for him would be quite certainly and unquestionably his own, so no angry soul would take the coat off his back or the spear from his hand. Then he would be welcomed triumphantly by the One-Being-on-High, and have plenty of fat meat to set his teeth in and a walrus head to roll from star to star.
But Aina of the brooding eyes and soft voice would shiver when he mentioned this.
“Ai-a,” she would sigh, for the flood of life was strong in her, “I hope when the net comes down for me it will be in the hands of our father and mother. I hope no angry soul will send the net for you, either. We must take care and be gentle with Ostak, for his time is near.”
Until he was six years of age, it had puzzled Kam how Ostak would find his way in the kanun-kotan, since he could not see. Aina said it would be managed. And now Kam saw that it, indeed, would be simple. The horse, having good eyes, would see to choose the way and Ostak would tell him where to go, just as the fisher told Kam where to guide him.