The Curse of the Viking Grave

by Farley Mowat

  “He says his load is light,” Awasin told his sister. “The going is better now, and he says you can ride on his sled. It would be wise to do that, for you will soon be too tired to keep up on foot.”

  Too weary to argue, Angeline obediently slipped off her snowshoes and climbed on the back of Zabadees’s sled where she curled up with a deerhide over her.

  The teams moved slowly over a low, spruce-covered ridge to the next lakelet. But when they were again on firm, smooth ice, the boys saw that Zabadees was rapidly pulling away from them. They thought nothing of it, for it was easy enough to follow his sled trail; but by the time they had reached the third in the chain of little lakes, he and his team were completely out of sight. They did not see him again until the opalescent light of dawn faded the setting moon and turned the dark blue snow to somber gray. By then they had reached and crossed a deep inlet of Kasmere Lake (staying close to the shore in order to hide their trail) and had come to another bay, from the end of which there was a portage into the Putahow River system.

  Zabadees was waiting at the portage. Angeline was still sleeping soundly on his sled.

  “He wants to know,” Awasin told Peetyuk and Jamie, “if we should go any farther.”

  “I think we can risk another hour on the trail,” Jamie replied. “They’ll have to heat up their engine before they take off, and probably they’ll eat first. Let’s push on a bit. We’re still too close to Kasmere House for comfort.”

  Zabadees nodded when he was told the decision. He called to his team and started off at once, leaving the boys to follow without having had time to rest either themselves or their dogs.

  They caught up with him again on the fringe of a dense stand of black spruce beside the shore of the southern arm of Fisher Lake. He had already tramped down a trail into the heart of this thicket and soon the teams and sleds were well concealed.

  The morning broke clear and bright—ideal weather for flying. Keeping their ears cocked for the sound of an aircraft engine, they had a cold breakfast of bannocks and boiled caribou meat. They were all bone-weary, and after feeding the dogs they spread their sleeping robes on piles of spruce boughs and lay down. Peetyuk and Zabadees went to sleep at once, and Awasin and Angeline soon followed them. But Jamie was too tense to sleep.

  For a long time he lay, half dozing. The swish of melting snow slipping off the branches of a spruce tree brought him wide awake, his heart pounding heavily. He tried to force himself to go to sleep, but he had hardly begun to doze again when the faintest of sounds—no louder than the hum of a mosquito—jolted him awake once more.

  This time there was no mistake. He reached over and shook Awasin. The two boys sat silent, every nerve drawn taut, straining toward the distant sound. Almost imperceptibly it grew louder, and Jamie concluded, with a sick certainty, that the airborne searchers must have spotted their trail. Then, mercifully, the far sound began to fade. Soon there was nothing to be heard in all the silent land except the guttural cry of a raven soaring high in the empty sky.

  “They followed the false trail, Jamie,” Awasin said with a sudden outrush of pent-up breath. “It is all right now. They will not come our way.”

  The tension slowly ebbed and at last Jamie drifted into the dark depths of exhausted sleep. He did not wake again until the day was almost done and then he became sleepily aware of someone touching his face. It was Angeline. In her hand she had a pint mug filled with meat soup, for Awasin had risked lighting a small fire. She was smiling uncertainly at him.

  Pushing up on one elbow, he took the mug and thanked her perfunctorily. As she turned from him he wondered what she really thought of him, and he felt his conscience prick a little.

  During the second night the fugitives made good progress. Their route followed the Putahow, and the lake and river ice, covered with a hard layer of wind-packed snow, made for fast going. At Zabadees’s insistent invitation, Angeline again rode the last part of the way on the Chipeweyan’s sled, and once more he drew away from the three boys, so that they were nearly an hour behind him in reaching their next camp on the shores of Goose Lake.

  A fire was already burning when the boys arrived. Zabadees was not in sight, but Angeline came running out from shore to meet them and they were surprised by the warmth of her greeting. Awasin, who knew his sister better than any of them, was mystified. It was unlike her to be publicly so demonstrative. But after a quick meal had been eaten and the rest of the boys had gone to feed their dogs, she drew him aside and whispered rapidly into his ear. As he listened, Awasin’s face darkened. When, an hour later, Zabadees appeared suddenly from the woods having returned from an unsuccessful hunt for deer, Awasin did not greet him nor did Angeline offer to build up the fire and get him hot food and drink. Zabadees looked speculatively at the two Crees for a long moment, but he said nothing. Having rebuilt the fire, he heated his own meal, then carried it off to where he had unrolled his sleeping robes, some distance away from the others.

  “What’s the matter with Zabadees?” Jamie asked as he was getting into his own sleeping robes.

  “Nothing,” Awasin answered shortly. “The Idthen Eldeli are strange people. They do not mix easily with others.”

  “They not so strange,” Peetyuk said. “That fellow he stay with Angeline too much. What for he always go ahead when she on sled?”

  “He has a lighter load, that’s all, Peetyuk,” Awasin replied. “Anyway, she is well rested now. She will not ride his sled tonight. Now go to sleep, for there is a long road ahead of us.”

  But they did not start off again that evening. The bad weather which they would have welcomed the previous day came upon them now that they did not want it. A bitter northeaster had begun to blow. By dusk occasional snow flurries had turned to a steady, driving blizzard which made night travel out of the question. The boys pitched the travel tent and, with a big fire burning at the door, they and Angeline made themselves snug inside. Zabadees did not join them even though Jamie invited him in with hospitable gestures. The Chipeweyan’s distant, almost hostile attitude was worrying Jamie.

  “We must have done something to annoy him,” he told the others as they snuggled under their robes in the little tent. “I don’t like it. If he gets sore he might push off and leave us on our own, and we don’t know the road.”

  “Let him go,” Peetyuk said loudly. “We not need. Soon come out of trees to my country: I find way then.”

  “But we aren’t out of the forests yet, Pete. We still need him. I wish I knew what was eating him. You got any idea, Awasin?”

  Awasin and Angeline exchanged a fleeting glance; but Awasin shook his head.

  “It is nothing. He will be all right. Do not worry about him, Jamie.”

  By morning the storm had blown itself out, and after a big breakfast and a leisurely second mug of tea they decided to move on in daylight. It was the best sort of day for traveling. The storm had hardened the snow and a bright sun was thawing the surface just enough so that the carioles and sled glided effortlessly over it. It should have been a day for a record run.

  But the day seemed to be full of unexpected halts and setbacks. Twice Zabadees appeared to lose the proper route and made long detours into dead-end bays. Once he halted unexpectedly, seized his rifle, and went off into the bush for an hour in pursuit of what the boys were sure was a nonexistent deer. To make matters worse he insisted on stopping to boil the tea billy every hour or two.

  Peetyuk, who was undisguisedly delighted to find that Angeline had chosen to walk with him at the end of the train, was unperturbed by the slow progress; but Jamie grew increasingly upset. Awasin said nothing, and his face remained expressionless.

  About 3:00 P.M. they left the Putahow system at the east end of Red Sucker Lake and crossed a low ridge to the shores of a new lake which Zabadees, when he was pressed for its name, reluctantly told them was called Dead Men’s Lake. It stretched off to the eastward, and in its center was a small, barren rock island. As they descended toward the lake out of
the spruce thickets, Zabadees called a halt to the day’s journey by stopping his sled and unhitching his dogs. In vain Jamie expostulated with him, through a rather uncooperative Awasin. Nothing would persuade Zabadees to continue on. Finally, when Jamie had reluctantly resigned himself to losing the rest of the day, Zabadees pointed negligently to Angeline and, in his sibilant language, muttered a few quick words.

  Awasin’s face betrayed nothing of his inner feelings.

  “He says he wants Angeline to travel with him. He says there are bad spirits in this country, but she is good luck and makes it easier for him to find the way.”

  “Well, let her then,” said Jamie in exasperation. “She might as well ride as walk. If he believes that stuff about spirits and luck, she might as well make herself useful.”

  Awasin’s face hardened. “She is my sister, not a dog! She does not wish to ride the sled.” Then his expression softened. “I am sorry, Jamie, but it is better if she does not ride with him.”

  “Why not, for heaven’s sake? She’ll have to ride all the way back to Than out Lake with him anyway.”

  Awasin turned away and began to pull the remains of a haunch of caribou off his sled.

  “We are getting short on dog feed,” he said, changing the subject. “I have seen much deer sign today. I think it is as well if we camp here and make a hunt.”

  Peetyuk had listened closely to the conversation, but had said nothing. There was a strange look on his face. It was no longer amiable. Suddenly he turned to Angeline.

  “That fellow speak bad you?” he asked abruptly. “I think he make trouble with you. Eema—yes?”

  Angeline shook her head so violently that her long hair whirled gleaming in the fading sunlight. “There is nothing wrong, Peetyuk. Come, help me gather wood. Or, please, will you cut some ice for tea water?”

  Puzzled and annoyed, Jamie watched the pair walk away. “Girls!” he muttered almost viciously. Then he shrugged his shoulders and began to unload his cariole.

  Zabadees sat motionless on his sled. His black eyes followed Angeline with an intentness which might have explained many things to Jamie, if he had been acute enough to observe and understand. But Jamie was too wrapped up in the driving urge to put distance between himself and Kasmere Lake to be alert to the interplay between the Chipeweyan and the Crees.

  It was a calm night, touched with the first signs of the spring thaw, and so they did not bother with the travel tent but simply climbed into their sleeping robes. No one was particularly tired and they began talking about the country they were passing through. Peetyuk told a story about how the Eskimos had once tried to establish contact with a white trader who had a post on Thanout Lake.

  He described how the most powerful and active of the Eskimos, a man named Kakumee, undertook to make a journey to this trading post even though the Eskimos were in mortal fear both of the Chipeweyans and of the shadowed forests in which the Indians lived. Kakumee started out in mid-winter with a sledload of white fox pelts drawn by twelve great Eskimo dogs. He made fast progress south, following the western shores of Nueltin Lake which the Chipeweyans called Nuelthin-tua—Lake of the Sleeping Islands.

  Reaching a certain bay, Kakumee turned up a river leading into the forest country and on his first night amongst the trees he built his camp on a low, rocky islet in a lake, which gave him good observation in all directions. Alone in what had always been enemy country, he slept very lightly indeed, and when just after dawn one of his dogs growled, he was instantly awake.

  In the pale early light he saw seven teams of dogs and seven carioles swinging across the ice toward him. Kakumee recognized the approaching strangers as Chipeweyans, but made no move either to flee or to take up a defensive position. Instead he quietly lit his fire, put a kettle on to boil, and waited with empty hands as the carioles swept up to his islet and stopped on the ice.

  There were nine Chipeweyans in the party. At first they kept their distance, but when they had assured themselves that Kakumee was alone they came up to his fire. One of them insolently flung back the hides covering Kakumee’s load of furs. Another kicked one of Kakumee’s dogs, and when the animal lunged at him he struck it across the head with the butt of his rifle.

  Kakumee could speak no Chipeweyan, but he could guess what the Indians were saying. When three of them casually began to rip open his bales of furs, while three others moved slowly around the fire so they would be behind the Eskimo, he wasted no more time.

  He had concealed his .44–.40 repeating rifle under the loose folds of his parka. Without any hesitation, and so rapidly that the Chipeweyans could not have stopped him even if they had realized what he was up to, he flipped the rifle to his hip and shot the nearest Indian through the stomach. Even as this man screamed and fell, Kakumee whirled and shot one of the three who had tried to get behind him.

  The remaining Chipeweyans panicked. They sprinted for their carioles while Kakumee methodically fired .44–.40 slugs into the ice right behind them. In ten minutes they had reached the far shore where they vanished into the forests, leaving the Eskimo in possession of his life, his furs, and two corpses. Abandoning the bodies where they had fallen, Kakumee continued on his way, reached the trading post, and returned safely home. Word of his exploit spread like fire through the forests and he saw no more Chipeweyans either then nor on later journeys south.

  While Peetyuk was telling this story Zabadees seemed to pay no attention, but at several recurrences of the name “Kakumee” his gaze flickered toward Peetyuk. Peetyuk had observed this.

  “That fellow he know story, I think. Awasin, you tell him what I tell. Also tell him all happen right on this lake, and tell him Kakumee my grandfather.”

  With evident relish Awasin translated the gist of the tale. He could see that it made Zabadees markedly uneasy. The Chipeweyan’s gaze kept shifting from Awasin to Peetyuk, and when Awasin mentioned Peetyuk’s relationship to Kakumee, Zabadees slipped out of his robes, spat angrily on the dying fire, and stalked off into the dark forests. He did not reappear until all except Peetyuk were asleep.

  When the Chipeweyan eventually returned and slipped into his robes, Peetyuk got up and threw some sticks on the embers of the fire. When there was enough of a blaze to see by, he got his rifle from the cariole and methodically began to clean it. Every once in a while he cast a long, thoughtful look in the direction of the dark shadows which showed where Zabadees lay rolled up in his robes.

  Then Peetyuk began to sing an Eskimo song, almost—but not quite—under his breath. It was a weird, alien chant that sounded as if it could easily have been an invocation to the dead. It rose and fell with nerve-wracking monotony. At intervals the name “Kakumee” occurred in it, and each time he chanted the name, Peetyuk clicked the bolt of his rifle.

  In the dim and flickering light of the little fire his performance was immensely effective. By the time the fire died down and blackness returned, Peetyuk was chuckling to himself. “That is one Chipeweyan who will not sleep well tonight,” he thought with satisfaction as he curled up comfortably under his robes.

  CHAPTER 7

  Nuelthin-tua

  JAMIE SLEPT RESTLESSLY AND WAS the first to waken. He lay quiet for a while, enjoying the warmth of the robes, then he sat up and looked about him. Awasin and Angeline were asleep with the carioles providing a windbreak for them. On the other side of the dead fire Peetyuk lay completely buried under a mound of robes. Zabadees was gone.

  For a moment Jamie attached no significance to the Chipeweyan’s absence, thinking he had gone hunting or was off gathering wood. Then he realized that Zabadees’s sleeping robes were missing. He scrambled out of his own robes and stood up, looking toward the dog-lines down by the lake shore. Zabadees’s dogs were gone…and so was his sled. The two canoes lay where they had been hastily dropped on top of a snowdrift.

  “Wake up!” Jamie shouted urgently. “Wake up, you fellows! Zabadees has done a bunk!”

  Peetyuk’s head popped out from under his robes,
his red hair awry. “Where bunk?” he asked, puzzled. “Here no cabin. Here no bunk.”

  “He’s gone, you idiot!” cried the exasperated Jamie. “Awasin! Wake up!”

  The three boys hurriedly pulled on their stockings and moccasins and ran together to the shore of the frozen lake. There was no doubt about it. They could plainly distinguish the tracks of Zabadees’s sled overlying those they had made the previous day.

  “Come on,” Jamie cried urgently. “Let’s get a team hitched up. Maybe we can catch him.”

  Awasin, who had been examining the trail, replied quietly. “I think not, Jamie. He has been gone many hours. And if we did catch him, how could we turn him back?”

  Jamie was beside himself. He turned fiercely on Peetyuk.

  “This is your fault!” he shouted angrily. “You and your fool yarns. You must have scared the wits out of him with that story and he took off. Now how are we going to find the road…and,” a blank look spread across his face, “how do we get rid of Angeline?”

  Peetyuk replied rather meekly. “I sorry, Jamie. Not know he so big coward. Only I wish make him leave Angeline alone. He bother her too much.”

  “That is true,” Awasin cut in. “And there is more than Peetyuk knows. I would not tell either of you before. You would have been angry at Angeline, and Peetyuk might have made real trouble with Zabadees. Two days ago when he went so fast ahead of us, he said things to Angeline. I do not blame him too much. He is a young man, and the girl he would have married died of the lung sickness this spring. So he wished to take Angeline and make her his wife. When he found she would not have him, maybe he did not want to help us anymore. Anyway, it is a good thing he is gone. If you had said she had to go back with him I would have taken her home myself.”