by Farley Mowat
“Don’t get jumpy, Peetyuk,” Jamie said hastily. “It’s only a skull. It was inside the cache and I pulled it out without knowing what it was when I crawled in there last summer. We’ll put it back where it belongs.”
Peetyuk was not reassured. He backed quickly away from the tomb and Awasin, who had seen the skull the previous year and had been badly frightened at the time, stepped back with him.
“I not go in!” Peetyuk said shakily. “I sorry, Jamie. I not go in!”
“There’s no need,” Jamie replied. “I’ll do it. Awasin, help me roll away the stones.”
Reluctantly Awasin came forward and the two boys removed the stones with which they had blocked the narrow entrance after their previous visit.
The tunnel was no more than a crevice in the rocks, floored with thick moss and illuminated only by faint gleams of light filtering through the interstices in the boulders. Jamie bent down to peer into the opening and he could just distinguish the outlines of the things he had briefly removed and then hurriedly thrust back into the tunnel before he and Awasin departed overland to the westward. His own heart was beating faster than usual, and he felt a strong revulsion at once again having to enter that wet, dark hole.
He took a deep breath before working his head and shoulders into the entrance. His hands touched chill metal and he wiggled quickly out again, dragging the object with him.
Peetyuk and Angeline gazed in amazement at an immense weapon, nearly four feet long and heavily encrusted with rust and dirt.
“Koonar’s knife!” Peetyuk muttered in a shaken voice.
“It’s a sword, Peetyuk,” Jamie explained. “A two-handed sword. Only a giant of a man could have handled a thing like this. I can hardly heft it at all. Here, Awasin, lay it down easy on the moss. There’s an awful lot of rust. Probably not too much solid iron left in it.”
Having taken the first plunge, Jamie turned back to the entrance with less reluctance. He brought out a rusted iron helmet next, and after that a dagger whose blade had been reduced by rust to a flaking filament of metal.
“That’s all I took out last year,” Jamie explained to Peetyuk and Angeline. “Now I have to crawl right inside and see what’s left. I’m going to light matches so I can look around.”
“You will only find bones, Jamie,” Angeline said timidly. “Perhaps you should not go inside. Perhaps we should be satisfied with what we have.”
Jamie shook his head stubbornly.
“No,” he said. “I have to see what’s there. And I have to put the skull back where I found it.”
Awasin joined Jamie at the entrance and squatted down uneasily as Jamie began wriggling into the tunnel. Peetyuk and Angeline stood a few paces away. Peetyuk’s eyes kept shifting from the entrance to the white skull that seemed to stare blankly at the sky out of empty sockets.
Jamie had disappeared from view. There was a scratching sound as he lit a match, then his muffled voice could be heard.
“I’m inside, Awasin. It’s like a cave. About three feet high. You’ll have to pass the skull in to me.”
Overcoming his revulsion, Awasin forced himself to pick up the skull. He carried it very gingerly to the entrance and thrust it into the darkness where Jamie took it from him.
For an unbearably long time there was no further sound from the tomb. Then Jamie’s muted voice was heard again. It sounded strained.
“I’m passing out some more stuff. You’ll have to stick your head in, Awasin. Be careful. It’s something like a box, but it’s as heavy as a rock.”
Steeling himself, Awasin knelt down and thrust his head and arms into the musty-smelling hole. His hands came into contact with a cold, slimy surface and he shrank back involuntarily. Then a match flared and he saw Jamie’s face, white and streaked with sweat and altogether fearful-looking. Awasin almost scrambled out of the entrance.
“Get hold of it,” Jamie said impatiently. “It’s only a box. It won’t bite.”
As the match flame died Awasin looked down and saw that the object was a greenish square thing with a lip all round the top. He forced himself to grasp it and squirmed back out of the hole. Jamie was right behind him.
Jamie got to his feet and stood for a minute breathing deeply.
“That’s enough of that!” he said when he had got his breath. “Let’s have a look at the box.”
On closer examination the “box” turned out to be a sort of casket carved out of soapstone, about ten inches square and eight inches deep. At one time it must have had a wooden cover, but this had rotted away, leaving only fragments of wood clinging to the thick rim. The box appeared to be filled with black mold, but when Jamie cautiously lifted some of this material with a stick he encountered hard objects underneath.
The boys and Angeline crowded close around the stone box, their uneasiness forgotten. Gingerly Jamie lifted one of the objects out and cleaned the decayed vegetation off it with his fingers. It was revealed as an open circlet, like a bracelet with a piece missing. It was of some very heavy metal and was dull greenish in color. Jamie scratched the surface with his thumbnail.
“I think this might be gold!” he said in hushed tones.
Fired by the treasure fever, Peetyuk grabbed a stick and began poking in the debris. But Jamie caught his arm and stopped him.
“Hold on, Pete. We’d better not muck around with this stuff any more. Might smash up something in there that’s gone rotten. We’d better leave the box just like it is until some expert can go to work on it.”
“It not box,” Peetyuk replied. “That only old kind Eskimo cook-pot, made of stone.”
“Whatever it is, it seems to be full of Koonar’s things,” Angeline interjected. “I think Jamie is right. We should wrap it up in moss and put it in one of the carrying bags.”
Jamie waved his hand at the sword and dagger lying on the turf nearby.
“We’re going to have trouble with those, too. Looks to me like they’re so rusty they’d break into a hundred pieces if they got one good bang.”
“I fix,” said Peetyuk, anxious to redeem himself after Jamie’s rebuke. “We take sticks and put along sides. Then wrap tight in wet deerskin. Skin dry and shrink. Make hard cover, very strong, not bend.”
Awasin nodded. “That will do it. But first we must get these things back to the Eskimo camps. Each of us can carry one thing, and if we are careful, nothing will be broken.”
They did not linger at the tomb. But before they departed Awasin collected the small pile of gifts from the flat rock and placed them in the entrance tunnel. Then he and Jamie rolled several big boulders over the opening.
Half an hour later they rejoined the two Eskimos on the far ridge. Kakut and Ohoto glanced at the things the young people were carrying, but made no comment. Getting lithely to their feet, the Eskimos led the way back to the kayaks and canoes.
Late that night, when the camp had gone to bed and the four were alone in their tent, Peetyuk volunteered some information.
“I not tell before, but last week some people talk, talk about you take stuff from Koonar grave. Some people go Elaitutna tent and he make drum dance and call spirits. People hear strange voice, very deep, speak words nobody know. But hear three times name ‘Koonar.’ Elaitutna listen with eyes shut. He shake all over. Then Elaitutna fall on floor like dead man. After a while he wake up and say is very bad take things from Koonar grave. He say make Koonar very angry, give us bad luck.”
As Jamie listened to this recital he had a hard time trying to suppress the skepticism he felt. Nevertheless he held his peace until Peetyuk stepped outside the tent for a moment. Jamie turned to speak to Awasin then, and he was startled by the expression of uneasiness on the Cree youth’s face.
“What’s the matter with you?” Jamie snapped. “You don’t swallow all that stuff, do you?”
Awasin looked unhappy. “I do not know what to think. We too have medicine men, Jamie, and they can do things you would not believe. I do not know if Koonar’s ghost spoke to the
people, but I do not like this talk about bad luck. The Eskimos may not want to help us now, and if they do not we cannot hope to find the canoe route eastward to the coast. That would be very bad luck for us, I think.”
Peetyuk’s return forced Jamie to swallow the sharp retort which sprang to his lips. He contented himself with a mild comment.
“Uncle Angus says everyone makes his own luck and I believe him. We’ll make out all right so long as we don’t get scared by a lot of mumbo-jumbo. Now let’s forget it and turn in. There’s plenty of work to do tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 15
Interlude
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING THE boys and Angeline began preparing the Viking relics for the long trip to Churchill. Peetyuk got the frame of an old kayak from one of his Eskimo friends, and from it they took several long stringers with which to splint the sword.
They were busy fitting these splints when the tent flap was pushed open and old Elaitutna shuffled in. It was the first time he had visited them and they did not quite know how to receive him. However, he ignored their awkward attempts at a welcome and, going straight to the sword, squatted down beside it.
Delicately he touched the heavy haft where several greenish metal rings hung loosely around the remains of what had once been an ivory or bone handle. Then he barked a command at Peetyuk, who hastily brought out the dagger, the helmet and the stone pot.
The old man gave the dagger and helmet only a perfunctory glance, but he looked at the stone casket with such concentrated attention that the youngsters began to feel uneasy. Jamie moved forward, intending to pick out the metal armlet to show to the angeokok, but the old man stopped him with a fierce gesture.
Then Elaitutna fumbled in a skin pouch which hung from a lanyard over his shoulder and clawed out a small packet of dried skin. It was so black and filthy that the youngsters could make nothing of it. The old man thrust it toward the casket and mumbled a few phrases before stuffing the black thing back into the pouch. Then he got to his feet, uttered a harsh burst of words, pushed open the tent flap and vanished without a backward glance.
“Now what the heck was all that about?” Jamie asked.
Peetyuk’s reply was subdued and hesitant. “He very angry man. That thing he take from pouch is very strong charm. When he hold it up he say to pot: ‘Bring no evil to me. Not my fault someone dig up your bones. Fault belong Kablunait and Itkilit—white men and Indians.’ Then, when he go out of tent he say we are big fools and all Eskimo who help us they bigger fools.”
Peetyuk was badly upset by the visit, and Awasin too was much disturbed. Jamie tried to dispel the effect of the visit.
“Look, you fellows. We’re not going to let that old geezer scare us, are we? Maybe he talks to ghosts, and maybe he doesn’t. But we’re not doing anything wrong. Archaeologists dig up graves every day all over the world, and nothing happens to them. Nothing’s going to happen to us, either.”
“I not know what people do other places,” Peetyuk stubbornly replied. “But I think it bad thing wake up dead men in my country. Elaitutna, he say it very bad.”
Although he was exasperated by Peetyuk’s attitude, Jamie had learned not to show his impatience. He was trying to find some way to ease his friend’s fears without antagonizing him, when Angeline unexpectedly came to his rescue.
“What Jamie says is true, Peetyuk. We are doing nothing bad to Koonar. It will help the Eskimos and I think Koonar would have wanted that. And I do not think everyone agrees with Elaitutna that we are doing a bad thing.”
Jamie snatched gratefully at this support, even though it came from a source of which he did not entirely approve.
“Elaitutna’s only one man. Let’s go talk to Ohoto. He’s the best hunter in the camp and everyone looks up to him. We’ll explain exactly what we intend to do, and maybe he’ll take our side.”
To the youngsters’ great relief Ohoto agreed that the removal of the weapons from the grave was no great crime, particularly since the sale of these things to the white men in the south might enable the Eskimos to obtain guns and ammunition. But Ohoto had reservations about the stone casket. He told the young people that according to Elaitutna it reputedly contained the arrow that had killed Koonar and—grisly thought—some of the blood Koonar had shed through his death wound.
Peetyuk shuddered visibly as he translated this, and even Jamie felt a twinge of unease. He mastered it firmly.
“I just don’t swallow that,” he said. “How can Elaitutna be sure what’s in the casket? Maybe the arrowhead is there, but all that stuff about blood is more than likely something he invented to scare us. I think he wants that casket for himself. Whatever he has in mind, we’re going to take it with us. I’ll carry it myself and I’ll look after it. None of the rest of you even need to touch it. Tell Ohoto that, Pete. Ask him if he’ll still help us.”
There was a moment’s silence after Peetyuk had translated this. Ohoto looked hard and long at Jamie before replying slowly.
“He say,” said Peetyuk, “maybe you foolish, but you brave too. He say he help us. He show us way to Big River when time to go.”
“What about you, Pete? Do you feel okay about it now?”
“Maybe I foolish too, Jamie. But I just as brave as you. We take stone pot!”
During the next ten days the weather rapidly improved. Summer had already begun in the Barrens, where there is no real spring as we know it. Winter ends with a roar of thawing rivers, and almost before they are clear of ice the country is inundated by a wave of living things who have no time to waste if they are to raise their young before the return of the frost.
Gulls, wading birds, ducks, geese, and small land birds seemed to appear almost instantaneously and in such numbers that the sound of their myriad voices made an unending chorus that never ceased, even in the middle of the night. But then, there was no longer any real darkness at night, for the sun barely sank below the horizon and its glow never left the sky.
The herds of doe caribou had long since disappeared, hurrying north to the fawning grounds. Most of the herds of bucks had followed them at a more leisurely pace, but there were still many loitering bucks scattered across the plains.
On sandy ridges exposed by the melting snows arctic foxes, dun-colored after the loss of their white winter coats, barked and yapped outside their burrows. At the mouths of larger dens on higher ridges, small brown wolf puppies scuffled with one another and crawled over the bodies of their patient parents.
Everywhere the muskegs were alive with mouselike lemmings. On stretches of drier ground, golden ground squirrels sat up like posts and whistled at each other and at the rough-legged hawks that spiraled overhead.
The dead land was dead no longer. The Barrens were vibrant with the brief burst of summer life.
During this period the boys and Angeline were busy making ready for the journey to the coast. Despite an increasing display of animosity from Elaitutna, the majority of the Eskimos remained well disposed to the young travelers and were ready to lend them a hand with their preparations. The older hunters pooled their memories of the Hudson Bay country in order to help Ohoto decide upon the route to be followed. Kakut and Bellikari agreed to collect the cache which the boys had left on Little River, and to keep the boys’ dogs for them through the summer. Kakut, Ohoto and two other men would journey south to Thanout Lake that coming winter as soon as ice and snow made sledding possible. They would bring the dogs with them, as well as the surplus possessions which the youngsters would be unable to carry with them to Hudson Bay. On their return journey to the Barrens it was hoped that the Eskimos would have a good load of rifles, ammunition, tea and flour purchased with some of the proceeds from the sale of the Viking relics.
Angeline took on the task of repairing the clothes and soft gear. She had so much help from the Eskimo women and girls that she found she was hardly allowed to do anything herself. However, the women encouraged her to learn how to make waterproof Eskimoan skin boots. Peetyuk’s mother was particularly
attentive to Angeline, and whenever Peetyuk appeared she addressed remarks to him which made him blush and sidle off. Neither Angeline nor the boys could understand what the Eskimo woman was saying and Peetyuk refused to translate, but it was not too hard to guess the gist of the remarks.
“Looks like Pete’s mother’s made her choice of a daughter-in-law,” Jamie announced innocently to Awasin one morning. Peetyuk, who was sitting nearby oiling his. rifle, pretended not to hear, but it was impossible to ignore Awasin’s reply.
“You are right, Jamie. And do you see how my sister is sewing clothes in Eskimo style? I hope Peetyuk will be a good husband. If he starves her, I will have to beat him, for a brother must look to his sister’s welfare.”
This was too much for Peetyuk. Jumping to his feet, he sprang roaring at his two friends, but they were ready for him. Catching his arms, they wrestled him to the ground. Jamie sat on him while Awasin, with great solicitude, felt Peetyuk’s forehead.
“He is hot, Jamie. Love fever, I think.” He raised his voice and shouted. “Angeline! Come quick. Peetyuk is sick. He is calling for you!”
Angeline had been sewing in one of the Eskimo tents. Now she flew to the travel tent. One look at the tableau on the ground showed her she had been tricked. She said not a word but grabbed the water pail, and before any of the boys could blink an eye she had doused all three of them with a stream of icy water. Whereupon she turned and tramped off to the Eskimo tent without a backward glance.
Spitting and gasping, the boys struggled to their feet.
“Anyway,” said Awasin when he had got his breath, “Peetyuk is cool again…for a little while!”
As June drew to an end the atmosphere in the Eskimo camp began to undergo a subtle change. Although most of the Eskimos remained friendly and helpful, they began to show symptoms of uneasiness when they were in the presence of the three boys. Awasin was quick to notice this, and one evening he queried Peetyuk about it. At first Peetyuk was evasive, but finally he admitted that there was trouble brewing.