In the beginning the trail north was not hard to follow. It had been pounded into the snow by many men headed for the placer mines around Candle. After a few days, though, it forked many times, and each time Anna had to wait for hours—once for two days—until some prospector came along and pointed her in the right direction. She traveled from sunup until dark, wrapping herself in a blanket and burrowing into a snowbank by a small fire at night. Sometimes she caught a rabbit in a snare trap, and there were three roadhouses along the way where she stopped for food and rest. In each one she offered her gold coins in payment, but the owners would read her note and refuse to take any money. Word spread up and down the trail about “the little squaw with the pack on her back,” and men tried to warn her that she was trying to do an impossible thing. But they soon saw that she was bound to push on, and all they could do was wish her luck.
She reached Candle in the last days of March, her boots worn to shreds and her body shriveled with cold and hunger and a terrible weariness. A miner, who had heard of her coming, sent his wife to take her into their house. There she stayed for many days, making a new pair of boots and regaining her strength, for the worst part of the journey was still ahead. And one morning in late April, she thanked her friends for their goodness and set out again.
Now there was no more trail to follow. Each fair morning Anna put her right shoulder to the sun and pushed out across the snow-covered land. In this way she could travel ten, sometimes twelve miles before dark. But there were days when the sun didn’t shine, and others when blinding gray storms trapped her where she was, holed up in a snow shelter in the midst of an endless emptiness, so that weeks passed and she had not yet found the Kobuk River. Still she pushed on.
One morning a rifle shot shattered the great stillness around her, then another. Anna looked up and saw a ptarmigan fall from the flock wheeling across the eastern sky. She shouted and stumbled across the snow, past caring about the danger that the unseen hunter might be an Eskimo. Soon she saw him, a grizzled old white man by a sled, a prospector who stood gaping at the sudden appearance of this childlike figure on the bare land. Anna fumbled loose her note and gave it to him, and when the old man had read it he shook his head in greater astonishment yet. “You can’t possibly make it,” he told her. “The river breaks up soon and that whole country’ll flood out. Better climb on the sled and let me haul you back to Candle.”
My mother thanked him but said that she had to go on. “Where is the Kobuk River?” she asked.
He pointed to the Northwest. “Another two days, maybe three. But that’s only the beginning, sister. Once that ice breaks. . .”
Then he looked at Anna’s face and stopped, for he saw, as the others had, that there was no use arguing with her. He gave her the ptarmigan and some matches and wished her well. He was the last human she was to see for a hundred days.
On the third morning, as the old man had said, she came to the Kobuk and turned east, following its frozen, twisting path up into the reaches of the Waring Mountains. With each passing day the sun rose higher in the big sky and the hours of daylight grew longer. Slowly the white land began to thaw, showing itself in widening brown patches on the slopes. In her father’s village, Anna knew, this would be a time of gladness and expectancy. The summer was coming, and soon the Hogatza would run red with fat salmon fighting their way upstream to spawn, and the great caribou herds would sweep across the tundra, and there would be as much fish and meat as anyone wanted to eat.
For her, though, it was a time of toil and brewing danger. She sank into the melting snow with each step and the icy hummocks sucked at her boots, and every foot forward was a struggling preparation for the next. When the moon shone she traveled by night, for the land froze again soon after each sundown. By day she listened uneasily to the groaning of the Kobuk, the thawing ice cracking and grinding as it thrashed to break free.
It went out with a great unexpected thundering on a warm May morning, the sudden surge of choked water thrusting great islands of ice fifty feet in the air, and flinging lesser pieces out on both banks. Terrified, Anna staggered away over the swampy land toward a piece of high ground to the south, crawling when she fell, and reaching safety only moments before the riverbanks exploded in coils of water that had finally broken through the winter-long dam of ice. For days she sat on her barren little island, cut off by the swirling flood, unable even to build a fire for want of wood. Finally the waters ebbed. Carefully she picked her way over the drowned land to the river. And sometimes following a sandy beach beneath the bank, sometimes hauling her way through the clutching tundra, she began moving east again, down from the mountains.
She had long since eaten all the food in her pack. She had no more luck snaring rabbits, but now and then found the uneaten parts of one, or of a ptarmigan, that a marauding hawk had dropped, and she ate those. She picked berries, many of them not yet ripe, and afterward lay writhing for hours until the great pain in her stomach went away. Mosquitoes sprang up from the bog and swarmed at her face. She made a fire only on the coldest nights, for her supply of matches was nearly spent.
One day when it was well into July and she was lightheaded with hunger, she came to a hill that seemed, somehow, to have a familiar look. Hope flared and gave her strength, and she went stumbling to the top, her mind’s eye already seeing the well-remembered lay of land that sloped down into Indian country. But when she looked out across the tundra it stretched away to a far horizon as strange as every one she had struggled up to in all the weeks past. She was lost in this bleak and forbidding land, still a terribly long way from home, and weary of fighting mosquitoes and the endless miles.
Suddenly sick at heart as well as in body, she let her weight carry her shakily back down to the river. She was very weak now and when she fell to her knees, she hadn’t the strength to get up. She dragged herself to the bank and dug up some roots and ate them. Then she lay back in the hot sun unable any longer to fend off the mosquitoes, and listened to the hushing flow of the Kobuk, and fell asleep.
It was still daylight when she woke. She had a sharp sense of some sudden danger and half-rose as she searched the bank for a bear. Then she turned toward the river. Watching her from his kayak, not twenty feet away, was a young Eskimo boy. For a tense and endless moment they stared at each other. And the instant Anna moved to scramble up the bank in flight, the boy’s paddle flashed and the kayak shot upstream and vanished at the first bend.
Anna slumped to the ground again. She knew what must happen now—the boy would return to his village and a war council would be called and they would dispatch a party of hunters to find her and kill her—but she simply hadn’t the strength to get up and run away. She made up her mind to stay where she was for one full day. Maybe when she had rested she would be able to strike out across the tundra, hiding there, away from the river, until the Eskimos came and went and the danger was past. If the boy had as much as a day’s journey up the river to his village, she would have a chance. Exhausted, she pulled the blanket over her head to keep off the mosquitoes, and tried to sleep.
In the night she heard forbidding sounds, sometimes an animal growl, sometimes voices that sounded like her mother and father warning her to be careful, and she tore loose from these nightmares weaker than ever. Not long after sunrise, though, she dragged herself erect and started out over the empty land. She moved very slowly, resting with every few steps, and hadn’t gone two hundred yards when the Eskimos came.
They saw her first, as soon as they came paddling around the river bend. She was up on the tundra, her bent figure plain against the open sky as she moved unsteadily among the hummocks. They hailed her and saw her stop, her shoulders sagging in defeat.
Anna stood without turning. She had tried very hard to return to her children. She had done her best. But she knew now that, alone, she could not hope to win out over the pitiless arctic. Even if the Eskimos had not found her, she was too spent with hunger and fatigue to go on any longer. Listening to th
em sloshing toward her across the tundra, she waited without fear, but with a great sadness, for the end.
Close behind her, one of them spoke: “Do not be afraid, my child. We have come to help you.”
Anna turned around. She saw that the man who spoke was Schilikuk, the Eskimo trader, the friend of her father. With him was the young boy she had seen on the river yesterday. Tears came to my mother’s eyes and she could not say anything, but the old man understood. He gave her pack to the boy and held her, and he said, “I saw your father not two moons ago. He had had word that you left Nome on foot. He asked me to watch for you. Each day my son has come down the river to wait. And now you are safe.”
They helped her back to the bank and built a fire. They warmed broth and fed it to her, then the meat of a roasted duck. When she could eat no more, they put her on some caribou skins in the bottom of the boat and began paddling upstream. For the first time since she had left Candle so long ago, Anna slept with a satisfied stomach, and without fear.
When they reached the old man’s village, his wife and daughter and an older son were waiting by the river. The women helped Anna out of the boat and put her to bed. Then the old man called the people to his house and said, “This woman is the daughter of the Indian trader, the one who supplies us with hides and red rock. He is my friend and no harm shall come to his child while she is under my roof. Is it understood?”
The people nodded and went away. And watching, Anna wondered how the great fear between Indian and Eskimo had begun, for these she had seen seemed no different from her own people.
The old man sat on the floor by her bed. “You will stay here with us until it is time to trade again in the spring,” he said. “Then I will take you to your father.”
But Anna shook her head. “I cannot wait so long,” she told him. “I have been separated from my babies for almost a year and I am sick to see them.”
The old man thought for a moment. “Then you must stay at least until the snow falls,” he said. “By that time you will be strong again and able to travel, and the walking will be better.”
Anna touched his hand in thanks. Soon she fell asleep again.
Before long she was well enough to help with the cooking and take her turn walking down to the river to empty the fish wheel. Little by little she grew close to the daughter, who was almost her age. Together they would pick berries, smoke and hang the salmon, and walk along the riverbank telling each other of their lives. Often, when Anna spoke of her dead husband, or of her children and her mother and father, she would be overcome with loneliness and sorrow. Then the daughter would hold her hand and comfort her. “The days are flying by,” she would say. “Soon you will be with your loved ones again.”
Fall came early that year. In September, ice was already moving in the river. Anna passed long hours searching the sky for the first hint of snow. “When will it come?” she asked the old man.
And he smiled and told her, “In its own good time, child. A hungry fisherman may watch the river day and night, and still there will be no salmon until they are ready to spawn.”
Then one morning she woke to a strange new stillness on the land. She sprang from the bed and ran to look out. During the night a steady snow had fallen and now the tundra was overlain with a soft white sheath many inches thick.
“It snowed!” Anna cried out, clapping her hands with excitement and rousing all the family. “Oh, it snowed, and now I can go home!”
They came to stand beside her, and the old man put a hand on her shoulder. “We are happy for you,” he said, “though our family will be lessened when you go.”
“May I leave today?”
“No, no. It is a long way and we must make preparations.”
Soon the family was to leave for the head of the Pah River where they would spend the winter trapping, the old man explained. Anna would go with them, and from there would have only a ten-day walk across the divide and down to the Hogatza. First, though, the sons must go off to hunt. When they returned with meat for the trip, the river would be frozen solid and they would be ready to start.
The next days passed very slowly for my mother. The family busied themselves preparing for the journey—the sons off stalking the caribou, the old man making the snowshoes Anna would need for covering the flat timber country on the far side of the divide, and the women packing supplies onto the sled. Anna did what she could to help, but her heart was already far up the river, and she could almost see the familiar hills that were her gateway to home.
Then at last the sons returned with plenty of meat, and enough new snow had fallen so the heavily loaded sled rode easily, and the old man said they would leave with first light. That night, the chief and village council ordered a great feast for Anna, and all the people turned out, for they had come to regard her as one of their own. Food was piled high on the willow floor of the Kashim, a sort of community hall—caribou flanks and muktuk, which is the raw meat of a whale’s flipper and considered a great delicacy by the Eskimos, and dried fish and a sort of ice cream made with fish meal, seal oil, and low bush cranberries—and the drummers played while the people sang and danced far into the night. At the end, each one came to my mother and took her hand, not saying anything, but bidding her good-bye in their own silent way.
Just after dawn, they closed up the cabin and made their way down to the river. The sons hooked the dogs into their traces and, with the older one walking ahead to break trail, they moved off in a single file, their breath hanging on the still, frozen air. By midmorning snow began to fall and the going grew heavy. No one could ride, for the sled was fully loaded, and they stopped frequently to rest. Still, they had covered twenty miles by dark, and the old man was well satisfied. He calculated that they had little over a hundred miles more to go.
Each day was much like the last, the silent miles of plodding through the snow, the bright campfire at night, and the dreamless sleep that follows great exertion. Then they would be off again. The long hours of hauling the sled made the dogs ravenously hungry. They wolfed down their food and yowled for more, and soon the meat supply had shrunk to practically nothing. Twice they stayed over an extra day while the sons struck out into the woods to hunt, and it was November before they reached the family’s wintering place on the Pah River. And the morning after they had made their permanent camp, the old man said to Anna, “Come, I will walk with you to the divide and see you safely into Indian country.”
The good-byes were sad. They all knew how unlikely it was that they would ever see one another again. The daughter, losing her friend, cried, and the old mother put Anna’s hand to her mouth and held her tight until Schilikuk grew impatient. “Good-bye,” Anna said. “Good-bye, my good friends.”
Her eyes were filled as she followed the old man out across the sea of untouched snow, but she kept them raised to the distant hills. In three hours time they reached the top of the divide, and the Eskimo stood searching the wooded land below. Then he said, “This is as far as I dare take you, child. I can do no more.” He gave her meat and dried fish, and pointed in the direction of the Hogatza. “If you lose your way, come back to these hills. We will be on the Pah until the days are long again, and will care for you until I can take you to your father.”
They looked a long time into each other’s eyes, then the old man said, “Go now, child,” and Anna started off down the hill. Once again she was alone on the cold and empty land.
All day she walked, and came to the Hogatza just before dark. She made a fire beneath the heavy spruces and ate some meat, but could not fall asleep for many hours. For now, with all the long months and the bad things behind her, her children and her people seemed very near.
Had they given her up for dead? Would the babies even know who she was?
Next day, she quickly realized that she was not so close to her family after all. Along all the length of the Hogatza that she could see to the south, the land looked as strange and unfriendly as ever, for she had never been here in
winter. But she knew now that if she had to crawl the rest of the way on hands and knees, she would get back to her Native village.
By the tenth day her food supply was very low. She wasted the morning trying to snare a rabbit, then decided to move on and try again at her next camp. She had not gone far when she came upon snowshoe tracks leading away from the river. A great dizzying joy took hold of her —they must have been made by one of her people!—and without thinking she began following the tracks out across the open snow. Not until the darkness fell did she suddenly realize what a great risk she had taken. As long as she followed the river, she knew where she was going, and could always make her way back to her Eskimo friends. Here, though, out on the open tundra, she was at the mercy of those tracks. If the wind blew them smooth in the night, or they were buried under a fresh snowfall, she would be lost on this vast and unknown white plain, without a landmark to guide her forward or back.
The night was long and seemed full of bad omens, a rushing wind and, one by one, the stars flickering out, and then the moon, as thick clouds slid under the sky. In the first gray daylight she searched for the tracks, found them, and pushed on, not even pausing for a morning meal. At midday, she noticed in the distance that the land seemed to fall away, and she hurried on, a certain unaccountable eagerness touching her heart. By the time she reached the last of the high ground she was pushing her snowshoes forward as hard as she could, and then she stood looking down, remembering, understanding the great pounding happiness that had hold of her. She knew where she was. Just below her lay the Hogatza River again, and the tracks she had followed had saved her many miles, cutting overland at the narrow neck of the river’s last wandering loop before it ran into the lakes that fed its mouth. She was perhaps three days walk from her father’s village. And his winter cabin was on the far bank, not five miles upriver. Would he be there? Would she be safe in his arms before this very day passed?
Full of new drive, Anna took off her snowshoes and clambered down the bank. Now she no longer needed to follow the tracks. Every twist and turn of the river was hauntingly familiar. Here she had snared rabbits from the time she was a girl—even now a snare line was strung there!—and there she used to slide down the shallow bank on the sled her father made her. With every step her spirits soared and her heart raced, and when she saw a thin line of smoke climbing into the sky ahead, tears of joy came to her eyes and she gave thanks, for she knew her father was only a shout away.
On the Edge of Nowhere Page 2