The Gaunt Gray Wolf Part 23

Immediately drum beats were heard within the tent, accompanied by a low groaning and moaning, which gradually increased in volume and pitch until presently it became a high, penetrating, blood-curdling screech. This continued for perhaps half an hour, the drum beats never ceasing their monotonous rat-tat-tat.

The shaman, or medicine man, thus working himself into a frenzy, at length believed he saw within the lodge the ghostly form of the particular Matchi Manitu, or evil spirit, responsible for the disappearance of the caribou and the resulting famine.

This spirit's wrath it was believed had for some reason unknown to the Indians been aroused against them. Only the shaman could get into communication with the spirit, and learn from it what course the Indians would be required to pursue to placate its wrath, and remove its curse.

When the appearance of the spirit was announced, the shaman began to supplicate and implore the Matchi Manitu to withdraw from the people the pursuit of Famine; to return the caribou to the land; and to preserve the lives of the dying.

Presently in tones of joy the shaman announced that he had succeeded in enlisting the services of the Matchi Manitu, and with the announcement the din within the lodge ceased, and for several minutes mysterious whisperings were heard.

Suddenly the shaman threw over the lodge, and in a state of exhaustion tottered forward. Still under the influence of the paroxysms into which he had worked himself, he delivered in a wandering, disconnected jumble of meaningless sentences the demands of the Matchi Manitu.

These consisted of many unreasonable and impossible feats that the people were required to accomplish before the Spirit of Starvation--the Gaunt Gray Wolf--would cease to follow upon their trail.

The Indians began at once to break camp. Sishetakushin had reported no caribou to the southward. Their only remaining hope was to reach the haven of Ungava post to the northward; and they were to begin the life-and-death struggle northward at once--a struggle in which many were to fall.

A sense of vast relief was experienced by Shad when Sishetakushin resumed the march. Famished and weak as he was, this was inexpressibly preferable to a continuance with the starving crowd, and he turned his back upon the camp, little caring whence their trail led.

For a while they continued northward upon the frozen bed of a stream, which they had been following for several days, then a sharp turn was made to the eastward, and as the sun was setting they came upon the ice of a wide lake.

At the end of a half-hour of slow plodding across an arm of the lake, they entered the edge of spa.r.s.ely wooded forest and halted.

Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn began at once to remove the snow from the top of what appeared to be a high drift, and a little below the surface uncovered the roof of a cache similar to the one they had made on the sh.o.r.es of the Great Lake of the Indians, where Shad and Ungava Bob had found them.

Shad's heart gave a bound when the object of the journey was revealed to him. Here was food and promise of life! And Bob's words, so often repeated when they were stranded on the island, flashed into his mind:

"It's th' Lard's way. He's watchin' you when you thinks He's losin'

track o' you. He's takin' care o' you an' you does your best t' take care o' yourself."

Manikawan and her mother stretched the deerskin cover upon wigwam poles used the previous summer and still standing near the lake, and Shad cleared the snow from the interior of the wigwam, while the women broke boughs and laid the bed.

In the meantime, Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn opened the cache and transferred its precious contents to the wigwam. A fire was kindled, and in the cosy warmth of their shelter they broke their fast, which had now extended over a period of thirty-six hours.

The small portion of dried caribou meat doled out to each was far from satisfying. Some of the tea which Ungava Bob had given the Indians still remained. A kettle of this was brewed, and it served to stimulate and warm them. Then they lighted their pipes and for a time smoked in silence.

At length Sishetakushin, turning to Mookoomahn, began:

"On the Lake of the Beaver to the northward we have a small store of atuk weas (deer's meat). We also have there the cover of a lodge.

Three suns will pa.s.s before we can reach this store of food. On the Great Lake we have another store.

"Sishetakushin and the woman will travel to the Lake of the Beaver.

With the store of provisions and the lodge which we find on the Lake of the Beaver we will travel northward to the lodge of the white man, where the water of the river joins the big sea water, and where we shall find food.

"Mookoomahn and the maiden, with the friend of White Brother of the Snow, will travel southward to the Great Lake. Mookoomahn will show the white man the way to the lodge of White Brother of the Snow. Then he will return to the Great Lake and trap the marten and the mink.

"When the sun grows strong, and drives away the Spirit of the Frost, Mookoomahn will travel northward to the Lake of the Beaver. There he will find Sishetakushin and the woman to welcome him. He will take his food from the waters as he travels.

"The maiden will remain in the lodge of White Brother of the Snow.

Sishetakushin gives her to White Brother of the Snow. She is his.

White Brother of the Snow is of our people. He will be glad, and the maiden will be glad. White Brother of the Snow has white man's food in great store. Mookoomahn will not be hungry."

"Mookoomahn will do as Sishetakushin directs," answered Mookoomahn.

For a time all smoked in silence, then Sishetakushin resumed:

"Of the dried meat on the toboggan Mookoomahn and those who are with him will eat but once during each sun. They will eat little. If they eat much, the meat will soon be gone, and the Spirit of Starvation will overtake them and destroy them."

"Mookoomahn and those that are with him will do as Sishetakushin directs," said Mookoomahn.

A series of signs and pantomime conveyed to Shad the substance of Sishetakushin's remarks. He understood that on the morrow the party was to separate. That he with Mookoomahn and Manikawan were to return to the Great Lake, and that they had been cautioned to husband their provisions.

He surveyed the small bundle of jerked venison with misgivings. Even with one light meal a day he calculated that it could not last them above three weeks. Their journey from the cache on the Great Lake to their present position had consumed a month, including a period of one week when they were stormbound.

Should they be fortunate and encounter no storms, the food, sparingly doled out, might serve to sustain them. If storms delayed them, it certainly would not.

In any case their lives must hang in the balance until the cache was reached, unless game were encountered in the meantime, which seemed highly improbable.

A meagre meal was served at an early hour the following morning. As usual, camp was broken long before day, and then came the farewells.

The parting between Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn was affecting, that between the women more stoical. Shad regretfully shook the hands of the old Indian and his wife. They had been friends to him, and he had no expectation that he should ever see them again.

Then Shad and his companions turned southward into the wide wastes of frozen desolation that lay between him and his friends. It was to be a journey of tragic experiences--a journey that was to try his metal as it had never yet been tried.

XX

THE FOLK AT WOLF BIGHT

The Grays were very lonely and the little cabin at Wolf Bight seemed desolate and deserted indeed during the first days following the departure of the trappers for the interior. Mrs. Gray and Emily cried a little, and often Emily would say:

"I wonders where Bob is now, Mother, an' what he's doin'?"

"He's workin' up th' river, la.s.s, an' th' dirty weather's makin' th'

trackin' an' portagin' wonderful hard for un," she would answer, when it stormed; or, when the sun shone, "They's havin' a fine day for travellin' now."

But presently the preparations for Emily's departure for school occupied their attention to the exclusion of all else, and they forgot for a time their loneliness.

Her going was to be an event of vast importance. It was an innovation, not only in their household but in the community, for never before had any of the young people of the Bay attended school; and never before, save on the occasion when Emily had been taken to the St. Johns hospital the previous year, to undergo an operation, had any of the girls--or women, either, for that matter--been farther from home than Fort Pelican.

When Bob came into his little fortune through the salvage of the trading schooner, "Maid of the North," Mrs. Gray had urged that Richard rest from the trail for one season, and at the same time give the animals an opportunity to increase. This he had done, and during the previous winter, when Bob also was at home, he and Bob had occupied their time in the woods with the axe and pit saw, cutting a quant.i.ty of timber and planking.

There was no immediate need of this timber, and when Bob was gone Richard determined to utilise it in the construction of a small schooner, in antic.i.p.ation of the trading operations to begin the following year. Such a vessel would be a necessity in transporting supplies from Fort Pelican to the store at Wolf Bight.

Therefore, he began at once the work of laying the keel. There were nearly three months at his disposal before he would go out upon his trapping trail, and in this time, hoping to accomplish much, he remained at his task from early morning until dusk drove him from it.

Thus occupied, Mrs. Gray and Emily seldom saw him, save at meal hours and after candle-light in the evening, and this made them doubly lonesome.

One day late in August, Douglas Campbell sailed his boat over to Wolf Bight to spend the day with his friends and to announce that a week later he would come for Emily to take her to Fort Pelican, where they were to connect with the mail boat for St. Johns.

This recalled the near approach of Emily's departure, and the days that followed pa.s.sed with amazing rapidity. Emily's new woollen frock--the first woollen frock she had ever possessed--needed still some finishing touches. It was to be her Sunday dress--to be worn at church, where there would be many fine people to see her--and as pretty as the mother's skill and care could make it.