The Magnetic North Part 26

"Who is Yukon Inua? Where does he live?"

"Unner Yukon ice," whispered Nicholas. "Oh, the river spirit?... Of course."

"Him heap strong. Long time"--he motioned back into the ages with one slim brown hand--"fore Holy Cross here, Yukon Inua take good care Pymeuts."

"No tell Father Wills?"

"No."

Then in a low guttural voice: "Shaman come again."

"Gracious! When?"

"To-night."

"Jiminny Christmas!"

They sat and smoked and coughed. By-and-by, as if wishing thoroughly to justify their action, Nicholas resumed:

"You savvy, ol' father try white medicine--four winter, four summer. No good. Ol' father say, 'Me well man? Good friend Holy Cross, good friend Russian mission. Me ol'? me sick? Send for Shaman.'"

The entire company grunted in unison.

"You no tell?" Nicholas added with recurrent anxiety.

"No, no; they shan't hear through me. I'm safe."

Presently they all got up, and began removing and setting back the hewn logs that formed the middle of the floor. It then appeared that, underneath, was an excavation about two feet deep. In the centre, within a circle of stones, were the charred remains of a fire, and here they proceeded to make another.

As soon as it began to blaze, Yagorsha the Story-teller took the cover off the smoke-hole, so the company was not quite stifled.

A further diversion was created by several women crawling in, bringing food for the men-folk, in old lard-cans or native wooden kantaks. These vessels they deposited by the fire, and with an exchange of grunts went out as they had come.

Nicholas wouldn't let the Boy undo his pack.

"No, we come back," he said, adding something in his own tongue to the company, and then crawled out, followed by the Boy. Their progress was slow, for the Boy's "Canadian webfeet" had been left in the Kachime, and he sank in the snow at every step. Twice in the dusk he stumbled over an ighloo, or a sled, or some sign of humanity, and asked of the now silent, preoccupied Nicholas, "Who lives here?" The answer had been, "n.o.body; all dead."

The Boy was glad to see approaching, at last, a human figure. It came shambling through the snow, with bent head and swaying, jerking gait, looked up suddenly and sheered off, flitting uncertainly onward, in the dim light, like a frightened ghost.

"Who is that?"

"Shaman. Him see in dark all same owl. Him know you white man."

The Boy stared after him. The bent figure of the Shaman looked like a huge bat flying low, hovering, disappearing into the night.

"Those your dogs howling?" the visitor asked, thinking that for sheer dismalness Pymeut would be hard to beat.

Nicholas stopped suddenly and dropped down; the ground seemed to open and swallow him. The Boy stooped and saw his friend's feet disappearing in a hole. He seized one of them. "Hold on; wait for me!"

Nicholas kicked, but to no purpose; he could make only such progress as his guest permitted.

Presently a gleam. Nicholas had thrust away the flap at the tunnel's end, and they stood in the house of the Chief of the Pymeuts, that native of whom Father Wills had said, "He is the richest and most intelligent man of his tribe."

The single room seemed very small after the s.p.a.ciousness of the Kachime, but it was the biggest ighloo in the settlement.

A fire burnt brightly in the middle of the earthen floor, and over it was bending Princess Muckluck, cooking the evening meal. She nodded, and her white teeth shone in the blaze. Over in the corner, wrapped in skins, lay a man on the floor groaning faintly. The salmon, toasting on sticks over wood coals, smelt very appetising.

"Why, your fish are whole. Don't you clean 'em first?" asked the visitor, surprised out of his manners.

"No," said Nicholas; "him better no cut."

They sat down by the fire, and the Princess waited on them. The Boy discovered that it was perfectly true. Yukon salmon broiled in their skins over a birch fire are the finest eating in the world, and any "other way" involves a loss of flavour.

He was introduced for the first time to the delights of reindeer "back-fat," and found even that not so bad.

"You are lucky, Nicholas, to have a sister--such a nice one, too"--(the Princess giggled)--"to keep house for you."

Nicholas understood, at least, that politeness was being offered, and he grinned.

"I've got a sister myself. I'll show you her picture some day. I care about her a lot. I've come up here to make a pile so that we can buy back our old place in Florida."

He said this chiefly to the Princess, for she evidently had profited more by her schooling, and understood things quite like a Christian.

"Did you ever eat an orange, Princess?" he continued.

"Kind o' fish?"

"No, fruit; a yella ball that grows on a tree."

"Me know," said Nicholas; "me see him in boxes St. Michael's. Him bully."

"Yes. Well, we had a lot of trees all full of those yella b.a.l.l.s, and we used to eat as many as we liked. We don't have much winter down where I live--summer pretty nearly all the time."

"I'd like go there," said the girl.

"Well, will you come and see us, Muckluck? When I've found a gold-mine and have bought back the Orange Grove, my sister and me are goin' to live together, like you and Nicholas."

"She look like you?"

"No; and it's funny, too, 'cause we're twins."

"Twins! What's twins?"

"Two people born at the same time."

"No!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Nicholas.

"Why, yes, and they always care a heap about each other when they're twins."