The Curse of the Viking Grave (11 page)

 

CHAPTER
11

Elaitutna

D
URING THE NEXT FEW WEEKS THE
boys and Angeline remained at the Eskimo camp. Although the rivers had broken up, they were still full of floating ice and could not yet be used as canoe routes. The spring thaw, which comes so swiftly to the arctic plains, had turned the country into a morass of melting snow, swollen lakelets and sodden muskeg, so that overland travel was also out of the question for the time being.

Although the travelers were impatient to reach the Viking cache, they did not find the enforced delay difficult to endure. Life with the Eskimos was full of interest.

Jamie and the two young Crees soon felt at home amongst the Ihalmiut, but all the same they insisted on erecting their own tent. Eskimo hospitality, as they had found, was apt to be a little overwhelming. However, they ate many of their meals with the people, and they were in great demand as guests.

The Eskimo diet consisted almost entirely of deer meat, cooked in a variety of ways and sometimes eaten raw. During the first days of the visit, deer meat was in short
supply, since without ammunition the Eskimos had not been able to kill many of the migrating does. However, on the second day at the Innuit Ku camp, Peetyuk led Jamie and Awasin off on a hunting expedition, and when they returned late that day, having killed six fat deer, they were greeted as mighty hunters. These deer were particularly welcome since the Eskimo men were anxious to get their kayaks covered in preparation for the arrival of the bucks and good deer hides were scarce.

Jamie and Awasin watched with keen interest as Kakut prepared his kayak. First he soaked the fresh hides in the river for two days, then he scraped both sides, removing the hair and the fat. The resulting parchmentlike skins were moistened again and carefully stretched over the skeleton of the kayak, and the hides were stitched tightly together by three women. This stitching, done with sinew and bone needles, was so fine that the finished seams were completely waterproof.

As the skins dried they shrank, so that the kayak covering was stretched as tightly as a drumhead.

One morning Kakut decided to test his kayak. He picked it up easily—for it weighed almost nothing—carried it to the edge of the lake and laid it carefully on the water, where it floated as high and as light as a pinch of thistledown. Wading out alongside it, Kakut nimbly swung himself into the tiny cockpit, picked up his long double-bladed paddle, and shot off over the lake.

It looked easy, and when Peetyuk slyly intimated to Awasin that
only
an Eskimo could handle a kayak, Awasin
incautiously took up the challenge and agreed to try his skill.

Peetyuk quietly spread the word around the camp, and when Awasin went down to the shore he discovered to his dismay that almost all the Eskimos had gathered to watch him. Trying to ignore the expectant mob, he launched the kayak and, having drawn on a pair of skin boots—
kamikpak
—which came above his knees and were quite waterproof, he waded out.

Getting into the kayak proved harder than it looked. On his first attempt he tipped the little craft over on its side and half filled it. Grimly he hauled it ashore, emptied it, and prepared to try again. This time, by dint of jumping into the cockpit rather than attempting to step into it, he managed to get aboard. Instantly the kayak tipped to the left, almost spilling him out.

Jamie, Peetyuk and the Eskimos were vastly entertained. Shouts of laughter and of good-natured advice rained down on poor Awasin as he fought to get the skittish little boat under control. Finally he got it balanced and took a stroke with the paddle. The kayak shot ahead so fast that Awasin's mouth fell open in surprise, and the watchers on shore almost convulsed themselves with mirth. Once under way, Awasin seemed unable to stop. The kayak leaped out over the icy waters of the lake with Awasin paddling for dear life as he tried to turn for shore again. Having described a huge and erratic circle, he eventually got the long, pointed bow headed for the land. But as he approached the shore he attempted to slow
down by backwatering too strongly with one end of the paddle. Before he could as much as change his grip the kayak tipped right over and Awasin disappeared from view. A moment later his head popped to the surface and he began dog-paddling for shore. He had not gone a yard, however, when a look of blank surprise came over his face. His struggles ceased and he rose slowly to his feet, for the water was hardly more than knee deep.

Peetyuk could not contain himself. Choking with laughter, he rolled on the gravelly shore until Awasin, stumbling over unseen rocks, came charging up the beach, grabbed Peetyuk by one leg, and hauled him into the lake. Helpless with laughter, Peetyuk could put up no resistance. His head disappeared under the surface, and when he came up again, spouting water like a whale, the Eskimos lost all control and the shrieks of mirth became ear-splitting.

The kayak was rescued and dried out, and then Jamie was offered a chance to show what
he
could do. He declined, firmly but politely, while secretly making up his mind that the only way they would ever get
him
into the flimsy craft would be to hog-tie him first.

 

One day about a week after their arrival at the summer camp, Ohoto (who had been making daily excursions on foot toward the south) returned to camp in a great state of excitement. He brought the news that the long-awaited herds of bucks were coming.

The six kayaks which had been readied for use were hurriedly carried over a ridge behind the camp to the
banks of the small but swift river which flowed into Innuit Ku from the northeast. Here they were concealed in a clump of willows. Beside each kayak an Eskimo hunter lay down in hiding.

Two other men went loping across country to the east where a long row of
inukok
, spaced about fifty feet apart, had been built for nearly a mile in a diagonal line toward the southeast. The two men ran from stoneman to stoneman, crowning each with a big lump of muskeg from which dried grasses waved. The addition of these “heads” gave the stonemen a resemblance to crouching human beings. This was a “deer fence,” and its function was to deflect the approaching herds toward the particular crossing place on the river near which the hunters and kayaks lay hidden.

Back at camp the women and children were busy rounding up the dogs and tying them securely so they would not rush out and alarm the caribou. All fires were put out and the ashes damped with water so the deer would not catch the smell of smoke.

When everything was ready those Eskimos who were not otherwise engaged climbed the slope of the ridge near camp and took up vantage points from which they could observe the hunt.

Peetyuk, Awasin, Jamie and Angeline took up a position at the north end of the ridge, almost directly above the chosen crossing place.

Old Kakut was at the south end, searching the southern horizon with an ancient brass telescope. At last he laid down the tube and began waving his arms up and down.
Another man, stationed not far from Jamie, repeated the signal so that the hidden hunters by the kayaks could see it.

“They come now,” Peetyuk muttered to his friends.

Straining their eyes, the watchers could just make out a blob of movement on the slopes of a hill two miles away to the south. As they watched, it began to resolve itself into a familiar pattern. Long skeins of caribou twisted slowly down the slope and headed out along the floor of the valley leading past the ridge. These were all bucks and they were in no hurry. They seemed to drift aimlessly before a light southerly wind, often stopping to browse on reindeer moss which had been exposed by the melting snows.

They moved unbearably slowly—or so it seemed to the watchers. Finally the lead bucks reached the stoneman fence. Although they did not seem much frightened by it, they nevertheless swung away towards the northwest.

Two hours after they had first appeared in view the lead bucks reached the riverbank. Here they milled about for another twenty minutes, apparently undecided whether or not to cross the swift stretch of water. Then the pressure of the herds building up behind made up their minds for them and a bunch of fifty or sixty animals plunged into the stream. With heads held high, they struck out buoyantly for the opposite shore.

Jamie's gaze was glued to the barely discernible shapes of the kayakers, but they remained motionless.

“What's the matter?” he whispered to Peetyuk. “Why don't they launch the kayaks? Those deer are pretty near across!”

“Wait,” Peetyuk calmed him. “Watch close, you see.”

Having crossed safely, the first deer shook themselves like dogs and began to move on north. Now a herd of perhaps a hundred which had been watching them from the south shore seemed to conclude that the crossing was a good one, and they too plunged into the fast-moving current.

They were halfway over when the six hunters leaped to their feet, seized their kayaks, flung them into the stream and jumped aboard. Whipping the water with their paddles, they shot down on the startled deer and in a few seconds had cut them off from both banks.

The caribou whirled in panic, swimming upstream and circling so tightly that they got in each other's way, which increased their panic. In the meantime each kayaker, while handling his light craft with one hand, pulled a short spear from its lashings on the foredeck. Wielding these three-foot lances tipped with broad triangular steel blades, the hunters closed in on the milling animals.

One quick thrust into the back of each swimming buck just behind the ribcage was enough. Then the hunter maneuvered his kayak within reach of another deer. Soon the cold green waters of the river were darkening and becoming turbid with blood. A score of dead and dying deer were drifting swiftly downstream from the killing place. The survivors scrambled ashore wherever they could, and made off at an ungainly gallop across the plains.

The whole incident, from the time the hunters appeared until the deer fled, had taken no more than five minutes. As Jamie, Awasin and Angeline got stiffly to their feet
along with the Eskimos and began to make their way down the hill to the crossing place, the two men who had gone off to repair the
inukok
appeared away downstream. Each of them had a long pole with a hook on it, and they were busy hauling the floating carcasses to shore.

“Your people don't
need
rifles,” Jamie told Peetyuk admiringly. “That was the slickest hunt I ever saw.”

Peetyuk grinned. “They hunt good, but not all time can catch deer at river. Then come hungry times, if have no bullets for guns. Come on. Now we have big feed of marrowbones.”

 

There was a gigantic celebration in the camp that night. Everyone stuffed himself on the sweet white marrow from
the long bones of the bucks and on other delicacies such as roast kidney, hearts, and whole broiled briskets dripping with fat. When the eating had eased off a little (it never ceased entirely), the drums came out and there were songs and dancing.

One of the dancers was an ancient old man whose face was so lined and creased it looked like a piece of corrugated cardboard. Yet despite his age he was very agile, and when he sang and danced everyone stopped to watch and listen.

“Who's that old fellow?” Jamie asked Peetyuk.

“He Elaitutna. Most old man of Ihalmiut, He
angeokok
, big magic maker. He speak to many spirits, and he know many story. Tomorrow, maybe, he tell you some.”

The next afternoon Peetyuk took his friends to visit Elaitutna. The old man did not rise from his pile of robes when they entered his tent, but only nodded and looked sharply at them with tiny, jet-black eyes which were almost hidden under folds of wrinkled skin. After a time he spoke briefly to Peetyuk, and Peetyuk replied at considerable length before explaining the conversation to his friends.

“He ask what you do in our land. I tell him about Viking cache and say we come to get. He not like that. Maybe he try stop us. He think Viking cache some kind of magic. Wait now, I try find out.”