The Curse of the Viking Grave (20 page)

 

CHAPTER
22

Joshua Fudge

E
ARLY THE NEXT MORNING THE
travelers said good-by to the hospitable old couple and again took to the river. Jamie switched over to Awasin's canoe and Angeline now sat amidships. Peetyuk led the way in the other canoe with the young Eskimo, Mikkiluk, paddling bow and acting as pilot.

Under his leadership they had no difficulty negotiating the rapids they encountered during the next few hours. Towards noon Mikkiluk led the way to shore for a brew-up. When the boys and Angeline climbed the steep dike of boulders which formed the riverbank, they found themselves looking out over an infinite expanse of gray waters.

“
Dhaeo!
” Mikkiluk said proudly.

It was indeed the sea—for Hudson Bay is an ocean unto itself measuring over eight hundred miles from north to south and more than four hundred miles in breadth. The sight of that heaving immensity of endless waters had a profound effect upon Peetyuk and the two Meewasins, none of whom had ever seen salt water before.

“
Ai-ya!
He too big for me,” Peetyuk exclaimed.

“It would be bad to be out there in a storm,” Awasin agreed. “Now I know what you meant, Jamie. It is no place for canoes like ours.”

“Maybe we won't need the canoes—if we're lucky. If he hasn't gone yet we may be able to hitch a ride with the free trader. That is, if he's any sort of a half-decent fellow.”

 

They were not long in finding out what sort of fellow he was.

Big River now began to split up into channels that grew in number as they decreased in size. The voyagers were entering the tidal estuary which spreads out over dozens of square miles forming an almost impenetrable maze of channels and low, barren islets. Had it not been for Mikkiluk they might have searched for days before they found the trader's cabin. But Mikkiluk guided them unerringly from channel to channel until they rounded a final bend.

There, on a slight promontory, was an Eskimo camp in the process of being broken up. Mikkiluk yelled and waved and the canoes touched shore.

The goodbyes were quick. Jamie and the others were impatient, and as Mikkiluk pointed from the shore they turned and paddled away from him.

They hardly bothered to wave, for ahead of them on the flat and barren foreshore of Hudson Bay stood a large wooden house. But even more exciting was the sight of a sailing vessel anchored in a lagoon.

Although there was no sign of anyone moving on the
boat, Jamie was so fearful of losing a ride that he risked a swim by standing up in the canoe and announcing their arrival by yelling at the top of his voice.

His shout was answered by a chorus of yelps and howls from a dozen dogs tethered near the cabin. Then the door opened and a big, bald-headed man appeared, his face covered with shaving lather.

The man stood as if transfixed, staring at the approaching canoes. Then he rushed inside, appearing a moment later with a pair of binoculars. He continued to stare through these until the canoes had landed. Not a word did he say, nor did he acknowledge the arrival of visitors by the slightest gesture.

“He does not
seem
too friendly,” Awasin said anxiously as they hauled the canoes up above the tide level.

The big man lowered his glasses and stood immobile as the four travelers hesitantly approached him. They noted the bulging muscles of his bare arms, and the hard glare of his blue eyes peering at them over the beard of lather. When he finally spoke he transfixed his visitors, for he had a voice like the bellow of a moose.

“Where in the blank-blank-blank did
you
come from? And who in the blankety-blank
are
ye anyhow?”

Peetyuk and Awasin were tongue-tied, and even Jamie had trouble finding his voice.

“From the Kazon River, sir,” he stuttered. “From Thanout Lake, I mean.”

“Make up your blinking mind,” the big man shouted (for shouting was his normal way of talking). “I guess
you're a bunch of whopping liars anyway. Nobody
ever
canoed from Thanout Lake down Big River.”

“
We
did, sir, honestly,” Jamie said. “I'm Jamie Macnair.”

“Macnair? Macnair? No relation to Angus Macnair, be ye?”

“I'm his nephew, sir. These two, they're the son and daughter of Mr. Meewasin, the chief of the Crees at Thanout. And this is Peetyuk Anderson—his dad was a trapper on the Barrens.”

“Anderson too, eh? Why blank me, this is like old home week. Well, what are you standin' there for? Come in! Come in!” And he stood aside so they could enter his home.

Since there were no trees anywhere near the mouth of Big River, the house had been built of planed timber brought by schooner from Churchill. It had four rooms, many windows, three stoves, and was filled with shiny mail-order furniture. A glittering radio blared away from the kitchen table, and small light bulbs on the ceiling showed that the owner had a generating plant to make his own electricity.

The big man suddenly remembered his lathered face. With a muffled apology he grabbed a towel and wiped off the lather. Then he began to bustle about at a great rate, heaping coal on the kitchen range and slapping dishes on the table.

“Wherever ye belong, ye look nigh starved. You needs a scoff! What'll it be? Bacon and eggs and seal steaks suit ye?”

The travelers could only nod their heads dumbly, for they were overwhelmed by the change in their situation. Only a few hours ago they had been nomads living in a lonely, empty land. Now they were in the lap of such luxury as Peetyuk and the Meewasins had never known, and such as Jamie had not seen for several years. It was enough to strike them all dumb.

“Got no tongues in yere heads?” the big man shouted. “I'm Joshua Fudge. Belong to Newfoundland, I do. Been in this blank-blank country for thirty years now. Don't know why I stays. Knew Frank Anderson pretty good a long spell back. Told him he was a damn fool to go into the Barrens. He wouldn't listen. So you're his son, eh? Got his hair, anyway. And Angus Macnair. The old so-and-so's still living, is he? Trapped three seasons with him on the Mackenzie. You're his nephew? Pretty puny one, if you asks me. Now here's your grub. Scoff it down, me sons. Don't mind me. I talks a lot. But then I ain't had nobody but Eskimos to talk to for a year. Kind of get bottled up inside me, ye might say….”

Once started, Josh apparently could not stop talking. But as he roared on, the visitors dug into the welcome meal and began to feel a little more at home. By the time they had finished they had grown used to the bellowing, and had begun to like their host. When breakfast, or lunch, or whatever one would call it, was over, Josh poured pint mugs of coffee for all hands and herded them into the next room. This was a spacious living room equipped with easy chairs and with masses of books and magazines piled against the walls.

“Sit ye down, me sons. Sorry, missy! Don't mind what I calls you. It's only the way I has of talkin'. We don't see many ladies in these parts, not counting Eskimo ladies. Sorry to you, Peter, or whatever your name is. I meant no harm to the Eskimos. They're the finest friends I got. Might say the only friends. Now, then, what the devil is all this about coming down Big River? Where did you
really
come from, and how?”

Josh relapsed into temporary silence as Jamie told the story of the trip through the Barrens. The big man grew more and more interested, leaning forward in his chair until he was almost falling off the edge of it. “You don't say?” he would bellow at intervals, but he let Jamie continue until the tale was told.

“So that's the way of it? Well, me sons, ye came to the right place. Macnair in trouble? And the Mounties after you younkers? Ha! We'll see about all that. And them Viking things? I'd like to cast me eyes on them if I might. Now then, you younkers. I figured on sailing for Churchill day after tomorrow. That good enough for ye? We'll make the run in two days, weather willing. Once we makes Churchill I'll get on the telegraph. We'll find out about Angus right smart—that we will. And if needs be I'll go along of ye to The Pas. Time I had a holiday in the bright lights anyway. By the living blank-blank-blank there ain't nobody will lay a hand on ye if Josh Fudge is standing nigh!”

He paused as he saw that he was losing his audience. The excitement of their overwhelming welcome at Josh Fudge's, together with the warmth of the room and the
relief of knowing that their lonely voyage was at an end, had combined to render the travelers unbearably sleepy. Josh understood.

“Best haul down the sails for now, I reckons. Time for the watch below. Off with the lot of ye. There's two bedrooms. Yes, and even sheets on one of the beds. That'll be for the young lady. The rest of ye can bunk together. Git, now! I'll see to yere gear.”

 

The stain of the voyage down Big River was at an end, and the uncertainty about how they would get to Churchill was resolved. The boys and Angeline now had nothing to do but take things easy, eat, sleep, and satisfy their curiosity about their host.

Josh was a magnificent cook. The table was always heaped with fresh bread, doughnuts, great roasts of meat, potatoes, apple pies, stewed fruit and cookies. He never stopped talking, and he was full of yarns about his own experiences.

He told them how he had first come north as an apprentice with the Hudson Bay Company, but had tired of hard work for little pay and had gone off trapping on his own. During his thirty years in the arctic he had wandered all the way from Baffin Island to Alaska, amassing a not inconsiderable fortune in the process. Ten years earlier he had decided to settle down at the mouth of Big River, and here he had built his elaborate house which was now a legend for comfort all through the north. He did not work too hard any more, contenting himself with running a few traplines for white fox on the lower reaches of Big
River. More or less by accident he had also become the trader for the Big River Eskimos, who found it difficult to make the long journey south to Churchill even in their big sea-going canoes. So Josh took their furs and supplied them with their needs, but he ran the trading business almost at cost—making little or no profit on it. It was a service which he rendered to the Eskimos. In the summer months he and some of his particular friends amongst the Eskimo men took his schooner, the
Arctica
, on exploring and hunting voyages along the coasts of Hudson Bay. The previous year they had been as far north as Southampton Island, hunting walrus for winter dog food.

His stories fascinated all his visitors, but Peetyuk was particularly interested. The first sight of the sea seemed to have affected him like a fever. He could not hear enough about it and he was constantly pestering Josh to tell him more.

The day after their arrival Josh took the young people out to see his vessel. She was a fifty-foot Newfoundland schooner. In addition to her sails she was fitted with a powerful diesel engine. She had been specially built for ice navigation and was double-sheathed with iron-hard greenheart planking. She had a roomy main cabin with a good galley in it, a saloon table and bunks for four, and up in her bows was a forepeak cabin with four more bunks.

The boys climbed into every nook and corner of her.

“What a way to travel!” Jamie exclaimed as he sat with the others drinking coffee in the schooner's cabin. “No more canoes, no more rain, no more being wind-bound, no more leaky tents…”

“No more go down big rapids…” Peetyuk added.

“No more mosquitoes either,” said Angeline.

Josh Fudge's blue eyes gleamed as he listened to their enthusiastic remarks.

“Tell you what,” he boomed. “I'll sign the lot of ye on for a voyage. Why don't you come along of me this summer? We'll make a trip to Boothia—that's where the magnetic pole's supposed to be. Might bring it back for a souvenir.”

“Thanks a lot, Mr. Fudge—Josh,” Jamie replied. “I guess we'd all give our right arms to go with you. But we have to get on south. We have to sell the Viking things we found, and look after my uncle, and try and do something for the inland Eskimos.”

 

CHAPTER 23

Journey's End

I
MMEDIATELY AFTER BREAKFAST
all hands went to work loading Josh's furs and the youngsters' kit and canoes aboard the
Arctica
. Josh checked over the vessel's gear and tested the engine. By noon she was ready to sail.

It was a fine day with a brisk breeze off the land—a “quartering breeze,” as Josh called it. Helped by the boys, who took readily to their new roles as deckhands, Josh soon had the sails set, the anchor hauled home, and the schooner's head pointed out to sea.

She stood straight out from the land until the low-lying coastal plains had sunk out of sight behind them. Josh explained that it was necessary to stay well offshore because the coast to the southward was dangerously shoal. But the experience of leaving the land behind and finding themselves surrounded by a gray void of ocean unnerved Peetyuk.

“What we do if sink?” Peetyuk asked his friends anxiously.

“Whistle up a whale and get a ride ashore,” Jamie answered cheerfully. “Don't worry, we won't sink. And if we
did we still have our canoes, and there's a big dory for a lifeboat.”

The remark about whales must have been prophetic. As Josh altered course to run southward, Awasin, who was standing near the bow, let out a warning shout. Directly ahead of the vessel a score of small waterspouts broke the surface and a moment later a number of great, white gleaming bodies arched into view.

“Beluga—white whales,” Josh explained. “The bay's full of they.”

In their curiosity about the whales Peetyuk and the Meewasins forgot to be nervous, and within a few hours they had settled down to life afloat. They were full of questions and Josh was kept busy explaining how to steer a course, how to keep the sails properly set, and many other nautical matters.

The wind held steady off the land so there was no sea or swell to set the youngsters' stomachs heaving. Because there was no real darkness Josh kept the vessel driving south all through the night. Towards evening of the following day Awasin, who had been sent up the weather shrouds at Josh's order to act as lookout, spotted the distant loom of the gigantic concrete grain elevator at Churchill—the end of the railroad and the point from which prairie wheat is shipped to Europe in summertime over the short arctic route.

As the
Arctica
came around and headed into the mouth of the Churchill River, Josh started the engine and helped the boys take down the sail. They came chugging in past the ruins of ancient Fort Prince of Wales, which gives
Churchill its Eskimo name of Stone House, and pulled alongside the Government dock.

Peetyuk and the Meewasins stared bug-eyed at the huge structure of the elevator, towering several hundred feet into the air. They were equally amazed by the size of two ocean-going freighters loading at the long wharf, and by the roar and rattle of a freight train, laden with wheat, which was just pulling in to the dockside terminal at the end of its seven-hundred-mile run north from Winnipeg.

They were not allowed to stand and stare for long. Once the lines were made fast, Josh ordered everyone below.

“I wants all of ye to stay aboard, and keep out of sight,” he told them. “They's a big Mountie detachment here. I'll go ashore and mosey about. I knows everybody in Churchill and everybody knows me. When I finds out if the Mounties is looking for you I'll be back. Light up the galley fire and get yourselves a scoff; but mind now, keep down below!”

Jamie found himself left with the chore of getting supper. Peetyuk, Angeline and Awasin had their faces glued to the cabin portholes examining this—the first real town they had ever seen. Jamie was glad of a job to do, for he was now extremely nervous about the police.

Several hours went by before the youngsters heard the tramp of heavy boots on deck. Tensely they eyed the companion ladder and when Josh descended into view they were much relieved. But they tensed again when they saw that he was accompanied by a stranger.

The newcomer was clean-shaven and smartly dressed in city clothes.

“This here's a perfessor fellow from the south,” Josh said by way of introduction. “I run into Old Windy Jones and he tole me this here fellow was digging in the ruins at Fort Prince of Wales. I figured he'd know about them old things you got, so I tracked him down to his hotel. And here he is.”

The stranger smiled. “My name is Armstrong,” he said in a pleasant voice. “Actually I'm an archaeologist with the Dominion Museum in Ottawa. We're doing research on the old fort. My own field of study is the early colonial period but it just happens that I know something about Norse culture, too. Mr. Fudge tells me you have some things you think might be Norse?”

“Maybe we have,” Jamie replied cautiously, for he was afraid of saying too much to the wrong person.

“I assure you it's quite safe to tell me about it. Whatever you've got is yours by right of finding it. Nobody can take it away from you. And perhaps I might be of some help by giving an opinion on your finds.”

Jamie glanced at Peetyuk and Awasin, and when they nodded their heads he got to his feet, rummaged under one of the bunks, and pulled out the carefully wrapped packages. Placing them on the saloon table he cut the lashings and drew back the deerskin coverings.

The archaeologist bent over the table and minutely examined the sword and helmet. He whistled lightly between his teeth.

“These
seem to
be the real thing, boys,” he told them. “I didn't really believe it when Mr. Fudge told me what you thought you'd found. But this is almost certainly a twelfth
or thirteenth century Scandinavian sword and helmet. What's in the soapstone box?”

“We're not sure, sir,” Jamie replied, his caution forgotten. “We didn't want to mess up the stuff that's in it. We thought we'd better leave it alone till some expert could look it over.”

Armstrong nodded his head approvingly. “Very wise. But I see a Nordic armlet there—looks like a gold one too.”

“That belong Koonar. All stuff belong Koonar one time,” Peetyuk said.

Armstrong's eyebrows shot up. “How do you know the name of the man? I think you'd best tell me the whole story of your find.”

He sat on a bunk and listened intently as Jamie, assisted now and again by one of the others, told the story, beginning with the finding of the stone tomb the previous summer. By the time Jamie had finished the archaeologist had become extremely excited. He got to his feet and began pacing the length of the cabin.

“I don't want to say too much until we've checked all the facts. There's that lead tablet you have at your cabin, for instance. That will have to be examined by qualified runologists. But I'll go out on a limb partway—I think you young people
may
have made one of the most valuable and important historical finds of the century.

“Now we'd better decide how to proceed from here. These relics are far too valuable to be left lying around. I think you should place them in the hands of the police for safekeeping. I'll radio my colleagues in Ottawa this very
night…What's the matter? Did I say something wrong?” He cast a puzzled glance at Jamie, who now appeared very nervous and ill at ease and was desperately trying to catch Josh's eye.

“I reckon I know the trouble, Perfessor. But you got nothing to worry about, Jamie. I had a yarn with one of the corporals at the detachment. Old chum of mine. He says he never heard tell of you. There's no ‘wanted' poster out on you. What's more, he says since you're nearly sixteen there likely never was no idea of putting you into an orphan asylum. He figures they just wanted to make sure you didn't starve up in the woods alone. Looks like you run halfway across the arctic all for nothing. Running from shadows, you might say.” He chuckled at the expression of relief mixed with embarrassment on Jamie's face.

“There's more news for you. I wired the hospital at The Pas. Got an answer back right off. Angus Macnair's been convalescent for pretty near a month, and he's due for discharge anytime. So I sends a wire off to him, telling the old buffalo to meet us at Hudson Bay Junction Tuesday next, when the weekly train goes south.”

The archaeologist looked baffled as the three boys and Angeline leaped to their feet shouting with delight, and clamoring for more details.

“Whoa there!” Josh bellowed. “Steady down! The perfessor here'll think you're ‘bushed.' Where's your manners, eh? Missy Angeline, put on a pot of coffee for the man. Now then, Jamie, I figures you can trust the perfessor here. Windy Jones reckons he's okay, and Windy don't make no mistakes. You'd best do what he says.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fudge. You can certainly trust me, boys—and you too, young lady. We'll get a receipt from the police for the relics. If I get the reception I expect from my radio message to Ottawa, I'll come south with you myself and we'll arrange to have some museum specialists from Ottawa and Toronto meet us in Winnipeg. Perhaps you would agree to going on as far as Winnipeg? I can guarantee that the National Museum will pay all your expenses for the journey.”

 

A week later when the train left Churchill for the long run south it carried four excited youngsters, all of them togged out at Josh's expense in brand-new “store clothing.” The boys felt somewhat stiff and peculiar in their new gear, but Angeline was delighted with a smart new dress which made her feel as pretty as she looked—and that was pretty enough to draw a good many admiring glances from other male passengers, and to make Peetyuk growl a little with barely suppressed jealousy.

This was the first train ride Awasin, Angeline and Peetyuk had ever taken and they found it fascinating. Crowded on the rear platform they watched the rails slip away behind them as the clattering train swung away from the gray waters of Hudson Bay and plunged into the stunted spruce forests. And although a train trip was no novelty for Jamie he was just as excited as were the others, for a telegram had arrived shortly before their departure telling him that Angus Macnair would join the party at Hudson Bay Junction. It had been decided that they would all go on to Winnipeg together and enjoy a holiday
in that prairie city while the Viking relics were being examined by the experts.

Josh Fudge joined them on the open platform and after a moment he drew their attention to the pale evening sky where a black and straggling “V” of Canada geese also pointed southward.

“The Big River people claims them geese carries summer with them when they takes to wing,” he told his young companions. “And in the spring, they brings it back. Maybe when they pitches at Big River next year you younkers'll come along with they; and we can make that voyage to the nor'west we talked about…but that's for later on. Right now let's go and see what kind o' grub they gives a feller on this here ‘muskeg express.'…”