People of the Deer (6 page)

Franz feared the dead, for his Indian blood runs strongly through the imagery of his white man's mind. He did not touch the frozen corpse, but turned his dogs back until he came to the igloo of Angleyalak. The passageway was open, though only a narrow cleft remained free of drifts. Fearful of what lay under the still dome, Franz called aloud, but got no answer. He would have turned and fled from the place then, but faintly he heard a sound, as of an animal that has been maimed and left for dead.

Franz tied his dogs. Then, summoning all his courage, he wormed his way down the long passage that was nearly filled with drifted snow. He came in time to save the younger children. They were both awake, and waiting for their father. Now dimly they saw that he returned, and the whimpers of the little girl grew louder.

Franz covered Pama's frozen corpse and the horrible body of Iktuk with some skins taken from the ledge, and then he stayed a full day in that igloo. He fed the two bony things he had found on soup, cooked on his Primus stove—and he waited patiently while the two children retched it up again; then he once more fed them soup until their rebellious stomachs would accept the nourishment. He kept the tiny stove going at full heat until the igloo's dull walls brightened and filmed with ice, as the temperature rose rapidly. The little girl held out her hands to him, trembling little talons that were white with frost, and Franz massaged them gently till some warmth returned.

By the next day the children were already displaying the incredible resilience of the very young. Franz did not dare linger any longer for he had no dog feed on his sled, and little enough food for himself. Also there were the presences of Iktuk, Pama and Angleyalak. A hundred miles lay between Franz and Windy Camp and he was anxious to begin the trek.

He unloaded and cached the frozen corpses of a dozen white foxes from his sled, and in their place he spread out his own robes with the two children carefully wrapped amongst them. Then he drove south from Ootek's Lake, and in two days was lighting a wood fire in the stove by Windy Bay.

Hans came in from his trap line a short time afterwards, and if he was surprised to find the children at the cabin, he did not show it. In a few days he found himself left alone with the orphans, for Franz had forgotten his old anger against the People, and he had forgotten his impatience with their improvident ways. The finding of Kunee and Anoteelik had wrought a great change in him and as soon as he was satisfied that the children would be secure during his absence, he hitched up his dogs again and drove back to the Little Hills.

At Katelo's igloo, on the banks of Kakumee Lake, he found starvation had reached the ultimate limits before death intervenes. Franz distributed part of the flour and meat that he had brought with him, then drove on to all the occupied igloos he could find, giving to the family in each enough food to prevent immediate disaster. At Ootek Lake and at Halo Lake there was still no sign of life and Franz had no knowledge of what had happened to the families who had once been there.

When the food was distributed—and it was only a miserable handout, though it was all Franz had—he returned at once to Windy Bay and after one day's rest, drove southward on the three-hundred-mile journey to the nearest outpost of white men. This was a tiny trading post at Deer Lake, run by a young half-breed manager who was himself completely isolated from the world in winter, except that he had an ancient short-wave radio over which it was sometimes possible to transmit his halting signals in Morse code.

Franz reached Deer Lake in seven days, and of those seven, he spent three fighting a spring blizzard. Once at the post, he and the manager labored over a message that would tell the outside world of the plight of the Ihalmiut. It was a message of great importance—for it was to be the first message ever to go out from the inland plains; the first cry for help in all the centuries that the People had lived their hidden lives within the land. Franz was the first of those—traders, trappers or missionaries who had heard of the People and their plight—to take it on himself to seek help for them. He was the first to care.

The message went out slowly, each word tapped out two or three times. At Churchill the big radio station picked it up and relayed it south. The days were passing and Franz waited at Deer Lake for the answer which was so long delayed. The days were passing.

As to what happened to the message—who can say? At first, no doubt, the authorities were skeptical of its validity, and in any case one must investigate before one spends the funds of government. Also it was the first time that the authorities had been called on to help the inland People—“Why should they need help now, after all these years?” But at last the wheels began to turn. A message was dispatched to The Pas. An aircraft was hired and a flight was made. That flight failed. A second flight was made and a plane landed at the extreme south end of Nueltin and unloaded its supplies.

Meanwhile Franz had been expecting an aircraft from Churchill, the direct and shortest route, and when he heard that someone had sent a plane from The Pas instead, he left Deer Lake to find the cache which had been made over two hundred miles short of its destination. Time was running out.

Franz traveled over a hundred miles to find the cache, and when he found it he discovered that it consisted largely of things that would be of no aid to the dying men and women in the camps. There were white beans; sacks of white beans, for people who had no fuel for fires and whose world was still one of ice and snow.

Loading his tired dogs with the things that could be used, Franz started north again: two hundred miles of bitter driving, with the spring thaws already making progress very difficult.

Time had been running out.

Franz had traveled almost a thousand miles on behalf of the People. He came to the camps again in time to learn that Eepuk, Aljut, Uktilohik, Elaitutna, Epeetna, Okinuk, Oquinuk and Homoguluk—people he knew well—had not been able to await his corning. It was spring. These dead ones were buried under rock piles where the snow had left the ridges. There were others, too, who did not have the benefit of graves, but whose bodies were attended to by wolves and wolverines, so that their spirits may never know the rest that comes only to those who are buried properly. In the camps where these had died there had been none left to bury them.

Franz had done much for the Ihalmiut, and in so doing had done much for himself. The old bitterness and anger, the legacy of his own treatment at the hands of white men, was all gone. No, not quite gone, but turned against those who deserved it, and no longer against the People of the Little Hills.

As for the People—it was only another spring for them, no different from twoscore springs which had been theirs during the last half-century.

And there was something to balance the ledger this time, for now a message had gone out. Now the government could not ignore the People any longer, nor plead ignorance of the charges who had been placed in its care by the white man's law. The message had gone out. The response to it had been too slow, and badly bungled, but at least there
had
been a response; and at long last the government acknowledged that in the great plains there lived a people who were its wards.

Fifty years of darkness had intervened between the time of Tyrrell's visit and this belated recognition of the People he had found. Now half a century of casual forgetfulness was at an end, and for the second time in their long history as squatters in this land of ours, the existence of the Ihalmiut was admitted. And surely this was a bright victory for the conscience of our race, not dimmed or clouded because that victory came too late to do more than prolong the last dying spasms of the People of the Little Hills.

4. The Lifeblood of the Land

On the day following the arrival of Hans and the children, I was awakened by the sound of heavy firing. The crash of gunshots intruded itself into my dreams until I thought I was again back in the Italian hills, listening to an exchange of rifle fire between the German outposts and our own. When I came to full consciousness the firing remained, so I hurriedly pulled on my clothes and went out into the June morning.

Franz, Anoteelik and Hans were sitting on the ridge above the cabin and they were steadily firing their rifles across the river. On the sloping southern bank nearly a hundred deer, all does, were milling in stupid anxiety. I could see the gray bursts of dust as bullets sang off the rocks, and I could hear the flat thud of bullets going home in living flesh.

The nearest animals were waist-deep in the fast brown water and could not return to shore, for the press of deer behind cut off retreat. The does that were still on land were running in short, futile starts, first east then west again, and it was some time before they began to gallop with long awkward strides, along the riverbank. Their ponderous bellies big with fawn swung rhythmically as they fled upstream, for their time was nearly on them.

When the last of the straggling herd had passed out of range beyond the first bend of the river, the firing stopped and the three hunters ran down the bank and hurriedly began to clear the snow away from the green back of a canoe, which lay beside the cabin. I helped them and in a few moments the canoe was free and ready for the water. Franz and I pushed off into the still-flooded river, and we worked with all our power to gain the other bank before the current could sweep us out into the opening bay. It was hard and exciting work, but even in the fury of that struggle I had time to notice that the water was not all brown. Long, tenuous, crimson streamers were flowing down the river, fading and disappearing as they joined the full flow of the current. We grounded on the opposite shore and leaped into the water to beach the canoe, out of the river's grasp.

The excitement of the shooting, and of the river crossing, ebbed as suddenly as it had risen and I stood on the rough rocks along the slope and looked down on the dead and dying deer. There were a dozen of them lying in my sight along the shore. Their blood was still pumping thickly into the foam-flecked eddies at the river's edge, for only two of them were dead. The rest lay quivering on the rocks and lifted heavy heads to watch us blankly or, struggling to their feet, plunged forward only to fall again.

It was a sight of slaughter and of horror, and the knowledge that each of these dying beasts was swollen with young did not make the bloody spectacle easier to bear. I was seeing the blood of the land flow for the first time, but though my eyes were still those of a stranger and I was sickened by the sight, Franz was quite unperturbed. Rapidly, and with the agility of a deer himself, he leapt among the rocks to reach the cripples. He carried a short-bladed knife and as he reached each wounded doe he made one dexterous thrust into the back of her neck and neatly severed the spinal cord running inside the vertebrae. It was efficient and it was mercifully quick. Within ten minutes all the wounded animals lay still and Franz began the task of cutting up the meat.

One long stroke sufficed to open up the bellies. The sharp blade was used with such control that while it split the skin, it did not even mark the soft tissues of the swollen stomachs, distended with the fermenting leaves and lichens that the deer had fed upon. Then, reaching a bare arm into the hot cavities, Franz disemboweled each beast with one strong pull. Carefully he removed the livers and the kidneys and, using his knife as a chopper, he severed the hindquarters from the trunks. Leaving the forelimbs untouched, he sliced through the skin under the chins and cut out the heavy tongues.

I watched with fascination and repulsion, but so sure were all Franz's movements and so deft his touch, that the horror of the scene began to dull. I was filled with admiration for the man's skill. Though I did not know it then, I was watching a man of Tyrrell's deer people do his work, for Franz had learned his knacker's arts at the hands of the Ihalmiut, who are, in truth, a People of the Deer.

In less than twenty minutes all the carcasses were drawn and we were carrying the hindquarters to the shore. Where half an hour ago a herd of living deer had stood, now there were only shapeless, bloody heaps of meat that steamed gently upon the melting snow. The transition was too quick to have its full effect upon me then, and by the time I had lived in the land long enough to understand the truth behind a killing such as this, I too came to view it through Northern eyes, and to recognize the stark utility of death. But now it was my first spring in the Barrens, and the deer had returned. With their coming the long hiatus that life suffers during the interminable winter months was over. Outside the cabin the meat-hungry dogs raised their gaunt faces and howled exuberantly as each new change of breeze brought the strong smell of deer.

Kunee and Anoteelik were in an ecstasy. Anoteelik rushed knee-deep into the swollen river to help us land and eagerly snatched up a piece of still-warm meat and wolfed it down with feverish excitement. I remembered that this was the first fresh meat he had tasted in long months, and Anoteelik had not yet forgotten those starvation days by Ootek's Lake. Kunee was not far behind him, and I cannot describe the emotions that filled me as I watched this girl-child with a knife in one hand and a great chunk of dripping back meat in the other, stuffing her little face and burping like an old club man after a gargantuan meal.

For the first time Hans showed some animation. He smiled. I do not know whether it was from pleasure in the killing or from anticipation of fresh food. His smile was—well, expressionless.

Franz too was smiling as we unloaded the heavy cargo and he shouted at Kunee to get a fire going. A new spirit of enthusiasm and fresh life was in the place, as if new blood flowed through the veins of those about me. Even I was stung by an emotion I could not analyze, and I felt alive as I have never felt before.

The fire had just been lit and a pot of deer tongues just set to boil when a wild babble from the dogs brought me outside again. This time I looked directly to the crossing, and where the butchery had taken place there was a great new herd of does milling as it came up against the stream.

This time there was no shooting, though Hans could hardly restrain his urge to take up a rifle and empty it again. The deer seemed to ignore the cabin that stood in full view and in a minute they had all taken to the stream. Heavy as they were, they swam buoyantly and powerfully so that they made the crossing without losing ground and landed literally in our own front yard.

The dogs became insane and threatened to tear their tethering posts out of the frozen ground. The deer paid them, and us, but little heed. Splitting into two groups, they flowed past the cabin, enveloping it for a brief instant in their midst. The stink of barnyard was strong in our nostrils as they passed, then they were gone beyond the ridge.

In less than an hour I had seen so many deer that it seemed as if the world was full of them, but I had seen nothing yet. That afternoon Franz took me on his sled and we drove warily along the rotten shore ice of the bay, to the Ghost Hills. The heat was remarkably intense; at noon the thermometer had reached 100; and so we wore nothing but thin trousers and cotton shirts. Water lay deep upon the ice and the sled was really more of a boat than a land conveyance. An hour's travel took us to the north shore of the bay, and here we tied the dogs and climbed a long gentle ridge that faced the south. Below us lay Windy Bay, and beyond it the shattered slopes of the Ghost Hills. It was a scene to be recorded on gray paper, for the growing things had not been able to keep pace with the precipitate transition of the seasons, and the subtle overlay of color that would suffuse the summer plains had not yet begun to flow. The rotting surface of the ice was dark, but framed in ivory drifts, still lingering on the shores and in a thousand gullys and ravines. The hills were dun-colored heights sheathed in rock and long-dead lichens, with startlingly black patches of dwarf spruce spotted along their lower slopes. To the north, the plains sank into white and snow-filled hollows, hiding the muskegs and ponds; then lifted to reveal a hueless and leaden waste that stretched to the horizon.

From our vantage point all of this achromatic world lay somberly below us as we waited for the coming of the deer. We had not long to wait. Franz caught my arm and pointed to the convoluted slopes of the distant southern hills, and I could just discern a line of motion. It seemed to me that the slopes were sliding gently downward to the bay, as if the innumerable boulders that protruded from the hills had suddenly been set adrift to roll, in slow motion, down upon the ice. I watched intently, not certain whether the sun's glare had begun to affect my eyes so that they played fool tricks on me. Then the slow avalanches reached the far shore and debouched over the bay. I tried to count the little dots. Ten, fifty, a hundred, three hundred—and I gave up. In broken twisted lines, in bunched and beaded ropes, the deer streamed out onto the ice until they were moving north across a front of several miles.

From that distance they barely seemed to move, and yet in a few minutes they had reached the center of the bay and had begun to take on shape. I had binoculars, but in my preoccupation with the spectacle below I had not thought to use them. Now I lifted the glasses to my eyes. The long skeins dissolved at once into endless rows of deer, each following upon the footsteps of the animals ahead. Here and there along the lines a yearling kept its place beside a mother who was swollen with the new fawn she carried. There were no bucks. All these animals were does, all pregnant, all driving inexorably toward the north and the flat plains where they would soon give birth.

The leaders reached our shore and began the ascent, but across the bay the avalanche continued and grew heavier. The surface of the bay, for six miles east and west, had become one undulating mass of animals, and still they came.

Without hurry, but without pause, unthinking, but directly driven, they filed down to the ice and, following the tracks of those who had crossed first, made for our shore. Highways began to grow. The black ice was pounded and shattered until it again became white with broken crystals. The broad roads stretched across the bay, multiplied, grew into one another until at length they disappeared and the whole sweep of ice was one great road.

The herds were swelling past our lookout now. Ten paces from us, five, then we were forced to stand and wave our arms to avoid being trampled on. The does gazed briefly and incuriously at us, swung a few feet away and passed on to the north without altering their gait.

Hours passed like minutes. The flow continued at an unbroken level until the sun stood poised on the horizon's rim. And I became slowly conscious of a great apathy. Life, my life and that of Franz, of all living things I knew, seemed to have become meaningless. For here was life on such a scale that it was beyond all comprehension. It numbed my mind and left me feeling as if the inanimate world had been saturated with a reckless prodigality in that sacred and precious thing called life. I thought of the twelve deer slaughtered on the banks of Windy River and I no longer felt horror or disgust. I felt nothing for the dead who were drowned beyond memory in this living flow of blood that swept across the plains.

It was nearly dusk when we roused ourselves. We walked silently to the sled and I felt a little sick. I began to doubt the reality of the vision I had seen. The ice had begun to freeze as the sun went down and the sled bumped so wickedly over the endless hoofprints that I was forced to run along behind it. A dozen times we passed close to a late herd of deer and each time the dogs, in defiance of Franz, lunged in pursuit and could be halted only when we overturned the sled to hold them back. There was no doubt about it—the vision had been real.

That night I sat for a long time on the ridge behind the cabin, smoking and thinking of that vision. I knew little of the People of the Deer as yet, and now that I had seen the herds, I was aware that I knew nothing of the deer themselves. The People and the deer fused in my mind, an entity. I found I could not think of one without the other, and so by accident I stumbled on the secret of the Ihalmiut before I had even met them. I believe it was this vague awareness of the indivisibility of the Barrens People and the caribou that made my later attempts to understand the Eskimos yield fruit.

Since the time of the first arctic explorations,
la Foule
—the Throng—has baffled the curiosity of men. Unlike the immense herds of the prairie buffalo, whose habits were open to the eyes of human intruders, the caribou have always remained wrapped in an aura of mystery that has never quite been penetrated. It was known that at certain times of the year, and in certain places, the deer would suddenly appear in herds which blanketed the land. Then, in a few days, they would be gone again. Where had they gone? Well, to the north, the south, or to the east and west, but to what destinations and for what reasons, no one knew.