Lost in the Barrens

by Farley Mowat

  When he stopped his wild prancing, there was a curious look on his face. He stared down at the frying pan. “I’ve got it!” he yelled. “That old wire handle! Heat it red hot and we can burn the holes in the runners!”

  Awasin looked at him with real admiration. “That might work,” he said. “Let’s try it.”

  The idea did work, but it took a long time to burn a pair of holes through each runner, at the point where each crosspiece came. It was well after midnight when, working by the light of the fire, the crosspieces were at last lashed firmly to the runners with thin strips of wet rawhide.

  “Not bad,” Jamie said. “That hide will be dry by morning, and then the joints will be firm. Let’s go to bed. Tomorrow we’ll try out our new clothes and the sled too.”

  Early the next day the boys carried the new sled outdoors into a crisp, cold morning. Awasin rigged two pulling straps to the front of it while Jamie packed some camp gear and the sleeping robes, for now that winter had come it was not safe to go any distance unless prepared to spend the night if a sudden storm blew up. At last they put the loops of the pulling straps around their shoulders and gave the sled a try. It pulled like a solid chunk of lead!

  Jamie was disappointed but Awasin was unperturbed. “I forgot,” he said. “The Chipeweyans pour water on the runners and let it freeze, then they get an ice surface that will skid easily. Wait a moment…”

  He ran for the water bucket and in a few moments had squirted several mouthfuls of water on the runners, where it froze almost at once. Then Awasin carefully scraped the surface smooth with his knife. “Let’s try her now,” he said.

  This time the sled moved so easily that once it was in motion the boys hardly felt any pull against their shoulders.

  Happily they set off, their breath forming white clouds about their parka hoods as they trotted down the valley.

  When they emerged from the hills into the open plains a fierce north wind met them, but they turned their backs to it and on the hard-packed snow of the plains the sled fairly flew along toward Stone Igloo Camp.

  When they reached the deer fence they found that the stone pillars had completely disappeared beneath the drifts. The meat caches had also vanished except for the deer antlers Awasin had thoughtfully placed on top of each cairn as markers.

  The stone igloo was snowed under and they had to use the hatchet to chop away the hard snow that had packed around the doorway. Jamie crawled in and to his relief found that the stored food and hides were untouched. No wolverine had broken in.

  But Awasin had gone to investigate some of the nearby caches of meat, and he returned to report that one of them was ruined. “Come and look,” he said, “and you’ll see why I made such a fuss about heaping all those rocks on top of the meat.”

  At the cache Jamie was amazed to find that boulders weighing fifty pounds had been pried loose and rolled aside. The wolverines had done a thorough job. What they had not eaten had been left for foxes and wolves to finish and there was nothing left except a few fragments of bone.

  “It’s lucky they only smashed one cache,” replied Awasin. “But we’d better get the meat up to the cabin where we can keep an eye on it.”

  They decided to have a quick meal, then load the sled and set off for home. Hauling all the food and other supplies up to the cabin was going to be no easy job and neither boy looked forward to it. “It’s going to take a week of darn hard work,” Jamie said gloomily. Then wistfully he added, “Wish we had a team of dogs.”

  They had one thing to be grateful for, however. Despite the cold wind, and the lack of a dinner fire, they were warm. The new clothing was more of a success than they had dared expect, though the makeshift gloves that Awasin had hurriedly put together as an afterthought were so clumsy that they had to be taken off when there was finger work to do.

  After a cold dinner of pemmican, Jamie walked off to check the rest of the caches while Awasin began to load the sled. The Indian boy was startled by a sudden yell from Jamie.

  “Come over here—quick!” Jamie called from one of the most distant caches. “And bring the rifle!”

  Awasin ran to join him and found Jamie standing beside the cache. It was in a hollow and the snow that had drifted in was still soft enough to show footmarks. In a half-circle about the antlers that marked the cache was a ring of queer depressions in the snow. As Awasin looked at them he felt his back hair begin to prickle.

  The marks were more than a foot in diameter, perfectly round, and about three feet apart. They looked as if they had been made with the end of a small barrel.

  “What on earth could have made those!” Jamie whispered, for he too felt a sudden chill of fear.

  Awasin was slow to answer. “Only two things I know of,” he said, and his voice sounded thin and frightened, “and I don’t want to meet either of them! They might be tracks of the giant Barrens grizzly bear—or they might be Eskimo snowshoe prints.”

  Both boys glanced uneasily about them. The bleak white plains stretched away for miles on every side, and nothing moved on all that white expanse. Just the same Awasin slipped the safety catch off the rifle, and his finger was resting on the trigger.

  “It must have been a bear,” Jamie said.

  “Maybe,” Awasin answered. “The Chipeweyans tell stories about the Barrens grizzly and he’s a mean animal to meet. I never heard of one being killed, and not more than a couple of Chipeweyans have ever seen one.” He shivered, though he was not cold. “Anyway, we don’t want to spend the night out here. Let’s load up and go home.”

  In a few minutes they were dragging the sled northward at their best speed.

  CHAPTER 19

  Gifts from the Dead

  THE PRESENCE OF WOLVERINES AT Stone Igloo Camp was enough to make the boys anxious to see all their food supplies recached within sight and sound of the cabin. The inexplicable and frightening tracks made them doubly anxious to clean out the caches by the deer fence so that there would be no further need to visit the place.

  In the next three days they made three round trips, bringing back heavy loads of meat and fish each time. The journeys were uneventful—for which the boys were thankful—but they were ordeals of backbreaking labor. The trips home, dragging the heavily laden sled up the long slopes to Hidden Valley, became a nightmare.

  By the time they had started home for the fourth time they were so exhausted that they could only pull the sled a few hundred yards at a time before being forced to stop and rest. Seeking an easier route, they had stayed close to the lake shore this time, intending to circle north, then back to the entrance of the valley, and so avoid the snow-free rock ridges in between. This route took them farther north than they had ever been before and they stared about them, as they rested, with particular interest. It was Awasin’s keen eye that first caught sight of a strange object on a ridge ahead.

  He pointed toward the crest of a long finger-ridge that ran out at right angles from the hills which cradled Hidden Valley. “What’s that queer bulge on the hilltop?” he asked.

  Jamie stared in the direction Awasin was pointing. The sun on the snow was blinding, but after a time he made out something that might have been a mound of stones on the very crest of the ridge.

  “It looks like any other pile of rocks to me,” he said.

  “Not any pile,” Awasin replied sharply. “Whatever it is, it was made by men.”

  Despite his fatigue, Jamie grew interested. “We could leave the sled and walk on a way for a better look,” he suggested.

  Rather warily they went forward. As they approached the ridge, the shape on its summit grew more distinct. Jamie’s curiosity mounted and he burst out with, “Looks like the Stone House on the Kazon!” He could have bitten his tongue out the next instant, for Awasin reacted as Jamie might have known he would.

  Stopping abruptly, Awasin said, “Let’s get out of here!”

  If the boys had not been so weary, Jamie might have agreed. But he was tired and irritable. And having come
this far, he was determined to climb the ridge and see for himself what the mysterious object was. “Come on!” he said shortly. “A bunch of rocks can’t hurt you.”

  Awasin’s mouth set stubbornly. He did not like the implication that he was afraid, but he was not going to give in.

  “Go ahead if you want,” he said, and there was an overtone of anger in his voice. “I’ll wait.”

  Without a word Jamie turned his back on Awasin and walked on. He did not want to go alone, but he was too stubborn to admit that he also felt uneasy. After going a hundred yards he paused and looked back. Awasin was sitting on a rock, watching him.

  “Come back, Jamie!” he called. “It’s getting late and we’ve got a long pull yet to the cabin.”

  Awasin’s words gave Jamie a chance to back down gracefully, but he chose to ignore the opportunity. Stubbornly he resumed the climb.

  In fifteen minutes he had gained the ridge and found it swept clear of snow by the north wind. Directly ahead of him was a beehive-shaped mound of rocks, and on the reverse slope of the hill were three more similar mounds.

  Feeling even more uneasy, Jamie examined the nearest mound. It was about three feet high and perhaps five feet across the base. Lying near it in the windswept gravel were many fragments of gray and weathered wood. They were hard and brittle as old bones. Jamie picked up a length that was about the thickness of a pencil, and as he pulled it free of the gravel his eye caught a flash of green. He knelt down and a few moments later he was holding an arrowhead in his gloved hand It was obviously of copper that had turned green with the years. Diamond-shaped, it had been sharpened on all four edges and even now it looked deadly.

  Jamie dropped it into his carrying bag and began to scrutinize the ground closely. In a few minutes he had discovered a copper axhead, and a whole series of bone tools and ornaments that were so old they crumbled into dust as he tried to pick them up. There were other implements of copper as well, many of them in odd shapes.

  His curiosity had now overcome his uneasiness, even though he suspected that he had stumbled on an ancient graveyard of some forgotten native tribe—perhaps primitive Eskimos of long ago. Jamie knew that it was the custom of the northern natives to place all of a man’s possessions on his grave so they could be used by the spirit in the next world. Clearly the tools lying in the gravel had been intended for men whose bones probably lay under the rock mounds.

  Jamie glanced down the slope to where Awasin waited and he felt more at ease. Rapidly he circled the grave mounds. Beside one of them he found a squarish block of stone that had been hollowed out and smoothed to a high finish. Further search revealed three more of these stone “pots,” and Jamie placed them all in his bag.

  A gust of wind struck the exposed crest and drove eddies of snow up the north slope like fantastic shapes of unreal beings. Despite himself Jamie shivered, and turning away from the graves made his way quickly down the hill to where Awasin waited for him.

  “Well?” Awasin asked. “What was it?”

  Cautiously Jamie replied. “Oh, just an old campsite of Eskimos, I guess. All cluttered up with queer stone tools and copper gadgets. I picked some of them up. We can look them over tonight when we get home.”

  Awasin was not fooled. He had guessed the real nature of the “campsite” and there was a grim, unfriendly look on his face as he led the way back to the sled. He said not a word all the rest of the weary way home, and the silence between him and Jamie was strained and unhappy.

  The cabin was bitter cold when they arrived but soon the fire was roaring and supper was cooking. Jamie bustled about making tea and trying to break through his friend’s stubborn silence. He knew perfectly well that Awasin all his life had heard men speak of ghosts and devils as if they really did exist. Superstition or not, Awasin was only obeying the laws of his people when he shrank from any contact with the dead. And Jamie knew that out of sheer stubbornness he had needlessly disturbed his friend.

  Trying hard to break through Awasin’s mood, Jamie dumped the contents of his carrying bag on the floor and said cheerfully, “Let’s have a look at the stuff. Some of it might be useful.”

  It was the wrong thing to do. The sight of the objects taken from the graves made Awasin’s face darken. He lay down on his bunk. “Robbing the dead is evil,” he muttered and turned his face to the wall.

  Jamie felt as if an unseen barrier had fallen between them. It was a frightening feeling. All of a sudden the immense weight of the loneliness of life in this desolate place seemed to fall upon him. He could not stand it.

  He walked to the bunk and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Awasin,” he said. “Maybe you’re right the way you think. Maybe there are things out there that we don’t know much about, and that don’t like to be disturbed. I won’t do it again.”

  Awasin rolled over and looked at Jamie. He smiled suddenly. “No!” he said firmly. “I’m the one who should be sorry. All this about ghosts! Let’s have a look at what you found.”

  The barrier had vanished. The frightening gap between the two boys, born of their first serious quarrel, was closed. Happily they bent their heads over the assortment of things Jamie had dumped out of his bag.

  Awasin picked up one of the stone dishes and examined it closely. He ran a thumbnail down the side of it and found it was soft and soapy to the touch. Absently Awasin handled the dish but he was thinking hard.

  At length he spoke. “The other night you wished we had a lamp, Jamie,” he said. “Well, I think we’ve got one!”

  Jamie looked surprised. “That old thing?”

  “Wait,” Awasin replied. He got up and pulled a handful of moss out of a crack in the cabin wall. Expertly he twisted it between his fingers until he had what looked like a three-inch length of rope. Next he took a piece of deer suet, melted it in the frying pan, and poured the grease into the stone vessel. Taking a chip of wood he fastened the “wick” to the chip and put it into the lamp. The wood kept the tip of the wick floating in the hot grease. “Let’s have a light,” he said to Jamie, who had been watching, fascinated.

  Jamie handed him a bit of burning wood from the fire and Awasin touched it to the top of the wick. A fat yellow flame leaped up, smoked hard, and then began to die down.

  “I’ll have to trim it,” Awasin said. He adjusted the wick into a flat, broad strip and relit it. This time the flame burned steadily and hardly smoked at all. The interior of the little cabin was transformed as if by magic. After having been without any real source of light for months, Jamie felt as if someone had switched on a dozen electric light bulbs.

  He was delighted. “That really makes this place feel like home,” he said with enthusiasm.

  Awasin grinned with pleasure at his own success. Forgetting his distaste for using things taken from graves, he began to dig through the rest of the relics. His interest focused on one of the copper arrowheads. “This is a queer shape,” he said. “It looks as if it was held to the shaft with pegs of bone. There’s still a peg left in this one.”

  “I wonder if we could make a bow and arrow that would work,” said Jamie.

  “We could try,” Awasin replied. “I counted the shells yesterday and we only have twenty left. We can’t use them on anything except big game. But if we had a bow we could kill ptarmigan and hares.”

  “The first day we get the chance we’ll try and make one,” Jamie said. “But not tonight. I’m done for. Let’s go to bed.”

  Sleepily the boys climbed into their robes without bothering to blow out the little lamp. In a few moments they were asleep.

  The fire burned down, and from the table shone the gleam of a light that had been reborn after a hundred years of darkness. Once an Eskimo woman must have treasured the little soapstone lamp and over its moss wick cooked food for her family. Now it lived again. And the arrow points that had belonged to some long-forgotten hunter of the dim and dusty past were also ready for new life.

  The dead out on that lo
nely, wind-swept ridge were friendly spirits. They had made gifts to the living of another race, across a century of time.

  CHAPTER 20

  Winter Strikes

  SOMETHING COLD AND WET SWISHING across his face brought Jamie out of the depths of a heavy sleep. He groaned and thrust out his hand. His fingers closed on the stiff, hairy mat of the little fawn’s forehead and unwillingly he opened his eyes.

  The cabin was as cold as death and almost as dark as night. The lamp had long since burned out, and the fire had sunk away to a few glowing coals. The fawn Otanak was standing by Jamie’s bed grunting anxiously, and as Jamie lay still, the fawn thrust its head forward and slapped its tongue over his face a second time.

  Jamie sat up abruptly and pushed the little deer away. “Ugh!” he said, wiping his face. “Lay off that stuff!”

  He was fully awake now and he began to realize that the usual silence of Hidden Valley had been broken. To his ears there came a steady, roaring sound as if there were a waterfall near the cabin.

  Though it was dark, Jamie’s stomach—and the fact that the fire had almost burned out—told him it was morning. He jumped out of bed and pulled on his clothes. The cold was terrible and he was blue with it by the time he reached the fire and had begun heaping fresh kindling on the coals. The fawn followed him, nuzzling his back until Jamie in some irritation gave it a shove. “What’s eating you, anyway?” he asked.

  The fire flared up and Jamie walked to the door to have a look outside and find what was responsible for the rising blare of sound that seemed to be pouring into the cabin from all directions.

  He opened the door and a gust of wind almost tore it out of his hands. Snow drove into his face so hard it almost blinded him. He could see nothing except a gray, swirling haze of driven snow, and even the nearby spruce trees were completely obscured. Jamie stumbled back into the cabin gasping for breath.

  He shook Awasin awake. “Get up!” he cried. “The granddaddy of all blizzards is blowing. I never saw anything so bad!”