by Joan Grant
“Mother, don’t let him be lonely! Mother, stay with him, very close so that he knows you are always there, even in the daytime.”
I saw Raki pick up his paddle, and I bent to mine. Slowly the wooded hills swept down to hide us from Na-ka-chek. The silence of early morning was broken by more than birds, or water dripping from the paddles of seventeen canoes; we seemed to hear the heart of the woods beating. Then the rhythm changed, from a lament into a song of victory soaring in the sunlight, song of the Forgotten Ones laughing in the moonlight.
We lengthened our stroke to the rhythm of the drumming, and sorrow was lifted by the rhythm of the drumming; in the drumming there were high hills and looking forward; in the drumming there was laughter and new horizons; in the drumming there was friendship which a parting cannot sever.
“This is why Narrok was not there to say farewell to us,” said Raki.
“This is his farewell,” I said. “He is telling us that in spirit he joins in our adventure. He says that if ever we are in danger we shall hear his drum.”
The rhythm beat like a pulse in my head, even when we were far up-river and my ears were deafened by the distance.
We kept to the river for eleven days; serene days when our cooking-fires were lit before sunset and no one woke until dawn. I do not know if the others found it hard to leave the canoes; to me they were the last physical link with the old life. The river was the same river in which we had swum and speared fish since we were children, but the country into which we were journeying had no link with us. We dragged the canoes up the bank, protected them with pine boughs, and tied three broken feathers to each prow to show that they were abandoned and could be used by anyone who had need of them.
The next eight days were through bleak country—bare hillsides with tracts of dense pine forest in whose shade the winter snow still lingered. Game was scarce, but several times we were able to kill a deer and so conserve the grain and pemmican we had brought with us.
On the nineteenth day we sighted the Bitter Mountains. They were much higher than those that guard the Valley of the Two Trees, and snow still lay thick even on the lower slopes. I wanted to suggest that we make a temporary encampment until the weather improved, but Raki and the others were so eager to press on that I did not voice my uneasiness. Hajan said that it would take us five days to cross the pass, so we waited until we had sufficient fresh meat to last us for that time. We smoked it over greenwood fires but did not cure it into pemmican.
Why should Redskins be afraid of cold? Did not each of us have two tunics, one lined with fur; and a blanket to sleep in, and moccasins of double leather? Why should I doubt the endurance of the women when they had not yet failed to maintain their equality?
The night before we were to start the climb, I walked beyond the friendly circle of firelight and could feel the snow crunching underfoot. Behind me I heard our people laughing and talking together; ahead of me were jagged peaks, black against the rising moon. I talked aloud, to try to fan my spark of courage into flame.
“Piyanah, don’t see only the threatening peaks; look further, to the kindly valleys we shall find beyond them. Think of the fruit trees, Piyanah, the warm river and the lush meadows where your children will play. Take your people over the mountains, Piyanah, so that your son will know that even the winter is not unkind. Piyanah, don’t let Raki know you are afraid, nor Dorrok, nor any of them. It was you who first wanted to go South; if they know you are afraid they will begin to doubt your judgment. If the mountains look difficult now they will seem even higher if we wait until the snows melt. You have made them wait until enough meat was smoked. There is no excuse to wait longer, Piyanah. Raki is ready to go. Would you make of yourself a burden instead of a companion?”
Next morning I saw a heron against the cold grey curve of the sky, a heron flying to the South. I took it for a sign that our totem was close. The faith that flickered grew strong. The mountains were only a barrier to cross—and had not Raki and I already crossed so many barriers to find each other?
The first three days of steady climbing, through the foothills that guarded the main range, were so easy that I was glad not to have betrayed my apprehension, even to Raki. The sky was a strong blue and the wind only enough to cool the sweat on our foreheads. Hajan said that the pass was between two peaks which we could see jutting up like the fangs of a wolf. It seemed guarded by a precipice, but he repeated that he knew the route by which this could be climbed.
On the third night we camped at the foot of the towering wall of rock. We were above the tree-line, but we had hoped to find the usual scrub or thorn bushes and so had brought no fuel with us. But there was nothing to give us fire. When the women realized that there would be no light to guard us in the dark they began to whisper together. Raki wanted to burn some of our arrows to quell their fears, but I told him that if he did, it would prove that we were tolerant of their superstitions.
“All the tribes believe that it is an ill omen to pause in a migration without lighting a fire,” said Raki. “The Chiefs believe it and the Elders; even the little fire that I could kindle from a quiver of arrows would comfort them—and it is so easy to make arrows, Piyanah.”
Perhaps because I understood only too well what the squaws were feeling I said sharply, “If you encourage them in their superstitions I will go on alone, to show them that their Chief who is a woman is not so tolerant of their foolishness as their Chief who is a man.”
I walked resolutely away into the darkness, praying that Raki would follow or call me back. The prayer was answered.
“As you feel so strongly about it I will do what you wish, Piyanah.”
“Why listen to me when more than thirty other women are asking you to please them?”
“Aren’t you being unreasonable?”
I knew this was true, but I replied, “Yes, if it is unreasonable to try to fulfill the purpose of our journey. You said that superstition was like a viper, to be killed whenever you get the chance. Now it seems that I am unreasonable because I don’t feed it!”
“It is a good custom, the watch-fire of the traveller. The fire is the link between him and the sun—the place of the fire is his home even though the country is unfamiliar. Do you grudge them that small security, Piyanah?”
I wanted to cry out, “I want a fire more than any of them! No one else left people they love as I love Na-ka-chek and Narrok. I want to be back in the places I have always known, where even the grass is friendly. I don’t believe Hajan knows the way over the pass. I think he is boasting. I think we are leading our people into a danger we are both too proud and too stupid to recognize.”
I wanted to tell Raki all this, but instead, trying to make my voice sound amused and a little scornful, “Give them their arrows, Raki; I had forgotten that children are afraid of the dark.”
He looked at me, hurt and bewildered, then turned to go back to the small patch of level ground where the others had spread their blankets. I sat with my back against a boulder and my chin on my knees, angry and miserable; watching the sparks from Raki’s fire-stick and the pitiful little flames which crawled up the shafts of the arrows I had fletched for him.
The fourth day was slow and arduous. Thirty-seven times every load had to be hauled up to a new ledge by ropes; for the rock was friable and the handholds would not have borne a man’s weight if he had been cumbered even by a tomahawk or a bag of maize. There were several places where we could rest, though with our legs dangling over a sheer drop. We dared not waste the daylight and so pressed on.
At sunset we came to a wide shelf, sufficient for us all to sit huddled together but not for anyone to lie down. We roped ourselves together so that if anyone slumped forward in his sleep he could be jerked back to safety. It was very cold and my jaw muscles ached from the effort to stop my teeth chattering; for the others might have thought they chattered with fear as well as cold—which might have been true though I would not admit it even to myself. We were all too tired to eat, tho
ugh Raki gave each of us a stick of pemmican to chew.
Before dawn the wind began to rise, sharp as snow-water. I longed for the light so that we could see to go on. Anything would be better than this frozen waiting. Dawn showed a sky thick and grey as a dirty blanket. Snow began to fall, heavy sullen flakes, which froze as they touched the rock. Hajan again took the lead, but his earlier confidence had deserted him. The ledge on which we had spent the night ended in an overhang and we had to go back to try to find a new way up. We came to a perpendicular shaft which Raki decided would be possible. He went first and I followed him—feet and shoulders wedged across the cleft. It was painful progress, and all the time a question ran in my head, “Will the walls widen so that we can get no purchase, or narrow until we are wedged if we try to go any further?”
My moccasins were worn through before I reached the top, where Raki hauled me up to stand beside him on a wide platform; it was exquisite relief to lie down without fear of falling. It was easier for the others, for we let down a rope to them, but it was noon before the last load had been brought up.
Now the snow was falling faster and the wind bayed us as its quarry. When the clouds lifted for a few moments, we could see the pass above a steep scree, which looked easy compared to the last two stages. We even found a few stunted thorn bushes, which surprised me as the lower slopes had been barren, and there was a shallow cave which gave sufficient shelter for a fire. We all felt more cheerful after a hot meal, of pemmican stewed in snow-water and thickened with maize-meal. The weather was getting worse, so Raki decided we should spend the night there and start for the summit with the first light.
I must have fallen asleep while the others were still eating, for when Raki woke me I was still sitting half upright with my head on his shoulder. He had pulled a blanket round us. The others were rolled in theirs, huddled together for protection from the wind, which had veered to the northeast and was now blowing into the cave, the mouth of which was half covered by a snow-drift. I slept so heavily that Raki had been rubbing my hands and feet to warm them, without waking me. We baked bread in the ashes, and each had a piece to eat before the light was strong enough to move on.
Until about noon it was a slow, steady climb over loose shale. The wind came in gusts, sometimes so strong that we had to cling together to stop being driven down the perilous slopes. The women were uncomplaining as the men, though I saw that Rokeena’s and Cheka’s fingers were bleeding where the cold had cracked them open. All of us were scourged by the lash of the wind. Often the clouds lifted and we could see the twin peaks against the hostile sky. Then the clouds came down again and we could only plod on in the direction the brief glimpse had given us.
We only knew we had reached the top of the pass by the sudden increase in the fury of the wind, which roared between the crags as though enraged that anything dared to give it challenge. Hajan had been anxious for Raki and me to take the lead, but now he strode forward. I paused to let him go ahead; he deserved this triumph even though the going had been far more difficult than he had led us to expect. The snow-laden wind swirled round him like smoke. I suppose I should have been able to share his sense of triumph, but I was too tired and too cold.
Suddenly he stopped. I saw him shake his fist at the sky. As I came up behind him I heard him laughing. Hajan, the Scarlet Feather, the imperturbable, laughing as though laughter would break out from the cage of his ribs. Then I saw his face. It was the face of a man driven mad by his own betrayal—but he could still recognize me.
“I never came to the head of the pass! I lied when I told you that the southern slopes were easy! Look, Piyanah, you can see the land of your future; but to reach it you must borrow wings from your totem!”
He stood on the edge of a precipice; far below I could see the forests where we had thought to walk in peace.
“I promised to lead you to the South. I will keep my promise!”
With a terrible cry he ran forward and leapt. I saw his body falling…falling; his arms beating the air as though he were trying to fly.
Raki had stayed to see that everyone reached the summit in safety; I was the only one who had seen Hajan go to his death because he thought he had betrayed us. If the women knew what had happened they might panic, and to make our way down the cliff all of us would need everything we had of courage, and endurance. … “I must lie, even to Raki, and say that Hajan had gone ahead. It will be true even if Raki does not understand my truth. I must tell him that I am going ahead with Hajan, and that he must somehow find shelter to light a fire; even if he uses all our arrows they must have the comfort of a little warmth.”
Raki, when I had spoken to him, was confident that our worst perils were over, otherwise he would never have let me go on without him even though he thought Hajan went with me. Hidden by a jutting rock I prayed as I had never prayed before, to the Great Hunters, to Norrok, to Na-ka-chek, to the Lord of the Herons, “Please help me find a way down. Please help me to help them, for they have been so brave and have come so far.”
I shall never be sure whether it was the wind blowing through a cleft, or whether I heard Narrok’s drumming with my living ears. The sound led me towards the face of the western pinnacle, and I saw that it would not be difficult to climb. I did not question why I should climb higher in an attempt to go down, but found myself scrambling from ledge to ledge on which, compared to the way we had come, was almost a series of natural steps. I reached a long horizontal crack, running east and protected from the worst of the gale.
Even above the battery of the wind the drumming was steady, the rhythm Narrok called “new horizons” and which I had so often heard come to life under his fingers. The crack ended in a ridge, curving down like a rib from a backbone. It was steep and snow-covered, but not impossible. From it I could see the precipice over which Hajan had plunged, falling sheer as water to the forest which he could have reached in safety.
The relief was more life-giving than a bowl of deer-stew. The journey back to Raki seemed easy. Three of the women were huddled together under their blankets in the shelter of an overhanging rock. They refused to get up when Raki gave the signal, and would not move even when their husbands ordered them. One of the men slapped his woman across the face, and suddenly she became the obedient, unquestioning squaw, who even a day earlier she would have despised. She scrambled to her feet, and followed him docilely. The other women did the same.
How soon Raki noticed that there was only one set of footprints ahead of us, I am not sure. He did not mention it, but I think he found it difficult to forgive me for having lied to him about Hajan. Soon we were on the lower slopes, and I was happy because I thought the ordeal was almost over and that Raki would soon be proud of me instead of angry.
We had seen two avalanches earlier in the day, but they had been too far away to concern us. Suddenly there was a crack, loud as the whip of the Great Hunters if they had been gathering all the herds of Earth. A great stretch of snow, marred only by the file of our prints, began to slide, faster and faster as the avalanche gathered speed.
“Run!” shouted Raki. “Cover your heads with blankets if it reaches you!”
Like bison in stampede, the avalanche thundered down. Clinging to Raki’s arm I was deafened by the noise. It swept past us to crash among the trees below.
As the air cleared I saw men and women stagger to their feet. Swiftly I counted them, Raki and I and seventy and three—no two, for Hajan was dead. I counted them again. There were only seventy-one.
“Raki, someone is missing!”
Then I realized who it was. “Dorrok! The avalanche caught Dorrok!”
We were all digging with our hands, throwing aside stones and lumps of frozen snow, rolling away boulders, in desperate effort to reach Dorrok before he smothered. I tried to reassure myself, “People have lived for half a day under the snow. Don’t die, Dorrok, we’ll get you out very soon.”
It was Gorgi who found him. He was still breathing, but his life was running out
like water from a broken jar.
“The pass I am crossing is very easy, my Piyanah. I never knew until now that it is so much easier to die than to live.”
I thought that was the last time I should hear his voice; but he spoke again, smiling, “It is warmer, even than the South, on the other side of the water.”
Black Spider
We buried Dorrok’s body in an open glade of the forest whose shelter we reached at the sunset of his death. We slept that night by a blazing fire, but I could not get warm. The cold of the Bitter Mountains, the cold despair of Hajan, the cruel, relentless cold that had fallen on Dorrok and crushed to a bruised pulp those splendid sinews which he had tempered by fine endurance; this cold seemed to have become a part of me. I shivered and moved closer to the fire. Then it was the fire that seemed unkind, for my skin throbbed with heat and snow-water could not quench my thirst.
I slept fitfully, to dream that I was lost in a waste of snow; or parched, craving for water, crawling exhausted up a dry water-course, searching for even a small pool of moisture. By the morning I found it difficult to walk without stumbling and desperately tried to conceal my weakness from the others. They had seen Dorrok die, and last night I had had to tell them of Hajan’s death. If they thought that I was going to fail them they might be afraid to go on.
Raki found a way to conceal my weakness from them. He wrapped my foot in strips of blanket and said it had been badly bruised by a loose boulder when I had been helping to clear the avalanche from Dorrok. He told only Gorgi that I was ill and dazed with fever, and they made a litter for me of one of the pieces of leather we used for shelter, slung from two tepee poles and carried on their shoulders.
