Shaman Pass

by Stan Jones

  “Arnie Rivers,” Maiyumerak said. “Naluaqmiut guide. Fly his hunters up here in the fall time for caribou and sheep, come back in the spring for bear sometimes. I guess he use this for his camp.”

  All was silent, except for the sound of Kobuk barking joyously somewhere out front. Probably after a lemming, judging from the tone.

  The snow in Arnie Rivers’s camp was pocked with tracks from Maiyumerak’s high-tops. “Did you take anything?”

  “I never touch nothing,” Maiyumerak said.

  From the looks of the gear under the blue tarps, Maiyumerak was telling the truth. But it still seemed unlikely to Active. “Why not?”

  “I never have time.”

  “Why not?”

  Maiyumerak squinted in reluctance and fished cigarettes and matches out of an inside pocket.

  “But you had time to go out there with a broom and interfere with a trooper investigation?”

  “I never interfere with nothing.” Maiyumerak lit the cigarette, took a drag, and exhaled. The smoke drifted away on the breeze from the north. “I just want to get Uncle Frosty before they take him back to that museum.”

  “Uncle Frosty’s evidence in a homicide. And he belongs to the tribal council.”

  Maiyumerak grimaced. “Not if they try put him in a case for tourists to look at.”

  “That’s their business,” Active said. “Why did you wait till now? You’ve been watching us all week, right?”

  Maiyumerak nodded. “After I hear on Kay-Chuck how Robert Kelly take his grandfather and get away from you up here, then you guys find his sled and snowgo, I start to think he’s probably dead, all right. Maybe I could come up here and find them, maybe at least hide Uncle Frosty before you fellas come back, except how am I going to find them? All Kay-Chuck say is, it happen in Shaman Pass. Didn’t say if it was south side or north side, or even if it was up one of these canyons. Then I see Whyborn and Alan Long take off on their snowgos, all loaded up for a long ride, and I think maybe they’re coming up here. So I follow them and then I watch you fellas every day to see what you will find.”

  “You’ve been camping by yourself up in these hills all this time?”

  “I got Kobuk for company, all right.”

  Active shook his head. “So you’ve been coming down and doing your own search at night?”

  Maiyumerak squinted. “I never sweep myself until today. That’s when I see Alan and Whyborn take off to the south, look like they’re going hunting. And you’re asleep on the sled. I come down through this little canyon here and that’s when I find this camp. Seem to me like Robert Kelly was trying to reach this place but he never make it.” Maiyumerak pointed at the nearest trail marker in the line stretching back up the pass. “Robert Kelly and Uncle Frosty must be between here and that last willow, ah?”

  Active studied the scene, and Maiyumerak’s logic. “If he had Uncle Frosty with him. Maybe he hid him somewhere back up the trail. Or maybe he missed this place in the storm and walked right past it.”

  Maiyumerak was silent, looking along the line of willows. “Could be. But he know this country like his wife’s miluks, from what I hear, and he have to go this way to get to and from Caribou Creek. I think he know about this camp.”

  Maiyumerak turned and pointed at the canyon wall. Like the gear, the inuksuk was hard to make out in the snow at first, but Active finally saw it. The little man stood on a ledge about twenty feet above the camp. His bottom half was buried in a drift, but he was mostly free of snow from the waist up. The dark frosted stones of the torso, arms, and head stood out clearly once Active’s eyes focused on them.

  Now it was Active’s turn to shrug. “Maybe Robert Kelly put in the inuksuk before Arnie Rivers started camping here.” He turned and looked out at the trail of willows leading down from the pass. Kobuk had stopped barking now, but was still digging furiously in the snow maybe a hundred yards out from the canyon mouth.

  Active shook his head at the dog’s boundless, if pointless, energy and turned his attention back to the problem of Calvin Maiyumerak. “I should arrest you for interfering with our investigation. But you’re not worth the paperwork. Take off now, and I’ll forget it.”

  Maiyumerak lifted his eyebrows, but didn’t look convinced.

  Active pulled the handcuffs off his belt and tapped Maiyumerak’s wrist. “ ‘Take off now’ means, ‘If I see you again before this investigation is complete, you’ll go home wearing these.’ ”

  Maiyumerak jerked back. “Arii! They’ll freeze my arms.”

  Active lifted his eyebrows and smiled. “Uh-huh. Now get— what the hell is that?”

  Even as he said it, Active realized the unearthly howl was coming from Kobuk.

  Calvin flicked away his cigarette. “Shit!” he said, and floundered through the snow toward Kobuk, who let out another howl.

  Active burst through the willows. Kobuk was on his haunches beside his dig in the snow, his muzzle pointed at the sky. Calvin reached the spot first, looked into the crater, and knelt beside the dog. Active moved up beside him, looked down, and saw a shoulder, clad in a green corduroy parka, in the trench the dog had clawed out in the snow.

  “Look like Kobuk find him for us, ah?” Maiyumerak said.

  They began clearing away the snow around Robert Kelly. They worked in from the right arm, uncovering his torso, legs, and a frost-glazed face of dark marble, expressionless, the cut still visible over the brow. His arms were folded across his chest, mittened hands clasped as if in prayer.

  As they cleared the left shoulder, they could see a blue shadow through the adjacent snow. They kept clearing until they had uncovered something man-shaped and man-sized wrapped in a blue tarp beside Robert Kelly. They stepped back and were silent for a time as the breeze from the north sifted snow onto the plastic.

  “That’s Uncle Frosty, ah?” Maiyumerak said finally.

  “Has to be,” Active said.

  “Can we look?”

  “Got a knife?”

  Maiyumerak reached inside his snowmachine suit and came out with a big clasp knife. He opened it and passed it to Active.

  Active knelt beside the blue bundle, cut away the ropes, and folded back the tarp. Uncle Frosty—Natchiq—was wrapped in caribou fur. Fresh caribou fur from the look and smell of it. Kelly must have removed whatever the Smithsonian had used for wrapping and replaced it with something his grandfather would be more used to.

  Only the mummy’s head was visible. Most of the hair was gone, and the skin was wizened and leathery from its long sleep in the cold, dry cave in Shaman Pass and in the Smithsonian basement. The eyes were open and empty, the lips drawn back in that ghastly grin Active remembered from the photograph. But something seemed familiar.

  “They kind of look alike, ah?” Maiyumerak said.

  Active looked back and forth between the two men and grunted assent. It was true. Natchiq had the same narrow, egg-shaped face as his grandson.

  Active replaced Natchiq’s blue tarp, then noticed a gleam from between Kelly’s praying hands. Maiyumerak spotted it, too. “Look like he’s holding something.”

  Active fumbled with his one good hand at Kelly’s frozen hands, then gave it up in frustration. “See if you can get it out.”

  Maiyumerak knelt and forced Kelly’s hands apart, then pulled out an object wrapped in silver duct tape. “Look like he want us to find it. You want me to cut off the tape?”

  Active nodded and Maiyumerak pulled out his knife again and sawed at the wrappings until the object inside was free. Wordless, he passed the Prince Albert can to Active.

  Active thumbed up the lid and peered inside. A folded paper was all he could see. He started to pull the mitten and underglove from his right hand to fish it out but thought better of it as the breeze lashed his parka ruff into the corner of his eye.

  “Come with me.” He stood and trudged back to the snowmachines, Maiyumerak hurrying along beside him and asking, “What he put in there?”

  When they reached
the Yamaha, Active knelt and laid the tobacco can on the black Naugahyde of the seat. He looked at Maiyumerak. “I think it’s a note. I want you to take it out and spread it on this seat and hold it down while I read it. And don’t let the wind take it.”

  Maiyumerak squinted assent, bared his right hand, and gingerly pulled out the paper. It was a piece of brown grocery bag, Active saw, covered on both sides with penciled block printing. Maiyumerak spread it on the snowmachine seat and held it down as they both read it. “To whoever find me,” it began.

  My name is Robert Kelly and this man with me is my grandfather Natchiq the Eskimo Prophet who was kill early days ago by a bad angatquq name Saganiq. My snowmachine break down because it’s shot by that Trooper Active so if you find us it mean we never make it out like I’m afraid will happen, that’s why I write this note. I don’t care what happen to me but please don’t take my grandfather back to Chukchi. They will put him in their museum for naluaqmiut tourists to look at that don’t know anything about him or what really happen early days ago.

  After I take my grandfather from that museum in Chukchi, I go back to my camp in Shaman Pass, get ready to take him over to Canada where he was going when Saganiq kill him. That’s when I hear Victor Solomon on Kay-Chuck, talk about how he knows who do it and they will put him in jail and my grandfather will still go in glass case for naluaqmiut tourists to look at. I never know he thinks Calvin Maiyumerak did it, so I think he’s talk about me. That’s when I decide to leave my grandfather at my camp and go talk to Victor, see if he will make a deal. I ride down to Chukchi again and ask some old lady on the street, where is Victor? She tell me he’s at his sheefish camp so I ride out there and he come out of his tent when I drive up. He look pretty surprised when I show him his grandfather’s harpoon and owl amulet and tell him who I am. Then he say, what I want?

  I tell him it’s time for our families to give up old fight, now it’s modern times. I say, he can have Saganiq’s things, put them on display in museum, I’ll take my grandfather to Canada like he always want, then he will drop the case and it will be over. No more problems for our families.

  Victor take that harpoon and the amulet, all right, but then he say he’ll tell police about me anyway. He’ll find my grandfather and put him on display in the museum and the police will put me in jail. My grandfather and me, we’ll both be in cages, that’s what Victor say.

  That’s when I think I’ll just try to get away, go back to get my grandfather and hide him somewhere in Canada before police can catch me, hope Victor never find him. But Victor, he try stop me when I start to leave, hit my eye with his grandfather’s harpoon.

  So I grab that harpoon away and all of a sudden something tell me to stab him with it. I do it and Victor fall down in sheefish hole and seem like he’s dead already when he hit the ice. I never mean to kill him but when he’s dead, I’m not sorry. That’s why I leave the harpoon and amulet behind, that way maybe if a few old people can still remember the stories about my grandfather and Saganiq, they will know what happen when they hear about how Victor is kill. I even put Saganiq’s amulet in Victor’s mouth, let him eat his grandfather’s kikituq.

  I know I’m bad man now, even if I never mean to do what happen. All my life, I try live new way. Go to school, get job, vote, pay naluaqmiut taxes. But when I’m out there on the ice with Victor, old-time Eskimo way seem right to me.

  But my grandfather was a good man, never kill anyone or do any other bad thing all his life, try help them Eskimos at that time get ready for naluaqmiuts to come with their new ways. So that is why I ask you, if you find us, please never take my grandfather back to Chukchi.

  And please call my daughters Louise Oomittuk in Point Hope and GeriAnne Carson in Barrow, tell them I’m found and that I loved them, and that I was not a bad man, except this one time.

  Active folded the note, tucked it inside his parka, and dropped his sunglasses back over his eyes. “Well, I guess we know what he was doing that extra day,” he muttered to himself.

  “What?” Maiyumerak said.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Active shook his head. “Let’s get them back to camp. Cowboy can haul them out to Chukchi in the Beaver.”

  Maiyumerak didn’t move. “Both of them?”

  Active nodded, steeling himself against it.

  “We could leave Uncle Frosty here like Robert Kelly say, ah? You got your man.” He pointed at the trench where Robert Kelly lay beside his grandfather a few yards away.

  Active shook his head. “Uncle Frosty is museum property and he’s evidence in Alan’s burglary case and my homicide. He has to go back.”

  “Alan don’t have to know. I could take off with Uncle Frosty and hide him somewhere, and you could say we only found Robert.”

  Active pulled off his sunglasses and studied his reflection in Maiyumerak’s mirrors.

  Maiyumerak pulled them off and looked Active in the eye. “Please, Nathan?”

  Active looked back at Arnie Rivers’s hunting camp and the canyon behind it, then walked over to the trench.

  “You don’t need him for your case, now,” Maiyumerak persisted. “And you’re Inupiat. You don’t want him in that museum for naluaqmiut tourists to look at. He belong out here.”

  Active looked at the pair in the snow. “It’s not . . .”

  Kobuk started barking again, his muzzle pointed south up the pass. They looked that way and at first saw nothing, heard nothing. Then Active picked up the distant hum of a snowmachine engine and saw a black speck moving down the slope.

  Maiyumerak watched tensely until the rider was close enough to recognize. Then his shoulders sagged. “Too late now, anyway. That Alan Long would never do it.”

  Alan pulled in a few minutes later and shut off his Ski-Doo, staring in surprise at Maiyumerak. He walked over to the pit without a word, his eyes taking in Robert Kelly and the bundle beside him.

  “Is that Uncle Frosty?” he asked, looking at Active.

  Active nodded.

  “Good.” Alan stepped into the pit and pulled back the tarp for a look, then gave a satisfied nod. “Jim Silver never thought I’d get him back. Now we can close our burglary with the museum’s property back where it belongs.”

  Active and Maiyumerak shot each other a quick glance, rolling their eyes. Active pulled the piece of grocery bag from his parka. “We can close the murder of Victor Solomon, too. Kelly left behind a note saying he did it.”

  “Really?” Long said. He took the note and read it over. “This is excellent. Damned fine police work, Active.”

  Active exchanged another eye roll with Maiyumerak.

  Long turned to Maiyumerak. “What are you doing here, Calvin? Did you help Trooper Active find these guys?”

  “Actually, it was Kobuk who found them,” Active said.

  “Smart dog,” Alan said. He stepped out of the pit and, with Calvin, loaded grandfather and grandson onto the sled behind Active’s Yamaha.

  Active drove the Yamaha to camp with Alan and Calvin riding ahead on their own machines. When Active reached the tent, he saw four field-dressed caribou stacked in the snow, the purple-brown flesh already glazed with frost.

  The three other men were huddled in front of the tent, Calvin pointing at the cloud mass to the north and talking seriously to Alan and Whyborn.

  “Calvin and Whyborn think we ought to get out of here,” Alan said as Active walked up.

  Calvin nodded and waved at the north again, in the direction of the clouds and breeze. “Storm coming. I heard it’s real bad up here when it come from north side. We should go.”

  Active frowned. “Go where?”

  “Not so bad on south side,” Whyborn said.

  Active shrugged. “Yeah, OK.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THEY PACKED A FULL set of camping gear into the sleds. Also, gas for the snowmachines and fuel oil for the stove. Plus the four caribou, plus Kobuk and Kibbie, who bounded onto their owners’ sleds, wormed out hollows in the baggage, curled up
with their tails over their noses, and closed their eyes. Finally everything was stowed except the corpses of Natchiq and Robert Kelly, now resting on the mat of willows where the tent had stood.

  “Looks like we have to leave ’em,” Maiyumerak suggested. “Cowboy could pick ’em up when he get everything else.”

  Active shot him a glance. “Not a chance, Calvin. Something might happen to them before Cowboy gets here.”

  “Like what? Nobody even know they’re here.”

  “Somebody might come by.”

  “What you going to carry them in? You got no sled.”

  “We’ll borrow one.” Active turned and pointed at Robert Kelly’s abandoned sled, still squatting in its trench with the Arctic Cat in the middle of the pass.

  Maiyumerak squinted his unhappiness, but said nothing.

  Active retrieved the sled with his Yamaha and they loaded the two corpses on, securing them not with bungee cords but with actual rope at Active’s insistence.

  Even with the four sleds, they left a fair pile of gear behind, with a note to Cowboy explaining their plan to wait the storm out in the best campsite they could find on the south side of the pass.

  BY THE time they were ready to go, the wind was up to twenty miles an hour, Active guessed, with long streamers of snow slithering over the surface in a sugary mist.

  Whyborn, as the senior hunter in the group, took the lead. He looked at Active as they prepared to start their engines. “You ever travel with a bunch of snowmachines in a storm before, Nathan?”

  Active shook his head, the wind whipping the guard hairs on his parka ruff into his eyes.

  “Well, we could put you second in line.”

  Active nodded, and Whyborn continued.

  “I’ll take the lead, then you, then Alan, then Calvin.”

  Active nodded again.