Читать книгу Swift Lightning - James Oliver Curwood - Страница 5

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The sombrous darkness of twilight was gone and the arctic world lay mellow and golden in the lap of the Long Night. High up where the midday sun would have been in a southern summer sky hung a steady, silvery illumination, the faintly gleaming mother-of-pearl heart of the night itself; and close about this silvery heart were the stars. Countless and still, fixed and lifeless things blazing everlastingly in the sky, they lightened the frozen world like unmoving and jealous eyes watching enviously the scintillating and more spectacular glory of the aurora.

Tonight, or today—for night and day exist in terms of hours even where there is neither day nor sun—the aurora was like a many-robed magician. For two hours Kesik Munitoowi—the sky-goddess—had been at play, and as if to disprove her kinship to the pole she was displaying her mysterious charms and phosphorescent splendor over what would have been the western horizon. For two hours she had been unfurling her banners of all the colors of the rainbow; for two hours she had frolicked in her dazzlement of flame and glow. She had sent out ten thousand dancers of sinuous and twisting beauty; she had streaked the sky with pathways of gold and crimson and orange and diamond-blue, and now—as if tiring of her more intricate sport—she was beginning to paint her playground a vivid, living red. In city, village, and open land a thousand miles to the south were eyes that saw her and wondered at the mystery of the thing “over the pole.” But it was under her that souls shivered, and the ice of a frozen world flung back a glow to the stars.

This world was dead, white, and still. It was terribly cold, so cold that in the air—unmoved by a breath of wind—were at times steely crackling sounds. Now and then, from out of the mountainous ranges of ice in Coronation Gulf, came an explosion that was like the rumble of a great gun as one of the ice mountains broke or split to its heart; and when these explosions came their echoes ran like whimpering, ghostly things up the frozen surface of Bathurst Inlet, for the play of that intense cold was as weird and mysterious as the aurora herself. At times it was as if a company of skaters were flying through the air on ringing steel, and one could fancy the swish of their skirts, the sound of their voices and far-away laughter. Yet one would not have sensed the deadliness of the cold, for without wind it held no bitterness or sting.

Outside their little cabin of saplings stood Corporal Pelletier and Constable O’Connor, and not far behind them was a hooded and furred Eskimo with a sledge and six-dog team. It was a month and a half ago that Pelletier had sent his last report down to Fort Churchill, and, as he looked at the vivid crimson splash of the aurora in the west, he said:

“The first red night of the winter, O’Connor. It’s lucky for us. It means plenty of blood to the Eskimos, and I’ll wager every conjuror between here and Franklin Bay is busy at work this minute casting out evil spirits and offering up prayers. The hunters along the coast ought to be on their way to join us to a man.”

O’Connor shrugged his shoulders with the skepticism of the unbeliever. He had great faith in Pelletier and he loved with a man’s love this picturesque and storm-hardened Frenchman who had lived half of his life along the edge of the arctic circle. But he had his own opinion of the gigantic wolf-hunt he had faithfully helped Pelletier to plan. For two weeks his clumsy fingers had rolled strychnin poison in pellets of caribou fat. He had faith in the poison. Scattered over the wide barrens, those baits would bring death to something. But as for the hunt——

“It’s our one chance—and theirs,” Pelletier was saying, still looking at the red sky. “If we can get the big pack into a cul-de-sac, if we can destroy even a half of it, we save five thousand caribou. And if Olee John doesn’t fail us with his reindeer we’ll do it. If we succeed, it means we’ll be staging big hunts up and down the coast all winter, and if we don’t get a sergeancy and a corporalship out of it——” He grinned hopefully at O’Connor.

“We’ll at least have the fun,” finished the Irishman. “Let’s move, Pelly. I’m guessing the thermometer is close around forty right now. Ho, you—Um Gluck; get a move on! Mush it! We’re on our way.”

The Eskimo in his furs came to life. His voice rose in a clacking chatter; his long whip curled over the backs of the dogs, and eager for the thrill of the trail they leaped out in a straight, tawny line, whimpering and whining and clicking their jaws in their yearning for the long run under the growing crimson of the sky.

For many miles up and down the savage coast of Coronation Gulf and the rugged shores of Bathurst Inlet there was movement that night. The scourging hand of famine lay threatening over the land, and this movement was Pelletier’s awakening of the igloo people, their response to the “call” of the White King, who was to turn a great magic against the devils that possessed the devastating hordes of wolves that were driving all game from the barrens.

The tribal camp of Topek was to be the rendezvous. It was Topek’s runners who carried word of the great wolf-hunt up and down the coasts, and it was Topek who sent the warning that, unless the wolves were driven off or destroyed, famine and death would fall heavily upon the land. Faithfully he repeated the message of the police, represented by Corporal Pelletier and Constable O’Connor.

There was a thrilling answer to the summons. For unnumbered generations the benighted people of Coronation Gulf had lived in the belief that devils entered into the bodies of the blood-mad wolves in winter-time; and those who answered the call of Topek and the police were the youngest and bravest of them all. It was one thing to give battle to the big white bears, but quite another matter to turn human hands against the evil spirits. Yet they came, and two hundred hunters headed for Topek’s village. They were protected by many charms and armed with many weapons. A few had rifles, purchased in times of plenty from the whalers; some had harpoons, and others assagai-like lances with which they hunted the seal. From farthest west of all came Olee John, an Eskimo who had married a woman in the white man’s way, and with him came ten of the bravest hunters of his village, and a herd of fifty reindeer.

The aurora, like a lamp burned out, had faded away when Pelletier and O’Connor came to the end of their six-hour journey and shook hands with Topek and almost hugged Olee John. For six hours thereafter the hunters continued to come in. With the last of them a terrific wind filled with sleety, shot-like snow drove from over the ice fields. It filled every track and wiped out all trails. And for three days and three nights after that storm, by the hours of Pelletier’s watch, there was great activity in Topek’s camp. The cul-de-sac was found—a “blind cañon” with ice walls and only one entrance—and the work of luring the wolves into it began. Five times the reindeer herd went forth, guided by Topek and Olee John and Olee John’s men; and five times it came back, men and beasts near exhaustion. Yet no cry of wolf came from the reindeer’s trail, and no great pack followed it. And although hundreds of poison baits were scattered in the hoof-prints of the herd no dead wolves were found.

In the stolid faces of the young Eskimo hunters began to grow a solemn fear. The medicine-men and the elders of the tribes were right—devils were in the wolves, and they might as well fight the winds. Even Topek and Olee John were losing faith, and in Pelletier’s heart was an ever-growing anxiety.

For the sixth and last time Topek and Olee John and the reindeer herd went forth upon their errand, and there were those in the village who whispered that outraged gods and devils were about to set their curse upon the land and sea.