Now he led us into the dank and dismal Schweder cabin where, with difficulty, we managed to get a fire going in the rusty old cookstove. As we waited for the tea water to boil, Owliktuk explained that his people had endured another starvation winter (their third in five years). Although the migrant deer were now returning north, the people were unable to hunt because the Schweders, their only source of ammunition, were still absent.
We would learn that in February the surviving Ihalmiut, numbering forty-seven men, women, and children, had come to the cabin in search of help. Finding none they had nevertheless remained close by, hoping Charles would soon return. They had sustained themselves chiefly with what they could scavenge from the frozen carcases of wolves and foxes skinned then tossed aside by Charles and his brothers, and on the bones, guts, and hides of caribou the Schweders had killed the previous autumn.
All but four of the Ihalmiuts’ remaining dogs had died of starvation during the weeks of waiting for Charles to return – and had been eaten. There had been just enough sustenance to keep the people alive through March when they had straggled back to their own camps hoping to kill some caribou with bows and arrows at natural defiles. They had in fact been able to kill enough to keep themselves going.
Owliktuk viewed our arrival as the salvation for his people and was desperately anxious to take the good news and ammunition back to them. Despite this, he agreed to remain with us for a few days to help us get our gear ashore before the ice weakened. He did this even though the creeks and rivers across his homeward path were already flooding with meltwater and he knew if he delayed too long he would have to wade shoulder-deep or even swim many of these obstacles.
Making use of some old dog sleds the Schweders had left behind, we hauled everything to the nearest point of land – Cache Point, we came to call it – and stored it under canvas there until we could find time to move it to the cabin. When we began opening some of our crates, we came across two items of special interest. The first contained our supply of cigarettes and pipe tobacco. This find triggered ecstasy in Owliktuk. The second held an Inuit-English dictionary, which was as good as a Rosetta stone to me.
A third, government-packed crate plastered with red FRAGILE labels contained a battery-operated short-wave radio with which we were supposed to keep in contact with our employer. But instead of the ten-watt model we had been promised, we had received a mere toy of 2.5watts’ power.
Nevertheless we rigged it up, attached the battery, and made our first attempt to communicate with the outside world. We were unable to get a response from anyone, including the powerful Churchill Radio, which was supposed to be our point of contact. When our voice transmissions went unanswered, I tried using Morse code, but this too failed to elicit any response. All we could hear in the earphones was the manic chuckle and whistle of static. When anxious efforts to report the dire situation of the Ihalmiut succeeded only in draining our batteries, we decided to give up the attempt for a few days in hopes atmospheric conditions would improve.
The thaw was now well under way, which meant it ought soon to be possible for us to travel by water. We had planned to bring a canoe in with us lashed to one of the plane’s pontoons but on arrival at Churchill had been told a ”collapsible boat” had been substituted for the canoe.
We had seen no sign of such a thing until, at Windy River, we began unpacking some peculiarly shaped packages tightly swathed in sacking. These turned out to contain intricately shaped pieces of plywood which, when finally assembled (with much cursing and bad temper), proved to be a kind of boat.
I wrote this about it in my journal:
It is evidently Banfield’s version of the 18-foot freighter canoe we asked for. If it floats, it might prove useful for something but God help us if any of the little snap-fasteners that hold it together let go. And it sure and hell won’t support an engine, which leaves us with a fine new 5-horsepower outboard and a boat that won’t have anything to do with each other. Maybe we can use it for a bathtub.
By the end of our first week at Windy Cabin the thaw was well advanced.
There’s an exhilaration in the air. You can almost feel it as an electric buzz in every nerve and muscle. It makes you feel so goddamn full of life you want to climb a mountain, swim an ocean, or screw an entire chorus line. There are priceless moments sitting on the skinned log we use for a john with the rising sun on your face, looking out over the Windy Hills scarified by ten thousand caribou trails; listening to the first flies of the season trying to get their wings unthawed; hearing the rumble of ice beginning to move in the river; and watching the tumbling flight of a pair of ravens celebrating the most important things in the whole bloody world – the coming of spring and the need to make love.
One morning Andy and I were startled by what felt like a minor earthquake. Alarmed, we ran out of the cabin to find the river ice grinding and roaring as it tore loose from the bottom, thrusting up enormous cakes four to five feet thick. Soon pans from upstream were piling up on those in front, forming a dam right across the valley. Behind it the river quickly became a lake.
Before long the water, thick with ice crystals, was almost up to the cabin door. Frantically we scuttled about building a dyke of snow and ice against it, though our efforts were pitifully inadequate. We would surely have lost the battle and the cabin with all its contents had not the dam fortuitously burst and spewed ice pans with thunderous violence for more than a mile out over the still-solid surface of the bay, sending them spinning and crashing into one another like fun-cars in a giant midway ride.
Spring was now on us with a vengeance. Noon temperatures shot up into the seventies (though they generally fell to below freezing at night), and it seemed to us the country had become one vast water-soaked sponge, impassable to any four-legged animal except perhaps long-legged deer.
We were wrong about that.
Today I climbed the high gravel ridge north of camp and spotted what I thought was a bunch of deer galloping toward me. I watched them lope along until it dawned on me that the creatures splashing across the tundra like water buffalos were people. As they got closer they began waving their arms like crazy and making a hell of a row. I was relieved to recognize Owliktuk leading a charge of seven men, who turned out to be the heads of families of the Kazan band.
They’d been out of tobacco all winter so the first thing they did was empty my pouch into their stone pipes and light up. Then they all followed me back to the cabin gabbling like jay birds. When we poured in on Andy he looked as if he might have a fit but rose to the occasion and began making tea for all hands like a good hostess should. The cabin literally bulged with Eskimos. There was much hand-shaking (no nose rubbing, thank God), introductions, and friendly beaming but it took a while and gallons of tea before we could make much sense of things because of the language problem. We gathered that Owliktuk had told everybody we had come to catch caribou and wanted their help to do that, so here they were, and pretty damn anxious to go to work.
We staked them to a bag of flour, baking powder, lard, and tea, and they happily set up camp on the ridge behind the cabin. They had a dog, one of the few survivors from the winter. We gave it the bones and scraps from a deer Owliktuk had killed for us before his departure and it ate until literally it could hardly walk. Same with the Eskimos, who ate most of the rest of the deer then cooked the whole bag of flour into bannocks and scoffed them down. They really were starving.
Owliktuk, by the way, has shed the skin clothing he was wearing when we first met him and in our honour is wearing a tattered old shirt Charles must have given him and something that looks vaguely like a pair of ancient breeches that are worn right through at the knees and ass. When he was dressed in clothing made of caribou hides he looked like a man to be respected. In white man’s castoffs he looked like a hopeless bum.
Supper over, we had ourselves a party. What a blowout! Nine of us crammed into a space about as big as an average bedroom, with the stove roaring away as it boiled a river
of tea. Most of us not having had a bath since God knows when, you could’ve sliced the air with a knife. Thank God for the smell of tobacco, though the smoke did make it hard to see what the gang was up to.
Fun and games was what. Ohoto, a squat little guy with a grin like a cat, seemed to be the chief clown. He did imitations of white men (namely Andy and me) that brought the house down. Then he found a bag of our onions and started juggling them. I swear he had a dozen aloft when he lost control and they flew everywhere. I found a couple in the five-gallon pail we were using to make tea, but they only added spice to the flavour.
A guy called Mikki produced an Eskimo drum, which is a hoop covered with caribou gut, and they took turns singing and dancing for us. Then we had to do our stuff. Andy tried dancing a hornpipe while I did my bagpipe imitation. Our efforts were well received, perhaps because we had slipped a few slugs of caribou juice (90% proof alcohol intended for preserving specimens) into the tea.
Our visitors remained several days and were a great help ferrying supplies from our temporary cache and collecting firewood for us. We especially appreciated the latter because there on the edge of the Barrens the trees were tiny – seldom taller than ten feet – and usually few and far between. Furthermore, those within easy reach of the cabin had mostly been felled and burned long since.
When not working with us, our visitors tried to teach us their language and learn ours. Then one evening they announced they had to return to their families. They asked nothing from us except ammunition, which they offered to pay for with white fox skins next winter.
Unfortunately we had few shells of the calibre they needed and so had to refuse all except one man, a big, smiling fellow named Hekwaw, who owned a beaten-up .30-30 carbine. We gave him several boxes of ammo for it, with the stern stipulation that everything he shot had to be shared among all the people. Hekwaw seemed surprised by that, for of course this is what he intended to do anyway. It was what the Inuit did.
Owliktuk, Ohoto, Mikki, Hekwaw, Ootek, Onekwa, and Halo departed next morning, each toting a heavy backpack supported by a rawhide band around his forehead. We were left alone to get on with our job, which promised to be difficult.
Because the arrangements made by the department had delayed our departure until break-up, the pregnant does were now far to the north, hurrying to reach their fawning grounds near the arctic coast. Most of the bucks had also gone by, leaving only occasional sick or wounded strays in our part of the country.
In consequence I assumed I would not be able to proceed with one of my special projects – studying the home life of wolves – for I concluded that if there were no caribou in the vicinity of Nueltin there would be no wolves.
I was dead wrong about that.
I woke this morning feeling really low, partly because of being somewhat worried how this separation may be affecting Fran. Partly because although I think I got an SOS out on the radio last night to Churchill about the terrible winter the Eskimos have had, I couldn’t get a clear acknowledgement. And partly because we’ve missed the spring migration of the deer.
Without the deer we’re up shit creek without a paddle. Or – what’s more like it – with just a paddle.
I decided to see could I do something about that. Using bits of old packing cases I spent a day and a half strengthening our folding boat and making a frame to hang the outboard on the stern of it. Andy thought I was nuts, or suicidal. But it worked!
The motor fired at the first pull. The boat stood the strain and none of its buttons popped. In a fit of bravado I ran her up the rapids at the mouth of Windy River, then back down again. C’est bon! We are no longer stuck in one spot. Once the ice on Nueltin melts we’ll be able to go anywhere, perhaps even the Kazan River, though right now Windy Bay is only barely showing open water around its shores.
I beached her on Cache Point and was waiting for Andy, who’d said he’d join me (he’d wisely decided against taking part in the initial run on the river), when I heard queer noises from away to the eastward: yaps, and yelps, and whimpers like a bunch of dogs playing. Andy failed to join me so I ran the boat across the bay and climbed a ridge on the far side to see what was up. Nothing was, but the noises continued so I climbed two more ridges and came upon a sight I’ll remember to my dying day. Poised on the crest of a yellow esker, sharply outlined by the setting sun, was a big white wolf. In that clear light it looked as big as a polar bear. My neck hairs crawled then damn near stood on end as the wolf threw back its head in a full-throated howl. This was echoed from further down the esker and when I swung my binoculars that way I could see two more big wolves, and a scurry that looked like pups at the mouth of a black hole in the side of the esker. It had to be a den!
About then it dawned on me that I didn’t even have a firecracker with me. Though I knew wolves aren’t supposed to attack human beings, did they know it? Truth to tell, I slunk back to the boat and went speedily home, where I had several shots of caribou juice before going to bed happy as hell.
I know what I’m going to be doing for the next little while.
– 19 –
INUIT AND OTHERS
Two days after my discovery of the wolves’ den, the energetic Ohoto reappeared. Wet as a muskrat after spending several days wading across overflowing streams and through swollen muskegs, he bounced into the cabin to announce he would be our tuktu catcher, adding that, since there were no deer about at the moment, he was ready to take on any other project we might have in mind.
I seized on the offer to make him my assistant (and, as it turned out, chief instructor) in my study of amow – the wolf.
The first thing we did was to establish an observation post about a quarter mile from the den. We pitched a very small tent camouflaged with spruce boughs outside of which we set up a powerful binocular telescope I had ”liberated” from the German army. Inside we installed a Primus stove so we could brew tea while taking a break from wolf-watching.
While we were setting up our spy camp, the big white wolf kept us under close observation. He stared so long (and, it seemed to me, speculatively) that I was tempted to reach for my rifle, until reassured by Ohoto:
”Amow not eat white men. Taste bad!”
I spent much of my time during the next several weeks at this observation post, accompanied at first by Ohoto, later by Ootek.
Before dawn this morning Ohoto showed up from his little camp (a bit of canvas stretched between two spruce stubs) and he and I headed for the wolf den in Banfield’s Bathtub. Made tea when we got there, then lay on our bellies watching the wolf den, but there was damn little action. I think we got three quick glimpses of wolves for a day-long vigil. We got well chilled and well bored, and the mosquitoes have thawed out so we got well bitten too. For a break, Ohoto went off prospecting and came back with about a ton of iron pyrite, which he hoped was gold. All my fault for trying to tell him how white men get rich quick.
Knocked off at dusk and on the way back to the boat found a lemming mooching around under a dried-up deer carcass. An incredible little guy built like a brick but cuddly as a teddy bear, very prettily coloured in reds and browns, and absolutely unafraid of us. To the contrary, Owinak (his Eskimo name) greeted us like old pals and when I picked him up spent about ten minutes licking my fingers (for the salt?). So we took him home to add to a battalion of red-backed mice who, uninvited, share the cabin with us.
After supper Andy and I worked at learning Inuktitut with Ohoto as teacher. He’s really good. Patient, understanding, and with a racy sense of humour. We teach him English in exchange. I wonder if we mangle his language as badly as he does ours? Together he and I composed a song in both lingoes about how we would like to screw Pommela’s two wives.
When he figures we’re getting bored, he does tricks to amuse us. Yesterday he did back flips over a ten-inch butcher knife stuck, blade up, in the sand outside our door. Scared the bejesus out of me. He never seems to sleep. Can keep going all day and all night. These people must do all their
sleeping in the winter.
Tonight I tried to work our stupid little radio again. Could hear snatches from Churchill Radio, but they couldn’t hear us and we couldn’t make sense of their transmissions. Hope to hell my message last week to Ottawa about the terrible condition of the Kazan Eskimos got through and help is sent before it’s too late.
I don’t know what Ohoto makes of our struggle with the radio but he seems to have figured out what the snatches of voices in the earphones are, though sometimes he may get it wrong. This night he was listening to the static when suddenly he jumped to his feet, wild-eyed and frantic, and rushed out the door. We hurried after, wondering what the hell, and caught him half way to the river. He was gibbering like a maniac and fairly bouncing up and down.
”Ino … Ino …,” he howled, spinning around like a top and pointing all around the horizon.
We got him back inside and sat him down. I took his pulse and his heart was going like a trip-hammer. After a lot of confusion we discovered Ino is some kind of bad spirit who had just paid us a visit. Apparently Ohoto heard Ino voices and glanced up to see one – it looks somewhat like a man – go floating slowly by the window beckoning to him to follow. Ohoto says he had to follow, and if we hadn’t caught him he would have followed the Ino into the river.
There was no doubt he was scared half to death. He wouldn’t go out again on his own so we let him spend the rest of the night in the cabin. When, at about 0100, the place suddenly shook as if a dinosaur had grabbed it, Andy and I damn near panicked too. We sidled outside with rifles cocked, but there was nothing unusual to be seen. All was still in the half-light, and there wasn’t any wind. Earthquake? Maybe.
When the cabin shook, Ohoto just about went bonkers. We dosed him with a heavy shot of our alky and he finally seemed to go into a coma. Then he seemed to have a fit. At one point he swallowed his tongue and his face was turning black before Andy managed to hook a finger around his tongue and free up his windpipe. After that, he finally went to sleep and so, thank God, did we.