CHAPTER 8.
NAZA! NAZA! NAZA!
It was a waiting day at Fort Chippewayan. The lonesome, far-northernHudson's Bay Trading Post seldom saw such life. Tepees dotted the banksof the Slave River and lines of blanketed Indians paraded its shores.Near the boat landing a group of chiefs, grotesque in semi-barbaric,semicivilized splendor, but black-browed, austere-eyed, stood in savagedignity with folded arms and high-held heads. Lounging on the grassybank were white men, traders, trappers and officials of the post.
All eyes were on the distant curve of the river where, as it lostitself in a fine-fringed bend of dark green, white-glinting wavesdanced and fluttered. A June sky lay blue in the majestic stream;ragged, spear-topped, dense green trees massed down to the water;beyond rose bold, bald-knobbed hills, in remote purple relief.
A long Indian arm stretched south. The waiting eyes discerned a blackspeck on the green, and watched it grow. A flatboat, with a manstanding to the oars, bore down swiftly.
Not a red hand, nor a white one, offered to help the voyager in thedifficult landing. The oblong, clumsy, heavily laden boat surged withthe current and passed the dock despite the boatman's efforts. He swunghis craft in below upon a bar and roped it fast to a tree. The Indianscrowded above him on the bank. The boatman raised his powerful formerect, lifted a bronzed face which seemed set in craggy hardness, andcast from narrow eyes a keen, cool glance on those above. The silverygleam in his fair hair told of years.
Silence, impressive as it was ominous, broke only to the rattle ofcamping paraphernalia, which the voyager threw to a level, grassy benchon the bank. Evidently this unwelcome visitor had journeyed from afar,and his boat, sunk deep into the water with its load of barrels, boxesand bags, indicated that the journey had only begun. Significant, too,were a couple of long Winchester rifles shining on a tarpaulin.
The cold-faced crowd stirred and parted to permit the passage of atall, thin, gray personage of official bearing, in a faded militarycoat.
"Are you the musk-ox hunter?" he asked, in tones that contained nowelcome.
The boatman greeted this peremptory interlocutor with a cool laugh--astrange laugh, in which the muscles of his face appeared not to play.
"Yes, I am the man," he said.
"The chiefs of the Chippewayan and Great Slave tribes have beenapprised of your coming. They have held council and are here to speakwith you."
At a motion from the commandant, the line of chieftains piled down tothe level bench and formed a half-circle before the voyager. To a manwho had stood before grim Sitting Bull and noble Black Thunder of theSioux, and faced the falcon-eyed Geronimo, and glanced over the sightsof a rifle at gorgeous-feathered, wild, free Comanches, thissemi-circle of savages--lords of the north--was a sorry comparison.Bedaubed and betrinketed, slouchy and slovenly, these low-staturedchiefs belied in appearance their scorn-bright eyes and lofty mien.They made a sad group.
One who spoke in unintelligible language, rolled out a haughty,sonorous voice over the listening multitude. When he had finished, ahalf-breed interpreter, in the dress of a white man, spoke at a signalfrom the commandant.
"He says listen to the great orator of the Chippewayan. He has summonedall the chiefs of the tribes south of Great Slave Lake. He has heldcouncil. The cunning of the pale-face, who comes to take the musk-oxen,is well known. Let the pale-face hunter return to his ownhunting-grounds; let him turn his face from the north. Never will thechiefs permit the white man to take musk-oxen alive from their country.The Ageter, the Musk-ox, is their god. He gives them food and fur. Hewill never come back if he is taken away, and the reindeer will followhim. The chiefs and their people would starve. They command thepale-face hunter to go back. They cry Naza! Naza! Naza!"
"Say, for a thousand miles I've heard that word Naza!" returned thehunter, with mingled curiosity and disgust. "At Edmonton Indian runnersstarted ahead of me, and every village I struck the redskins wouldcrowd round me and an old chief would harangue at me, and motion meback, and point north with Naza! Naza! Naza! What does it mean?"
"No white man knows; no Indian will tell," answered the interpreter."The traders think it means the Great Slave, the North Star, the NorthSpirit, the North Wind, the North Lights and the musk-ox god."
"Well, say to the chiefs to tell Ageter I have been four moons on theway after some of his little Ageters, and I'm going to keep on afterthem."
"Hunter, you are most unwise," broke in the commandant, in hisofficious voice. "The Indians will never permit you to take a musk-oxalive from the north. They worship him, pray to him. It is a wonder youhave not been stopped."
"Who'll stop me?"
"The Indians. They will kill you if you do not turn back."
"Faugh! to tell an American plainsman that!" The hunter paused a steadymoment, with his eyelids narrowing over slits of blue fire. "There isno law to keep me out, nothing but Indian superstition and Naza! Andthe greed of the Hudson's Bay people. I am an old fox, not to be fooledby pretty baits. For years the officers of this fur-trading companyhave tried to keep out explorers. Even Sir John Franklin, anEnglishman, could not buy food of them. The policy of the company is toside with the Indians, to keep out traders and trappers. Why? So theycan keep on cheating the poor savages out of clothing and food bytrading a few trinkets and blankets, a little tobacco and rum formillions of dollars worth of furs. Have I failed to hire man after man,Indian after Indian, not to know why I cannot get a helper? Have I, aplainsman, come a thousand miles alone to be scared by you, or a lot ofcraven Indians? Have I been dreaming of musk-oxen for forty years, toslink south now, when I begin to feel the north? Not I."
Deliberately every chief, with the sound of a hissing snake, spat inthe hunter's face. He stood immovable while they perpetrated theoutrage, then calmly wiped his cheeks, and in his strange, cool voice,addressed the interpreter.
"Tell them thus they show their true qualities, to insult in council.Tell them they are not chiefs, but dogs. Tell them they are not evensquaws, only poor, miserable starved dogs. Tell them I turn my back onthem. Tell them the paleface has fought real chiefs, fierce, bold, likeeagles, and he turns his back on dogs. Tell them he is the one whocould teach them to raise the musk-oxen and the reindeer, and to keepout the cold and the wolf. But they are blinded. Tell them the huntergoes north."
Through the council of chiefs ran a low mutter, as of gathering thunder.
True to his word, the hunter turned his back on them. As he brushed by,his eye caught a gaunt savage slipping from the boat. At the hunter'sstern call, the Indian leaped ashore, and started to run. He had stolena parcel, and would have succeeded in eluding its owner but for anunforeseen obstacle, as striking as it was unexpected.
A white man of colossal stature had stepped in the thief's passage, andlaid two great hands on him. Instantly the parcel flew from the Indian,and he spun in the air to fall into the river with a sounding splash.Yells signaled the surprise and alarm caused by this unexpectedincident. The Indian frantically swam to the shore. Whereupon thechampion of the stranger in a strange land lifted a bag, which gaveforth a musical clink of steel, and throwing it with the camp articleson the grassy bench, he extended a huge, friendly hand.
"My name is Rea," he said, in deep, cavernous tones.
"Mine is Jones," replied the hunter, and right quickly did he grip theproffered hand. He saw in Rea a giant, of whom he was but a stuntedshadow. Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with yard-wide shoulders, ahulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous, shaggy head rested on a bullneck. His broad face, with its low forehead, its close-shut mastiffunder jaw, its big, opaque eyes, pale and cruel as those of a jaguar,marked him a man of terrible brute force.
"Free-trader!" called the commandant "Better think twice before youjoin fortunes with the musk-ox hunter."
"To hell with you an' your rantin', dog-eared redskins!" cried Rea."I've run agin a man of my own kind, a man of my own country, an' I'mgoin' with him."
With this he thrust aside some encroaching, gaping Indians s
ounconcernedly and ungently that they sprawled upon the grass.
Slowly the crowd mounted and once more lined the bank.
Jones realized that by some late-turning stroke of fortune, he hadfallen in with one of the few free-traders of the province. Thesefree-traders, from the very nature of their calling, which was to defythe fur company, and to trap and trade on their own account--were ahardy and intrepid class of men. Rea's worth to Jones exceeded that ofa dozen ordinary men. He knew the ways of the north, the language ofthe tribes, the habits of animals, the handling of dogs, the uses offood and fuel. Moreover, it soon appeared that he was a carpenter andblacksmith.
"There's my kit," he said, dumping the contents of his bag. Itconsisted of a bunch of steel traps, some tools, a broken ax, a box ofmiscellaneous things such as trappers used, and a few articles offlannel. "Thievin' redskins," he added, in explanation of his poverty."Not much of an outfit. But I'm the man for you. Besides, I had a palonct who knew you on the plains, called you 'Buff' Jones. Old Jim Benthe was."
"I recollect Jim," said Jones. "He went down in Custer's last charge.So you were Jim's pal. That'd be a recommendation if you needed one.But the way you chucked the Indian overboard got me."
Rea soon manifested himself as a man of few words and much action. Withthe planks Jones had on board he heightened the stern and bow of theboat to keep out the beating waves in the rapids; he fashioned asteering-gear and a less awkward set of oars, and shifted the cargo soas to make more room in the craft.
"Buff, we're in for a storm. Set up a tarpaulin an' make a fire. We'llpretend to camp to-night. These Indians won't dream we'd try to run theriver after dark, and we'll slip by under cover."
The sun glazed over; clouds moved up from the north; a cold wind sweptthe tips of the spruces, and rain commenced to drive in gusts. By thetime it was dark not an Indian showed himself. They were housed fromthe storm. Lights twinkled in the teepees and the big log cabins of thetrading company. Jones scouted round till pitchy black night, when afreezing, pouring blast sent him back to the protection of thetarpaulin. When he got there he found that Rea had taken it down andawaited him. "Off!" said the free-trader; and with no more noise than adrifting feather the boat swung into the current and glided down tillthe twinkling fires no longer accentuated the darkness.
By night the river, in common with all swift rivers, had a sullenvoice, and murmured its hurry, its restraint, its menace, its meaning.The two boat-men, one at the steering gear, one at the oars, faced thepelting rain and watched the dim, dark line of trees. The craft slidnoiselessly onward into the gloom.
And into Jones's ears, above the storm, poured another sound, a steady,muffled rumble, like the roll of giant chariot wheels. It had come tobe a familiar roar to him, and the only thing which, in his long lifeof hazard, had ever sent the cold, prickling, tight shudder over hiswarm skin. Many times on the Athabasca that rumble had presaged thedangerous and dreaded rapids.
"Hell Bend Rapids!" shouted Rea. "Bad water, but no rocks."
The rumble expanded to a roar, the roar to a boom that charged the airwith heaviness, with a dreamy burr. The whole indistinct world appearedto be moving to the lash of wind, to the sound of rain, to the roar ofthe river. The boat shot down and sailed aloft, met shock on shock,breasted leaping dim white waves, and in a hollow, unearthly blend ofwatery sounds, rode on and on, buffeted, tossed, pitched into a blackchaos that yet gleamed with obscure shrouds of light. Then theconvulsive stream shrieked out a last defiance, changed its courseabruptly to slow down and drown the sound of rapids in mufflingdistance. Once more the craft swept on smoothly, to the drive of thewind and the rush of the rain.
By midnight the storm cleared. Murky cloud split to show shining,blue-white stars and a fitful moon, that silvered the crests of thespruces and sometimes hid like a gleaming, black-threaded peak behindthe dark branches.
Jones, a plainsman all his days, wonderingly watched the moon-blanchedwater. He saw it shade and darken under shadowy walls of granite, whereit swelled with hollow song and gurgle. He heard again the far-offrumble, faint on the night. High cliff banks appeared, walled out themellow, light, and the river suddenly narrowed. Yawning holes,whirlpools of a second, opened with a gurgling suck and raced with theboat.
On the craft flew. Far ahead, a long, declining plane of jumpingfrosted waves played dark and white with the moonbeams. The Slaveplunged to his freedom, down his riven, stone-spiked bed, knowing nopatient eddy, and white-wreathed his dark shiny rocks in spume andspray.