The Loyalty of Peeguk

PEEGUK, the Flat-footed One, lived, when he was at home, not a thousand miles from Fort Herschell, and for the Arctic this is a fairly close address, from which he would be easily found by one who knew the country. Fort Herschell is, as all the world knows, a mass of rock as big as two or three English counties, and situate not a great way from the mouth of the Coppermine River. It is wind-whipped, storm-smitten, and ice-blistered, and, in the short-lived summer, occasionally warm. The Fort — though there is no fort — is the farthest-north spot where abide representatives of law and order.

Peeguk’s very mobile headquarters were on the mainland. Sometimes he found it rather lonely, and this in spite of the fact that his joys and sorrows were shared by Oomgah, the Moonfaced One. There was never any shortage of food. White whales, for instance, came ashore every now and then in summer, and as soon as Peeguk saw that they were firmly wedged among the rocks he would move his topek — or, rather, Oomgah moved it — to the nearest point, and the whale furnished a free lunch counter from which, perhaps for weeks, they carved lean and fat as their leisurely fancy desired. By night the white bears came along to help themselves, and after them the lesser fry of the curved-clawed, shortfurred, sharp-toothed family. Under this combined assault the whale, which weighed only from twelve to fifteen tons, did not last very long. But all was quite amicable, with the rules of precedence mutually remembered and recognized.

It happened on a day that some coast Huskies came along in the fine weather, floating like gulls on the placid sea, and camped at the mouth of Wind River, not far from the summer residence of Peeguk. Among them was a certain Atokwok, the Farsighted One, known to many of the small brown tribes as being wise and of great experience. Especially was he learned when it was a matter of the doings and habits of white men. And it occurred that when Peeguk and he were sharing a still living salmon, which the latter had just jerked up through six fathoms of cold green water, Peeguk, whose throat was full of fish, asked if there was anything new in that particular part of the world.

Atokwok picked a salmon bone out of his gums and waved a greasy hand.

‘I have come from the Island on a whaler to the mouth of the Mother of Rivers [he meant the Coppermine] and thence here. But on the Island I saw those who had arrived from the far south, bringing with them a strange new devil.’

‘Does it live in a box, and speak without a tongue, and make a noise like a dog scratching the ice when its speech is finished?’

Atokwok shook his head. ‘No not that one. But nevertheless kindred to it, for, of a truth, this I saw is born in a box. But it will not stay there, and leaps out of it across a place as big as many topeks, whereupon it sticks to the wall.

Peeguk blinked at him. ‘Then you can catch it, or scrape it off?’

‘Not so: for when I tried to do this there was much laughter, and my hand went through the devil and felt only the wall.’

‘Then it escaped — for there cannot be a devil made out of nothing. ‘

‘Yet there is, and I have seen it. It is the spirit of a very powerful and active one, and lives in the dark.’

‘Since when has my brother seen in the dark?’ asked Peeguk satirically.

Atokwok, undisturbed, helped himself to the tail of the salmon.

‘Verily this thing crossed the dark on a bridge of light, as the ice makes a bridge over a narrow lane of deep water in a season of the year. Thus it came to the wall of which I spoke, and there it stuck.’

Peeguk surveyed his visitor gravely. Men did not lie to each other when they sat on a flat rock, side by side, and ate fish on the shore of the sea. At least Eskimo men did not. But all this was a deal harder to swallow than the salmon. A devil that stuck to a wall, and could not be scraped off! Then he had an idea.

‘Had it a voice?’

‘No — nor was there any sound save a small rattling noise in the box from which it jumped. But no voice.’

‘And your hand went through it?’

‘As I have told you. The part I touched was water, with many strange boats on it — boats that moved with men in them, speaking, it seemed, together. And though I dipped my hand in this water I felt no cold; nor was my hand even wet. Have you no more salmon?’

Peeguk did not answer at once, being too occupied with many reflections, novel and stirring. He knew enough to realize that the white man was allpowerful. It was always a surprise to him to hear that a white man had died, and he attributed it to the fact that one of the numerous devils in the white man’s service had for a moment got the better of his master — which was not infrequently correct. In a way it made one feel more contented with one’s own lot. But this last revelation surpassed anything he had ever heard.

‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘but in the next bay is what is left of a young whale whose meat is rotten and therefore very tender. What size is this devil?'

Atokwok heaved himself up. ‘How far away is that whale?’

‘As far as a tired man can walk in one hour,’ answered Peeguk. ‘Again I ask how large is this devil?’

‘Twice as long as my arms can reach, and twice as high; and,’ added Atokwok impressively, ‘ it all came out of a hole in the box of a bigness that could be filled by the nose of a jar seal.’

He waddled off, his own nose questingly in the air, for thereby he would inevitably find what he sought; and Peeguk sat quite motionless. He gave up trying to understand, but at that moment there was born in him the determination to see this thing for himself. If Atokwok was a liar — well, the word would go forth to that effect; and if he was not — well, the heart of the hunter swelled at the very thought. So, because he wanted to work the thing out carefully in his own mind, he asked no more questions, and when Atokwok and his friends moved off eastward next morning, into the empty wastes of the Beaufort Sea, Peeguk merely waved a hand and said nothing. But the kayaks of the voyagers had hardly vanished round the nearest point when he turned to Oomgah with an odd look in his black eyes.

‘I go to see something of which Atokwok has told me, and in two months I shall be at the mouth of the Mother of Rivers. Meet me there with the dogs.’

That was all he said, this being a matter he had decided to handle himself, and he went off with the quiet assurance of those who can live without fire or water, and whose larder is the deep green sea from which they take what they need when they need it. He did not worry about Oomgah, she being well able to take care of herself in this fat season of the year, when the salmon lay like silver slabs in the shallow waters, and the runways beside the small inland lakes were crowded with plump, pink-fleshed, half-feathered geese and swans that waddled coastward while their plumage grew. Nor did storms delay Peeguk, and day after day his kayak, tight as a drum and unsinkable as a soda-water bottle, nosed along the naked shores of the Arctic, its slim prow set steadfastly toward Herschell Island. Then, for the last leg of the trip, an obliging Alaskan whaler gave him a lift over from the mainland, during which he worked his passage with rising excitement in his barrel-like breast.

He approached the Fort with strange misgivings that intensified when he learned from a Coppermine Husky of the notable things which were being done there almost every night. It was certainly great magic. The man who told him this said, his eyes rolling, that once he had crept up to a window of the Fort, and, looking in, had beheld two white men fighting with guns against the wall; that one of them was killed, for he fell down and did not move, and there was no noise at all of fighting or firearms.

‘This thing I saw,’ he repeated earnestly. ‘So, being much afraid, I ran away, and for two days watched the Fort from a little distance. But there was no white man’s body carried out to be put with those who died of the great sickness, nor was there any sadness or mourning. Without doubt it is a place of devils, many and strong, and there lies much danger in this matter.’

‘Why?’ demanded Peeguk, setting his teeth.

‘It is in my mind that when a man is thus killed he is forthwith eaten. Otherwise where is his body?’

Peeguk took a long, long breath. In the year of the great hunger men had been eaten on the shore of the Beaufort Sea, and he knew it. But they were mostly old men, who could be spared, and an old woman or two, not of much value. This, however, was spoken of only in whispers, because evil things had befallen many of those who thus saved themselves. Pitalik, for instance, who ate some of his grandfather, was killed by a bear within two months; and Sinuluk, the Large-eared One, whose wife’s mother was at the very end of her life the mainstay of the family, came to grief over a difference with a bull walrus the very next spring. So, for every reason, the subject as well as the practice was wisely avoided. But he felt that a large hearty devil might well lick his lips over such fare.

‘Atokwok told me that he had put his hand through this thing.’ Peeguk’s voice was stubborn, but his bowels felt as though they were turned to water.

‘I do not know or care what Atokwok said, but it is true that he, being admitted to that place for a short time, came out very quickly with his face the color of sand when it is mixed with mud where the white foxes play at the edge of the water. Also he did not ask to go back, though the chief of the Fort was willing, but started for the anchorage of the whaler that brought him. ‘

Peeguk glanced apprehensively at the ship from which he had just disembarked; then his jaw stiffened. Had he not come a matter of twenty days’ journey to see this thing? He felt in the leg of his long walrus-hide boot, and brought out a sheathed skinning knife with a bone handle, a twelve-inch blade, and an edge like a razor. Testing this reflectively with a leathery thumb, he gave a little grunt.

‘I go to seek this devil,’ he said curtly, and strode toward the Fort.

To the man behind the counter — there was much profitable trading done here — the request was made known, the brown face a mask for feelings many and mingled. It then appeared from what he was told that the thing had been brought by a medicine man six moons ago as a present for the chief of the Fort, that no such devil had ever been seen in the North before, that it came out only in the dark, and that, though it was a white man’s devil, an exception could be made for himself since he had come so far.

‘Then it cannot get loose?’

Only when the light shines in the dark, and then when it is permitted.’

‘Atokwok told me it went across to the wall on a bridge of light.’

‘That is what happens.’

‘And otherwise it lives in a box?’

The trader nodded. A patient man, used to dealing gravely with those who were aware only of first principles, he could enter into the mind of this hunter with the quick, black, questioning eyes and the soul of a child. The seal of the North was over them both. There were also mysteries on Peeguk’s side — strange stories handed down from father to son of a Thing that walked by night, and, passing near an igloo, was shortly and inevitably followed by another visitor, even more grim and relentless. It had been heard and seen, but the full story was locked in pagan breasts where it would lie concealed. And there were other cardinal and more earthly mysteries pertaining to birds, animals, and fishes, which the short brown people read at sight but no white man could ever decipher. Besides all this there was that which one feels for another if that other comes of a breed that will walk up to the hungry she-bear when she issues gaunt and ravening from her winter fast with her cub lurching beside her, and, tauntin the great brute in his queer, clickin tongue, will drive his spear into her vast furry body. So, take it all in all, the trader found nothing to laugh at when he looked at Peeguk.

‘There is much that is hard to put into words concerning this matter, but come you here after I have eaten, and you shall see for yourself.’

Peeguk went out, and for the next three hours sat on a rock not five yards from the door. His stomach was empty, but he craved no food. At times he took out the knife, tested the edge of it with his tongue, and put it thoughtfully back. The feel of it was good against his leg. At nine o’clock, when it was as dark as it would be for the next three months, the door opened.

’Come, and fear nothing. While this thing is on the wall it is not permitted to any man to speak. You may laugh or cry —but no words.’

Peeguk took a look around before he went in. The gray of the Arctic sea tilting flatly up to the horizon; rock ledges, worn smooth by glaciers in the distant past; the low Island buildings, hugging the solid earth as though they feared being uprooted by winter blasts; a cluster of topeks just above tide level; a few hungry, mangy dogs; the miniature whaler, riding, slack-chained, in the bay; and, over it all, the suggestion of illimitable space and emptiness. This was very familiar. Now it was in his mind that he might never see it again, for all that the trader said, because the trader did not know what he proposed to do. But he only made a soft little noise in his throat, and followed. And this, perhaps, was the bravest thing he ever did in his life.

The room, the biggest in Fort Herschell, was used indiscriminately as a church, when a missionary came that way; as a courtroom, when, for instance, a magistrate journeyed five thousand miles to try Tetamagama and Alikomiak concerning the murders for which they were subsequently hanged; or for trading, when the rush was on in the springtime. Some of the whaler’s crew sat on benches at one end, with a few other whites. Behind them was a small wooden house with a hole in one side. Peeguk noted that this hole was of the size of the nose of a jar seal.

‘It is the devil house!’ he whispered to himself, and took the seat nearest the door.

Someone turned out the lamp, and a moment later light was visible inside this house. A voice spoke, saying that all was ready. Peeguk did not stir a muscle, but the hair crawled up the back of his neck.

Then out of the hole in the devil house leaped a great light that hit the opposite wall so that there came a space like a very white cloud and very round. At the same time was heard a sound like small gravel running down the bank of a stream, or many, many rifles being cocked quickly one after the other. In the white cloud appeared something Peeguk did not understand, but knew to be the writing of white men; then a face, very large, the face of a woman who opened her mouth showing many teeth, and smiled at him — Peeguk, the husband of Oomgah. At this his soul quivered within him, and he was glad Oomgah had not come. After that another white woman — also beautiful, and with as many strong teeth, but not fat enough for a good wife. Then two men, evidently not hunters, because their necks were thin and their shoulders narrow. They also looked at him, and went away, and behold the white cloud remained without a mark. Of a truth this was great magic!

His brain began to spin, while, mutely, he searched his past life for something by which he could judge this matter. There was nothing. He desired greatly to get away, but was mysteriously anchored to his seat, not frightened as much as he expected, but reduced to helplessness because there was so much beyond his understanding. When one has traveled four hundred miles, one wants to understand. It would be no use trying to describe this thing to Oomgah. It would pester him for the rest of his days.

He became aware that these spirits — for they could be nothing else — had something to do with each other. One man and woman rubbed noses. He understood that. The other man saw it, and was angered. This also was comprehensible. There were many devil things they got into and out of, black like porpoises — things that ran about over the ground and carried people in their entrails. Peeguk did not worry about this end of it, because he expected that the males were going to fight about the woman. He had seen several fights about women in the last few years. So now he tried to soothe his palpitating heart, and waited. Also he loosened the knife that lay against his right calf.

It came before he was ready for it. One man — or devil — sat smoking, the woman having melted away from him, when the other came up very quickly from behind, and stabbed him between the shoulders. Peeguk did not think much of the stabbing, because he who did it evidently knew little about the proper use of a knife; also when a man was stabbed he generally twisted about on the ground for a while before he died, whereas this one died at once. But great anger stirred in the pagan breast when, a little later, the murderer came upon the woman, and, taking her in his arms, rubbed noses very hard indeed. She did not like it, and fought with him.

Peeguk writhed on his seat, hot fury mounting in him. He had seen much the same thing before when Ugnuk carried off Pilyuka, the Cross-eyed One, and wife of Tolpan. Tolpan had stabbed very efficiently when he caught them. But here was a woman who had none to help her. She went on fighting, her hair flying loose like much dry seaweed. Then—just as she became all soft, and bent like a fish in the arms of the murderer—Peeguk, who had suffered all he could, saw red. Whipping out the skinning knife, he rushed across and drove it deep into the man’s heart.

In that instant several things happened. There was a great shout that filled the room as with laughter; the murderer faded away as a salmon swims under the ice; the gravel-like noise ceased altogether; and there was the knife sticking into the breast of the woman! At that the stomach of Peeguk stood upside down within him. He gave one loud cry, and fled for the open air.

Oomgah, the Moonfaced One, had come at her leisure to the mouth of the Mother of Rivers, paddling close to the shore while the dogs yelped and scrambled westward over the barren land. The journey was nothing to her. She fished, trapped, slept as much as she liked, and in a general way enjoyed a sort of rest cure. As to Peeguk she had no anxiety. He might come at the end of two moons; but if it were three, what matter? She rather expected him to do some visiting first.

She was therefore surprised when, a week ahead of time, she saw his kayak floating like a dry leaf opposite the camp. He came ashore, rubbed her nose in a rather thoughtful manner, asked a few ordinary questions, ate heartily, and resumed life in the good old-fashioned way. But never a word he said of what had taken place at Herschell Island. She endured this for some days, then want at him.

‘It is in my mind that after talking with Atokwok you journeyed to see certain magic. Did you see it?’

He nodded stolidly.

‘It was great magic?’

‘Too great for a woman to understand.’

She turned that over for a moment, and then sent him a knowing glance.

‘ Where is your skinning knife with the walrus-tusk handle? Mine is broken.’

‘I lost it, and therefore bought another. Also I bought this for you.’

He drew out a small packet, the contents of which had cost him much thought. It was a purchase made from the cook of the whaler on the way back from Herschell Island, and paid for with an otter skin. He had anticipated awkward questions from his life’s partner, questions he was not prepared to meet; so, with the wisdom that may be found on the Beaufort Sea as well as off it, he pitched on the oblique method of evasion. Women, if diverted, give no trouble. Therefore divert them. He handed Oomgah the packet.

Inside she found a four-inch shavingglass, backed with copper. Her lips widened in delight as she stared into it and saw the moonlike globular face, with rows of rusty teeth, broken and jagged from much chewing of walrus hide. Here was a great treasure, and what a husband was hers! So she laid her round oily cheek against his, gurgling her satisfaction.

‘ It may be that you saw other women at the Island?’ she said throatily.

He shuddered a little. ‘Yes — one devil woman. ‘

‘Was she beautiful?’

He surveyed her critically. ‘Yes, but not so beautiful as you.’

‘Then she will not come between us?’

‘Never!’ said Peeguk triumphantly. ‘I killed her!’