It was the
end. Subienkow had travelled a long trail of bitterness and horror, homing like
a dove for the capitals of Europe, and here, farther
away than ever, in Russian America, the trail ceased. He sat in the
snow, arms tied behind him, waiting the torture. He stared curiously
before him at a huge Cossack, prone in the snow, moaning in his pain.
The men had finished handling the giant and turned him over to the women. That
they exceeded the fiendishness of the men, the man’s cries attested.
Subienkow looked
on, and shuddered. He was not afraid to die. He had carried his life too long
in his hands, on that weary trail from Warsaw
to Nulato, to shudder at mere dying. But he objected to the torture. It
offended his soul. And this offence, in turn, was not due to the mere
pain he must endure, but to the sorry spectacle the pain would make of him. He
knew that he would pray, and beg, and entreat, even as Big Ivan and the others
that had gone before. This would not be nice. To pass
out bravely and cleanly, with a smile and a jest—ah! that would have been the
way. But to lose control, to have his soul upset by the pangs of the flesh, to
screech and gibber like an ape, to become the veriest beast—ah, that was what
was so terrible.
There had
been no chance to escape. From the beginning, when he dreamed the fiery dream
of Poland’s independence, he had become a puppet in the hands of Fate. From the
beginning, at Warsaw, at St. Petersburg, in the Siberian mines, in Kamtchatka,
on the crazy boats of the fur-thieves,
Fate had been driving him to this end. Without doubt, in the foundations of the
world was graved this end for him—for him, who was so fine and sensitive, whose
nerves scarcely sheltered under his skin, who was a dreamer, and a poet, and an
artist. Before he was dreamed of, it had
been determined that the quivering bundle of sensitiveness that constituted him
should be doomed to live in raw and howling savagery, and to die in this far
land of night, in this dark place beyond the last boundaries of the world.
He sighed. So
that thing before him was Big Ivan—Big Ivan the giant, the man without nerves,
the man of iron, the Cossack turned freebooter of the seas, who was as
phlegmatic as an ox, with a nervous system so low that what was pain to
ordinary men was scarcely a tickle to him. Well, well, trust these Nulato
Indians to find Big Ivan’s nerves and trace them to
the roots of
his quivering soul. They were certainly doing it. It was inconceivable that a
man could suffer so much and yet live. Big Ivan was paying for his low order of
nerves. Already he had lasted twice as long
as any of the others.
Subienkow
felt that he could not stand the Cossack’s sufferings much longer. Why didn’t
Ivan die? He would go mad if that screaming did not cease. But when it did cease,
his turn would come. And there was Yakaga awaiting him, too, grinning at him
even now in anticipation—Yakaga, whom only last week he had kicked out of the
fort, and upon whose face he had laid the lash of his dog-whip. Yakaga would
attend to him. Doubtlessly
4
Yakaga was
saving for him more refined tortures, more exquisite nerve-racking. Ah! that
must have been a good one, from the way Ivan screamed. The squaws bending over
him stepped back with laughter and clapping of hands. Subienkow saw the monstrous
thing that had been perpetrated, and began to laugh hysterically. The Indians
looked at him in wonderment that he should laugh. But Subienkow could not stop.
This would
never do. He controlled himself, the spasmodic twitchings slowly dying away. He
strove to think of other things, and began reading back in his own life. He
remembered his mother and his father, and the little spotted pony, and the
French tutor who had taught him dancing and sneaked him an old worn copy of
Voltaire. Once more he saw Paris, and dreary London, and gay Vienna, and Rome.
And once more he saw that wild group of youths who had dreamed, even as he, the
dream of an independent Poland with a king of Poland on the throne at Warsaw.
Ah, there it was
that the long
trail began. Well, he had lasted longest. One by one, beginning with the two
executed at St. Petersburg, he took up the count of the passing of those brave
spirits. Here one had been beaten to death by a jailer, and there, on that
bloodstained highway of the exiles, where they had marched for endless months,
beaten and maltreated by their Cossack guards, another had dropped by the way.
Always it had been savagery—brutal, bestial savagery. They had died—of fever,
in the mines, under the knout. The last two had died after the escape, in the
battle with the Cossacks, and he alone had won to Kamtchatka with the stolen
papers and the money of a traveller he had left lying in the snow. It had been
nothing but savagery. All the years, with his heart in
studios, and theatres, and courts, he had been hemmed in by savagery. He had
purchased his life with blood. Everybody had killed. He had killed that
traveller for his passports. He had proved that he was a man of
parts by duelling with two Russian officers on a single day. He had had
to prove himself in order to win to a place among the fur-thieves. He
had had to win to that place. Behind him lay the thousand-years-long
road across all Siberia and Russia. He could not escape that way. The only way
was ahead, across the dark and icy sea of Bering to Alaska. The way had led
from savagery to deeper savagery. On the scurvy-rotten ships of the
fur-thieves, out of food and out of water, buffeted by the
interminable storms of that stormy sea, men had become animals. Thrice he had
sailed east from Kamtchatka. And thrice, after all manner of hardship and
suffering, the survivors had come back to Kamtchatka. There had been no outlet
for escape, and he could not go back the way he had come, for the mines and the
knout awaited him.
Again, the
fourth and last time, he had sailed east. He had been with
those who first found the fabled Seal Islands; but he had not returned
with them to share the wealth of furs in the mad orgies of Kamtchatka.
He had sworn never to go back. He knew that to win to those dear
capitals of Europe he must go on. So he had changed ships and remained in the
dark new land. His comrades were Slavonian hunters and Russian adventurers,
Mongols and Tartars and Siberian aborigines; and through the savages of the new
world they had cut a path of blood. They had massacred whole villages that
refused to furnish the fur-tribute; and they, in turn, had been massacred by
ships’ companies. He, with one Finn, had been the sole survivor of such a
company. They had spent a winter of solitude and starvation on a lonely
Aleutian isle, and their rescue in the spring by another fur-ship had been one
chance in a thousand.
But always
the terrible savagery had hemmed him in. Passing from ship to ship, and ever
refusing to return, he had come to the ship that explored south. All down the
Alaska coast they had encountered nothing but hosts of savages. Every anchorage
among the beetling islands or under the frowning cliffs of the mainland had
meant a battle or a storm. Either
the gales
blew, threatening destruction, or the war canoes came off,
manned by howling natives with the war-paint on their faces, who came to learn
the bloody virtues of the sea-rovers’ gunpowder. South, south they
had coasted, clear to the myth-land of California. Here, it was said,
were Spanish adventurers who had fought their way up from Mexico. He had had
hopes of those Spanish adventurers. Escaping to them, the rest would have been
easy—a year or two, what did it matter more or less—and he would win to Mexico,
then a ship, and Europe would be his. But they had met no Spaniards. Only had
they encountered the same impregnable wall of savagery. The denizens of the
confines of the world, painted for war,
had driven them back from the shores. At last, when one boat was cut off and
every man killed, the commander had abandoned the quest and sailed back to the
north.
The years had
passed. He had served under Tebenkoff when Michaelovski
Redoubt was
built. He had spent two years in the Kuskokwim country. Two summers, in the
month of June, he had managed to be at the head of Kotzebue Sound. Here, at
this time, the tribes assembled for barter;
here were to be found spotted deerskins from Siberia, ivory from the Diomedes,
walrus skins from the shores of the Arctic, strange stone
lamps,
passing in trade from tribe to tribe, no one knew whence, and, once, a
hunting-knife of English make; and here, Subienkow knew, was the school in
which to learn geography. For he met Eskimos from Norton Sound, from King
Island and St. Lawrence Island, from Cape Prince of Wales, and Point Barrow.
Such places had other names, and their distances were measured in days.
It was a vast
region these trading savages came from, and a vaster region from which, by
repeated trade, their stone lamps and that steel knife had come. Subienkow
bullied, and cajoled, and bribed. Every far-journeyer
or strange tribesman was brought before him. Perils unaccountable and
unthinkable were mentioned, as well as wild beasts, hostile tribes,
impenetrable forests, and mighty mountain ranges; but always from beyond came
the rumour and the tale of white-skinned men, blue of eye and fair
of hair, who
fought like devils and who sought always for furs. They were to the east—far,
far to the east. No one had seen them. It was the word that had been passed
along.
It was a hard
school. One could not learn geography very well through the medium of strange
dialects, from dark minds that mingled fact and fable and that measured
distances by “sleeps” that varied according to the difficulty of the going. But
at last came the whisper that gave Subienkow courage. In the east lay a great
river where were these blue-eyed men. The river was called the Yukon. South of
Michaelovski Redoubt emptied another great river which the Russians knew as the
Kwikpak. These two rivers were one, ran the whisper.
Subienkow
returned to Michaelovski. For a year he urged an expedition up the Kwikpak.
Then arose Malakoff, the Russian half-breed, to lead the wildest and most
ferocious of the hell’s broth of mongrel adventurers who had crossed from
Kamtchatka. Subienkow was his lieutenant. They threaded the mazes of the great
delta of the Kwikpak, picked up the first low hills on the northern bank, and
for half a thousand miles, in skin canoes loaded to the gunwales with
trade-goods and ammunition, fought their way against the five-knot current of a
river that ran from two to
ten miles
wide in a channel many fathoms deep. Malakoff decided to build the fort at
Nulato. Subienkow urged to go farther. But he quickly reconciled himself to
Nulato. The long winter was coming on. It would
be better to wait. Early the following summer, when the ice was gone, he would
disappear up the Kwikpak and work his way to the Hudson Bay Company’s posts.
Malakoff had never heard the whisper that the Kwikpak was the Yukon, and
Subienkow did not tell him.
Came the
building of the fort. It was enforced labour. The tiered walls of logs arose to
the sighs and groans of the Nulato Indians. The lash was laid upon their backs,
and it was the iron hand of the freebooters of the sea that laid on the lash.
There were Indians that ran away, and when they were caught they were brought
back and spread-eagled before the fort, where they and their tribe learned the
efficacy of the knout. Two
died under it; others were injured for life; and the rest took the lesson
to heart and ran away no more. The snow was flying ere the fort was finished,
and then it was the time for furs. A heavy tribute was laid
upon the
tribe. Blows and lashings continued, and that the tribute
should be paid, the women and children were held as hostages and treated with
the barbarity that only the fur-thieves knew.
Well, it had
been a sowing of blood, and now was come the harvest. The fort was gone. In the
light of its burning, half the fur-thieves had
been cut down. The other half had passed under the torture. Only Subienkow
remained, or Subienkow and Big Ivan, if that whimpering, moaning thing in the
snow could be called Big Ivan. Subienkow caught Yakaga grinning at him. There
was no gainsaying Yakaga. The mark of the lash was still on his face. After
all, Subienkow could not blame him,
but he
disliked the thought of what Yakaga would do to him. He thought
of appealing to Makamuk, the head-chief; but his judgment told him that such
appeal was useless. Then, too, he thought of bursting his bonds and dying
fighting. Such an end would be quick. But he could not break his bonds. Caribou
thongs were stronger than he. Still devising, another thought came to him. He
signed for Makamuk, and that an interpreter who knew the coast dialect should
be brought.
“Oh,
Makamuk,” he said, “I am not minded to die. I am a great man, and it were
foolishness for me to die. In truth, I shall not die. I am not like these other carrion.”
He looked at
the moaning thing that had once been Big Ivan, and stirred it contemptuously
with his toe.
“I am too
wise to die. Behold, I have a great medicine. I alone know this medicine. Since
I am not going to die, I shall exchange this medicine with you.”
“What is this
medicine?” Makamuk demanded. “It is a strange medicine.”
Subienkow
debated with himself for a moment, as if loth to part with the secret.
“I will tell
you. A little bit of this medicine rubbed on the skin makes
the skin hard like a rock, hard like iron, so that no cutting weapon can cut
it. The strongest blow of a cutting weapon is a vain thing against
it. A bone knife becomes like a piece of mud; and it will turn the edge
of the iron knives we have brought among you. What will you give me for the
secret of the medicine?”
“I will give
you your life,” Makamuk made answer through the interpreter. Subienkow laughed
scornfully.
“And you shall be a slave in my house until
you die.”
The Pole
laughed more scornfully.
“Untie my
hands and feet and let us talk,” he said.
The chief
made the sign; and when he was loosed Subienkow rolled a cigarette and lighted
it.
“This is
foolish talk,” said Makamuk. “There is no such medicine. It cannot be. A
cutting edge is stronger than any medicine.”
The chief was
incredulous, and yet he wavered. He had seen too many deviltries of fur-thieves
that worked. He could not wholly doubt.
“I will give
you your life; but you shall not be a slave,” he announced. “More than that.”
Subienkow
played his game as coolly as if he were bartering for a foxskin.
“It is a very
great medicine. It has saved my life many times. I want a sled and dogs, and
six of your hunters to travel with me down the river and give me safety to one
day’s sleep from Michaelovski Redoubt.”
“You must
live here, and teach us all of your deviltries,” was the reply.
Subienkow
shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. He blew cigarette smoke out on the
icy air, and curiously regarded what remained of the big Cossack.
“That scar!”
Makamuk said suddenly, pointing to the Pole’s neck, where a livid mark
advertised the slash of a knife in a Kamtchatkan brawl. “The medicine is not
good. The cutting edge was stronger than the medicine.”
“It was a
strong man that drove the stroke.” (Subienkow considered.) “Stronger than you,
stronger than your strongest hunter, stronger than he.”
Again, with
the toe of his moccasin, he touched the Cossack—a grisly spectacle, no longer
conscious—yet in whose dismembered body the pain-racked life clung and was loth
to go.
“Also, the
medicine was weak. For at that place there were no berries of a certain kind,
of which I see you have plenty in this country. The medicine here will be
strong.”
“I will let
you go down river,” said Makamuk; “and the sled and the dogs and the six
hunters to give you safety shall be yours.”
“You are slow,” was the cool rejoinder. “You
have committed an offence against my medicine in that you did not at once
accept my terms. Behold,
I now demand more. I want one hundred beaver skins.” (Makamuk sneered.)
“I want one
hundred pounds of dried fish.” (Makamuk nodded, for fish were plentiful and
cheap.) “I want two sleds—one for me and one for my furs and fish. And my rifle
must be returned to me. If you do not like the price, in a little while the
price will grow.”
Yakaga
whispered to the chief.
“But how can I know your medicine is true medicine?” Makamuk asked. “It is very
easy. First, I shall go into the woods—”
Again Yakaga whispered to Makamuk, who made a suspicious dissent.
“You can send
twenty hunters with me,” Subienkow went on. “You see, I must get the berries
and the roots with which to make the medicine.
Then, when you have brought the two sleds and loaded on them the fish and the
beaver skins and the rifle, and when you have told off the six
hunters who
will go with me—then, when all is ready, I will rub the medicine on my neck,
so, and lay my neck there on that log. Then can your strongest hunter take the
axe and strike three times on my neck. You yourself can strike the three
times.”
Makamuk stood
with gaping mouth, drinking in this latest and most wonderful magic of the
fur-thieves.
“But first,”
the Pole added hastily, “between each blow I must put on fresh medicine. The
axe is heavy and sharp, and I want no mistakes.”
“All that you
have asked shall be yours,” Makamuk cried in a rush of acceptance. “Proceed to
make your medicine.”
Subienkow
concealed his elation. He was playing a desperate game, and there must be no
slips. He spoke arrogantly.
“You have
been slow. My medicine is offended. To make the offence clean you must give me
your daughter.”
He pointed to
the girl, an unwholesome creature, with a cast in one eye and a bristling
wolf-tooth. Makamuk was angry, but the Pole remained imperturbable, rolling and
lighting another cigarette.
“Make haste,”
he threatened. “If you are not quick, I shall demand yet more.”
In the
silence that followed, the dreary northland scene faded before
him, and he saw once more his native land, and France, and, once, as he glanced
at the wolf-toothed girl, he remembered another girl, a singer
and a dancer, whom he had known when first as a youth he came to Paris.
“What do you want with the girl?” Makamuk
asked.
“To go down
the river with me.” Subienkow glanced over her critically. “She will make a
good wife, and it is an honour worthy of my medicine to be married to your
blood.”
Again he
remembered the singer and dancer and hummed aloud a song she had taught him. He
lived the old life over, but in a detached, impersonal
sort of way, looking at the memory-pictures of his own life as if they
were pictures in a book of anybody’s life. The chief’s voice, abruptly
breaking the
silence, startled him
“It shall be
done,” said Makamuk. “The girl shall go down the river with you. But be it
understood that I myself strike the three blows with the axe on your neck.”
“But each
time I shall put on the medicine,” Subienkow answered, with a show of
ill-concealed anxiety.
“You shall
put the medicine on between each blow. Here are the hunters who shall see you
do not escape. Go into the forest and gather your medicine.”
Makamuk had
been convinced of the worth of the medicine by the Pole’s rapacity. Surely
nothing less than the greatest of medicines could enable a man in the shadow of death to stand up and drive
an old-woman’s bargain.
“Besides,”
whispered Yakaga, when the Pole, with his guard, had disappeared among the
spruce trees, “when you have learned the medicine you can easily destroy him.”
“But how can
I destroy him?” Makamuk argued. “His medicine will not let me destroy him.”
“There will
be some part where he has not rubbed the medicine,” was Yakaga’s reply. “We
will destroy him through that part. It may be his ears. Very well; we will
thrust a spear in one ear and out the other. Or it may be his eyes. Surely the
medicine will be much too strong to rub on his eyes.”
The chief
nodded. “You are wise, Yakaga. If he possesses no other devil-things, we will
then destroy him.”
Subienkow did
not waste time in gathering the ingredients for his
medicine, he selected whatsoever came to hand such as spruce needles, the inner
bark of the willow, a strip of birch bark, and a quantity of moss-berries,
which he made the hunters dig up for him from beneath the snow. A few frozen
roots completed his supply, and he led the way back
to camp.
Makamuk and
Yakaga crouched beside him, noting the quantities and kinds of the ingredients
he dropped into the pot of boiling water.
“You must be
careful that the moss-berries go in first,” he explained.
“And—oh, yes,
one other thing—the finger of a man. Here, Yakaga, let me cut off your finger.”
But Yakaga
put his hands behind him and scowled. “Just a small finger,” Subienkow pleaded.
“Yakaga, give him your finger,” Makamuk commanded.
“There be
plenty of fingers lying around,” Yakaga grunted, indicating the human wreckage
in the snow of the score of persons who had been tortured to death.
“It must be
the finger of a live man,” the Pole objected.
“Then shall
you have the finger of a live man.” Yakaga strode over to the Cossack and
sliced off a finger.
“He is not
yet dead,” he announced, flinging the bloody trophy in the snow at the Pole’s
feet. “Also, it is a good finger, because it is
large.”
Subienkow
dropped it into the fire under the pot and began to sing. It was a French
love-song that with great solemnity he sang into the brew.
“Without
these words I utter into it, the medicine is worthless,” he explained. “The
words are the chiefest strength of it. Behold, it is ready.”
“Name the
words slowly, that I may know them,” Makamuk commanded.
“Not until
after the test. When the axe flies back three times from my neck, then will I
give you the secret of the words.”
“But if the
medicine is not good medicine?” Makamuk queried anxiously.
Subienkow
turned upon him wrathfully.
“My medicine
is always good. However, if it is not good, then do by me
as you have done to the others. Cut me up a bit at a time, even as you have cut
him up.” He pointed to the Cossack. “The medicine is now cool. Thus, I rub it
on my neck, saying this further medicine.”
With great
gravity he slowly intoned a line of the “Marseillaise,” at the same time
rubbing the villainous brew thoroughly into his neck.
An outcry
interrupted his play-acting. The giant Cossack, with a last resurgence of his
tremendous vitality, had arisen to his knees. Laughter and cries of surprise
and applause arose from the Nulatos, as Big Ivan began flinging himself about
in the snow with mighty spasms.
Subienkow was
made sick by the sight, but he mastered his qualms and made believe to be
angry.
“This will
not do,” he said. “Finish him, and then we will make the test. Here, you,
Yakaga, see that his noise ceases.”
While this
was being done, Subienkow turned to Makamuk.
“And
remember, you are to strike hard. This is not baby-work. Here, take the axe and
strike the log, so that I can see you strike like a man.”
Makamuk
obeyed, striking twice, precisely and with vigour, cutting out a large chip.
“It is well.”
Subienkow looked about him at the circle of savage faces
that somehow seemed to symbolize the wall of savagery that had hemmed him about
ever since the Czar’s police had first arrested him in Warsaw.
“Take your axe, Makamuk, and stand so. I shall lie down. When I raise
my hand, strike, and strike with all your might. And be careful that no
one stands behind you. The medicine is good, and the axe may bounce from off my
neck and right out of your hands.”
He looked at
the two sleds, with the dogs in harness, loaded with furs and fish. His rifle
lay on top of the beaver skins. The six hunters who were to act as his guard
stood by the sleds.
“Where is the
girl?” the Pole demanded. “Bring her up to the sleds before the test goes on.”
When this had
been carried out, Subienkow lay down in the snow, resting his head on the log
like a tired child about to sleep. He had lived so many dreary years that he
was indeed tired.
“I laugh at
you and your strength, O Makamuk,” he said. “Strike, and strike hard.”
He lifted his
hand. Makamuk swung the axe, a broadaxe for the squaring
of logs. The bright steel flashed through the frosty air, poised for a
perceptible instant above Makamuk’s head, then descended upon Subienkow’s bare
neck. Clear through flesh and bone it cut its way, biting deeply
into the log
beneath. The amazed savages saw the head bounce a yard away from the blood-spouting
trunk.
There was a
great bewilderment and silence, while slowly it began to dawn in their minds
that there had been no medicine. The fur-thief had outwitted them. Alone, of
all their prisoners, he had escaped the
torture. That had been the stake for which he played. A great roar of laughter
went up. Makamuk bowed his head in shame. The fur-thief had fooled him. He had
lost face before all his people. Still they
continued to roar out their laughter. Makamuk turned, and with bowed head
stalked away. He knew that thenceforth he would be no longer known as Makamuk.
He would be Lost Face; the record of his shame would be with him until he died;
and whenever the tribes gathered in the spring for the salmon, or in the summer
for the trading, the story would pass back and forth across the camp-fires of
how the fur-thief died peaceably, at a
single
stroke, by the hand of Lost Face.
“Who was Lost Face?” he could hear, in anticipation, some insolent young buck demand, “Oh, Lost Face,” would be the answer, “he who once was Makamuk in the days before he cut off the fur-thief’s head.”
Merci pour la lecture!
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