Chapter Thirty-One
They walk again, for days upon days, across eskers, string bogs, and peat flats, and past broad, wind-ripped lakes the color of old pewter fringed about with low clusters of bulrush and sweet gale.
As the summer warmth begins to fade, a cold wind gusts harder at their backs and dark-bellied clouds loom over them like sheaves of smoke-stained thatch.
It still seems to Tom Hearn, hobbled by grief and caged in gloom, that this mournful journey is eternal and may never cease.
Then, one early morning after sunrise, when he looks south through the spyglass, he sees the forest’s faint edge like a layer of gray silt on the brown horizon, and the next day, by the afternoon, the first ragged pine trees, shorn and spindled, begin to appear.
As the woods thicken all around them and taller firs give way to groves of flame-leaved birch and poplar, he senses with a sudden unreasoned certainty that this great change must portend some other even greater, and that what now seems true or solid will soon dissolve or be transformed into its opposite, although how that will happen, and why and when, he cannot start to guess.
On the fourth evening after leaving the Barrens behind, they make camp on a piece of higher ground, build up a fire, and keep it burning as a beacon through the night.
In the morning, Hearn and Keasik go off to look for food and Shaw stays behind feeding the blaze with armfuls of damp leaves and fallen branches until at noon, drawn by the smoke just as they intended, three Indian hunters, two men and a youth, emerge from between the tree trunks and hail him with a greeting.
The two elders carry antique muskets, square-barreled in the French style, and have loops of brass wire coiled through their earlobes and beaded caps of otter skin, while the younger one is bareheaded and carries only a spear.
They ask Shaw for food, so he gives them some nuts and berries that the girl has gathered, then they ask him for tobacco, and he shows them the empty pouches and tells them they have nothing left.
“Black powder, then,” they say. “If you have no tobacco to give us, give us black powder as a gift instead.”
“I’ll give you all the powder you want if you’ll help me and my friends to get back safely to the Fort,” Shaw says. “The guides we had before were killed up in the esquimaux country, so we need someone else.”
Instead of responding to his suggestion, they ask him why he would go to the esquimaux country when everyone knows the people up there are brutes.
Shaw, having long since learned to be patient and bide his time when bantering with the natives, explains that they had some business on the Barrens and shows them the bag of gold as evidence.
The elders pick out some morsels of the crushed ore, smell them, then put them back inside the bag while the lad crouching by the fire watches on without speaking.
“Those muskets you’re carrying are old and worn-out,” Shaw says. “I can give you new ones if you like.”
He hands them his own musket to examine and they pass it back and forth, whispering among themselves.
“If you have a musket, you must have powder too,” they say, “so why won’t you share it with us?”
“We don’t have enough to share. Our powder horns are almost emptied.”
“Even two grains of powder are enough to share,” they say. “One for you and another for us.”
“All the powder you could ever need is waiting at the Fort. Why worry about a grain when you could have a whole keg?”
They smile at him, then shake their heads.
“We have our own work to keep us busy,” they say. “We don’t have time to help you find your way back home.”
“At the Fort, we have the best tobacco,” Shaw reminds them, “and we have brandy also. Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you gladly.”
“If we want something special like that, we trade with the pedlars. It’s easier by far.”
The younger one, who hasn’t spoken yet, is still examining John Shaw’s musket, prying back the lock and peering down the barrel. Shaw can see that the elders have no interest in helping him, but he knows that if they walk away, it may be weeks before another Indian band crosses their path.
“If you won’t do it, what about the youngster over there?” he says. “What if he becomes our guide?”
The three men look across at the youth, who looks back at them but still doesn’t speak. He’s lean-faced and scrawny, no more than fifteen years old.
“Are you listening?” one of the elders says. “He’s just made you an offer.”
“Is he your son?” Shaw asks.
“Yes, he’s my son. His name is Ministik. He’s a good lad. Clever in his way, and he can hunt as well.”
“Why doesn’t he speak? Is he soft in the head?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him, but he’s always been quiet. It’s just the way he is.”
Ministik, apparently untroubled by these last remarks, gives the musket back to Shaw and then points at his missing arm.
“What happened to your hand?”
“This thing? I had a little accident, that’s all. Got myself bit by a wolf.” He pulls up his sleeve to show them the still raw and angry-looking stump. “I missed the old darling at first, but then I realized that one hand is sufficient to scratch my arse and pull my todger, so I’m happy enough.”
Shaw, with a wink and a ribald grimace, mimes the actions to make sure they understand him.
The two elders smile, but Ministik only stares skeptically at the mutilated limb as if it’s a puzzle that needs to be solved.
There’s something peculiar about that boy, Shaw thinks; you can see it in his eye and the way he holds himself, something skewed and haughty and a little off-kilter, as if he’s observing the world from one remove.
“If you give me another musket like the one you have, then I’ll guide you back,” Ministik says suddenly, as if the plan is his invention.
“You want a new musket like mine? Is that your price for taking us home?”
“And a big horn of black powder and a bag of lead.”
Shaw looks over at the elders to gauge if these demands should be taken seriously, and they smile again and shrug their shoulders.
“He’s always had a mind of his own,” the father says. “He does as he wishes.”
“Has he been to the Fort before?”
“He’s been as far as Beralzone and once you’re there it’s not difficult to find.”
He would hardly be my first choice, Shaw thinks, but in a place so vast and mapless as this, if no more experienced man is available or willing, an adept and knowledgeable youth might do at a pinch.
“Your father says you can hunt?”
“Some days I get lucky.”
“He’s being modest,” the father says. “If you take him, you won’t go hungry, I can promise you that.”
“Very well, then,” Shaw says. “If you can hunt and you know the way home, I’m happy to agree to those terms. A new musket, a horn of black powder, and a big bag of lead.”
“And some tobacco and brandy for my father and Oule-Eye, my father’s friend.”
“Two twists of tobacco, then.”
“Four.”
“Four twists of the best Brazil tobacco and two gallons of brandy, so be it. Let us quickly shake hands on the bargain before you think of anything more.”
Shaw grins and holds out his one remaining hand and Ministik stares at it suspiciously until his father explains what’s expected.
“You’ll get used to our strange manners soon enough,” Shaw tells him. “Just as we’ll get used to yours. We’ll all become the best of friends in no time at all, I expect.”