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 loath 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 from 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 her over critically. “She will make a good wife, and it is an honor 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