CHAPTER IX
ABOUT THE HUNTSMAN AND THE BOY WHO WAS DROWNED
To keep such a band supplied with food was an occupation in itself.
"Certainly I begin to believe there is truth in the things women say about a boy's stomach being like the bottomless horn which Thor tried to drink dry!" Brand jested. With his week of fuel-duty far behind him and a day's hunting immediately before him, it was a light heart that beat under his deerskin tunic as he followed his chief and the Ugly One out of the booth door.
On the threshold the hunters paused to call back in mock admonition: "See to it this time that the meat is hung where the dogs can not get it—" "Watch Njal, if you do not want the cheese cut with the garlic knife—" "Put a bone in the Bull's mouth! If the Skraellings should come while he is bellowing like that, they would get more scared than they were at Karlsefne's bull."
Then Brand shut the door upon the counter-chaff, and the three began to burrow for their skees in the pile beside the house.
Trees—such trees as Greenland never dreamed of—rose snow-laden behind the booth, and before it a sweep of snow-buried meadow sloped away to beaches of white sand; for the little settlement was built across a neck of land that reached down between a river and a great lake-like bay. But the lads went neither forward nor back when at last they were shod for the trip, but turned to their left and moved across the camp toward the river bank.
It was so early in the day that no wind had yet arisen to stir the fleecy snow-blanket which the night had spread, and to look up a sunbeam was to look up a track of swirling star-dust. From the provision shed next their booth the first camp dog to leave night quarters had only just emerged, yawning, and dragging his hind legs after him. Passing the great log-built sleeping houses with gray banners flying from every smoke hole, they caught a rattle of dishes and a hum of jovial voices which told pleasantly of the breakfast hour. Farther on, they overtook the thralls carrying the pails of milk to the dairy, and had—for a wink of time—a glimpse of Gudrid herself. Looking out to hurry the milkers she stood an instant in the dairy door, tall and straight and deep-bosomed, carrying her baby on her hip as though he were a doll. For all the white matron's cap upon her sunny locks, her face showed young and flower-fresh as she turned to smile at them. When they had lost sight of her, Brand spoke reflectively:
"Women are as helpless in hardships as a rowan tree in the open; but if they must be in the world, let them be like that."
"It is a good thing to be in a country where there are but seven women," Gard assented.
What Alrek would have said no one knows; for they reached just then a corner of the last booth, and rounding it, encountered Karlsefne returning from an early search for a favorite hound which he now carried in his arms, badly torn by fighting.
As he was coming out of the snow-mantled grove, so he might have been coming out of the finest trading booth in Norway, so splendid were his garments of blue, so rich the silvery furs that bordered them. On the iron of his hair and his beard and his bushy brows, the morning light was sparkling like rime frost; and a glint of kindly humor lighted his deep-set eyes as they fell upon the approaching three.
"I salute the Chief of the Vinland Champions and his men!" he greeted them. "We old bones need to look to ourselves when young blood is on the trail so early."
Drawing up his soldierly form in salute, the Sword-Bearer replied that young blood had need to stir early when it had young appetites to provide for.
"That is true," the Lawman assented; then added politely: "Yours is certainly a hard-working household, chief. I hope your debt to me does not lie heavy on your shoulders?"
Involuntarily the Champions of Vinland exchanged wistful glances, and their chief paused to consider his answer.
"Why, the truth of the case is this," he said at last. "It is only a little time that is left over after we have got the food and fuel which are needed to keep us going; and since we have to spend that time in working out our debt to you, there is left no chance whatever to employ ourselves with accomplishments or skin-hunting. That some have found this hard can not be denied, yet it should not be thought either that our knees are in any way weakening under us."
"Ah?" said Karlsefne, and stood a while stroking the head of the hound that had just strength enough to lick his hand. Presently he spoke with much graciousness: "It is an old saying that 'necessities should be taken into consideration.' Let us therefore look upon the debt as paid. In a short time to come you will find your hands full with ship-building. I expect that your boat will stand to Vinland's aid and strengthen us greatly, when it is ready."
So unexpected was the turn that for a time it took their breath away, but at last their chief recovered enough of his to answer gratefully:
"To let the matter rest so would be a great help for us, Karlsefne. If we do not serve Vinland well, it will not be for lack of trying."
"That is well-spoken, as was to be expected from you," Karlsefne made courteous return; whereupon they shook hands all around with the ceremony which becomes a dealing between chiefs.
After they had parted from the Lawman, however, and were skimming through the grove which was the back dooryard of the little settlement, dignity gave way to delight. Reaching the trail that zigzagged up the bluff, they streaked down it cheering, and cheering slid far along the sparkling track of the river.
Though black rifts yawned here and there in the middle of the stream, the ice within a hundred paces of the shores was as solid as a rock and as smooth-carpeted as a floor, a shining temptation to any with red blood in his veins. From sliding they went to racing, cleaving the air like swallows. There is no knowing when they would have stopped if they had not been halted, on turning a bend in the river, by the sight of smoke curling up from behind in a low white bank ahead of them.
In the same breath Brand cried: "Skraellings!" and Gard cried, "Dwarfs!" At which Alrek repeated the last word with lifted eyebrows:
"Dwarfs?"
Somewhat shamefacedly, Gard explained himself: "I said that in jest. It came into my mind how Biorn Herjulfsson's men used to think that this land was inhabited by them. But the rocks are not large enough here. It is more likely to be Skraellings."
"It is most likely to be some of our own hunters," Alrek dissented, "but it lies on our shoulders to investigate. We will leave our skees on the ice and creep close to the bank and listen; the tongue they speak, and their voices, will tell us something. If they are Skraellings, remember to behave well toward them, but on no account allow them to get hold of your knives. Karlsefne would blame the man strongly who should give them a weapon."
The plan was simple enough to carry out, for the shore was flat at the river's edge. With a sudden freak of perverseness, Brand decided that doffing his skees was unnecessary, and edged his way up sidewise, the six-foot runners threatening more than once to trip his neighbor. But they did not have to get very close to hear, as the place was still and the voices loud.
Their first expression was disappointment, for the language spoken was nothing more novel than Norse, and the voice was the hoarse one of the vagabond Greenlander known as Faste the Fat.
"——they are contented with no better excitement than hunting," he was saying.
"And to get only such wealth as is to be got from trading with Skraellings," added the grumble of Ale the Greedy.
In the faces of the eavesdroppers disappointment began to give place to curiosity.
"Better two followers like you than twenty cinder-biters," returned a third voice, harsh and sneering for all the flattery of the words. "I have not brought my news forward in the hall because I do not want the chiefs to take the power out of my hands. I have told only men who——"
Snap! Snap! Recognizing the Huntsman, Brand had moved involuntarily; and his cumbersome foot-gear came in contact with a bush and the dry twigs broke. Before the lads could more than straighten, the giant form of Thorhall appeared at the top of the bank, his knife bare in his hand.
"Prying again!" he snarled, in his small eyes so evil a look that Gard's fingers began instinctively to shape runes against charm-spells, and Alrek's deliberate voice became fiercely swift as at a challenge.
"A man must be doing something which he expects to have pried into who makes his council-hall in the wastes," he retorted. "We thought the smoke must be from a Skraelling cook-fire, and crept up to see."
The Huntsman tossed his knife back to its case, and his anger sheathed itself in contempt. "If a man in the wastes is unable to escape the meddling of fools, what would he not have to endure who remained in camp?"
To that there did not appear to be any satisfactory answer; and as he remained standing with folded arms, plainly awaiting their departure, there did not seem to be any adequate reason for staying. The only revenge they could take was to move away in the most deliberate manner possible and mutter scathing comment to one another, feeling all the while his eyes like knife-blades in their backs.
"It has something to do with that bag of his." "He is trying to get another ship-load of fools to accompany him south—" "If he thinks the Weathercock will lend him another boat—" "None but the scum will listen to him—" "I wonder if Ale and the Fat One were ashamed to show themselves?" "Let us turn around suddenly when we get to this bend and see if they are not all looking after us."
Agreeing, they reached the bend and turned,—but it was a day of surprises. Though each boy would have taken oath that he felt that gaze on him as he wheeled, neither Huntsman nor followers were anywhere to be seen. And as they stood staring, Gard uttered a smothered cry and flung out his arm in another direction, toward the middle of the stream.
Through a broken place in the ice not twenty paces away, two claw-like hands were reaching up; as the trio gazed, a head followed, covered with carrot-yellow hair which hung in dripping points about two starting eyes set in a ghastly blue-white face. Finally a white-cloaked body raised itself over the edge of the ice and stood before them.
Whether it would retreat or advance none waited to see. With a yell of "Hallad!" Gard was off up the river at a deer's pace, the others at his heels. When he came to another place where the bank was flat, he turned his long toes up it and plunged into the forest, the others still following.
Guiding six-foot runners in and out between trees, however, is less easy; and before long they were forced to moderate their speed. As soon as they did that, Alrek's wonted coolness was able to overtake him. He stopped disgustedly.
"We are simpletons to run. Hallad would do us no harm."
Gard devoted the only breath he had to triumph: "You do not claim that it is Tunni, now!"
"It is Hallad," the Red One agreed in a gasp. "If we could cut off his head and put it between his feet, that would make him rest quiet."
The Ugly One shook his black mane. "You forget that a wave-covered man can not be dug up again. It is said to be a sign that they have been received well when drowned men come back after their death; yet Hallad has scarcely the look of one who has been well entertained——"
"He was always wanting something different from what he had," Brand sniffed.
"However that is, it is unlikely that he has come back to make trouble," Alrek said. "That is only done by men who were unruly before their death. Hallad had less spirit than a wood-goat when he was alive. I think we were fools to run."
"If you had been that kind of a fool on the Cape of the Crosses, you would have made more by it," Gard muttered in rare resentfulness,—though he was not rash enough to speak so that his chief could hear him.
The Sword-Bearer on his side knew better than to ask over. Instead he said: "This is the first time I have been in this part of the country. I wonder what kind of game they have here," and moved leisurely away where a treeless space left a white page crossed and recrossed with woodland runes.
Preferring to discuss their last adventure before they sought a new one, the other two sat down to wait for him. But they were hardly settled before his whistled call brought them again to their feet.
They found him kneeling beside a trench-like trail, testing with his bared hands the condition of the snow that had fallen back into it.
"If this were a five days' journey north, I should declare them elk tracks," he said. "Snorri of Iceland shot many a one of them up there, last winter, which he thought greatly superior to any we have in Norway. I would give my head for another elk hunt." He remained gazing at the trail in pleased retrospection, which moved the two Greenlanders to say enviously that they had never seen an elk.
"You will find it sport when you do," the Sword-Bearer assured them. Then he came out of his musing and arose, once more Alrek the Chief, brief and purposeful. "They can scarcely be less than deer's, however; and they were made this morning. It is easier to find tracks than to find what made them, as it is one thing to sight land across drift-ice and another to land on it; but we shall have poor luck if we can not get our meat out of this."
Instinctively they fell again under his leadership, straightening as he rose and turning their runners in the direction he was facing.
"Certainly the snow could not be in better condition," Brand gave tacit assent, and reassured himself of the safety of the quiver at his back.
"I knew that we should have luck to-day, because I heard a wolf howl last night," Gard added, with a hitch to his belt.
Then they glided away, single file, under the white arches spanning the white aisles.