And the man with the cut-away chin replied; “Currus est in Kittila.”
“Estne via bona?” we asked.
“Est via, sed non bona. Sed via est.”
It was quite a delightful exercise conversing through the rags of this dimly-remembered tongue. But we did not talk for long, and we only learned some vague facts about our future course. Theirs was only a temporary halt. They were soon on the march again, and our curiosity concerning them grew high. The two principals started off first, the carriers following them; but when these last were just on the move, one of them, a Finn, turned back to us and pointed to his Lappish companion. We looked, and for the first time saw strapped outside the Lapp’s pack a pair of leg-shackles, bright and ferociously heavy. The Finn laughed and pointed to the big man with the heavy beard ahead, and then he turned away from us and set off on the march.
Whether he meant that the bracelets were destined for the big man’s ankles, or whether the big man was going to put them on some one else, we never discovered. None of the party wore the least vestige of official garb, and yet heavy leg-shackles are not usually part of the travelling kit of private individuals. Was the big man a political offender, doomed to exile in fetters amongst Lapland swamps? Or was he an officer of justice on the road to capture some sinning Lapp? Or was he some invalid, suffering from occasional fits of madness, and taking heavy curative exercise under the care of an attendant who had repressive measures handy? We never found out.
An American would have solved the problem by bluntly asking; but we somehow lacked that simple directness of questioning which is the birthright of the great nation across the water. Besides, the man with the cut-away chin had said that they had come up through Küstula and Kittila, and we promised ourselves satisfaction for our curiosity at these places. And lo! when we did reach them, and pushed inquiries, it was plain that we had been fubbed off with a lie, for the other caravan had passed through neither spot. And so out of what part of the wilderness they did come, or what was their errand, we do not know to this day, though later on we certainly did make a conjecture.
Now all the while we had been engaged in these other matters we had not been forgetful of our own business. We took the feckless Finn in hand, turn and turn about, and (to use the beautiful symbolic language of the sea) we twisted his tail. He did not like being roused from his lethargy; he much would have preferred that we should have taken permanent root at his expense in Scurujärvi; but four hours of energetic tail-twisting produced its effect. A reindeer sledge, carvel-built and boat-shape, was dragged out from beneath the flooring of the house; a single-tree was made and lashed to the drawing thong under the sledge’s bow; a pair of shafts were cut and made fast to the single-tree; and then Huckleberry was despatched to find a suitable animal for traction amongst the grazing grounds of the forest. He was not long away; he came back towing a steer, a little liver-and-white fellow with an inquiring eye, and backed it in between the shafts. A collar with wooden hames was put on the steer’s neck, and the ends of the shafts were made fast to these, and then a half-hoop of wood was put over the steer’s withers and lashed to the shafts, à la Russe, to keep them from chafing. The feckless one roused sufficiently to make a grummet of withes to put round the steer’s nose, and Tom Sawyer made a head-stall out of string, and bent on a check-rope to the grummet. We put our bundles into the sledge, and lashed them there, and turned to give a final curse to the feckless Finn. But he had dropped into contemplation again, and so he missed our words, and we had to set off without the satisfaction of leaving him stung.
The two boys were our escort, and the way at first was rough enough. Thick forest was on the outskirts of the farm, and under the forest trees were stones uncovered by moss or lichen. The little steer picked his way over these cannily enough, but the sledge would only follow if assisted, and so one or other of us had constantly to tail on behind to keep it in the paths of rectitude. And then we had to pass across the swampy valley. Logs had been laid down here to make some sort of a footway, but it was more than the steer could do to make the passage across these with the sledge bumping and sheering in his wake. So we had to unyoke, and drag the sledge over ourselves; and when we got to the other side, we found that the vehicle showed distinct signs of disintegration. It was pinned together by wooden pegs, and these had got dry and were falling out; and so there was nothing for it but to unload, and sink the sledge in a pool of water till it swelled and tightened, and in the meanwhile rest as philosophically as we could in the worst stew of mosquitoes we had yet met in the Arctic Lapland. It was one of the heaviest hours of torment I ever lived through.
Still at last the sledge swelled sufficiently, and we got limbered up again, and this time the procession set off in more real earnest.