Dogsong Read online

  The hunger lasted until he remembered the small piece of meat he hadn’t eaten the night before. He found it in the inside pouch of his parka and ate it. His body heat had thawed the meat and made it soft enough to chew. It was bad meat, tough meat, but it tasted so good that it made his jaws ache.

  And with the meat came energy. It rippled through him, up from his stomach like something alive, something hot.

  The meat brought strength into his legs and arms and made his eyes sharp. He scanned the hills ahead, the low round hills with grassy sides and small gullies between. That would be where he’d find game. The birds would be on the hillside where there was no snow to eat, but close to the snow so they could fly to the white for protection. The rabbits would be high so they could see when the wolves came. There would be mice in the grass if nothing else. All food.

  He headed for the hills and reached into the sled for the bow. When he had it out he stopped the dogs and strung it, marveling again at its beauty, the laminated strips of horn and bone and wood shining in the light.

  He took the quiver up and strapped it over his shoulder, letting the dogs run again as he worked. He would hunt with the team, rather than stalk, and hope to get close enough to something for a shot.

  And now there was luck.

  In many of the hills there were smaller animals. Rabbits and ptarmigan, some small fox—which had a sweet-rich meat and were easy to kill—and the ever-present mice, or lemmings. But sometimes herds of caribou numbering several hundred head moved across the land, taking the grass where they could find it.

  Such a herd lay in the gully in front of Russel and the dogs. The only way out for the caribou was to run over the team, or around it. The gully had steep sides with large drifts and the deer had foolishly cornered themselves. A pack of wolves could get into them and take many of them down before they could escape. Or a man could take them. But the deer would think only of running, not where they could run, just that they could run, in blind lines.

  The dogs smelled them before Russel saw them. They had seen him take the bow out and they knew he was ready to kill and when they smelled the deer they turned off and headed for the gully where the herd grazed.

  There were about a hundred and fifty deer within the confines of the drifts and when the animals at the outside edge saw the dogs coming they wheeled and tried to beat Russel to the opening.

  But the dogs were strong and thin and fast and they caught the deer easily. When they ran toward him into the narrowest part, Russel jumped off the sled and got ready. The dogs kept going, crazy now for the smell of deer and the wild running of the herd as it came at them.

  The caribou parted around the sled and the dogs wheeled to catch them, missing most, hitting a few with the ancient hamstring tear that ripped and crippled the deer’s backleg, and four of these, staggering with bloodied back legs, came by Russel.

  Falling, running, they tried to keep up to the other deer but they were doomed now, as doomed as if they had been hit by wolves, and the dogs were working to catch them and pull them down.

  Russel took them with arrows, putting a shaft in each one, just in back of the shoulders. He watched the arrows streak into the light and enter the deer cleanly. First one, then the other, then the next two, and they ran-fell for another fifty yards before they went down, blood spraying from their mouths onto the grass and snow.

  “My arrows are true,” he said aloud. And then, in a poem-song:

  They brought the deer down,

  They helped the dogs to bring us meat.

  My arrows are true.

  The dogs were on the deer now, stopping with the first one. Russel ran over to it to hasten the death by cutting its throat but he didn’t have to. The eyes were already glazing with the end and he put grass in the deer’s mouth, doing the same for the second, third and fourth ones, which were already dead.

  Then he pulled the dogs off and tied them away from the four carcasses. There would be food for them, but all in good time.

  He would set up camp and he would skin the deer out and cut the meat for easy carrying. Then he would eat and eat, he thought, and after he ate he would sleep, and then eat more. He’d never been so hungry and he could see that the dogs were the same. They were on the edge of eating each other, fresh with the blood smell and tough with the running.

  He set up camp and skinned the deer. By now it was getting dark and he cut front shoulder meat for the dogs—a great piece for each—and took a fatty tenderloin from one deer for himself. He used some grass and dried sticks and a match from his sled bag to start a fire and he warmed the meat over the flames until it was pleasant—not hot, just heated. Then he took a chunk in his mouth and bit down and cut it off by his lips with the ulu, wolfed it down, then another, and another, until his stomach hurt with the meat.

  He mourned not having a pot, but ate snow for water and this, with the blood in the warm meat, was enough moisture to help in digestion.

  With his stomach full he put one deerskin on the ground, hair side down, and the other three on top with the raw sides touching. In between the layers he had a fur sleeping bag as warm as the warmest down and he crawled in as the short-lived sun bobbed back down for the long night.

  Full-bellied dogs curled into balls in their harness, sleeping next to him. Russel pulled his head under the skins, took his parka and pants off and put them outside, inside out. The moisture from his perspiration would freeze during the sleep and he would scrape the ice off in the morning. With only his squirrel parka on he pulled back into the skins, took his mukluks off and left them inside the sleeping bag to warm up and dry out.

  It was a home.

  The sled, the dogs, the food, and more food to eat when he awakened.

  It was a home.

  It was as much of a home as his people had had for thousands of years and he was content. He closed his eyes and heard the wind gently sighing outside past the hides that kept him warm and snug.

  It was a home and he let his mind circle and go down, the same way a dog will circle before taking the right bed.

  What a thing, he thought—what a thing it is to have meat and be warm and have a full belly. What a thing of joy.

  And he slept.

  And while he slept he had a dream.

  7

  The Dream

  There were swirls of fog like steam off the water in the ice leads; thick fog, heavy fog, that would start to clear and close again, then clear a little more until finally he could see, could see, could see …

  A skin shelter, a tent, on the side of the ocean. Inside there was an oil lamp, much like the one Oogruk had, burning a smoky yellow that lighted the faces of the people in the tent.

  Two children were there. Small and round and wonderfully fat. They were eating of some fat red meat that Russel could not understand, didn’t know, but knew as being important. He wanted to know what kind of meat they were eating because it was so red and had coarse texture and rich yellow fat. All over the children’s faces and in their hair the grease shone and they were happy with it.

  On the other side of the lamp sat a woman, young, round and shining beautiful. She was fat and had eaten of the meat but was done now and worked at tending the lamp. There was much honor in tending the lamp and she took pride in it. The flame was even, if smoky, and in the stone lamp-bowl there was the same yellow fat that was so important for him to name.

  One other person was in the skin tent and he couldn’t see who it was; it was a man, but he kept back in the shadows and would not come forward.

  They were saying nothing, but the children laughed until the laughter was like a kind of music in the background and the woman looked at the man and smiled often. It was the kind of smile all men look for in women, the kind that reaches inside, and Russel felt warm to see it.

  But he could not see the man and he did not know the meat, and they were important to him.

  The fog came again, and this time when it cleared the man was standing near the doorw
ay in a parka. The parka was deerskin and he held a long spear with some form of black stone point, chipped black stone that was deep and shining dark. He was going out hunting and Russel knew, sensed, that he was going to hunt whatever had made the coarse meat and yellow fat and Russel wanted to go with him.

  The woman kept smiling and the children kept laughing but the woman was worried and said something in a language that Russel could not understand. It was words, and they were similar to what he knew, but enough different so they didn’t quite make sense to him.

  As the man turned to leave the hut the woman said something to him and he stopped and looked at her.

  Her eyes glowed at him and there was much fear in them, so much that Russel was afraid, and he knew that there was some fear in the man, too, but hidden.

  Russel would not have known that except that he felt close to the man. More than close somehow.

  The man left the tent and went out to harness dogs and they were already in harness, waiting for him, and they were dogs but they were more than dogs, too.

  Great gray sides twitching, they stood like shadows, with wide heads and heavy triangular jaws. Russel had never seen anything like the dogs in the dream. They were higher than the man’s waist and had silent yellow eyes that watched everything the man did while he put his gear in the sled and got ready to leave, and the way they watched it was clear that they could either run or turn and eat him. It was up to the man.

  He stood to the sled and Russel saw then that it was not of wood but all of bone and ivory, with large rib bones for the runners, and lashed with yellow rawhide. It shone yellow-white and rich in the night light, the color deep and alive, and when the man stepped on the runners the dogs lunged silently but with great speed and power and the fog closed again, swirled in thick and deep.

  When it lifted the man was alone out on the sweeps. The stretch of land looked familiar, but there was something different in the dream and after a time Russel could see that it was the grass. Where the snow had been blown away the grass was taller and thinner, with pointed ends. It was bent over in wind, but not twisted like the tundra grass.

  There was deeper darkness now and Russel watched as the man worked the dogs without making a sound. They were clearly hunting something, that much was sure, but what they were hunting Russel couldn’t tell. He was amazed to see the man handle the dogs with no audible commands.

  They ran to his mind, clean and simple. They went out into the sweeps and Russel watched as if from somewhere above, watched as they hunted in and out of the fog until finally, in a clearing, they found the fresh tracks of whatever they were hunting.

  The gray dogs put their hair up and ran to the tracks nervously. They wanted to catch the smell but they didn’t want to as well. They were still running to the man’s mind and he made them follow the tracks but there was fear now.

  Great fear.

  The tracks were blurred, but huge, and Russel couldn’t see what might have made them. He had never seen tracks like them, nor felt the fear that was in the man.

  Then there was a shape before him and Russel fought to see it.

  Some great thing it was, some great shape in the fog and then the mist was whirled away in a rush of wind and Russel saw two things clearly.

  The animal was a woolly mammoth. Immense, it stood with shaggy hair, its giant domed head swaying, its great tusks curved toward the dogs. The small trunk whipped back and forth in anger and the red eyes tore through the fog like a demon’s from the Below World.

  The man was to kill the beast if he could, or the beast was to kill the man and the dogs, drive them into the snow and kill them.

  That much Russel saw clearly and one more thing.

  As the man grabbed the long killing-lance and jumped from the ivory and bone sled, the wind blew off his parka hood and Russel saw the man’s face and knew it.

  The man was him: Russel, with more hair, longer hair, and small beard and mustache, but he was Russel and Russel knew fear, deep fear, because with the knowledge that he was the man in the dream he knew that he would have to fight the mammoth. He would have to fight it and kill it.

  And the mammoth charged.

  The head and tusks thrashed in angry arcs and the huge feet trampled the earth, tearing up clods of dirty snow, as the mighty animal bore down on the man and the dogs and sled.

  There was no time for escape, no time for dodging. The man had to face the beast.

  The dogs ran to the side, but turned back in as the mammoth rushed by them, heading for the man. But their action caused the animal to swing its head slightly to the side and that revealed the center of the chest.

  Crouching and turned away, the man set the shaft of the long lance in the earth and snow in back of him, settled it in as hard as he could and rose to face the oncoming mammoth. With its head sideways to lash at the dogs it roared down on the man as with small arm movements he guided and let the weight of the animal carry it down the shaft to death.

  The lance entered like light, like a beam of light shot into the mammoth and when there should have been death the animal instead wheeled and heaved in a great circle, caught the dogs and threw two of them in the air.

  All in silence.

  And then the beast stopped. It stood with its head hanging, swaying back and forth, and accepted the death from the broken lance shaft in its chest and went down on its front knees and then its back and in an almost gentle roll slipped to its side and died.

  And the man as he saw the animal falter began to sing. Again Russel did not know the words but they sounded familiar to him.

  The man sang in exultation.

  Sang the death of the great beast, and the mountain of meat lying before him.

  Sang the luck of his hunt.

  Sang of the fat that would be his for his family and the dogs that now tore at the belly of the mammoth.

  Sang the wind that brought his dogs to the tracks and sang the gratitude for the great animal who died and left him much meat.

  And Russel felt all those songs inside his soul, felt them even as the man in the dream sang and the fog came again to hide him and the dogs and the mammoth.

  Russel knew it all because he knew them all. He was the man and he was the dream.

  He was the fog.

  8

  The Run

  The light filtered into the skins and he awakened. Some of the dream was still with him and he had a great hunger for the coarse red meat and yellow fat but when he looked out from the skins he saw only the four deer carcasses. The team was chewing on one.

  He stuck an arm out and scraped his parka and turned it right side out and put it on. The cold of the skin penetrated his squirrelskin undergarment and brought him totally, instantly wide awake.

  Next he put his mukluks on—they were warm from being in the skins all night—and then he threw back the skins and stood.

  The dogs had fought while he dreamed and the gangline was bitten in two or three places. He swore and pulled them back from the deer and to the sled and tied them in place, liberally slamming their noses with his mittened hand.

  In a few moments they had settled and he went back to the deer. Their bodies had frozen but were small enough to fit roughly on the sled. Legs stuck out but he wanted to keep going and the legs didn’t bother him. There were no trees to catch at them.

  The skins were more of a problem. Though he had slept in them the raw sides had frozen solid. The hollow hairs had kept his body heat from penetrating the skins and they would not fold. He finally jumped on them in the middle to fold them over and jam-fit them next to the deer carcasses on the sled.

  He pulled the hood on, tightened it against the coming wind and called the dogs up. In minutes he was out of sight of the camp area, heading still north. Out. Into the sweeps.

  Today was different—as Russel knew all days are different in the north. It was so cold his spit bounced—white men would call it forty below zero—and the air caught in his throat as he warmed it.


  The color was new as well. Yesterday had been blue. Today was almost a deep purple with stringers of clouds shooting across the dimly lighted sky, fingers aimed away from an advancing storm.

  Russel knew weather as all Eskimos know weather. The storm would come in two days, maybe a little less, but it would not be too bad. Some wind and cold, nothing more. He could ride it out easily.

  But there was a strange unease driving him and at first he thought it was the dream. It had been so real-seeming. He could still smell the inside of the dreamigloo-tent, the stink of the mammoth voiding itself in death, the heat of its blood down the shaft of the lance.

  He had killed the beast and yet something was pushing him, making him drive the team. They were new now, a new team. It wasn’t that the dogs had changed; and yet they were not the same dogs that he’d first seen at Oogruk’s. They changed with him, or at least so it seemed, changed with his mind.

  It was as if they had gone out of themselves and become more than dogs, more than animal.

  They ran to his mind, out and out before him. With bellies full of deer meat, rich guts and stomach linings, the dogs were strong and driving, had great power, and wanted to run.

  He let them run and they seemed to want to head the same way he wanted to go and that, too, became part of his thinking.

  Did they know him?

  Did they know his mind and run to it the way the wolf-dogs had run to the man’s mind in the dream?

  And if that were so, which he believed since he seemed to see his thoughts going out ahead, with the lead dog—if that were so, did the dogs know where they were going? Did they know when he didn’t know?

  And more, did they know why they were heading north?

  “Why do we run?” he asked aloud and the sudden words broke the silence and startled the dogs. They kept running but broke stride for a few steps before regaining rhythm.