All the following day we were left alone, the shaman appearing for but short intervals, and always with an air of restless preoccupation and grim annoyance. Once when he was out and I stood staring through the window I saw him in the center of a group of natives, his hands gesturing now and then as if he were vehemently addressing them, and once he shook his fist under one tall buck's nose as if threatening him. The man turned and walked away as if angry and disappeared into a cabin.
For a while some of the men at the mines worked, and I could see several windlasses going where stalwart squat forms labored like automatons, first laying broad shoulders and powerful arms to the hoisting of the great buckets filled with what I surmised was pay dirt, then skidding them out to the end of the dumps, emptying them, skidding them back to the shafts and lowering them for another burden of earth, gravel, and gold. Later, however, as if a general air of infectious restlessness pervaded the camp, these men stopped work and joined the idlers, who stood in knots or finally disappeared in some of the houses. There could be no mistaking a universal excitement nor doubt that it was due to our presence.
“Jack,” I commented, “something is boiling here in this camp. I don't know what's up. Wish I did.”
“If you're wishing for things, why don't you wish we had never come to Madame Malitka's camp?” he replied despondently.
“I might wish that, too, but for the fact that if we hadn't blundered into it we should have been dead before this, and as it is—well—we are still alive. We've had that much luck.”
“I don't know whether we can call it luck or not,” he declared moodily. “Somehow everything seems to have turned to bad luck. First I get snow blindness. Then we nearly die of starvation, find a place where we're not wanted, and you blunder—I'm not blaming you, old man!—into a secret of all these people so they don't dare let us go, and”—he stopped and walked across the room and threw himself into a chair by the fireplace from which place he muttered—“and I met her! I thought her so womanly; so fine!”
There came a loud bark and a snarl in the rear of the house, and then shrill expostulations. I stepped to the door, wondering at the noise, and was almost knocked down by the frantic lunge of my own pet dog, my own leader, who whined and whimpered in delight at finding me, and twisted his great body around my legs, finally turning and raising an angry ruff and growling with savagely bared fangs at the old woman who cared for the house. She drew back, uttering shrill and unheeded commands. Then suddenly the shaman appeared behind her and called to me, “Make quiet! Make dog still. Bring here.”
I caught the animal by its sturdy neck, soothed it, and led it outward. I had never been to the rear of the house. It was now exposed. Behind it was a fence of saplings and two large outhouses. Peluk led me to one of these, and I saw therein several dogs of our own team and some of his.
He turned to the woman and gave an order, “Keep them well fed so they will be quiet. There are three missing. I will bring them also as soon as I can find them. And—be sure to feed them so well that they make no noise. Tell no one that they are being kept here. Is that plain?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then see that you obey,” he commanded and, advancing toward me, indicated we were to return to the main room of the house.
Once we were inside and he had removed the huge, shapeless, vividly colored Mackinaw coat from his shoulders and stood in front of the fire, he made a little clucking noise with his tongue, as if audibly punctuating a mental exclamation. His great chest rose and fell as if in anger. The heavy muscles of his throat, exposed and bared by the opening of his collar, moved as he twisted his head from side to side, as if restless.
“Peluk,” I asked, “what's up? Trouble?”
“Heap!” he replied regarding me.
“On our account?”
He nodded emphatically, started to speak, seemed to consider the advisability of confiding in us, and then said affably, “One young man here makeum trouble many time before you come. That very bad young man, what you call savage, ummh? Him say must killum you quick! Me say, 'No, not so much hurry.' Say can killum mebbe next week, mebbe nex' mont', jus' as good as killum now. Think mebbe young man talk other young mans, makeum think his way, ummh? Me speak to one old man, say, 'One white man my friend. Osser white man no matter. Killum and be damned; but no like my friend be kill so quick.' So, when get ugly say, 'To-night big talk in big house. Say then what do.' Young mans go way. No like talk. Say all palaver, ummh? Unnerstan' palaver, ummh?”