TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the front cover of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.
The Trail of the Elk
The Trail of the Elk
from the Norwegian of H. Fonhus
illustrated by Harry
Rountree
Jonathan Cape
Eleven Gower Street, London
First published 1922
All Rights Reserved
The Trail of the Elk
The Trail of the Elk
§ 1
THIS is the story of a wizard elk—Rauten, as people called him. He was a human being in animal guise.
The story begins in RÉ Valley, which lies like a yawning gap between mountains, long and flat with borders of forests so dark that they look as though part of the blackness of night lingered in them. A river moves sluggishly along the bottom of the valley, making its way slowly and carefully between stretches of light-red sand. It runs northwards, a rare thing in Norway.
There are bogs along the banks of the river, bearing tall, stiff sedge, and when the weather is calm they appear to be bristling. But in sunshine and wind they sway to and fro like undulating carpets of silk. Sometimes a long neck appears, and a crane moves with his measured stride, in which there is peace and contentment. For the crane does not trouble himself about the past or the future. The present with its long round of days suffices for him.
An ancient mountain farm lies there with its fence all tumbled down. The thin pasture is covered here and there with copses. The houses rot and are never rebuilt. At one time bears were so troublesome round about Tolleiv Mountain Farm that it was impossible to remain there, and even to-day it often happens, especially in the autumn, that a bear is seen feeding on berries far up the mountain side.
But in the spring, life seethes in all the animals of the valley. The capercailzie stretches his neck, shuts his eyes, and hisses passionately towards the sunrise. Each night is a time of fierce unrest. Wings flap, claws tear and rend, and slavering rows of teeth snarl angrily at each other in the purple moonlight. Above the forests the RÉ Mountains rise like white swans.
§ 2
It was in the summer-time a good many years ago. On the slopes between Svart Mountain at the upper end of RÉ Valley there might have been seen an elk with her calf. The strange feature of the calf was that it had lost half one of its ears. I will tell you later on how this happened. The calf was born amongst the patches of hard snow below the region where the snow melts in spring, and at the time of which we write he was still quite small. But as by degrees the weeks passed by he developed gristle, he gained in bulk, marrow formed in his bones, and he grew heavy. That calf was bound to grow into a giant elk if only he were allowed time enough.
Even the elk oxen with their seven-tined antlers, who scrub the young trees in RÉ Valley, were once young calves like this.
He is feeding from his mother; the warm milk, trickling slowly from her body into his, gives him his first sensation of pleasure. Consciousness grows clear just as the clouds roll away and leave the blue sky above him. He gains his first notions of time, which is made up of light and darkness. He learns that still water is silent, and that running water makes a sound, and may lick his legs as with wet and cool tongues—and that when the wind rises the trees wail like young fox cubs. He also learns how to distinguish the shrill call of the hawk and falcon that hover beneath the sky like shivering leaves. At night countless little eyes gleam from the vault above him; they are stars. But stars may gleam even from dark copses and gullies, from marten and from fox, from all the animals that rise when the sun sets.
The nights of midsummer draw their soft veil over the valley, and the glaciers, forgotten and abandoned in the mountains, light their shining silvery lamps. Deep down in the Gipsy Pond a golden cloud has gone to rest like a pyre in the night, a sacrificial fire to the god of peace and loneliness. And above its flames the leaves of the waterlilies sway on the face of the water like great green hearts. Some days bring thunder and lightning, as if the heavens would be rent asunder, and after the storm the sun gleams on showers of rain trailing over the mountains like dew-wet shimmering cobwebs.
But on autumn nights the earth seems to be wrapped up in a golden fleece and the moon glares from the sky like a yellow eye.
About this time the elks of RÉ Valley grow strangely restless. Old bulls stand snorting against the wind, and they may be observed to veer round for nothing more than the fresh tracks of a man. What ails them? They do not know. But here and there spoors of dog and man form, as it were, zones of terror across the wilderness.
There they go, the man and his dog, across the bogs along the RÉ River, where tufts of dying dwarf birch lie blood-red like open wounds. The man and his dog walk for an hour. They go on for another hour.
The man is short and compactly built, and people never call him anything but Gaupa (The Lynx). His beard is long, dark, and bristling like lichen. His eyes have almost the same colour as his beard, and they are so piercing and cold that a glance from them seems to give physical pain, and so small that they appear to be on the point of disappearing. Around the left corner of his mouth the skin is everlastingly twitching; it started years before when he was a lad, but it still goes on whether he is awake or asleep.
Gaupa wears grey homespun, with real silver buttons on his waistcoat. The buttons gleam in the sun, becoming in their turn tiny shining suns. Over his shoulder hangs his rifle, which he has named the “Tempest” and the dog he leads is large, dark and shaggy, and his name is “BjÖnn” (The Bear).
Gaupa does not walk like other people, he is always half on the run. When his path is barred by a fallen tree or such like he does not stride across it, he jumps. He seems to be in incredible haste, and yet few people have more time to spare.
Wherever he goes he reads the signs before him. A bog to him is a written page, a short story written by the animals themselves with their hoofs or claws. There is the spoor of an elk, but somewhat old, for dry weather has fallen in and the grass has straightened itself. BjÖnn puts his nose to it, but remains indifferent.
And the man and his dog walk on and on.
Late in the day a rumble is heard from the RÉ Mountains, long and heavy. The lesser mountains catch the sound and send it on. It floats along the slopes from one side to the other till it dies away behind a shady hill far to the south. One might imagine it was Silence itself moving only to listen for more. And throughout the valley startled elks raise their heads. That is how things were when the shot cracked.
The warm evening sun glows on a pine-clad hillock on the western slope. Moss grown rocks take a deeper tint. Two elks come running out of the forest, a cow and a calf. A shaggy deer-hound follows, his dripping tongue lolling. The cow starts walking again, but stops as if suddenly remembering that there is no longer any hurry. She sways a little and nearly falls, but regains her balance. Her flanks work furiously and with each breath golden-red clouds emerge from her nostrils, falling like a red rain on the little calf frisking before her. He seems to be ruddy all over his back from his mother’s breath.
Standing thus the cow begins to nod her head. Her eyes are moist, shiny, living, like mirrors catching the picture of the little calf before her—oh, so clearly, as if they would fain take the memory of him away with them far away into the land of shadows.
In a little while she falls on one side, felling a young pine with her weight, and now the animal has no more soul than a tree-stump, a monstrous heap of flesh and bones devoid of life.
BjÖnn follows the calf, baying deeply. After a while he is heard once more, more shrill and eager. Then once again the evening sun throws a peaceful glow over the pine-clad hill. The huge grey heap on the moss does not move.
Very soon Gaupa is there; he leans his rifle against a tree and draws his knife, and whistles softly, coaxingly, for BjÖnn.
§ 3
It is night, and cloudy weather; no stars twinkle coldly over the RÉ Mountains. Outside a tiny wooden hut on the eastern banks of Gipsy Lake Gaupa stands, his hands covered with blood. The tree-tops crowd together against a background of cloudy sky, and somewhere in the western mountain a brook murmurs.
Gaupa is bareheaded and his hair is raven black. With his hand on the door handle he stops suddenly in the act of entering. Was there a sound in the silent darkness? He thought he heard something, but could not decide from which direction it came. Yes—there it is, quite clear now. From somewhere up in Black Mountain a strange animal cry reaches his ears. It is not a bear or fox—it is most of all like a despairing moan of a human being. Icy waves seem to run down his spine. He remains immovable, listening for more cries from the Black Mountain. But nothing more is heard and the man enters his hut, locking the door.
Soon after he is outside again, listening. But there is nothing to be heard, and he re-enters the hut.
The Gipsy Lake Hut is cosy and warm. The roaring stove devours the logs, and from the draught-hole in the iron stove door a light steals out to flit in ever-changing play over the timber walls. Gaupa and BjÖnn lie on the bed side by side, the dog barking in his sleep once in a while.
For a long time nothing is heard but the deep contented muttering from the stove.
Then Gaupa rises with a start and sits immovable.
“There it is again,” he thinks. But soon he sees clearly that no animal cry could possibly have reached him from the Black Mountain through those walls of timber.
He understands what animal it was that uttered the cry. It was the elk calf whose mother he had killed. Now that poor mite was searching the wood calling upon his mother. Gaupa had heard such calves in distress call often enough, but the cry from the Black Mountain that night made him shiver. No ordinary elk calf could wail like that.
Gaupa lay down again. Sleep had left him, and strange memories visited him instead.
Some ten to twelve years before a half-demented old Swede roamed about in RÉ Valley. People called him the RÉ Valley Swede. For two whole summers he wandered about with a divining rod and a pickaxe, looking for the RÉ Valley treasure. According to an ancient old legend, seven pack-horses loaded with church plate passed up the Valley at the time of the Black Death. Four men led them. When they reached the bogs near the Tolleiv Mountain Farm, the plague overtook the men. They had barely the strength to bury the silver, before they lay down to die with the name of Our Lady on their lips.
This treasure lived like a ghost in the imagination of the people. Somewhere in the RÉ Valley lay the plate, that much was certain. When the half-witted old Swede heard of it he commenced haunting the RÉ Valley from end to end. He used his pickaxe diligently enough. Every wound in the bogs bore traces of his exertions.
Thus he went on one whole Summer. During the Winter he went timber-cutting in the lower valley, but Spring saw him in RÉ Valley once more wielding his divining rod and his pickaxe untiringly.
People met him when they happened to pass that way. At times he was starved to the point of exhaustion; but when they gave him to eat of the food they carried, the old Swede grew strong and full of energy once more. He would half bury his pickaxe in the earth, then straighten his huge body, saying: “To-day I am as poor as a church mouse. But to-morrow I shall be as rich as the King at Stockholm.... I am pretty certain of the treasure now.”
And his voice, which began in a deep bass, would rise upwards to the shrillest falsetto.
Once some lads placed a few bits of an old stove in a pit where the Swede was digging. He found them, and the next day he went home to the Lower Valley delirious with joy. When he understood that it was not the real Treasure after all, he wept like a child, but went straight back to RÉ Valley and resumed his digging.
The RÉ Valley Swede suffered from epilepsy. Sometimes when he reached the summer mountain farms he fell down in a fit. Therefore people either expected some day to find him dead up in the lonely valley or else never to see him again.
During the third summer of the mad Swede’s digging Gaupa stayed near Gipsy Lake fishing. One night he took his road northwards across RÉ River. A few stars twinkled. A glacier shimmered in the Western Mountains, long and narrow like a white bird with wings outstretched. Gaupa moved slowly, slowly northwards along the River.
Towards morning he observed a light coming from a small pine-covered mound, and he went to investigate. A few sparks flew up, and the pine needles were still pink in the glow from a burning log.
He heard a noise, the loud though not unmusical sound of iron on stone, and he thought, “There is the Swede.”
A moment later he saw him. He was bent towards the earth, digging, and Gaupa could not help thinking of a bear digging his winter shelter, just as he had seen one some years before about Michaelmas time. Gaupa advanced and the Swede straightened himself, his face streaming with perspiration.
Gaupa greets him with “Evening.” “Now I shall soon have the Treasure,” mutters the Swede. “It is in here, and to-morrow I shall be a rich man, as rich as the King at Stockholm.”
Then he tells his tale, how the night before he was sitting on the slope resting, when he suddenly saw a tiny blue light moving along the banks of RÉ River, bounding along till at last it stopped at the mound, where he saw as it were a bluish shimmer for a long time, much like a firefly on a summer night. He at once understood that this was a sign to him. He went round the mound with the cleft birch wand, and when he reached the spot where he was then digging an invisible hand seemed to pull the wand downwards, until it seemed to writhe in his hands, pointing to earth like a finger.
Gaupa saw that there was a small cellar where the RÉ Valley Swede had been digging, with reddish sandy soil and small round stones heaped up round about. Gaupa gave the old man food, which he wolfed down like a starving dog, but he had no time for rest, for as he said, when the sun rises, it will sparkle on the RÉ Valley Treasure, which has not been exposed to the light of day for hundreds of years.
Gaupa remained near the fire watching the Swede as he dug. He wore an old pair of sheepskins, stiff with dirt like dried deerskin. He would never leave RÉ Valley though, he said. When he got rich he was going to build a small palace on Black Mountain, and there he would sit drinking fine wine and gaze upon the earth stretched out before him.
Then he straightened himself, the pickaxe hung loosely in his right hand, and with his left he wiped the perspiration from his bald head, and the hand left a mark, it was so dirty with digging. The red bearded face worked itself into a half-witted smile, the eyes grew large, lost all keenness and became troubled. Then he said: “And when once I die, then I will return to RÉ Valley in the shape of a beast.”
Gaupa saw how the Swede was becoming strange, as if he were listening. Then he uttered an ugly roar, and fell on his face almost into the fire.
Quick as lightning Gaupa pulled him away, and there lay the old Swede prostrate in a fit. His hand held the shaft of the pickaxe too tightly for Gaupa to wrench it open, but he succeeded in forcing a stick between the teeth of the sick man to prevent him from biting off his own tongue. His legs were pulled up crooked under his body, a muffled groan from the depths of his throat was heard off and on, his mouth was smothered in foam.
At last the body twitched no more, the Swede began to breathe evenly and heavily; he slept like a man tired to death.
“He’ll soon be himself again,” thought Gaupa. He had seen epileptics before and knew that such attacks most often end in deep sleep.
But the Swede slept on and on, and Gaupa noticed how his breathing grew fainter. At last he had to lie down close beside the body to catch it at all. The time came when the RÉ Valley Swede did not breathe any more. He lay crouching over the plate which was to have been the great adventure of his life. But the pine-log fire burned on beside him red, resinous, and alive.
After that night Gaupa was unable to rid himself of the last words of the old man with the glassy troubled eyes: “in the shape of a beast.”
When evening spread her dark mantle over the sky, when the tree-trunks ceased to be, and he saw the wild beasts gliding like living shadows across the wooded glades, then he heard it: “in the shape of a beast—beast.” And however much he willed it not to happen, his heart would beat in his breast like the sound of far-off muffled guns.
When at dawn he waited for the capercailzie’s love song, the mystical peals of bells of the forest, he heard what he had noticed since his earliest youth: although the silence was absolute, there seemed to be someone talking somewhere, far away in no particular direction only far away. He had often thought of the People of the Hills, for Gaupa believed in them most sincerely; he had both seen and heard inexplicable things, but ever since the death of the RÉ Valley Swede the low distant murmur became words, “Beast, Beast, Beast....”
Gaupa was constantly expecting something to happen. The tension of it was like music to his soul. Ever since that time when he watched through the night beside the dead Swede, felt his hands growing cold, saw his lips growing blue, ever since that time the night and the forest seemed to attract him even more strongly than before. The possibilities hinted at by that one word “beast” ran through his brain like an icy trickle, became a sweet pain—“Beast, Beast....”
Gaupa had never known fear in the woods, not even when once he killed a bear cub and the mother bear rushed straight towards him with huge leaping strides—even then he was not afraid. He just sent a bullet through the head when she was four paces away. And it is easy to understand that the last words of the RÉ Valley Swede did not frighten him.
Only he acquired a strange habit. After shooting an animal he invariably looked into its eyes. It had become such a confirmed habit that he did not think about it, for ten or twelve years had elapsed since the corpse of the RÉ Valley Swede had been carried away to civilisation on the back of a horse, and in Gaupa’s thoughts the memory had grown somewhat blurred. All the same he could at will recall the face of the dead man in the glow of the fire, a face as red as the trunk of a pine tree in the evening sun.
The old Swede had said he would return to RÉ Valley in the shape of a beast.... Gaupa remembered what had happened some time before on a farm north in the Lower Valley, a farm where the outlying meadows mingled with the highest birch copses just below the bare mountain.
The farmer’s son married the prettiest maid in all the valley—oh, what a beauty she was!—but pale and delicate as a winter’s moon. And just as the moon dies and vanishes before the light, so life ebbed out of her slowly, oh so slowly. But she clung to life, and she said that if she died she would return to her boy husband in the shape of a bird. And she did die.
The following summer the people of the farm were astonished to see a mountain grouse amongst the poultry. At first she was shy and disappeared every night, but she was always there in the morning. At last the bird grew so tame that the lad who had lost his girl-bride could hold it in his hands.
When winter came the grouse changed her feathers and became snowy white, and one day she flew to the mountains straight towards the sun. The shimmering sunshine absorbed her, and to the lad she seemed to be a white angel flying into heaven.
When Gaupa first heard the story he felt himself start. The girl had kept her word. Would the half-witted Swede keep his?
Then in the Spring, something happened. Gaupa was stealing through the wooded slopes of RÉ Valley one morning about four o’clock. The surface of the snow, thawed once and frozen to hard ice afterwards, bore his weight. Big socks outside his boots allowed him to walk without a sound, for the capercailzie is easily alarmed.
A tiny fluffy cloud flamed red in the eastern sky. Water from melting masses of snow rushed down the mountain-sides, making a sound like gusts of wind in the forest-clad mountains.
Then he heard a raven croaking above him, and he raised his face to the sky in search for it. What might the black bird be crying out for? Gaupa saw warnings in many things, and he knew that a raven’s croak generally means something sinister. He remembered an autumn night when he was spearing trout somewhere west in Three Valley Mountain, how in the moonlight he saw such a bird fly up from the ground. Gaupa went up to the group of young spruce out of which the raven came and there he found the skeleton of a man, with a half-rotten leather pack lying beside him. It was the wandering pedlar who many years before had insisted on crossing the mountains to the next cultivated valley, and had never been seen again.
Gaupa felt quite convinced that the raven is a sinister bird. What might that black eater of carrion be croaking about now? wondered Gaupa as he stole along lightly on the Black Mountain slopes. The raven was sure to have seen something down there in the forest, quite sure. “Arrp!” he cried—“arrp!”
Gaupa continued his way southwards, stopping once in a while to use his ears when the snow did not crunch under his feet. He had not known sleep since the evening before, when day fled from the horizon and he threw a lump of snow on to his fire farthest up the valley and walked into the darkness, for Gaupa preferred the darkness to broad daylight. He loved night.
Dawn was approaching and he was growing sleepy, a heaviness in his head took away his interest in everything about him. But when he reached a ridge overlooking Gipsy Lake, all drowsiness left him instantly, for before him in the pearly dawn he saw an enormous grey elk cow bending over and licking a newborn calf. He stopped short, but the elk cow seemed to think that Gaupa himself was nothing more than an animal, black as soil, with hairless skin round eyes and nose. Terror engulfed her, and when Gaupa drew near the cow fled. He went up to the calf. The little animal was wet and warm, steaming in the cool air of the dawn, its breathing laboured, uneven—it was newly born.
Gaupa caught his eyes and gave a start; he felt an icy chill run through his being, and he remained kneeling holding the animal’s gaze. Those eyes were not soulless and empty like those of other newly-born animals. They were human eyes, plainly and undoubtedly the eyes of a human being.
Above him the raven circled round and round croaking its steady “Arrp,” “arrp” until the bird turned westward and the cry died away, an ugly threatening sound amongst the dark clouds.
Gaupa held the elk calf with both his hands. He felt the pulse shaking its frail body, and he noticed that it was a bull. Once more he had visions of the RÉ Valley Swede, and heard the ugly roar that opened the epileptic attack, heard that last gasp—“Beast, Beast....”
Gaupa felt for his hunting-knife, wrenched it out of its sheath, and drew it straight across the left ear of the calf. Then he walked away with crackling steps.
The sun reached the pine-clad ridge behind him, played softly round the little calf’s head, kissed him and wished him welcome to life and to the forest.
§ 4
But Gaupa lay awake in Gipsy Lake Hut, full of memories. The dog was lying silent in sleep. Once Gaupa struck a match to light his pipe, and in one corner his rifle reflected the glow. “The Tempest” had roared once that day, and there was one elk less on the slopes of RÉ Mountains.
But what Gaupa saw that morning, when aiming at the elk cow, was the calf’s left ear—it was only half an ear. It was the same calf he had handled the spring before, the elk calf with human eyes. It was he who had just cried out so uncannily like a human being under the Black Mountain, more weirdly than Gaupa had ever heard a beast cry before.
There was also something strange about the calf’s spoors that day. The clefts were not side by side as elk clefts usually are. They spread out obliquely from each other. He knew he would be able to distinguish that spoor from a thousand. Gaupa had seen many elk spoors in his life, but never any like these.
The stove in the hut ceased muttering. The flue cooled down with tiny dry cracking sounds.
Below the hut a fox stopped to smell the smoke which still lingered in the air.
Up in the mountain the brook murmured incessantly. Under the Black Mountain an elk calf was licking the skin of his mother which was hung up on a pole fastened to two trees. The calf kept poking at it with his muzzle, but the skin was dead, lifeless, with no warmth of blood in it, and the young elk raised his head and whimpered plaintively, hoarsely and brokenly.
In Gipsy Lake Hut Gaupa was on the point of going to sleep when he suddenly became wide awake again. The hut was quiet as the tomb, but the silence slowly grew pregnant with that inexplicable murmur which Gaupa knew so well. It was as if spirits were whispering around him. “Beast, beast, beast.”
§ 5
The next day Gaupa went northwards to Lower Valley, where people were living. They struggle through life as best they can, and when they die they are taken to the ancient tarred wooden church that calls them back to earth with dismal deep-toned bells.
Gaupa’s home was a timber hut on a stony birch-clad ridge, jutting out into the river. The building was so near to the water’s edge that if the spring flood was unusually high the water almost lapped against its walls.
There Gaupa and BjÖnn lived alone. Gaupa was a confirmed old bachelor, over fifty years of age. He had reached the evening of life, and women and love had never been anything to him. No one had ever heard him sigh on account of a petticoat.
His real name was Sjur and he hailed from a spot far north in the valley, a crofter’s place called Renna. His parents died when he was young. Sjur was not cut out for a crofter, and so he built the little hut for himself down by the river, and it stands there to this very day.
Sjur was believed to be a shoemaker by trade and he was handy both with awl and thread. But what use was it to take your shoes to him when he never finished them? If you left them with him during the potato harvest in the autumn you could not expect to get them back until the cuckoo was heard in the following spring. Therefore work grew more and more scarce, and heaven only knew what he lived upon. But Gaupa would gorge like a dog when there was food, and could starve like a dog when food grew scarce.
People gave him his nickname “The Lynx” because of his strange habits. He slept during the day and was up and about at night, like a wild beast—like a lynx in fact.
When the dalesman locked his door, blew out his candle, and crept into his sheepskins, then the light gleamed as bright as ever from Gaupa’s hut. About midnight he would often steal out into the forest only to return at day-break, when he would creep into his hut, lie down and sleep as a wild animal does in its lair after its hunt for food. Gaupa was indeed a strange man.
There was an old schoolmaster in the valley, who went from one farm to another teaching for a time at each place. He wore spectacles and was exceedingly learned, and he always sang the corpse out of the house at funerals. He was the oracle of the valley. He knew everything, and could tell you why Gaupa slept by day and went out by night.
There were two kinds of people, he used to say. Some were born by day and some by night. Those born by night often had a strange longing for darkness. “Look,” he would add, “at that singular being at the Lynx Hut. He was born by night and avoids the day.”
The schoolmaster was quite right about that. To Gaupa the sunshine was not warm, but cold, while the moon was quite different. In the moonlight the shadows in the forest moved like the shades of dead animals, a steady movement, hardly noticeable and yet unmistakable. Then Gaupa felt as if he himself were stealing about on hairy soles. What a delightful thrilling, silent restlessness there was around him! He seemed to be watched by unseen eyes from the heaps of rocks and wooded copses, where soft paws trotted over the moss, sinewy bodies crouched, the whole copse felt like one mighty enchanting mystery. There was magic music in the air about him, a subdued melody, and he seemed to hear the burning stars sparkle in the firmament.
On such nights BjÖnn would often accompany him. The manner of BjÖnn’s arrival at Lynx Hut was as follows. One winter a dalesman from Lower Valley was travelling towards the plains with a load of butter and cured fish. When he left the town of HÖnefos on his return, he noticed a large deer-hound following him. It was dark in colour with a grey head and grey legs. The man drove on, wrapped in his black sheepskin coat, with his old horse drawing the sledge. The dog followed.
But on the evening of the second day the dog disappeared, and a week later the same animal, all skin and bones, crawled up to Lynx Hut. Gaupa gave him food, and the dog remained there. No one asked questions about him, and Gaupa named him BjÖnn.
Towards the spring, in April, Gaupa happened to show the dog a huge spoor in the crusted snow under RÉ Mountain. BjÖnn went absolutely mad, and the elk ox who was at the other end of that spoor was unprepared for such a terrible pursuit by such a tiny animal as BjÖnn appeared to be. The elk sank through the snow crust, but BjÖnn kept on top, and three days later Gaupa carried home venison which no one was allowed to see.
From that day BjÖnn grew to be the best elk-hound in the valley. Wonderful stories were told in the district of Gaupa and his dog. When those two started to follow a spoor they never gave up. They had their meals on the spoor, they rested, and even slept there. They followed it from one horizon to the other, from one county to another, till at last the elk lay dead.
Gaupa and BjÖnn were like the animals they were called after, wild and ferocious. People would say to Gaupa, “You’ll kill yourself yet with such mad chase”—but the prophets fell ill and died, whilst Gaupa ran on as mad as ever.
He was a great teller of stories and a popular musician at dances. Then he played on a fiddle on the head of which the devil himself, horns and all, was carved out. And when he had had a little brandy the stories would come pouring out between his bearded lips. He was inexhaustible like a spring, and in everything he told there was an alluring mystery.
One night he was at a dance, telling of the RÉ Valley Swede and the elk calf from Black Mountain—of the elk calf whose mother he had killed two weeks before and of the ugly cry he had heard the night afterwards, while he spoke silence reigned, and the young girls shivered.
A few days afterwards these things were the talk of the Valley. Such a story amongst those people was like leaven in dough. It grew and grew. Old sagas and old superstitions were added, and even the Sacred Word of God. For in those days the people of Lower Valley had nothing else to speak of but what actually took place within the limits of the mountain ridges before their eyes. Kings might die in the great world beyond—that was a matter of minor interest to them as compared with the death of a six-weeks-old piglet belonging to a crofter at Cool Hill.
Therefore it is nothing to wonder at that when Gaupa told the story of the elk calf of Black Mountain, the RÉ Valley Swede was in a manner of speaking resurrected from his tomb.
Then suddenly everybody remembered a number of things about him. The RÉ Valley Swede was not a true believer, he did not accept the Word humbly with a Christian’s heart. The Bible says that when people die they either go to heaven or hell, and no one in Lower Valley doubted for one moment that as a rule they all went straight to heaven from their Valley—that is, if we may judge from their funeral sermons.
But the old Swede believed that many things might happen after death; he even seemed to believe that the dead might return—as beasts!
The schoolmaster explained that there was another religion which taught such a belief. But people did not care two straws about other religions. The RÉ Valley Swede was a mocker, a free-thinker; a cold blast followed him wherever he went. Martin Ormerud recalled how when he entered the barn where the RÉ Valley Swede was laid out, a big black bird rose from his head. “Mercy upon us!” people cried.
Thus they gossiped; old wives eighty and ninety years of age, spectacles on nose and Bibles on their knees, read aloud with trembling voices how “the Lord endures not a mocker.” The old Swede was a living testimony to the truth of the Word. As a punishment for his sins and his mocking of God, his restless spirit was now condemned to roam about RÉ Mountains imprisoned in an animal’s body. God have mercy upon the poor soul when once the old sinner died, once more up there among the pines along RÉ River.
§ 6
Years passed.
In the wilderness between Gipsy Lake to the South and Lower Valley to the north there roamed about a wizard elk that no dog and no marksman could conquer.
The dalesmen called him Rauten; why, no one could say. Such names come floating on the north wind, and have no origin. Perhaps the name stuck because when he was still a calf he would low, for all the world like cattle on an autumn evening.
Rauten wandered about RÉ Mountains, not like an ordinary earthly elk, but like a being half body and half spirit. No lead bullets could wound him. He was rarely seen by human eyes.
During the mating season, at dawn and in the gloaming, foresters sometimes heard his mating call. It sounded more human than animal, and it made the foresters realise that they had nerves after all.
Now and then they happened to see his spoor, unlike all other elk spoors. The clefts pointed outwards, like the spoor of a man walking toes outwards. The RÉ Valley Swede had also walked toes turned outwards. When he went along the high road northwards one foot pointed east, the other west.
Long-limbed men strode miles and leagues after Rauten, but his spoor never ended. Dogs chased him, and returned limping and moaning.
There was a black-bearded man whom they called Gaupa. He and his dog BjÖnn followed elk spoors from one horizon to the other, from one county to the other. But whenever they happened to see an elk spoor with the clefts pointing apart they turned away. Chasing a spirit is like chasing a shadow.
Years passed.
§ 7
On Bog Hill, near the outskirts of RÉ Valley, an elk bull was standing immovable.
It was dawn, when light and darkness intermingle, when the wild animal threads softly to his lair, tramples in a circle for a little while, and then crouches down and closes his eyelids. The few hours out of each twenty-four when death and life are locked in each other’s arms have come to an end. Here and there a drop of blood lies on the earth like some moist red flower, or a heap of loose feathers seems to tell where a bird has undressed; only that particular bird no longer needs feathers.
Still the bull elk on Bog Hill did not move a muscle. His head stood out clearly against the dawn which flooded the eastern sky like a lake of yellow light. His antlers resembled young bushes, and between the tines a dying star twinkled in silvery paleness.
It was no mortal animal standing there; it was a ghost from dead generations, an animal spirit from the eternal hunting-grounds.
Daylight grew more and more whilst the elk stood still. A grey film of dawn decked the side of the pine trunks turned to the east. The light filtered through the pine needles as through a sieve. A bird chirped a while and then became silent again, like a life that dies just as it is born.
Then the elk’s head turned, quite slowly from west to north. In his slightly curved muzzle there was the dreaming melancholy of wooded dells. His nostrils worked incessantly, expanding and contracting, the cold morning air running in and out of his nose. His eyes were large and wide awake. For the call of sex burned in his mighty body—the call to mating which rises and falls from time to time in eternal rhythm, from generation to generation.
One ear of that elk was only half an ear. It was Rauten, the largest and wildest of all elks between mountain and valley. Mating time had come, when bull seeks cow, and cow seeks bull, when angry eyes stare into angry eyes in the fight for the female, when antler meets antler, breaking the silence of the forest with mighty crashes.
Rauten sniffed and listened. Into his nostrils entered the smell of rottening leaves and boggy marshes. It was late autumn, and the life which spring had created was on the point of returning to earth. But no scent of the female was borne on the slight breeze from the north that fills his nose. All the same he remained; now and then he cocked an ear, backwards and forwards, but no sound was heard from any living throat.
Then he lifted his head, opened his mouth and gave the mating call, a deep nasal sound which floated over the bog and died away again.
Again Rauten listened. The western slopes took on a lighter shade, but the valleys and gullies still yawned black.
Then he turned and went northwards along the ridge, with long strides, covering the ground at great speed. One cleft hoof splashes into a tiny pool of water, the other crushes a small spruce which has been ages about sprouting in the shallow soil, and might have grown to be a big tree.
Rauten knew of a cow living thereabouts. He had come a full league to find her, and soon a strange scent greeted his nostrils—a kind of burnt acrid smell, recalling a billy-goat at mating time.
Rauten went on till he found a marshy place with yellowing birches. On a hill-top close by, a small hole had been dug out in the earth—and not long before, for a couple of torn roots appeared fresh and white where they had been broken, not brownish as they are when they have been exposed for some time.
The hole had been dug out by mating-mad elk bulls, and the strong scent emanated from it. The hole seemed to breathe out that scent, and Rauten was in the middle of it.
He nosed the earth, but there was no breath of a cow. Then he rubbed himself against a small spruce.
Suddenly a soft-eyed elk cow came out on to the marsh below, and both animals stood still for a moment, heads raised eyeing each other. Rauten felt as light as light; he ran—no, he floated towards her. Passion was boiling inside him. He ran in rings round her, that shy female with lowered ears and patient, expectant eyes.
Then he broke loose upon her: He followed the same almighty law of Nature which compels the unconscious capercailzie and his cackling hen, the valiant wood-cock—yes, and even the little anemone which stealing the blue of the heavens spreads new life out of tiny soft stamens.
For a short time silence reigned over the marsh, except now and then for the crack of a breaking twig under the elks’ hoofs.
Then another elk appeared. It was a three-year-old, with slender horns. He saw the two in front of him and made as if he would jump. In him also the forces of nature were at work. Strength pulsated through his young body, each muscle trembled impatiently with longing for a contest. For that cow with Rauten belonged to him, to him alone. She had gone with him the day before; she was his, his own. The three-year-old grew large-eyed and wild-eyed, his withers bristled like a brush. Rauten must be vanquished, Rauten must die.
The two elk bulls faced each other on Bog Hill like two living springs of force. There were four eyes full of madness, four antlers, and those antlers mean death.
Rauten was like one suddenly waking from a trance. He was quivering, wide awake; for the cow who was peeping at them curiously from behind a crooked spruce was his. He had mastered her, he had floated with her through golden sunlit mists; she was his, his own. That youngster must be conquered. The youngster must die.
The first war-cry was raised, a hoarse cry from a savage soul on fire. “Yah! Yah!”
The younger elk lifted his upper body, a hoof was flung through the air, making a dark line across the pinewoods, stopped and fell.
“Crack!” The sound was at once soft and firm. Rauten felt a fierce burning sensation under one ear, a slight mist shadowed his brain for a moment, then all was clear again.
In that brief second the other hoof from the youngster struck his neck. Hair and skin was flayed off, a fire licked Rauten where the hoof struck, and then....
There he stood, half rampant, a thunder-cloud, a storm. He turned his eyes, turned them slowly, threateningly. They were no longer brown, but white. It was as if all madness raging in that huge body had concentrated in the eyes, turning them white. Rauten towered as tall as the young pine beside him, his jaws opened, breath steamed out and his tongue protruded, long, wet, slavering. Then Rauten struck back. His forelegs were no longer skin and bones and muscles belonging to a body. They were shadows, spirits, ghosts, sinister forebodings of blood and destruction. Lightning gleamed and thunder crashed. The storm had broken loose and the three-year-old was there to meet it. The God of the wilds have mercy on his body!
The sun had not yet risen, but was still resting somewhere behind the hills. But when Rauten struck, the three-year-old saw the sun all the same, not only one, but a number of suns, a swarm of them. They danced in his head like round sparkling disks of wonderful colours. They gleamed green like fireflies, metallic like a bluebottle, copper-red like the harvest moon.
Another blow fell on the heels of the first one. It struck above one eye. And once more the tapestry of the firmament was rolled up before the sight of the youngster. There were no suns that time, but stars—what a host of stars, as numerous as dewdrops on the grass, sparkling like snow in spring! They leapt and danced inside his head, whirling madly together.
They went out suddenly, all of them, disappeared like a mist, and then he saw the old sun peeping red-eyed from behind the eastern mountains.
The three-year-old went backwards and retreated, for this was so sudden. He had attacked a rocky wall and found it hard. But Rauten did not let go; he followed, followed, and up from hot gorges and reeking inner bodies came the war-cry again: “Yah! Yah!”
Their antlers met writhing into each other. Snouts touched the earth, the bulls groaning as if to rid themselves of something. The sinews of their hind-quarters shivered, trembled, rage gave life to every hair in their manes, their stumpy tails were raised angrily. Two sharp backs stood out against the sky like monsters. Every fibre of their bodies was taut, muscles writhed like worms and red-hot blood boiled rhythmically through their veins.
Their antlers were still interlaced in fierce contest; those of the youngster pale grey, Rauten’s brown, watered, lined like iceworn rocks, as if some unknown hand had written strange runes on them. They hammered and crashed, their hoofs cut gaping wounds in the moss, the dew fell like tears from the sedge, and dark spoors appeared on the bog where the mighty ones walked. But the three-year-old went backwards.
Their antlers released each other, their bodies rose, and once more legs turned into fleeting shadows. The blows sounded as if someone were beating sheepskins with a stick; hoarse sounds escaped from their throats, hair flew in the air like driven snow.
The cow looked on, slightly dazed, nodding as it were her approval, for that was what she liked. The tension between the bulls invaded her; she could not remain calm any more, she leapt forwards, stopped, stamped a little, and once she lowed loudly, out of sheer excitement. It was for her they were fighting, for her their sharp hoofs made their bodies bloom red with blood.
The red rose over Rauten’s shoulder grew and lengthened into a long narrow leaf, changing shape continually, but not changing colour. The three-year-old wore a number of such roses, which easily grew out of his young, well-beaten body.
The cow’s sympathies, however, were all for Rauten. He was the stronger, and she wanted the stronger. Even then she felt deliciously faint after their mating.
Rauten’s madness was that time sky-high, his muscles tautened and relaxed and in their rhythmical movement made a wild song.
Both bulls had now begun to feel the strain. The mouths of both were white with bubbling foam, and their heads felt heavy, but their haunches stood up like bushes, and Rauten’s eyes were alight with savage madness. It was as if he wanted to use to the fullest extent that opportunity of working off all the superfluous vitality which had accumulated in him in the course of a long, long year.
A few small bushes seemed to jump forward in the bog to see the fight. Tree-tops stretched their necks one behind the other, staring. Sparks of light flew up from the grass; it was the cool breath of night which remained like dew on the earth.
Once more the cow lowed with excitement. A woodpecker sat on a dry, hollow spruce tree. She was green as the slimy stones in the brook. She turned her head, listening in shiny-eyed astonishment at all the noise. Then her beak hammered on the wood once more. “Knrrr!” said the hollow tree-trunk.
Rauten’s skin was wet with sweat, and under his belly, on his flanks, flakes of foam boiled as if on a fleeing horse. And still his muscles sang their mad song, and again the three-year-old saw suns and stars. He staggered, retreated to the edge of the bog, sank on his knees, but rose at once. He had fought and lost, he had become a smaller beast in the woods. He was giving in, only he did not want to turn round and run away until he was obliged to do so.
At the edge of the bog the unexpected happened. A little hill runs down there, and a high stump of a tree stood close beside a spruce. The stump was about the same height as an elk, and it looked as if a storm had once felled a spruce. The younger bull retreated towards this stump, and without giving warning Rauten ran his antlers under him. Then he made a mighty effort which will not soon be forgotten in the Bog Hill forest. The three-year-old was raised on end, stood for a second on his hind legs, was pushed over and fell down on his back—between the tall stump and its neighbour the spruce tree, and was wedged in securely between them, fast as if in a vice.
Rauten stood with head uplifted looking at his helpless foe whose legs uselessly beat the empty air. Rauten wanted to use his antlers again, to kill, but he could not reach. The younger bull’s legs worked like a windmill, and a blow from them would hurt. Rauten remained there a long time, the youngster on his back, mouth wide open, steaming.
Then the cow joined him, and Rauten went to meet her. The storm within him calmed down. For the cow began to lick him, and her tongue was soft, so caressingly soft. His shoulder blazed red like the sunrise, and his neck wept warm tears on to the moist earth. Every touch of the cow’s tongue was a reward, humble admiration of him only—the greatest and the strongest among the elk bulls of valley or mountains, the crowned king of elks in RÉ Valley. Nothing could stand up before him. He broke down everything before him like a falling tree in the bushes. He trotted southwards with the cow by his side across Bog Hill, like Victory itself, even though one ear was but half a one, and his body wept blood. Round their legs the white heads of the bog down-grass moved like fat white birds, while the elks ploughed their way, dark grey under the sloping rays of the newly-risen sun.
The three-year-old lay on his back all the morning, wedged in between the stump and the tree-trunk.
There was no possible means of getting out again. He could not turn, the space was too narrow, and his legs could get no hold in the empty air. He worked till he grew weak. Then he lay still, knees bent heavenwards as if he were praying to the sun for help. His tongue lolled limply out of one corner of his mouth, and the sun burned his face pitilessly. Then he shut his eyes.
§ 8
That same day in the afternoon BjÖnn from Lynx Hut was following an elk spoor southwards through RÉ Valley.
BjÖnn ran quickly, nose to earth. He crossed wide marshes and small bogs where the dwarfed pines spread their wide, flat crowns like noses. He crossed ridges and valleys, and at last his course went towards Bog Hill.
There his song grew wildly excited. Gaupa was half a league farther north, but he overtook the dog within an hour. He went straight up to the helpless elk, whose legs still pawed the air. He aimed, pulled the trigger, and the bull elk moved no more.
“H’m”—Gaupa wondered.
“That is an elk bull,” he mused, “but in what a strange position! How in all the world did he happen to lie on his back between that stump and the spruce tree? It is inexplicable.”
He investigated the bog, picked up a tuft of hair which was dark, and then another which was lighter. But the whole bog looked as if someone had driven a harrow from end to end, and from side to side criss-cross.
“H’m,” Gaupa mused once more. Lord, what a fight there had been! He walked about studying the spoors. His eyes searched the earth. Two bulls had been here. One remained down there on the slope, and he had blown life out of him with his own “Tempest.” But the other bull was larger—and why, of course it was Rauten, the wizard elk. The cleft spoors stood out with curved outer edges as the spoors of a bull generally are.
Gaupa raised his head reflectingly. Round about him the calm glow of autumn burned in the air and on the earth. The slopes were multicoloured with pinewood and leafage intermingled, spotted like the coat of a lynx.
He began to flay the dead elk; but as it was too late in the day to go down in Lower Valley with the news that he had killed an elk, he decided to go east and spend the night in the nearest highland farm.
On his way he meditated on Rauten, but he was not such a fool as to try to trace him. That would be sheer waste of time. He was not such a fool as to try that. For many are the hunters who have returned with sore-pawed and worn-out dogs when they have had the wizard elk before them.
Rauten had peculiar ways. He rarely ran faster than the dogs could go, but he never really stopped, never long enough for the hunter to overtake him. He sought out all the lakes and ponds in existence, and crossed them. You might follow him for hours and hours if your dog did not give up—as he was sure to do sooner or later. Very eager dogs were known to chase Rauten till they completely lost their way, and they had been found in far-off districts past the mountain gap. Also all foresters in those parts agreed that bad luck went with the wizard elk. Petter Kleivaberget fell and broke his arm when chasing Rauten. Arne Öigarden shot his own dog in mistake for the elk—a fine dog, too, worth a hundred dollars. And the man from KrÖdsherred who attempted to run down Rauten on ski one winter broke both skis and as nearly as anything died in the snow. He was so weak when he reached the Tolleiv Mountain Farm that he could not walk across the pasture—he crawled on all fours and was a whole hour about it too, so it was clear to anybody how near to death’s door he had been.
No, Gaupa would not follow Rauten.
He went east to MorsÆter. The house lies in a little valley branching out from the RÉ Valley proper. As he walked he felt uneasy. His head was heavy and he coughed now and then; he breathed heavily going uphill—he who never used to notice a hill, he who could mount the slopes at a run. Presently he began to perspire also. Gaupa did not usually perspire for just nothing.
It was probably because he had sat down on a peak last night and felt exceedingly cold, after sunset. He had been running pretty hard just before, so that he was a little moist. And that mountain peak was quite bare, and such places are invariably rather cold.
Some years before Gaupa had had pneumonia. An epidemic raged in the district at that time, and there were many funeral parties and many sad-looking pine branches along all roads. And the young people did not dance again until Midsummer Eve.
Gaupa had really been very bad at that time, and Harald Övrejordet, the lay preacher of the valley, the high priest as they called him, came up to him and begged him to be converted from all his sins. Perhaps he would have turned from his evil ways, if he had not felt that selfsame day that the sickness had taken a turn for the better, and that he was going to get well. Therefore he was in no hurry, he would wait and see. He recovered completely and remained in sin for the time being.
But ever since then Gaupa found that if he ran really very hard a sharp needle seemed to run through his right lung. That needle was a perfect nuisance. It had cost him several horse-loads of meat, for it had forced him to stop while the elk ran away.
He felt that needle now, but, curse it, it was sure to go away again.
Towards evening the sky grew filmy, the sun dull-eyed, the earth grey. A lake to the north was just then gleaming pale under the wooded slopes. The fire went out and the lake was nothing but water.
The wet, naked rocks in the east mountains were also fiery while the sun shone. They seemed to be drops of fire which had fallen amongst mountain peaks and forests. They too went out.
Gaupa walked towards MorsÆter, BjÖnn on the lead. The needle in his lung was burning—a confounded nuisance and no doubt about it. It came like lightning, and so unexpectedly that it jerked his whole body. But it was sure to go away again.
In the gloaming he saw the flat pasture round the MorsÆter. The forest yawned, and he reached the fence. The roof had been freshly shingled, and looked very white and clean.
He searched for the key of the door. It was usually to be found in a hole in the wall, but not so that day. He tried other places, but there was no key.
As a matter of fact Gaupa was man enough to open a lock. He also knew how to take out window frames, so tenderly and carefully that they bore no mark of axe or knife. No house was locked to him, and if the worst came to the worst he would crawl down the chimney!
The padlock was opened without trouble. Gaupa merely gave it a few mysterious taps with his sheath knife. The hook released the body of the lock and seemed to say, “Please enter.”
While Gaupa was cutting wood for the night behind the house, the echo from his axe beat his ears like shots. The sky was sleepy and cloudy. Perhaps there would be rain.
He stood by the hearth cutting chips to start a fire, and felt his head reeling. But his will controlled the knife, so that the fat pine-root chips curled before him like small bouquets.
The fire was lit, and then three living things were in the hut—Gaupa and BjÖnn and the Fire. Gaupa sat on the hearth stone, creeping close to the fire. For it was cold and shivery that night, ever so cold. The boiling-hot coffee helped a little against the cold, glowing inside him for a little while, but very soon he shivered again. Cold blasts went down his spine, and they made him start and say “Damn” to the fire.
He pulled his bed near the fire. Two sheepskin rugs were there, and he found another in the next room. He went to bed with one under and two over him, but even then he felt cold. It was as if his body had ceased to produce warmth, he was cold from within, and a pang shot through his right side and would not leave him, however much he rubbed himself with his hard hand.
After a short time he fell asleep and dreamed—that he was chasing Rauten, running till he was quite winded—it was quite absurd how very much he was out of breath. And Rauten with the half-ear stood before him looking at him out of deep human eyes, but BjÖnn lay still beside him licking his paw—what an idiot of a dog! But when Gaupa fired he saw the bullet leap out of the muzzle of the gun and run slowly through the air as if time was of no account, and when at last it reached Rauten’s forehead the bullet rolled down as if it were a pea, which Rauten bending low picked up and chewed, very much as BjÖnn did when you gave him sugar.... And at that moment Rauten was changed into a man, the RÉ Valley Swede, only he had those enormous elk horns on his head. Gaupa’s hand fumbled for another cartridge, but then he woke up, perspiring.
Morning came—after a long, long night. Gaupa wanted to go to Lower Valley with news of the elk. He flung his legs out of bed and stood on the floor. But what the devil was the matter? His head had grown so heavy; the floor rose, he had to stretch out a foot to keep it from upsetting him. He had never felt anything like it! Perhaps he was going to be taken ill out there! Perhaps he would remain in that bed as helpless as a baby! “No,” he muttered, “I’m damned if I do.”
He sat down again and put his shoes on. That was better, but he could not swallow a bite. The food seemed to grow in his mouth as soon as he had bitten it. All the same he packed his sack and went outside.
Mist engulfed him like an enormous white wave. He saw the trees like shadows, and the little barn in the meadow was hidden from sight.
With BjÖnn on the lead he staggered across the meadow; and when he opened the gate in the fence, nature was so silent that the slightest noise seemed to saturate the air with sound.
He crossed the brook that runs from the little lake, and a few fish ran back into the lake, their backs so high that they moved the surface of the water. They are playing already, he thought; the trouts are laying their roe now about Michaelmas time.
Gaupa sat down. BjÖnn pulled at the lead as if wishing to investigate the mist.
Gaupa felt that he was far from being well. For by that time there was a hot pang in both his sides, and his chest seemed too small for his breathing. It was four full hours’ walk to the Lower Valley. He might meet people before that. He had seen wood cutters at a place near SpÆende Lake, where he passed a couple of days before, but even that is two hours’ walk, and Gaupa, the Lynx, was so uncertain of himself that he doubted whether he could manage that little bit in two hours.
In fact he began to see himself as he was that winter with pneumonia, a helpless man, whom his legs would not carry. At times he was in this world and at times in another, where everything went awhirl and upside down.
If now he should lie like that under a spruce tree between MorsÆter and SpÆnde Lake, it would be anything but funny, No one would find him, for who could know the ways of the Lynx? It would be better to crawl back to his bed of last night than risk a sick-bed under a spruce tree.
And then Gaupa behaved in a strange way. As usual he was wearing his brown cap with a very small peak, which he had worn for ever so many years. It may seem strange that he should drag about such a rag of a cap, but there is nothing so strange about it after all, for it was a Lucky Cap, and after BjÖnn and “The Tempest” it was Gaupa’s most cherished possession. Gaupa, it may be said, never went into the woods without that cap, and it showed signs of wear, for in the middle of the crown there was a round hole all through to the lining. The branches had made that when he moved about under the trees.
Gaupa took off his cap as solemnly and earnestly as if he were entering the Lower Valley Church on a Mass Sunday, but he was sitting by a mountain lake, bareheaded and black-haired in the mountain mist.
Then he flung the cap through the air, watching its flight with tense eyes. The cap turned a few somersaults, described an arch, struck the heather with a soft whisper, and lay still. Gaupa walked softly up to it and noticed very carefully the direction of the peak. It pointed to the house, and Gaupa knew then that he would go back. There could be no doubt about it.
For he believed in the power of the cap, and had never had cause to regret it. Many a time the cap had shown its remarkable power of giving good advice. When uncertain about the direction to be taken in order to find game, he had often thrown his cap, and where the peak pointed when it fell, there he went, and there the elks were, even when he could never have dreamed of finding them there. The cap was as good as a dog with a supernaturally fine scent.
Gaupa returned to the hut, and one need not laugh at him for that. Anyone living like he did sees many strange things which sound even strange in the telling. Beasts and bird and fish, yea, even trees and grass possess strange powers and may tell the future to those who have ears to hear.
Inside the but Gaupa tore off some bits of stale bread, hard as stone, for BjÖnn, and then he crept in under his sheepskins.
It cleared up later in the day. The earth changed her face and began to smile, the last flakes of mist vanished in the air as if by magic.
At sunset a red eye seemed to shut among the peaks. A long ridge of shadows made its way up an eastern slope. It rose slowly, inexorably, like water in a lock. The last rays of the evening sun covered a hill like a red cap.
Dusk fell, but the yellow birches round the bogs seemed to have drunk the sunshine and kept it in them, so that even in the gloaming the silver birches stood out like patches of sunlight that had been forgotten. On the fence round the pasture a tiny bird poured forth clear ripples of song into the stillness of the evening.
There were no signs of life near the hut.
Inside, BjÖnn was crouching at the foot of the bed, his nose under his tail and his ears flat. The hearth was black and dead, under the sheepskin rugs Gaupa lay, a quick breathing was heard. Once the dog rose to lick Gaupa’s hairy head. Then a rough hand with black nails was extended to stroke him. “Poor doggie,” someone whispered.
Then the dog curled up again at the foot of the bed, swallowed noisily a few times, and then there was no sound but the laboured breathing from the bed.
A silent fight was fought in that lonely mountain hut. A hardened body rose up against something intangible something that could not be hit, a trembling of every muscle, a heaviness in head and chest not to be shaken off. At last he was conscious that his whole body noted every single sensation, and he could not ward off a feeling of dread. Nobody had any errand up there at that time of the year. The manure had been spread over the pasture, and he could not think of any other work for the people from the valley, knowing that they had no wood-cutting to do.
