CHAPTER XXIV

THE LAPLANDER’S HUT

Before them, where the road led up the northern river-bank, already clear of snow, there was apparently a forest of dry gray branches. A forest that moved slowly forward.

Lapp-Mattes gave an echoing cry: a strange, penetrating shriek as if from the throat and the palate together. One who had never heard such a sound before would have thought that Mattes yelled forth sounds and words without meaning.

But the Barren Moor children knew so much of the Lapps’ ways as to understand that Mattes now, in a song made up on the spur of the moment, greeted his wife, children, and helpers. Then he told about the children so that those in the tent knew of their fate long before they had reached the herd.

‘Deer ran all day,’ sang Mattes. ‘Find little Swedish children beside frozen water; afraid of Lapp; glad when they see it is Mattes from Bear Mountain. They share Lapp’s food, lie in Lapp’s tent. They are alone, no father, no mother.’

Little Nerlja strapped on his skiis as soon as he saw the forest of horns. Swift as an arrow, like a hunted sea-fowl, he flew over the ice.

Those following soon heard the barking of the watchdogs, as they ran about the herd, composed of nearly a thousand deer, to gather them together for the night.

The Lapps were going to put up their tents beside the river, on this side of the big village the children had seen from the other bank. It was hard work for both dogs and Lapps to get the often unruly animals up through the narrow pass from the river to the plain.

Mattes bore off on his skiis to help.

Magnus, Maglena, yes, even Andy, walked as if asleep, dragging their feet after them. They scarcely rallied when a little one-year-old Mattes met them on the road, tumbling about in the snow as naked as when he was born.

Sigri, his little sister, had much difficulty in capturing him and getting him into the tent.

The Lapp mother, Cecilia, was more sure of herself. She took the kicking boy, stuffed him into the ‘klubb’ (a long cradle of skin which can be carried on the back), into the fine deerskin bed which lined it, and bound the soft cover of skin fast about his waist and little body, wriggling with life and mischief.

The mother hung up the cradle by means of leather bands to a slender tree-trunk which was fastened to the ceiling. Sigri rocked the cradle and sang the Lapps’ wild, deafening cradle-song to little Mattes, who became quiet, listened, and fell asleep.

The poor, tired little wanderers threw themselves down on the deerskins that lay like a carpet around the fire in the middle of the tent. They were awakened to drink the strong coffee which was given them.

Neither coffee nor anything else could open Magnus’s eyes. But it was remarkable how wide awake Andy and Maglena became after the coffee. They suddenly felt hunger, and how unbelievably good the reindeer meat tasted with the coarse bread. Even the strong black soup of deer’s blood tasted good. But the reindeer milk which was offered them in a beautiful carved bowl, made of one single piece of wood, they refused with thanks. It is strong and bitter for those who are not used to it. To them, goats’ milk tasted much better.

Golden Horn, whose rich supply of milk was offered to the Lapp household, climbed neatly over the skins and lay down comfortably on the farthest tent-skin. Magnus still slept like a boy of stone. And yet there was the worst kind of clamor outside of the tent. The Lapps yelled and hallooed when they threw the lasso over the horns of the reindeer cows that were to be milked. The cows resisted with all four feet braced in the snow slush and bare tussocks, but were pulled out in spite of themselves and held by the Lapps while the girls milked into small wooden bowls.

The cows and calves stared wonderingly at Andy and Maglena, who, hand in hand with Sigri, wandered about in the huge herd.

The Lapps walked safely among the reindeer bulls, who fought and charged each other with horns which finally became entangled, and among the lassoes which flew about their ears.

The ever-watchful Lapp dogs would suddenly see a deer who, unnoticed, wanted to get away to better pasture, and would dart after him straight through the herd. Then one had to keep out of the way if one did not want to be knocked down.

The strange, soft, yet wild, language sounded on all sides. The Lapps chattered, they pointed at the herd with vehement gestures, they yelled in order to make themselves heard. The reindeer bulls were to be captured and tamed for draught oxen. Little calves on wobbly legs must be looked after. Animals must be selected for slaughter.

The women talked caressingly, half singing, to the cows they milked; or they sat on their heels with a new little calf, soft as silk, on their knees. They fondled and caressed it, while the reindeer mother stood beside them and looked on with tenderness in the big moist black eyes.

Andy and Maglena became dizzy. They became part of the life, the funny sounds, the somehow gay bustle.

The forest of horns thinned. One pair of branches after the other sank down in the standing herd. More and more disappeared. Soon the whole herd was at rest for the night.

The Lapp dogs, who had been fed in the tent, slept there in the warmth, as Lapp dogs always sleep, with closed eyes, but with ears alert for the least sign of a wolf.

Mattes came into the tent with his elder sons and a servant. Cecilia had food and coffee ready for them. The women-folk of the family and the maids followed soon after, hungry and tired; but not so tired that they could not keep up a jolly clamor in the tent.

The men smoked short clay pipes; the older women too. They drank strong black coffee and told stories of their adventures: about the old wolf that no one could shoot; that was enchanted and that therefore neither shot nor spear could wound.

And they talked in whispers about what Mattes had ‘seen’ when he stood at the sacrificial stone on midsummer night. He had seen everything that was to happen in the country in the next year. He could foretell peace, war, or pestilence, a good year or a poor. He had followed the angel of death in his Vision. If he ‘wished,’ Mattes could say whether the angel of death would take more old or more young people during the next year.

All this talk in the Lapp language Sigri translated for Andy and Maglena. She probably added a little too, and saw to it that it all became a little more uncanny.

Here among the Lapps one heard nothing of brownies and fairies. But about goblins and bewitched Swedes who had to obey and follow a Lapp because they had been insolent to him; and about goblin drums and ‘sacrifice’ and dangers up in the deserted mountain country, with ‘death’ who shrieked and wailed out on the marshes all night long.

Strange that a person can grow sleepy during such talk. But they who were sleepy were Andy and Maglena. They had thrown off wet shoes and outer clothes, and now they curled up on the skin beside Sigri and little Lisa.

Outside slept the herd of deer. Thousands of lives and yet a soundless quiet. Over it all shone spring’s gently smiling heaven of stars, just as it had shone over the homeless children’s green cottage in the woods the night before.