Part 1

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

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