I looked down into the freed water. It was swift-moving, even here. I drew back from the edge.
We walked over the rock to the side we had climbed. Climbing down is always harder than climbing up, and Mike gave me a hand to hold to. But I won't climb down unless I see where I'm going. So I faced out and waved my foot back and forth in hope of finding some place to set it. Mike was watching me and laughing very hard, which was one of the reasons he didn't see them first. The other reason was he was climbing down with his face against the side of the Bull the way you're supposed to. Anyway, men, dogs, and sleds suddenly appeared over the hill. "Mike, Mike, look!"
We climbed back up and watched the men and teams surging over the plains below us. More and more sleds spread out over the valley until there must have been fifty men racing each other over the waste.
"Those are our neighbors, Kathy. Hudson's Hope men, all of them."
I stared down curiously at them. They were coming home after a winter's trapping. That would bring the population of Hudson's Hope up to about one hundred thirty-five people, including the Indians on the reserve.
The sleds were piled with dark furs.
"How much do they make from a winter's trapping, Mike?"
"I'd say six hundred dollars is a pretty fair season. But most of them owe a good part of that to Joe Henderson. He outfits the men up to a hundred and twenty dollars ... on credit."
"That's very nice of him."
"It's business," Mike explained. "He won't trade with them until he gets paid."
'Breeds, whites, and Indians ran forward beside their sleds, waving their arms and yelling. I turned to see what they were yelling at, and from the other direction came the women, running all together.
As the two groups neared each other, I began making out the faces of the women. There was old Ookoominou, who had spat in the corner at my first tea party. There was Ninalakus, running on light feet ahead of the others. I tried to guess to which man each was calling. A tingling thrill of anticipation was in me. These women had not seen their men for seven months.
The tension grew. The men and women were close enough now to recognize each other, and eyes passed quickly from face to face.
A few caps went sailing into the air, and a few hurrahs were heard from the men. The women stopped running; one or two walked forward slowly, and the rest stood still.
The men were among them now, circling in and out and through them. Here and there a man ran forward and caught a woman to him. But when that happened, the man was always white, and the woman always young.
For the most part a woman would walk to the man's side and he, many times without a word to her, would toss heavy pelts from the sled into her arms. She, bracing herself, received skin
after skin until her body bent under the weight of them. Then the man raised his whip and the dogs started, the woman keeping pace.
Bit by bit the women fell behind. Once again, men and women were in separate groups.
I couldn't understand, and I couldn't keep it in me any longer. "Mike, why do they do that?"
Mike didn't look at me. "Their dogs are tired from the long trek. They wanted to lighten the sleds for them."
"But the women!"
Mike said nothing. I followed his eyes and couldn't believe what I saw happening. An Indian had unhitched one of his dogs and was harnessing his wife to the team.
"Mike!"
"His dog's gone lame," Mike said.
I couldn't answer him. I watched, horrified, as the woman strained with the beasts, and the sled moved slowly after the others.
"Indian women are toughened to it, Kathy. That's all they've known for a thousand years. Why, it's only recently the braves have even turned professional trappers. Used to be the men only hunted to eat. There was no such thing as profit. And the occasional hunting they did was their only contribution. The women have always done the work, the lifting, the hauling, the skinning, the cooking and home building."
"But it's terrible. What kind of a life is that?"
"It's changing," Mike said. "Very slowly, of course, but it is changing. When the Hudson's Bay Company first came into this territory, it was the squaws they had to hire to bring the furs those seven hundred miles into Edmonton. They often carried a hundred and fifty pounds of goods on their backs, over fourteen-mile portages without a rest. Now, of course, the men have taken over, and there's come to be plenty of 'breeds and whites too. But at least it shows there is hope, that things are gradually changing for the women."
They'd have to change a lot more, I decided, and I was busy
with plans and revolutions all the way home. I didn't do any talking because I was thinking hard. Uncle Martin was always discussing the exploitation of labor, and he said organization was the only way to fight it. To Uncle Martin organization meant strikes. I considered the idea of getting the Indian women to go on strike against the men. But I decided they weren't advanced enough. They were savages, and they wouldn't understand.
I would have to devise something else. If I was going to live among these women, I was going to do something for them. I didn't know what yet, but. . .
Mike broke in on my thoughts. "Did you have a nice walk, Kathy?"
I looked at him surprised. Is that what we had done today, taken a walk? A walk here didn't mean around the block on a cement sidewalk, as it did in Boston. It meant wolf tracks, bear breathings, rivers throwing ice at you, and Indians, and .. .
"Yes," I said. "It was a very nice walk."
Eight
Mike had said of the mosquitoes, "They are the first to come and the last to go." But I hadn't realized what mosquitoes could be. I hadn't realized that every act of ours would be governed by them. When winter ended, I looked forward to getting out of my heavy mackinaw pants and into skirts once more. But I was never to wear skirts in this country; for spring and summer, and all during the mosquito months, I wore overalls as protection against those vicious swarms of insects. Mike tacked a fine cheesecloth over every window. The mesh of ordinary screening was not small enough for those tiny, whining pests. The dogs were made miserable. We had to keep smudge pots going, and all day long they huddled about them. Even wild animals were sometimes driven mad by the swarming, biting hordes. The nights were cold, and it was then we had our only relief from mosquitoes.
Mike had given me gloves to wear when I worked in the garden. I decided privately not to be bothered with them, but ten minutes out of doors, and my hands were red and swollen twice their size. So now I never went out without them. Another necessary piece of mosquito-fighting equipment was my hat, a big hat with a wide brim from which hung a cheesecloth veil that was carefully tucked into the neck of my waist.
As I bent over my field peas I was conscious of the thin whine of a thousand small wings. The sound was so constant and so monotonous that usually I didn't hear it, but now for some reason I did. The mosquitoes lay in dark shifting clouds over everything, and I was proud of having outwitted them with so many clothes.
There was something in my red clover patch I decided not to pull up because there was just a chance it might be red clover. I'd have to ask Mike when he came. He should be here pretty soon because he was taking me to the Indian Reserve. I straightened up. This gardening was hard on the back.
"Kathy!"
I ran around to the other side of the house and watched Mike come to me over the tall grass.
"Are you ready, Kathy?" he called. I was, and fell into stride beside him.
"I know it's longer by the river," I said, "but it's prettier."
Mike smiled, and we turned toward the river.
"How long do you think it will take me to speak their language well, Mike?"
"Not long. You're picking it up fast."
"The grunting I can do already," I said, "and the solemn looks."
Mike laughed. "Let's hear the grunting."
But instead I showed him a wild canary. It was pale yellow w
ith black on its wings, not at all like Mother's canary. Mike had
pointed one out to me a few days ago, and I wanted to show him I remembered.
Mike stopped me suddenly with his hand.
"What is it?"
"Nothing. You look pretty against a Manitoba maple. It sort of goes with that red hair of yours."
"Auburn," I corrected.
I was very happy, and I was doing good too—doing the kind of work missionaries and people like that did.
"That cheesecloth is going to make a big difference in the lives of those Beaver Indians, isn't it?"
"It should," Mike said.
It struck me this wasn't a very enthusiastic reply. But I forgave him because last week he had spent two hours talking to the Indians in their own language, telling them that the mosquitoes could not get through the cheesecloth I had brought them. He had explained patiently that it would be sanitary and comfortable, and they would have less sickness if they fastened this thin stuff over their windows and across the entrance of their tepees.
"What messages of civilization are you going to bring them today?"
Mike was teasing me, but I answered very seriously, "I'm going to teach them to wash."
"Wash what?"
"Everything. Themselves, their children, and their houses."
Mike laughed from there all the way to the river, when he got interested in telling me how we could make a million dollars. He pointed to the low island formed of sand, gravel, and silt that collected behind log jams and in other sheltered places. He stooped and picked up a handful of the sand.
"There's gold here," he said, waving it at me.
I poked at it with interest and turned over a few bright-flecked pieces that might have been gold. "Why don't we mine it?"
Mike threw the handful away.
"Too fine, no profit for hand panners. Some day, though,
somebody will invent a machine for mining this stuff and make himself a million dollars."
We walked on silently, thinking about gold. After a while Mike said, "It would ruin the country, though. All those prospectors coming in." And then, without change of inflection, "Watch that elk, Kathy."
I looked out across the river. It was narrow at this point, not a quarter of a mile across. In the middle, heading for the shore, was a giant elk breasting the water majestically. His antler stalk rose from his head like a young forest.
"Look, he's treading water. Something must have frightened him."
"Maybe he saw us or smelled us."
"No," Mike said, "the wind's the wrong way, and elk can't see at this distance. But he's scented something he doesn't like. He's turning back."
And sure enough, the animal turned and headed back for the opposite shore.
"There's the fellow that scared him. Look, Kathy, over there on the other side of the shoal."
I shaded my eyes and peered across. A large brown bear was making hooking motions with his paws in the water.
"Is he fishing?"
"Sure. See him? He's throwing the fish up on the bank."
Mike was right. Every few seconds the bear would scoop up a squirming fish and toss it on the shore.
"That's what the elk scented, all right."
"But Mike—" I watched as the beautiful creature swam toward the bear.
"They'll do that," Mike said, "every time. I've seen it happen with deer and with wolf too. When they're startled midstream, they'll swim back to the side they started from, no matter how close they are to the other bank. Even if the danger comes from that original side, back they go."
The elk veered again and swam on a slant. He landed well upstream of the bear and plunged off into the woods. The bear
never looked up; he was busy devouring his catch. We watched as he poured the wriggling, flipping things down his throat.
"They're whitefish," Mike said.
I gave him a quick glance. He couldn't possibly see what kind they were, clear across the water.
"You see," Mike explained, "they were coming in the shoal water to spawn. That's the only reason the bear was able to catch one after another like that. And it's the season for whitefish."
I reached up and kissed him through the cheesecloth. "You're wonderful!"
"It's my business," Mike said seriously.
"To be wonderful?"
"To know these things. It's a business just as banking or farming is a business."
"But you know it well," I said.
"Sure I know it well," he agreed.
While we had been kissing, the bear had gone away. We walked on beside the river. We were close to the Indian village when Mike pointed. "Another fisherman."
There was an Indian boy in the bottom of a canoe. He leaned over, his head close to the water, and peered down intently. In his hand was a dart, poised and ready.
"They spear the fish," Mike said. "Look, Kathy, he's got a partner." Up above circled an osprey. Suddenly his wings folded back, and he dived, or rather dropped, into the water. He came up gulping and swallowing the last of a still-thrashing tail. Mike called something to the boy, who grinned and held up a fish in either hand.
"What's he fishing for?"
"Anything he can get—pickerel, trout, giant pike. We'll go fishing with the Indians some night. They burn torches at the end of the boat to lure the fish."
The boy in the canoe shouted a shrill word to us. It sounded like "Muskinongi." Mike jumped to the edge of the water and stared down. I ran over too, just in time to see a dark sleek head dive beneath the surface.
Mike laughed. "Muskrat." Although we stared for several seconds, it did not reappear.
We left the river. Some Indian children were racing each other in the woods. They played silently. Heads looked out curiously from houses and tepees. The women and the children stopped work to watch us. Inside, the braves reached for their eagle headdresses and then stalked out to greet us. As we walked toward the house of Mustagan, the chief, the group around us swelled. Boys left their arrow-making, young men put down the paddles they were fashioning, girls left their spinning and their beadwork. Mustagan came forward from his door to greet us. He was a tall, strong-looking man. And behind him moved Oo-me-me, his wife. She was soft and pretty, and her name meant "Little Pigeon." Mustagan spoke words to Mike and raised his hand in ceremonial greeting. He led the way to his house, a cabin very much like ours.
Oo-me-me spread two bright blankets on the ground outside. Mike and Mustagan sat upon them, and the other men squatted in a circle around them. Oo-me-me brought the pipe to her husband. It must be passed around and smoked. It was beautifully carved, with a long eagle-plumed stem and a smooth bowl. But I didn't like the strong, acrid stink of it. I tried not to think of the mouths it had entered and the teeth it had lain between. Mike got a second puff at it, and as there were thirty or forty men, I was glad he was accorded this privilege.
Still, there was dignity in these men, hunters of the tribe, warriors. The circle was impressive, dark bodies rising naked out of velveteen cut from Joe Henderson's bolts. But over the store-bought goods were laid trappings of beadwork; images and colors flared against copper flanks.
On the nearest copper flank a mosquito settled, gorged its fill, and flew away. Mike said the Indians and the mosquitoes had lived here so long that they were used to each other. The 'breeds suffered like the whites, but the full bloods seemed more or less immune. But they weren't immune to the diseases that go with the fly and the mosquito, and I looked at the windows of Mus-
tagan's house. No cheesecloth of mine was hanging there, and the only curtain was made of the beating wings of insects.
"Oo-me-me," I said sternly.
She looked at me with smiling eyes. I beckoned her away from the council of men and into the house. I pointed at the bare windows. "The netting, the cheesecloth Sergeant Mike put up, where is it?"
She smiled again and spoke her Mission School English slowly. "Him muc
h fine, much pretty."
"Yes," I said, "but where is it?"
She looked at me a moment as though trying to understand what it was I wanted. "Me bring, yes?"
"Yes." I was glad that at least she still had it. Mike would have to hang it again, and I would have to explain again. "These things take time," I said to myself—"and patience," I said to myself, only harder.
A whimpering sound came from the room Oo-me-me had entered. I walked to the doorway and looked in. A baby lay in a nest of clothes that had been heaped on the floor for it. It waved its chubby legs, driving a flock of mosquitoes and flies into the air. On one leg was an open cut, angry and red. When the leg stopped twitching, the insects settled down on it again, biting into the flesh.
Oo-me-me had found what she was looking for. She returned to me with an armful of what the French call parfleche. It's a kind of dried hide, and half a dozen skirts, mostly velvet and velveteen, were wrapped in it. She undid the package with care, and I saw that each dress was edged with a thin strip of cheesecloth.
She was so pleased and proud of her dresses that I didn't say anything. Then I looked at her baby, turning and twisting under its covering of biting bull flies and mosquitoes.
"Oo-me-me," I said, "you have done wrong."
She understood that word. She must have known it at the Mission, for a hurt, puzzled look came into her eyes.
"It is not yours, that netting. It belonged to the windows."
She looked sullenly, almost defiantly, at the windows. "For what they want pretty dresses?"
At that point Mike came in. I showed him the dresses and started telling him the whole thing very fast, so that Oo-me-me wouldn't follow it. I don't think Mike could have followed it either if the dresses trimmed in cheesecloth hadn't been there as evidence. I could see from his expression that the whole thing struck him funny, and I think he would have laughed if my voice hadn't gotten a little shaky at the end. Instead, he called in Mus-tagan and told us about Father Lacombe and the garbage can.
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