Part 8

"They are here," said St. Jean. "Marya's son will take my girl. My son take Marya's girl. Marya teach the girls all woman's work, lak our people long tam ago. They are good workers."

Ralph remembered the two scared young faces he had seen looking from the tepee. "Suppose the boys are not pleased with the girls you have chosen for them?" he asked.

St. Jean looked at him surprised as by a foolish question. "There are no more girls," he said.

"How long have you been here?" Ralph asked.

"Two summers."

"How about you? Wouldn't you like to see the world again?"

Jean Bateese shook his head. "I am old," he said. "I have seen everything. I have travelled as far as the Landing. I have seen too much white man." Here, feeling that he had been impolite, he hastened to add deprecatingly: "White man good for white man. White man moch bad for red man. Nahnya say so. She is not lak other women. She is more wise than a man."

Ralph had the feeling that he was listening to wisdom from its source.

Jean Bateese waved his hand over the lovely scene before them, and his old eyes grew soft. "This our good hunting-ground," he said. "My boys good hunters. Him get good wife. Him have many good, fat babies. Him live same lak red man live long tam ago. Him forget white man. It is best."

As Ralph listened, the white man's world of artifice and oppression, the world of teeming, disease-ridden cities, the world of place-seeking and money-grubbing seemed like a nightmare to him. He felt as if he were being shown a glimpse of the essential truths of our being. As St. Jean had said in his own way, Nature was best.

Charley's wife, the blooming young Ahahweh, served him his dinner in an agony of bashfulness. The meal consisted of a stew of goat's flesh and rice. Ralph found it good.

"Rice?" he said questioningly.

"Wild rice," said Jean Bateese. "Him grow around the lake more than we can eat. We eat nothing from the white man's store only tea. The tea is near gone. I will miss it," he said with a sigh. "But our fat'ers not drink tea," he added stoutly.

Before Ralph was through eating, the two boys came into camp bearing his patient on the litter. Examining her, he found that she did not appear to have taken any hurt from her journey. Charley, St. Jean Bateese explained, had gone back through the cave to fetch the rest of their belongings from the camp in the woods.

An hour passed, and there was still no sign of Nahnya's return. Ralph became more and more uneasy. St. Jean assured him that it was Nahnya's custom frequently to paddle away by herself, and that they never sought to question her, nor to follow. Meanwhile the old man relaxed none of his efforts to entertain Ralph. He put his pupils through their paces. There was a foot-race in the grass, which Ching won to everybody's surprise, and the chagrined Cæsar was forced to yield up a brass clock-wheel that he wore around his neck. A race between the two canoes across the lake and back followed. This time Cæsar redeemed himself. The lithe young creatures were wholly beautiful in action. Afterward they were sent into the woods with their bows and arrows. By and by Cæsar returned with a brace of rabbits, and Ching brought in a fat porcupine. Ching was held to have won.

"Rabbit him no good meat," St. Jean said. "Man eat rabbit till him can't swallow no more and stay poor."

St. Jean was like a fountain of humble philosophy. Like all philosophers, he frankly rejoiced in a good listener. Ralph for his part was strongly drawn to the gentle, garrulous old man. St. Jean was a real individual. He had lived a real life, and stored a real wisdom from it. This natural life, as Ralph saw it lived before him, and as St. Jean interpreted it to him, satisfied a deep desire in him. This was what he had always been looking for. Nevertheless as he listened his heaviness increased. He could not deny the sad conviction that it was not for him. He was like an old man envying youth. He was an interloper here. He began to understand why Nahnya had been so distressed by his coming. He waited for her return anxiously, but without much hope.

She returned in time for the evening meal. He experienced an immense relief to see her safe. Her face was now composed and inscrutable. She made no overtures toward Ralph. Ralph's meal was served in state apart; baked porcupine and rice cakes. He would have much preferred to join the others, but this was their politeness. None would start eating until he had begun.

Afterward they all gathered in a circle about the campfire. Even old Marya was carried out of the tepee to take a place. Nahnya sat between her mother and Jean Bateese and kept her eyes in cover. Ralph sat on the other side of St. Jean Bateese. From across the fire the several pairs of beady black eyes stared at the white man with a savage, unwinking fixity.

St. Jean Bateese told a story. The words were lost on Ralph, but the quaint and speaking gestures were illuminative. Afterward, in his politeness, St. Jean insisted on repeating the whole tale in English.

"It is said once ver' long tam ago," he began, "when it was winter, when it was snow for the first tam, when the snow still lie on the ground, three men go out hunting early in the morning. Come to a place on the side of a hill where there is moch thick, low scrub. And a bear is gone in there. Them see his tracks, wah! One man go in after him and start bear running. Man call out: 'Him gone to the place where cold comes from!'--what you say north.

"Other man him already gone round to place where cold comes from. Him call: 'Bear gone back fast where comes the noon shadow!'--what you say south. Other man him already gone by side where noon shadow comes from. Him call: 'Bear going quick to the place where the sun fall down!' him call.

"So this way and that way long tam they keep the bear running from one to other. Bam-by the story says one man that come behind, him look down and see the world far, far down, wah! wah! and it was green! It is the truth, that bear him bring them right up into the sky, all tam in that place of thick scrub they think they chase him. And now it was spring!

"The man that come behind him, call to other man next before him: 'Oh, Joining-of-Rivers, we must turn back. Truly into the sky he lead us!' he say to Joining-of-Rivers. Him say not'ing back again.

"Joining-of-Rivers him run between the front man and the back man, and him have his little dog call 'Hold-Tight' run along behind him.

"Bam-by in the time of leaves falling they catch him bear. They kill him. After they kill him they cut many boughs of poplar and much sumach. They throw the bear on the boughs, and skin him and cut up meat. Always when the summer goes the poplars and the sumach redden in the leaf. Why is that? Because they put the bear on top the boughs, and all the leaves are stained with blood. That is why the poplar and the sumach turn red after summer.

"After those three men skin that bear and cut up meat, they throw what is left all around. To place where light first comes in the morning they throw the head. In the winter when the light is near coming there are stars there. They say it is the bear's head. His backbone they throw to the east also. In the winter ver' often you see stars there close together. It is that backbone!"

St. Jean paused, and cast a look around the circle to gather all eyes for the climax of his tale. Though they could not understand these words, they knew what was coming and hung upon the event attentively. Suddenly the old man pointed dramatically to the east. "See!" he cried. "They are coming now, the stars of that hunt! There are four stars in front. They say that is the bear! And the three that come behind is the three men that chase him. Now look hard with your young eyes. Between the middle star and the behind star you see a tiny little star hanging there?"

All the boys and girls looked hard at Ralph. "I see it," he said, perceiving that it was expected of him.

"That is little Hold-Tight the pet of Joining-of-Rivers!" said St. Jean Bateese triumphantly. "That is the end of the story."

Exclamations of high satisfaction were heard around the fire. Clearly these tales never palled. To work and to hunt all day, and to tell poetic tales around the fire! what a complete life! Ralph thought. He glanced at Nahnya, seeking to let her know that he was not alien to her life. Her expression dismayed him. Never had he seen such sadness in a woman's face.

Cæsar spoke up from his side of the fire. "Him say him tell story now," said St. Jean Bateese. As the boy went on with fire in his eye, and shrewd gesticulation imitated from his master, St. Jean translated sotto-voce, for Ralph.

"Little spider happened to be travelling along alone in a certain place, they say. He go alone through the forest eating. Him come to a river, and stand on the edge. Him want to go across ver' bad, but there is no way. They say Spider say: 'Here I stand all tam thinking, Oh! how I want sit on the other side!' Then something big come swimming up against the current. But only his long horns are showing. Spider say again: 'Here I sit all tam thinking, Oh! how I want sit on the other side!'

"Then the beast with long horns, him stop there and say to him: 'Ho! friend! I will take you across this water, but you mus' do something for me.'

"Spider say: 'Come, my young brother, I all tam do what you tell me.'

"So he say to him: 'I all tam swim in the water with my head not out. So you mus' sit and watch for me. Then spider say 'Yes! So Big-horn say, when one small cloud comes tell me. Then I will double up and go back to deep water.'

"Then Spider say: 'Wah! my young brother, what will I do when you double up and go back to deep water?"

"Big-horn say: 'When you tell me and I double up and swim away, you will fall beside the shore. When you say to me your grandfather is coming, that means the thunders roar.'

"So Spider was going along in the water sitting on the horn. When he was going along in the water near the other shore black clouds came. So Spider say: 'Wah! my young brother, your grandfather is coming!'

"_Wah! Wah! Towasasuak!_ All around the water is jump and roar and go white! And where Spider goes he not remember at all. Long tam he not remember nothing. By and by when him get his sense back, he is lying half on the land and half in the water. Him look and all the water is muddy, and him not see this thing with long horns any more, and he hear thunders roaring.

"After that they say Spider travel like anybody else. Ahmek remembers only this far."

The group around the fire broke up without Ralph's having had a chance to get into communication with Nahnya. She baffled every attempt he made. When he saw her leading her mother into the tepee, his heart went down like a stone, thinking he would not see her again until morning.

"Nahnya!" he cried. "Aren't you going to speak to me? You promised!"

She turned with her inscrutable face. "I am coming back," she said. "Wait for me." She paused for an instant, and added: "St. Jean, you stay up, too. We three will talk."

Ralph angrily bit his lip. So it appeared she was still bent on keeping him at arm's length. He wanted no third at their talk.

IX

NAHNYA'S STORY

St. Jean Bateese, Nahnya, and Ralph sat by the fire. The flames threw strong, changeable lights up into the three unlike faces; the first ashy brown, the second ruddy brown, and the third ruddy white. The fire held each pair of eyes steadily; it was too disconcerting to look at each other. Nahnya, in the middle, sat on her heels, with her head a little lowered, and her hands clasped loosely in her lap. Ralph was reminded with a little pain at his heart of a picture of Mary Magdalen that he had seen. Throughout the telling of her long story she scarcely ever changed her position.

There was a long silence before anybody spoke. When it became oppressive, St. Jean started to tell the story of the making of the world, but Nahnya silenced him.

"St. Jean," she said, "I have been thinking much what to do. Now I know. Often the doctor was angry against me because I did not tell him all about us. Now I will tell him. I think he is a good man. I think he is not so greedy for gold as other white men. I think when I tell him all he will go away and forget what he has seen."

It sounded like a death warrant to Ralph. "Nahnya----!" he began.

"Wait till I have told you," she said.

She was silent for a space, looking down at her hands, and searching it would seem for the right words to begin. She told her story in a low-pitched, toneless voice that, concealing all, suggested all. When in certain parts of the story her voice threatened to shake, she paused until she could control it. Nahnya had no fine English phrases; therein lay the power of her tale; its bare crudeness went deeper than pathos.

"When I was a little girl," she began, "I go to the mission school at Caribou Lake. The nuns' school. I am there four winters. They teach me to speak English and French; to read and write and number; to sew and cook and keep house like white people. I am the smartest girl in the school, they say. I like to learn in books; the other children hate books. When visitors come the nuns send me to say my lessons in the parlour. I not like the other girls. They stupid and foolish, I think. They not like me either. I different from them.

"At Caribou Lake are plenty white people. I like them. I like how white people live with nice things and nice ways. I like to sit in a chair to my meals, and have a white cloth on the table, and china dishes. All the time I think of the white people and their own country outside. I am crazy to go there and see all that is to be seen.

"There was a boy at that school two years more older than me. He is half-white like me. He does not like books, but I look at him and I know he feels the same like me inside. I would like to be friends with him. But the nuns do not let the boys and the girls speak together. But I look at him and he look at me, and at night when all are asleep I go out of the dormitory as soft as a lynx and he is wait for me in the vegetable garden. We talk together. He is like my brother. He tell me he is going to run away from that school and go outside. I feel bad. I want to go, too.

"When I come back in the house, a nun wake up and catch me. They make awful trouble. They say I bad girl. They lock me up and give me only bread and water. I am mad because they call me bad and look sour at me. Because I think before that they did love me. I know I am not bad, but I will not say anything. They say I am hardened. I am not hard; I am soft. All the time when I am alone I cry. But I will not let them see me cry.

"Long time I am locked up. It is near spring when I am let out. The boy is gone from the school. I am changed. I hate that school now. I want to run away. I act very good now, so I get a chance to run away. The nuns say I am reformed, and they smile again. They not know what is inside me. By and by they begin to let me go out by myself; because I am one of the biggest girls they send me to the store for tea and sugar.

"There is a white man in the French outfit store and he is kind to me. He give me things for myself out of the store, and I think he is a good man. I tell him I want to go outside so bad, and he say he will take me when he goes in the summer. I am so glad I near crazy. I not think any bad, because he is an old man with gray hair, and he say he will take me to see his daughters that he got outside. Me, I am not yet sixteen years old.

"So when the ice go out of the lake and they say the first York boat will leave Grier's Point soon as it is light next morning, he tell me, and in the night I get out of my bed. There is a nun sleeping beside the door, but I crawl under all the beds like a weasel, and I get out. All the way I run to Grier's Point. It is five miles. Soon it is day, and they push off the boat. I am so excite', I am _weh-ti-go_, crazy. But I am still.

"Soon I find I make a mistake. That white man is no good. He begin to act bad to me, and I am scare. There are many people going on the York boat, and with so many I am safe. I stay close by the English schoolmaster's wife, and mind her baby, and he cannot get me. He is mad. We are on the York boat five days. When we get to the Landing, when he is drinking in the hotel, I run away and hide in the woods.

"I walk to Prince George by myself. It is a hundred miles, they say. I beg a little food from the stopping-houses. I sleep in the deep woods, because I am afraid of men. When I come to the town I am wood with all I see. So much noise and moving; so many people I don't know what to do. I feel bad because there is not any place for me. And all the men look at me the same as that old white man on the York boat. Always I am hiding from them. I think there is something the matter with me. Maybe I am bad like the nuns say, and I not know it.

"I walk and walk in the streets. I am much hungry. By and by I get a job in a laundry. There are other red girls working there, and I think I am safe. They will tell me what to do. But they act bad to me because the boss talk and laugh to me, and only curse them. The boss is like the other men, and soon I have to go without my pay.

"I get another job soon because I am strong. I get many jobs. I cannot count them. Always some white man he will not let me be, and I have to go. It is near three years that I am working in Prince George. There is no use telling it, because it is always the same. By and by I am really hard inside like the nuns say. I do not care any more. I say to myself what is the use of a life like this. It makes a girl no friends. I am only a hunted beast. And I say I will not run any more, but take what comes. It cannot be worse. But always I have to run when the time comes. It is something inside me that makes me run.

"At last there was a man who was worse than any of the others. He followed me from place to place, and spoke bad against me, so that always I lost my job. He thought if he could starve me out I would go to him. I would sooner have jumped in the river. By and by I couldn't get any jobs in Prince George, and I go away.

"I am much sick of white men and white man's country. I think there is a curse on me that turns them into devils when they look at me. Often I see they do not act so bad to their own women as to me. So I think I go back to my mot'er's people. Maybe there is a place for me there. Maybe I am most red myself.

"So I make a long, long journey. I come to my mot'er's people at last. It is not good. There is nobody glad to see me. They are poor and sick and bad. They not like me because I am scold them because they are so dirty and lazy and foolish. They live beside a company post on the big river. When I was a little girl it was far off, and we never see a white man but the trader, but now the steamboat run on the river, and many white men are coming. There are surveyors measuring the land, and farmers ploughing it and growing wheat.

"It is moch bad for the red people. The young white men come around the tepees and flirt with the girls, and give whiskey to the boys. Our girls and our boys want to go with white men, and dress fine and not work at all. The boys learn to steal, and the girls are bad. The people live in houses with stoves to be warm, and they get the lung sickness. They try to be like white men, and they are nothing.

"My mot'er's husband is a bad man. He beat my mot'er and take a new wife. He hate me moch because he cannot look in my face. He speak bad of me to all the people. He is a chief man among those people, and all believe him and hate me.

"So they do not want me there. I feel bad. I think I doubly cursed because I cannot stay in any place nowhere. Only St. Jean Bateese, he is my friend. He remember the good time when the red men were free hunters. He feel bad like me to see the people dirty and lazy and sick. He feel much bad to see his children growing up and only badness waiting for them. When all are sleeping in the tepees we talk much together.

"By and by we make a plan. We say we take his children and my mot'er and my mot'er's children, and we travel far from the white men, and we teach the children how to live like our fathers lived without the white man and the white man's goods. My mot'er's husband, he not care if we go. He got a young wife now.

"All winter we are making ready, and when the ice go out in the spring we start up the river in three canoes. We travel many days on the big river. The weather is fine, and the children are happy to be travelling.

"One day Charley and I are hunting a bear on shore. He is wounded, and we follow him a long, long way up a mountain. He goes into a cave. We are much afraid to go after him, but we have followed far and there is no fresh meat, so we go in. We follow him under the mountain, and that is how we find this place. I am much glad when I see it. It is what we want. No white man will ever find us here, I say. Here is everything we need to live. We will live here and die here, and forget the white man. And me, I think then, I have found happiness."

Nahnya came to a conclusion, and there was a silence by the fire.

"So that is why you wanted to keep me out?" said Ralph, very low.

"You are a white man," murmured Nahnya. "St. Jean and I have sworn to keep the children from the white men."

Ralph was moved to the bottom of his soul. "Nahnya," he said in a low, shaken voice, "in all my life before I never made an oath. Hear me now. I swear to you by all I hold dear, by my honour, by my hope of heaven, that I will never do anything to bring unhappiness into this valley!"

"You mean good," she said. "I do not doubt you. But who can tell what will follow? I have a feeling of evil to come. Once I heard a wise man say: 'The white men are like a prairie fire and the red men are the grass. Who shall stop the fire from consuming the grass?'"

At a certain point in the telling of this tale Ralph's intuition had warned him that something was left out; this feeling pursued him to the end. "Nahnya," he said presently, "you told me you had been in Winnipeg."

Her eyes darted a startled, pained glance at him, and her head fell a little lower.

"Never mind if it's too painful," Ralph said quickly.

"Yes," she said, in the same dead, quiet voice, "I will tell you that, too. That part I have never told. Not to St. Jean Bateese."

After a while she went on: "When I couldn't get a job in Prince George any more it is not true that I come back to my mot'er's people right away. First I go see my father. When things get so bad I think maybe my father help me. My mother have tell me his name. I ask one and another and by and by I find out he live in Winnipeg. I have save a little money, and I go to Winnipeg on the railway. It is a big city.

"I have not been there at all before I learn my father is now a rich, great man, and the King has put a Sir before his name. Then I am scare to see him. I do nothing to see him. I get a job. I get many jobs. I can take care of myself better in such a big city.