Mrs. Mike: The Story of Katherine Mary Flanningan

26

ONE: day I saw a strange Indian sitting on my porch. He stood up when he saw me. “Sergeant Mike?”

”He’s not here.”

“Big trouble. Must find.”

“What is the trouble?" I asked.

“Must find Sergeant Mike quick.”

I saw there was nothing more to be got out of this fellow, so I gave in. “He’s at the Reserve.

I’ll take you.”

“Me find.” He walked down the steps.

“I’m going with you,” I said firmly. And then as we walked along, “Where are you from? He pointed in a northerly direction.

“What tribe?”

“ Blackfeet.”

“Sergeant Mike has no authority over the people of the Blackfeet . You must have a sergeant of your own.”

The man grunted. I thought awhile. We had heard that there was smallpox among some of the tribes. In fact, today Alike was vaccinating our whole Reserve. “ Have you sickness?" I asked. “No sickness,” the Indian replied.

He’s probably lying, I thought. They’ve sent him for help, and he’s afraid to tell me. Well, if it was sickness, Mike wasn’t going. I wouldn’t let him.

“Sergeant Mike’s not a doctor,’ I said. The Indian said nothing.

We walked in an unfriendly silence to the Reserve. I noticed, as we approached, that the village was awfully quiet. There were no children playing in front of the tepees. There were no old men squatting in the doorways smoking. No women’s voices calling, laughing. No sound of loom or kettle, nothing. It was a dead village.

I looked into the tepees, throwing back the heavy entrance skins. Nothing, no one. But things looked natural, as though they had been left but a moment, before. The tires Mere not out, needlework was left upon the floor, dogs bristled and growled at us. I opened the doors of the cabins, but again everything was deserted.

The Indian peered over my shoulder. He fingered the charm pouch around his neck, and his eyes rolled nervously. He must have thought the entire tribe had been spirited away by Gitche Alanito. I simply didn’t know what to think.

Suddenly I heard a welcome sound. A baby was crying. The noise that came from somewhere in front of us was not a spirit wait, but the wail of a very real human baby, bawling at the top of its lungs. I turned toward the sound, into the woods; and there, behind the last tepee, was Mike. Beside him sat the crying baby, and in front of them was the mother.

Between Mike and the young mother was a large jagged boulder. Mike was talking to the woman, and as he talked he slowly circled the boulder toward her, and she just as slowly circled away from him. All the while Mike kept up a steady, one-sided conversation. The woman stared at him with large black eyes, not at his face, but at his hands. I looked too and saw that in one hand he held a small glass tube and a piece of cotton. In the other he clutched a shining scalpel which he pointed straight at the young woman. I didn’t blame her for backing away, and I didn’t blame her for not listening to Mike’s soft words.

“It won’t hurt,”he was saying, “It won’t hurt you at all. It’s good medicine.”

I called to him.

“Kathy,” he said, coming toward me, “what are you doing here?" And then excitedly, “Darling, I’m so glad you’ve come.”

“Why?” I asked suspiciously.

“Why, now I can vaccinate you, and they’ll see there’s nothing to it.”

“Well, I’d like to oblige you, Mike, but you see I’ve already been vaccinated.”

“Oh.”And then his face brightened. “How long ago?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly. Why?”

“If it’s more than seven years, you need a new vaccination,” and he started uncorking that little glass vial.

“Oh, no,” 1 said hurriedly, “it wasn’t that long ago. It was just recently. Just before I came out to Uncle John’s.”

“I thought you didn’t remember when it was.”

“Well,” I said, “I remember now.”

Mike put the cork back grudgingly, then his eye lighted on the Blackfoot. He smiled at him ingratiatingly.

“Now, there’s nothing to this, nothing at all.”

“Mike,” I said, “you can’t. He’s not your Indian. 1 mean, he’s a Blackfoot.”

The word caught Mike’s attention and the Indian was saved.

The conversation that took place between them I couldn’t follow. It was in a dialect I didn’t understand. And then I caught a word that meant something to me. The word was “Cardinal,” and what it meant was trouble.

Mike put an arm around me. “Well, Kathy, I’ll be leaving as soon as we can get me packed up.”

“But why?” I said, hanging onto him. “Is It on account of that Cardinal?”

“Yes.” Mike started packing up the vials.

“What’s he done now?”

“Same thing.”

We started back through the still-deserted village, the Indian following us.

“Trap-robbing?” I asked.

“Yes. A refinement of it. He substitutes poor fur for good.”

“Are you going to arrest him?”

”Yes. This time I’ve got all the evidence I need against him.”

But why can’t Constable Cameron arrest him?”

“He’s got to stay here and vaccinate these people.” There was grim satisfaction in Mike’s voice. “If he can.”

“I don’t see why you don’t finish vaccinating and let Cameron bring him in.”

“Because,” said Mike, “if I were betting on who’d outsmart who, I’d bet on Cardinal.”

I agreed with Mike, although I didn’t say so.

When we got to the house, Oh-Bc-Joyfui fed the Blackfoot while I got Mike’s supplies together. Tins of beef and lea and another pair of mittens, an extra buffalo robe, for he was going into the Far North.

I walked out front, and watched Mike strap the things to his horse.

“When will you be back, Mike?”

Mike cursed under his breath at a slip knot that for some reason didn’t slip. “Two months, Kathy, for sure.”

I reached out a hand and steadied myself against the porch rail. “I’ll put in a few more tins,” I said and went into the house.

Oh-Be-Joyful was washing dishes in the kitchen, so I closed the door of the storage room behind me. I looked up at the rows of cans, but the bright labels blurred and swam in muddy colors before my eyes. I leaned my head against the edge of the shelf and cried silently.

“Kathy!” It was Mike calling. I rubbed my tears away and took a deep breath before I answered him.

“Here I am,” I called, “in the pantry.”

He opened the door. “What are you doing in here, kitten?”

“Getting more food. It would be awful if you ran short.”

“Darling

“Yes, Mike?”

He reached out his arms to me. When he was through kissing me, I still stayed there with my head against the red of his jacket.

“Kathy, if you don’t want me to go, I won’t.”

I reached up my arms and slid them around his neck. “No, I don’t trust Cameron to bring him in. You have to do it yourself, Mike.”

Mike held me very tight. “Kathy.”

“Of course,” I said. “You’re his superior. If he fails, the blame is on you.”

“Remember the other time, Kathy?” He was speaking very softly, his lips against my hair. “Remember I promised you you wouldn’t have the baby on the trail?”

I nodded.

“Well, I’m going to promise you something this time. I’ll be back. If I wasn’t sure that I would be, nothing could drag me away from you now, understand?”

“Oh, Mike.”

“In the meantime, Oh-Be-Joyful will be with you. And in case you or Mary Aroon is sick, there’s always Sarah, thank God. We’ve good friends here, Kathy. Don 1 be afraid to go to them.”

“Mike, it’s just you I’m worrying about. Be careful.”

“Listen, girl. Don’t come out. It’s no good standing and watching a man ride off.”

I was glad Mike said that because I hated the idea of seeing him swallowed up by the outdoors.

I closed my eyes and lifted my face.

His mouth was warm and rough and wonderful. Then he pushed me away from him, looked at me, and drew me back again by the shoulders. This time he gave me a big brother hug that meant, “Be good, minx, take care of yourself.

He smiled at me with those blue eyes and ruffled my hair with those big hands. Then the pantry door banged to, and I was alone.

27

MIKE kept his promise. He was back in six weeks, with Cardinal riding beside him, the same dirty yellow handkerchief knotted around his neck.

That first evening I fed Mike a big dinner. After such a trip I felt that, even our criminal deserved a real meal, so I sent Constable Cameron over to the jail with a supper for Cardinal.

Mike sat in the armchair with Mary Aroon on his lap. I curled up on a buffalo robe with ray head on his knee. Mary Aroon began to laugh, for Mike was making shadow pictures on the wall for her. He made a rabbit that wiggled its ears, and he made a billy goat that wiggled its long beard.

“Tell me how it was, Mike.”

“How what was?” And he made a little old woman with a pack on her back.

“About how you captured him,” I said.

“Oh, that. I just went up to his shack.”

“Did you have to do any lighting or shooting?”

“No; he saw me coining and beat it. But he didn’t go far. I heard him walking around the cabin that night. And in the morning I saw the tracks he’d made. There was still a thin layer of snow up there. Well, there was a night and two whole days that he stayed out with no food and no blanket. But the second night he called to me through the window.”

“What did he say?”

“He said if I didn’t go away he was going to shoot me and then burn down the house. I asked him, ‘What about the buttons?’ And he yelled in, ‘What about them?’

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘they won’t burn, and if there’s a button left, or a tooth, or any part of a bone, you’ll hang. Because every body in Grouard knows I came to bring you in.'

“He didn’t say anything, so I figured he was thinking that over. I fanned up the fire nice and bright and put on a kettle of tea. As I did it, I was thinking what a good target I made. When the water started boiling, I walked out on the porch and looked into the darkness where he d been talking. I couldn’t see a thing, but I talked as though he was right close by that first pine.

‘Come on in, Cardinal, and have some tea. We’ll talk it over.’ And he did. He stepped out from behind that pine.

“‘You’re right, Sergeant, about those damn buttons,’ he said.

“So we had tea and after a while dinner, and then sat around the rest of the evening. That’s all. In the morning we started home.”

Mike stood up and lifted Mary Aroon into the air. “Now you’re flying,”he said.

Just then the door burst open, and Cameron stumbled in.

“He’s dead!”

The shout brought Oh-Be-Joyful from the kitchen. We all stared at the man.

“ Murdered! There’s a hunting knife stuck clear through his throat.”

“Just a minute,” Mike said. “Who’s dead?”

“Cardinal. That’s what I’m telling you. I walked down therewith his dinner, and he’s sitting on the bench with his head thrown back against, the bars. I thought he was sleeping. But when I got close, I see he’s been stuck right through the throat. What a mess! And the knife still in him.”

Mike got into his jacket, “You said it was a hunting knife. Have you ever seen it before? Do you know whose it is?”

“It’s got Jonathan Forquel all over it, plain as though it was written.”

“What do you mean?”

“The handle’s all carved up. A whole hunting scene winding along. It’s Jonathan’s work, all right. You know he can’t keep from whittling. He cuts designs in everything he owns.”

Mike opened the door. “Come on, we’ll take a look at things.”

Oh-Be-Joyful continued to stare at nothing long after they had gone.

“Jonathan didn’t do it,” I said. “He wouldn’t kill a defenseless man.” But I knew that by tribal law Jonathan had the right. “Besides, he’s too clever to leave his knife there.” But at the same lime I thought: Isn’t that just like Jonathan to boast silently with a knife, to leave it as a taunt?

Oh-Be-Joyful said suddenly, “When they bring (he knife, it will be Jonathan’s.”

When Mike and Cameron returned, Jonathan walked between them. The three men entered wit hout a word. Mike took off his jacket and flung it over a chair.

“Well,” he said, “it’s got to be talked out.”

“You’ve got it,” Cameron said.

Mike reached into his pocket and brought out a carefully wrapped object. He held the paper by a loose edge, and the weight of the knife brought it tumbling out of the wrapping onto the table.

I stared at it. The blade was clean now, but a dark spot stained the head of the stag that ran around the handle.

“Oh-Be-Joyful,” Cameron said, “look at the knife.”

Mike said, “I think Jonathan will answer any questions about the knife himself.” And turning to the boy, he asked, “Is it yours?”

Jonathan did not hesitate. “Yes,” he said.

Mike said, after a pause, “Sometimes you make knives to sell, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“ Is this one of those?”

Jonathan regarded us with that crooked smile. “No,” he said. “It is mine.”

“Has it been constantly in your possession?”

“You think I kill Cardinal?”

“I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think you’d do it that way.”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Cameron asked.

“My hunch is all the other way.” Mike was watching Jonat han closely.

“In fact, if you tell me you didn’t do it, I’ll release you and look elsewhere.” Mike paused, but Jonathan said nothing. “Otherwise i’ll have to hold you on a murder charge.”

We all looked at Jonathan. Mike had given him every chance. Surely, if he was innocent, he would speak now. He didn’t.

I walked over to him, closer than I would if I thought for a moment he was a killer. “Jonathan Forquet, would you have us believe that you cut’ that man’s throat while he slept?”

“I did not say that.”

“No.’ I said, “but you didn’t say you didn’t, oil her.”

Jonathan was not smiling now. He looked coolly at us, one after the other. Then he spoke.

“When north wind forget he north wind and blow from south — when the mad sickness of the wolf come on me, so that I run in circles and bite my own flesh — then will I make account to Sergeant Mike.”

“That was a pretty speech,” Mike said, “and you’ll have all summer to sit and remember it. You’re under arrest.”

“No!” Oh-Be-Joyful sprang between them. “He did not do it,” she said to Mike.

Jonathan looked at her almost tenderly. “You good klooch. You do not want me spend summer in cage with mosquitoes, with bull fly.”

“Tell them you did not kill him.”

Jonathan looked at her thoughtfully. “Did I not?”

“No,” she said, but her eyes were not on his.

“Think,” he said. “My knife and my hate. Did I not?”

Oh-Be-Joyful stood with her head down, and her tears dropped on the floor.

28

THERE were a lot of things on my mind. Sarah kept telling me to relax. I tried to. I watched the northern lights dance outside. They flashed and quivered, forming arcs and ribbons of colors.

“The spirits are dancing there,” Sarah said as she set the kettle to heat.

Oh-Be-Joyful came to the door with the sweet oil Sarah had sent her for. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Sarah took the bottle from her and chased her out.

I was very sorry about Oh-Be-Joyful. I had tried to tell her how I felt, but she wouldn’t let me. It had lain between us these weeks. She did what I asked her and more than I asked her, but silently, with no words and no laughter. When she was not in the house, I knew she was standing before the cage. She would Stand for hours pressed against the bars, but they never seemed to talk toget her.

“Take deep breaths, Mrs. Mike. Relax.”

“Mike,” I said. “Mike!”

I felt him lake my hand in his. Love is pain,

I thought, all love, and I cried out against it.

I heard the sobs, I felt the tears. I thought they were my own. But in a little bit, when I was easier, I saw that Oh-Be-Joyful had her cheek against my hand, and that the tears were hers.

“Mike didn’t want to arrest him,” I said.

“Me, I am crazy. I thought everyone against him.”

“ You’re crazy now to say such talk. And Sarah lifted her to her feet. “Mrs. Mike must rest.”

But Oh-Be-Joyful still clung to my hand. “Oh, my sister,” she said to me in Cree, “oh, my morethan-sister, forgive me.”

I smiled at her. She seemed very far away. The northern lights made a robe for her. A curtain of Colors shone between us — shone between me and the world.

The bright pain, the dazzling, screaming pain of many colors entered me, was tearing me. I began to breathe the pungent odor of the woods, and I heard my good witch say, Make nice baby come fast.”

It did. For the next time the sky-curtains closed over me, throbbing with gold and purple pain, with agonizing violet and red the boy was born.

I lay with my eyes closed and let Sarahs hands work over me. They kneaded me into shape, they soothed and cleansed.

When I opened my eyes next, my son lay in the shelter of my arm. Mike was standing over us. He put a big finger down to the tiny bundle, and the baby grabbed hold. With the movement he grabbed hold of my heart too.

Sarah smiled broadly. “The northern lights danced for him at his birth,” she said.

Mike laughed. “It is a good sign, He’ll wear a red coat too, this hi lie one.

Suddenly there came a high, piteous wail, followed by moaning. I wasn’t out of my mind now, surely I wasn’t. I clutched Mike.

“No, Kathy,” he said, “it is nothing. Poor Mrs. Marlin is out there wanting to see your baby. Oh-Be-Joyful is stationed just outside the door. She won’t let her in.”

“She shall see him,” I said. Sarah, let her come in.”

Sarah shook her head, “You rest.”

“ Please, Sarah. I want to show him off.”

Sarah grunted an Indian grunt of disapproval and opened the door. Mrs. Marlin stood on the threshold, her voice uplifted on a keening note, her body rocking in sorrow. The opening of the door confused her. She broke off her wailing and peered uncertainly at us.

“Mrs. Mike say you come see baby.”

“Oh, can I see too?” Oh-Be-Joyful asked.

“No, too much.”

I smiled at Sarah, who stood like a watchdog over me.

“Let Iter, Sarah.”

At my word, Oh-Be-Joyful bounded into the room. She looked with wonder at the blanketful of baby tucked in my arms.

“Oh,” she said. “The little brave, the little warrior.”

“You can hold him,” I said.

She darted a quick look at me to see if I meant it and then, with her breath held, she lifted him.

29

I SIGHED a little. I felt sleepy and contented. I watched with half-closed eyes as Mrs. Marlin timidly approached Oh-Be-Joyful. Something about her caught my attention. She moved, slowly asone in a trance. Only her eyes were awake and alive. They were bright and large and swollen from crying. But it was the look in them, the avid, hungry way they fastened on my baby, that frightened me. I tried to tell Mike, but I wasn’t quick enough. The suddenness of the woman’s movement paralyzed me. With a darting gesture of the hand she took the baby from Oh-Be-Joyful.

Mrs. Marlin backed toward the door, the baby in her arms. But Sarah reached it first and blocked it with her body. Mrs. Marlin edged off to the far wall, keeping us all in front of her.

“What the hell!” Mike jumped up and strode toward the woman. In her fear she clutched the baby tighter. I half raised myself against the pillows. “Mike, don’t!”

My words stopped him. “Yes,” he said, “you’re right.”

Oh-Be-Joyful looked questioningly at me. I nodded to her, for I saw that Sarah could not leave the door and that the woman was afraid of Mike. I watched the girl approach. Mrs. Marlin watched her too. She crouched against the wall, ready to Spring, to rush them all.

Oh-Be-Joyful stopped within five feet of her. She smiled and held out her arms. Live me the baby.”

Mrs. Marlin began to cry and rock her body. “Mine,” she moaned. “Mine.’

But in another moment she was smiling and telling Oh-Be-Joyful that she was going to have a ba by.

“In July,” she said. “Isn’t this July?

No one answered her.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “it is time.” She turned dark eyes on Sarah. “Where is my baby?”

I remembered the black liquid she had carried away from Sarah’s shed last January.

“Where is my baby?" She was no longer asking it. It was a song to her now.

She cradled my son close in her arms. She crooned to him. “My baby dead. You are my baby. My baby went out from me when black medicine went in. My baby’s spirit go into you not yet born. You are my baby.”

Mike edged a little closer to her. Oh-Be-Joyful held out her arms again. The woman laughed at them and jiggled the baby up and down. The movement slowed to a rocking motion, and she began to moan again. Her tears spilled onto the baby’s white blanket. Her voice was a broken murmur.

“Dead, all dead, everything dead. Baby dead, father dead. Everything I touch dead. Dead, dead, dead.” She sang it to the tune of an old French nursery rhyme.

“I’m not klooch,” she said, turning on us, “not Indian. I got married in a church to American husband. American man. But he died of coughing sickness. Everyone die. I’m not klooch, not Indian for every dirty ‘breed put hands on. I fell him go away, leave alone. I’m widow of American. But when him drunk, come roaring into my house, throw me on bed, sometime on floor. Then he don’t come no more. Maybe go trap line. I got baby in me, his baby. I’m not klooch. What should I do? I go to Sandi, get black medicine for kill baby. But when I’m home I think little baby, pretty baby, want live. I think I want baby, soli little baby to hold. I put bottle away.

I think, when he come back I tell him I no klooch, him marry me in church maybe. Then pretty soon he come back. Sergeant Mike bring him, put him in cage. I go see him. I say, ‘I’m not klooch, not Indian.’ I tell him how his baby make me big. He sit down close to bars, he say, ‘You all right. Government she pay five bucks a year for kids born on Reserve. You stick by me, I make you rich woman!’ He throw back his head and laugh. Laugh ;it me, but I no klooch. My knife she lie in my belt. I take, I stick, like I stick my pig last summer in the throat. Red bubbles come out his mouth. The mouth she still laugh.

I go home and drink black medicine. I get much sick. My little baby gets dead. Dead, dead, dead.” She sang the words as n lullaby to my baby.

“Cardinal,” Mike said.

“Cardinal,” she repeated and spat.

Oh-Be-Joyful looked sit Mike with shining eyes.

Wait, he said. “She may have imagined it. Where did you get the knife?” he asked her.

“Knife?” She no longer remembered what she had told.

Mike said, “You’re not a klooch. He laughed at you. You stabbed him with the knife. Where did you get the knife? Think. Where did you get it?”

“My knife,” she said, “mine.”

Jonathan Forquet stacked wood for you this winter.”

“It’s not his.” She began to cry. “He gave it to me. He said I could have it.”

Yes, said Mike, “you can have it. If you give me the baby, you can have it.”

“To keep?” she asked.

“To keep.”

She handed him the baby.

30

IT WAS the time of the first fruits of the corn. The Indians were preparing a great feast, and I had undertaken to be on the food committee. During the last week every Indian for three villages around had come to me and asked me to write down his name on the list. After his mime would come the food that he pledged: half a deer, a whole deer, two beavers, or maybe seven rabbits. But, as all these animals had yet to be trapped and killed, it was really difficult to determine what our exact menu would be.

The children had been gathering firewood for days, and this was now neatly stacked under the great iron pots that hung from poles in the clearing.

The food began arriving. Black Feather was entered for one brown bear. He brought me two ducks and a string of fish. Strong Bow, who was down for half a moose, came in with a long story and a baby porcupine. But I didn’t care as long ;ts the food piled up. The women arrived before noon, and the caircasses were divided and apportioned among them for skinning.

That evening I laid out the lynx-paw robe lined with red velvet that Mike had given me when Ralph was horn. I didn’t have any relatives called Ralph, and neither did Mike. We just called him that because it was the prettiest name we could think of.

I also got out the suit of while caracul Chief Mustagan had given me when we left Hudson’s Hope, and called in Oh-Be-Joyful.

“Would you like to wear it tomorrow?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think

I go.”

“Of course you’re going,” I said. “ Everyone is going.”

“I thought I stay with the babies,” she said.

“Well, they’re going too. Besides, you don’t want to miss the games and the feasting and the dances. .It’s going to be fun.”

She didn’t say anything. I pretended not to notice.

“Try it on,” I urged.

She did, listlessly and indifferently. But when she saw herself in the mirror my mother had sent me, a little color came into her cheeks. She did look beautiful with the white fur framing her face and throat. With a sigh, Oh-Be-Joyful turned away from her reflection.

I wondered, as I’d wondered during the month Jonathan had been out, what was wrong between them. When he had been in jail she had been with him every hour she could spare, but since he had been released, she had not seen him. Once he had come to the house, bringing a wild pheasant, and she had stayed in her room. He had spoken with his eyes on her door, but it had not opened.

Oh-Be-Joyful slipped out of the caracul suit and folded it carefully on the bed.

“Take it into your room,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “It is so pretty.”

I turned back the bed and laid out Mike s slippers. “I suppose Jonathan is in the games, I said, fluffing -up a pillow.

“ I don’t know,” she said, and fluffed up the other one.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

She sat wearily on the bed. “In summer the deer stand in river many hours. The bear roll in mud until it coat its body. Why?”

“Why?” I asked, a little impatient at this Indian indirectness.

“So deer fly, bull fly, and mosquito do not make them mad. Why then you think Jonathan sit in cage through the hot days, his body bitten, his feet taking two steps, then back, then two steps? He whose feet go in all the paths of the forest?

“He’s stubborn, that’s all. Mike wanted an accounting of his actions, and rather than give it to him, he went to jail. It doesn’t sound reasonable,” I admitted, “but it sounds like Jonathan. ‘

Oh-Be-Joyful seemed to speak to herself: “I thought he kill Cardinal. Jonathan, he know what I think. And that is why he say nothing, why he went to sit in jail.’

“I don’t understand it yet.”

“He would not say, ‘ I don’t sneak up on man in cage, I don’t bring him to the bars with my talk, I don’t kill man with knife, who has no knife’ — these things he would not say. He wanted that I should know him. But I did not know. I know only Cardinal is his enemy. I know the knife in Cardinal’s throat is his, and most I know the never forgotten anger in Jonathan.”

I began to see into Jonathan’s mind, to follow the circuitous courses of his t ho light. His conception of love seemed strange and mystic. He wanted his woman to understand him. not with her intellect, not with her emotions, but directly, soul to soul. The things he had done, the things he would do, she must know as well as she knew his face. She must know he would kill Cardinal, but not murder him. Jonathan would not help her to this knowledge. Instead he let Mike put him in the cage, where he sat, proud and haughty, under the stinging swarms of insects. He remained motionless for hours at a time, staring into the cool distant green of the forest, but when Oh-Be-Joyful came, bringing fruit and milk, he said nothing to her. He waited for the day when she would speak, when she would say to him of her own accord, “ You did not kill Cardinal.

Much of this Oh-Be-Joyful understood now. And she was ashamed before this man ol stern pride whom she loved. Indirectly his days of stubborn suffering had accomplished what he had desired: Oh-Be-Joyful “knew him,” as she put it. But between them were still the days of torment and suspicion, and the insult of her long-unresolved hesitation.

I tried to comfort Oh-Be-Joyful. “He wanted you to know him all at once,” I said. “ But it takes years of living together to really know a person.

“If I loved him enough, I would have known then. How can I look at him? If he see me, he must think of those weeks, and 1 must think too.”

“You mean a great deal to him, Oh-Be-Joyful. It was for you he did it. It will be all right again.

She raised dark eyes to mine. “How can I know him when his spirit dance on the mountaintops?

I laughed at her, “He’s no spirit,’ I said. “He’s a willful, stubborn boy who follows his own path.

“But you like him?” Oh-Be-Joyful asked anxiously.

“Yes, I do.”

She smiled and gathered up the white furs.

31

I WOKE in the morning to the throbbing beats of a drum.

Oh-Be-Joyful and I hurried the children through breakfast, but even so the foot races had begun by the time we reached the village. There were a dozen young men competing. Oh-Be-Joyful looked quickly from one to the other, then her interest in the game was over.

But the excitement of the shouting crowd got into me, and I found myself yelling, “Kenipe, kenipe!” to a young man who didn’t kenipe fast enough, and came in fourth.

Somewhere a solemn chant started. It was taken up by the men, who formed themselves into a-long

line.

“What are they singing?” I asked Oh-Be-Joyful.

“It is the gambling song. They are going to play the wheel-and-arrow game.”

The men began divesting themselves of bows, bracelets, headdresses, belts, which they placed in piles in front of t hem.

“They are betting those things.”

I watched as a large wheel was rolled along the line of men, who attempted to toss an arrow through a spoke as it passed them. If they failed, the little pile of trinkets at their feet was taken away. If they succeeded, they received fur for fur and bead for bead what they had bet.

A drum broke up the gambling.

A little boy ran around holding his stomach and crying, “Meesook, meesook.”Everybody laughed. The word meant dinnertime. The women were busy turning spits of buffalo tongue and doer meat. I felt responsible for the food and was relieved to see that, no matter how many times they went back for more, there was more there. At last even the hungriest were filled up.

Dusk was setting in when the weird gambling chant arose again. Mike played for a while and lost a knife. This time it was a game played with two bones, one painted red and one black. You try to guess in which of your opponent’s hands the red one lies.

“Funny,” Mike said. “The colors are the same as roulette”; and after he’d lost the knife, “And I always had rotten luck in that, too.”

The pulsating beat of drums led us away from the games and up to the circle of dancers. All day Oh-Be-Joyful had followed me around. She bent her head over Ralph and moved silently through the festivities. Nothing touched her. She did not see the glances of the young men. Her feet did not quicken to ihe throb of the drums.

The first dance called for the maidens and the young men of the tribes. The girls gathered at one end, and ihe young men faced them across a circle of space. A girl ran up to us and caught OhBe-Joyful’s hand.

“ Mamanowatum,” she said.

Oh-Be-Joyful shook her head, but now a dozen young women were around her.

“Come, come,” they said, “the eagle moon is filling out,’ and they pulled her unwillingly into the dance.

She looked back at me. “Mrs. Mike!”

But I would not help her.

The line of girls danced forward to the line of boys. On toe and heel they moved, and Oh-BeJoyful moved with them. Then the line of girls swept back, and the young men surged forward, step, hop, step, in exaggerated rhythm.

A harmonica, playing “The Red River Jig,” cut in upon the austere pattern of drumbeats. The ‘breeds and whites had started a dance of their own. A little way back they cut pigeon wings and did the double shuffle, leaping and springing in the air. They drew a crowd of their own, that clapped hands and thighs in lime to the harmonica. A fiddler joined them.

I turned back to the Indians. The commotion had no effect on them. They pounded their feet in unbroken measures. Oh-Be-Joyful, dancing in her white furs, was transformed with joy and beauty. She did not laugh or smile, but she could not keep the excitement from her eyes. The young men and the young women rushed together and fell back. Jonathan was dancing with the men. Fiercely, exultingly, he leaped and crouched in the prescribed positions of the dance. A murmur ran through the watchers. I heard an old man tell another, “ Like a thistle he leaped among them.”

Suddenly the line broke. The women wove among the men. As Oh-Be-Joyful passed them, boy after boy called to her. But she moved as swiftly as the restricting patterns of the dance allowed her. She stopped in front of Jonathan and, lifting the scarf from her head, threw it around his shoulders. The other girls did the same, each catching a young man with her shawl. Everyone laughed and whooped and shouted.

Most of the couples broke up, a few walked away together. But Jonathan and Oh-Be-Joyful stood where they were when the drums had stopped.

I didn’t see him ask the question. I didn’t see her answer it —but when Jonathan walked across the village, she went with him. At the edge of the wood he stopped and caught some branches from her path. They swung back into place, and she was gone. She had followed her maker of canoes. He would build her a tepee of willow; they would lie on balsam and on furs. She would follow his steps through the paths of the forest.

Oh be joyful, Mamanowatum.

32

I SAT down to darn socks and wondered where the time went. Here it was January, 1911, and I hadn’t heard from Oh-Be-Joyful for nearly a year and a half. I’d had less trouble over her disappearance than I expected. The Mother Superior had sent plump Sister Teresa to see me. Over tea and Irannocks she mourned that even if we found Oh-BeJoyful, it would probably be too late, didn’t I think so?

“Too late?” I asked.

“Well, you know what emotional creatures they are.”

I nodded gravely and admitted that it probably was already too late.

That was two summers ago. I couldn’t expect Oh-Be-Joyful to visit me, or even write. Who was there to carry her letters? But I kept hoping there was some way she could let me know she was all right, and that Jonathan — that Jonathan had made a life for her as Mike had for me.

The children were in bed. Mike was laying out his favorite game of solitaire. He never won it. It was the kind where you lay out the deck three cards at a time, suils are built down in the array and up on the aces. I stood at his shoulder a minute, watching.

“If I could only get that jack out.”

“I don’t know why you play that game, Mike. You always get mad.”

“If I could only get rid of that five of clubs.”

There was a curious sound at the door. Someone was pushing at it, hitting it with bare hands. Mike opened it. Wiya-sha stood there.

“Sergeant Mike,”she said, “my baby sick. My baby choke.” The woman stood outside, waiting; little sobbing breaths came from her. I brought Mike’s jacket and coat.

“The gloves are in the pocket.”

He nodded. “ I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t wait up.”

He brushed his lips cpiickly across mine and followed Wiya-sha into the night.

I hated these nights when pain and death took Mike away: sickness, a woman stolen, or a man shot. The shadows from the lire seemed longer, darker, they moved more violently. I didn’t want to sleep until Mike was beside me. I moved around making things tidy and straight. I scrubbed a kettle. I set out the breakfast things.

I stirred up the fire and put on tea. Mike would be coming home cold and in need of something hot. The floor was icy. I got into bed and curled myself into a ball. I felt lonesome. I wished Mike was here. I mustn’t go to sleep — the fire’s lit.

I closed my eyes. I was warm now and drowsy.

Suddenly I was awake, very wide awake and listening. Someone was knocking. Mike wouldn’t knock. I got out of bed and into a bathrobe. The fire was ashes and embers. There was someone at the window — Mike.

“ I don’t want to come in,” he said. “ Wiya-sha’s baby just died of diphtheria. I’ll sleep in the office.”

“But, Mike— ” I couldn’t grasp it.

“ If this is an isolated ease, it will only be for fiyc or six clays. You’ll walk down and leave my meals for me, okay?”

“Yes,” I said, “but — ”

“If you need me, just hang a sheet out the window.”

“You’re sure it was diphtheria?”

“Pretty sure. Listen, darling. Don’t worry. About the only precaution you can take is to swab your throat and the kids’ with iodine.”

“How?”

“With a feather. Dip i in the iodine bottle. If you need me, hang out a sheet.”

“ Yes.”

“But when you bring the food down, don’t come in. Just leave it on the porch.

“Will it be bad?”

“Maybe not. We’ll know by morning.”

By morning broken cries and lamentations drifting in from the village woke me. Mary Aroon was frightened and began to cry. I shut all the windows and locked the door.

“It’s the wind,” I told Mary Aroon.

“Why is it crying?”

“ Eat your cereal.”

I drew pictures for her, and she colored them with her crayons.

“Mama,” and she held up my attempt at a hen which she had colored with barbaric reds and purples.

“That’s very nice,” I said, “but try to stay inside the lines.”

She went at it again. I washed the breakfast dishes and threw out the cold tea that no one had drunk the night before. I splashed the water and rattled the dishes and tried to hum an Irish lullaby, but now and then a wild, despairing cry reached us, and always the moaning underneath. I found myself straining to hear it.

I put on Mike’s breakfast. While I waited for the toast I looked out at the office. There was no sign of him. But there was a flash of movement over by the group of birch. It was a man running. He was naked. Naked in below zero weather. As I stared, he flung himself into the snow, buried his hands in it, pressed it to him like a covering. A woman ran to him, half raised him. He reached his arms back longingly and plunged them into the snow. She pulled him to his feet and supported him; they walked a few uneven steps. But his strength had been spent in the first wild flight. He sagged suddenly in her arms; his head fell across her shoulder. She lowered him to the ground and with her hands under his armpits dragged him past scrub brush and trees until they were hidden. My toast was burning.

“Mama.”Mary Aroon held up a pink free.

“Yes,”I said. “It’s very pretty.”

By the time Mike’s second piece of toast was done he was at the window knocking. Mary Aroon ran and held up the tree and the hen for him to see.

“Kathy,” he said, “you’ve got to help me.”

“Mike, are you all right?”

“Fine, but it’s everywhere. They’re lying four in a bed. Half of 'em don’l have food in the house. 'Those who do can’t stand up to get it. Get out your biggest pots. Fill ‘em with water and boil a couple of pounds of beef and a couple of pounds of rice in ‘em.”

“Yes,” I said.

“When it’s done, signal with the sheet and I’ll come get it. Put it out on the porch. If you can spare any bread, put that out too.”

“Mike! ” I yelled it and beat the window because he was turning away. “You’ve got to have breakfast.”

“Later.”

“No, now. You’ll get sick too if you don’t keep up your strength. It’s all ready.”

“All right.” He walked away. I opened the door a crack and set out the food. When the door was safely shut, he came back and began to eat.

I told him about the man in the snow.

“Poor devil lever. Sometimes they do that.”

I asked him what he was doing for them.

“Nothing. I passed out all the quinine I had. Now I’m giving them alcohol. But food is the best. If we can keep their strength up.”

He left, but was bark in an hour for the soup.

I passed out three pots. It took all my strength to lift them off the stove. I dragged them across the floor and set them on the porch. Mike carried the firsl two off. On his way back for the third, he asked, “Did you swab out the kids’ throats?”

“ Yes.”

“Well, do it again.” And he walked off toward the Reserve.

The days dragged on. No one came near the house. I tried to keep busy. There was a lot of mending to do.

I don’t know how many afternoons I worked. I don’t know how many I sat there not working. But once the room darkened and I looked up. There at the window a woman stood looking at me. Her hair was all undone, and the wind whipped it against her face and body. She held out a bundle to me and her eyes pleaded. It was a baby, dead and already stiff. Her mouth formed a word, “ Medicine.”

“Go to Sergeant Mike. Sergeant Mike will give you medicine. I have none.”

She turned obediently and walked off my porch. She walked unsteadily and when the choking seized her, she fell. It was terrible to sec her protect the dead baby from the jar with her own body. I rushed to the door and threw it open. But the spasm was on her. She pointed up as she fell back dead. An owl flew over my house. Was that what she meant? What was there—something about an owl then I remembered. An owl flying over the house brings death.

33

RALPH woke crying. The glands under his jaw were swollen. His throat looked red. I put Mary Aroon in our room and hung out the sheet. By the time Mike came, there were large grayish patches on Ralph’s throat.

“Mike,”I said, “do something.”

Mike kept hot towels on the baby’s throat, and he had me boil water on the stove so the room would be moist. “Feed him all he’ll eat, Kathy.”

I made more soup, and when I brought it in, Ralph was turning from side to side. Mike held the bowl, and I tried to feed him. But the pain in his throat wouldn’t let. him swallow.

“Ralph, baby, this is the train we’re going to see Grandmother on. It goes to Boston, and this is the way to Boston, right down the. little red lane.” Only it wasn’t a little red lane. The white patches covered it, and it was turning a thick yellow.

I drew back frightened. “It looks like leather.”

“It will be all right, Kathy. The disease is just running its course.”

“Don’t lie to me, Mike,” I said.

“ I won’t, girl.”

Ralph choked. He was fighting for every breath.

That night Mary Aroon held onto her throat and cried. “Mama,” she said. “Mama!”

I tacked up her pink tree and the purple and red hen where she could see them. I put the gingham bear on her pillow and fed her.’

Ralph began to cough saliva; it had gray dots in it. The little body twisted. Every organ in him strained for air. The hoarse rasping sound gave way to a gurgle, Ralph struggled and lay still. Mike bent over him. When he raised his head, I knew. I guess I’d known before. He put his arms around me, but I broke away.

“No!” I said. “No, no!”

Seven hours later, we lost Mary Aroon. I told her we’d go on the sled again, that she could keep the puppy in the house, that he could sleep on her bed. I promised her anything, anything. But the yellow membrane grew in her throat, choking her.

I kept the compresses hot. But, suddenly, the writhing stopped.

“Kathy,” Mike said.

“ But she’s never been sick! She’s never been sick a day in her life!”

He tried to lift me up, but I clung to her, still promising her the puppy, a rag doll, stories.

“Kathy,” he said. “They need food in the village.”

I didn’t answer him. I cradled Mary Aroon, I whispered pleading words to her.

“ Kathy, don’t!”

“All right.” I stood up.

“Darling, you can.’! do any good here.”

Mike, this was Mike, wanting me to do something. I loved Mike, so I took the basket of food he handed me; but all the time anger throbbed in me, a terrible anger against this country.

“Mike,” I said, and I was careful not to look at him, “if we’d been in a town

“Don’t, Kathy. You mustn’t think like that.”

He walked with me, carrying the basket. In the first house we went to, an old woman sat mourning with a blanket over her head. Mike set down the basket. I wandered to the door.

The scene outside the next cabin held me. It was like a drawing I had seen — a vision of William Blake’s and everyone knew he-was mad. Out the window hung a pair of legs. And in the snow a young man kept clubbing a snarling phantom of a dog. Another dog, lean and gaunt and ragged, crawled as close as he dared, on his belly. The two watched, their saliva dripping, while the man lowered the body of a girl into the snow. Lifting her, he climbed on the roof and laid her down.

I looked at the roofs of the other cabins, and for the first time saw the rows of feet. I saw then that there were bodies lashed to the trees too. That’s the way Mike kept our meat in the winter. Best refrigeration in the world, he’d said. Only you had to be careful to pick a thin-trunked tree or a sapling so it couldn’t be climbed.

Here and there a shadow detached itsell from shadow and jumped, yelping, at the trees. The creatures would fall back whining their disappointment and their hunger. Luckily most of the dogs were away with the trappers. Only the females with pups had been left, but now these pups were half grown, and starving. The Indians fed them twice a week, which was only enough to keep life in them. But who could do even that now? Who could fish for them when sickness was like a whirlwind among the people?

The young Indian slid down from the roof and turned into the empty house. I went back for a loaf of bread, which I put just inside the door. The Indian shook his head.

“Where her shadow go, I follow.”

The soft Cree words hurt his throat. He choked. Why had I not seen how gray his face was? He stumbled and half fell onto u bed oi skins. I rekindled the fire, and went to him, but he motioned me away.

“Let me at least bring you warm soup.” He shook his head.

I sighed and turned away. As I reached the door, he called me back. “Mrs. Mike!”

“Yes?” I said.

“The dogs.”

I didn’t understand.

“The dogs,” he said again. “They break in maybe.”

“I’ll wedge the door.”

“Yes,” he said, “for I must lie here many days. Sergeant Mike, him have one, two, maybe three men help him. We die too fast — is not enough.

I wedged the door. I remembered that for the ever-after world of the Crees, they, must keep their bodies intact. It would not do to appear before Gitche Manito mauled and torn by huskies.

I hurried past the rows of bodies waiting for Mike’s shovel, and into a tepee where three children lay tossing. I hauled water, I set it to boil. I wrung out compresses. I forced soup down swollen throats. Sometimes the little dark faces blurred, and it was my own two I was lighting for.

A child twisted into a terrible knot and died. The mother covered her head and moaned.

“On the gray wings of dawn she went.

Yes, the sun was up, but the light from it was cold. The dead in the trees looked at us. Ihe living writhed and choked and spat. And I moved among them, empty. Lain, tiredness, nothing touched me. Once a pair of little arms reached out to me, and F thought: Why these? Something hurt in me when I looked at the children that were going to live, that were getting better.

34

THE cribs were gone. I never asked Mike what he had done with them. Mary Aroon’s crayon drawings were gone, too. I waited until Mike was out and then hunted the house over for them. I guess I was glad that I didn’t find them.

Mike was gone every day. He and Tim and Tim’s father, old Georges Beauclaire, buried half a village that week. It was mostly the children that went, and the old people.

The second night Mike had taken me up the hill. We had walked between the rows of white crosses. Was the sorrow of other days like the sorrow of now? Did each neat whitewashed cross mean empty pain?

A little past the summit of the hill, a new row had been added. These crosses had not yet been stained or salted. But cut into the wood I read the name Mary Aroon Flannigan, and next to this, Ralph Flannigan. My two babies lying on this bare, windswept hill! I knelt down and laid my hands on the snow. I remembered the day, almost three years before, when Mike and I and our baby daughter had ridden into Grouard. I remembered seeing this hill and the bright crosses. Hadn’t I known then for a moment? Hadn’t I seen myself wandering through the rows that stretched horizontally, then end to end, and then crisscross in shifting geometric patterns?

Why hadn’t I taken my children away from this country that had killed them? Why hadn’t I taken them to antitoxin and doctors, out of these frozen winters?

Mike laid his hand on my shoulder.

I got up and followed him home. What had happened to us, to Mike and me? I wanted to reach out to him, but I couldn’t. At first I didn’t know why, and then I realized that I was blaming him. Did he feel it? Did he feel the thoughts that lay there, heavy and unspoken between us? He had very little to say to me. He was sweet and kind and patient, only he’d look away from me. And when he thought I was busy with something else, he’d stare at me. I couldn’t sleep because of the way he’d look at me. But there was a bitterness I couldn’t force back. He’d known. He’d lived in this country. He’d seen what it did to families. He’d seen children die in epidemics. He knew how virulent even a simple disease like measles was among the Indians. And he knew that in nil the Northwest there was no help, lie hadn’t had the right to bring a wife into this country. He hadn’t had the right to have children.

Eight days later the last of the graves had been filled in. I went with the women to whitewash and salt them. I moved, I worked in a kind of horror. I was beginning to realize my children were under there.

It was almost dark when I got home. I stopped outside the house in surprise. There was music coming from it. Such longing was in it, such hunger and desolation, that J stood there crying.

When I went in, I hurried past Mike, not wanting him to see my face. It was an old accordion he was playing, the accordion which had hung in Irish Bill’s store for over a year. When he saw me, he stopped. The thing dangled awkwardly from his knee. I don’t know, maybe if he had spoken to me then — But lie went back to his music. I noticed it was a different song, that he played more selfconsciously and made mistakes.

That night I knew I had been living in a daze. Mist and fog had mercifully wrapped themselves around my thoughts. All the time I had been listening for laughter and voices that I would never hear again. Why had I delayed giving away the children’s clothes? Why did they still hang in the closet ?

That night and for two months after I sat in the room with him. I don’t know what he found to do in the daytime, but he kept away from the house. I wanted him, I longed for him, I couldn’t stand the loneliness. Sometimes I counted the minutes out loud. Then he’d come.

“Hello, Mike,” I’d say.

“Hello, Kathy.”And if dinner wasn’t ready, he’d go and get his accordion.

While I scrubbed the potatoes and put them on to boil, I went over the things I was going to say to him. But when I was sitting facing him, my heart pounded and I would jump up for salt or to bring milk to the table, or maybe I’d forgotten the napkins. Anyway, what was there to say? Everything went .back to four years shared and known together. Each day, even the happiest, was now an entrance into a labyrinth of pain and bitterness.

The accordion was driving me mad. When I was alone with It in the daytime, I wanted to smash it. it had taken the children’s place in his heart, and my place.

35

IT WAS another night. I watched Mike reach for the accordion again. I knew I was going to stand up and scream. I didn’t because they brought a man in just then. They were carrying him on a door. I washed the blood off his face before I saw his eye was almost out, just hanging. I cut the jacket and shirt off him. Mike worked over his face. And somehow Sarah was there and putting on poultices. He was Randy Nolan, new in the territory. He’d come in with the trappers. When I looked at him again, his eye was in place, and Mike was bandaging it. One of his ribs was broken off and sticking out through the flesh, and across the ot hers were long, bloody slashes.

“Bear?" Mike asked.

Steve Brooks, one of the men who had brought Nolan in, slumped into a chair. “Well, what do you think?”

Mike didn’t answer. He was occupied with an arm that hung at an odd angle from the socket.

I insisted that the sick man should not be moved, and Sarah agreed with me. I welcomed the work he brought me. I had something to think about, something to do. The first week he was unconscious most of the time. The second week he lay moaning.

I didn’t think much about whether he’d live or not.

I thought more about giving him sweetened warmed milk with bread softened in it — or about making the broth nourishing. After a while Sarah even let me change the poultices, It was amazing to see how they drew the angry red from the new ly formed scar tissue.

Then he began to talk to me when I came into the room, He hardly spoke above a whisper. He talked of cities, Chicago. He’d been born in Chicago.

“Have you ever been to Boston?” I asked.

“Sure. Got a sister living there.” Before I knew what I was doing, I was telling him about my two sisters and my mother.

“She always has a canary, and his name’s always Rele, and the dogs are always Juno. And there’s a room on the top floor full of flowers, and she keeps it just for—” I stopped, ashamed of myself, for I could see I’d tired him.

But we talked again. He told me that his sister was married to a traveling man. That she was lonesome and always writing him to come, and thal she had a kid he’d never seen.

“Randy, she calls it. Named it for me. Can you beat that?”

He’d always been a rolling stone, he said. But he cursed the day he’d ever rolled into this devil’s country, begging my pardon.

I had a plan that excited me and frightened me. I led the talk back to his sister.

That night before dinner I sent a telegram to Agnes Lent field, Boston, U.S.A.

The next afternoon Mike came in with a wire for Randy Nolan. Purple block letters: RANDY DEAR STOP MUST COME WHEN FIT TO TRAVEL LOVE AGNES.

Mike looked at me for a long time, " He can’t go by himself.”

“I know.” I talked very fast. I didn’t look at him. ”I thoughl I’d like to take him out. I haven’t been out for almost four years. It would be a grand chance. I’d take him clear through to Boston, and see Mother and — ”

“If you have to do this, Kathy, go ahead. God knows, maybe it’s best. Maybe it will be good for you.”

“It’s not on my own account,” I said.

“I know. I know. When will you go?”

“As soon as I can.”

Mike sighed and lit his pipe.

There wasn’t much to do. I packed my clothes and the first-aid kit. Randy was able to sit up, but Mike made a stretcher for him so that the trip wouldn’t tire him more than need be. This time almost the whole trip was to be made by train. No more waiting for the winter freeze, because the Edmonton and British Columbia Line was pushing deep into the Northwest. Of course they were still quite a way from Grouard.

I was happy, awfully happy, at getting away. And I told myself that Mike didn’t seem to mind my going very much. He could have said more than he did.

“How far are you going with us?” I asked.

“I’ll see you on the train, Kathy.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Mike, But I don’t want you to have that long trip. It isn’t necessary.”

“It is necessary, it’s necessary to me.” He walked to the window and stood looking out.

“God damn it!”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“But — ”

“Listen, we haven’t even talked it out. You haven’t told me how long you’re going to stay yet, and I have a feeling —”

“What, Mike? What’s your feeling?”

“What’s the use? You’re going, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” What else could I say when he asked it like that ?

In the morning there was a lot to do. I already had the makings of sandwiches laid out. I just slapped them together. All right, I thought, that’s the way he wants it. He hadn’t spoken to me of the future, of when I came back. That was all right with me. I’d be glad never to set eyes on this country again. But maybe he thought there was still time; maybe he didn’t realize these were our last moments alone. I finished packing the hamper and snapped it closed.

“ I guess there’ll be a crowd down at the lake,”I said. But he was lugging out my trunk. I wasn’t even sure he heard me.

Everyone was at the dock, and everyone had instructions for me. And somehow, all the while, through the confusion, I was conscious of Sarah. She watched me as I smiled and joked, and her eyes were mournful. At the last, when Mike was holding out his hand to me and Timmy was yelling, “(let in, Kathy!” Sarah came up to me.

“Mrs. Mike,” she said, “come back. You must, come back.”

Mike lifted me into the boat. I turned and waved, but the faces blurred into a wall of faces. And the shouting, calling, and well-wishing reached me as noise from which I could not separate a word. All the time I was thinking: How could she know?

36

THE North Station. Boston. There it was, familiar and yet unreal, I had the same uneasy feeling you have in a dream when you speak freely and yet a bit dubiously to someone you have loved and who is now long dead. All through the trip with the sick man I had been fretting impatiently, burning to see my home and Mother. Now I was afraid.

My sister, Anna Frances, and Randy’s sister, Mrs. Lentfield, met us at the station. There were introductions, talk about baggage, and hasty goodbyes. Randy had stood the trip extremely well, and he was happy, confident that Boston surgeons would have him walking again. I felt I’d been right to bring him.

My sister had been watching me thoughtfully and saying very little. Mother was home, nursing a cold. Mary Ellen hoped to get up from Rhode Island. There were none of the questions I had been expecting about Grouard and Mike. Instead, my sister took my hand as we rode home in one of the new trolleys, and said, “Mother is very happy you’ve come home.”

“ I want to stay a long time,” I said carefully.

“ As long as you want,” mv sister said. “This is your home.”

If my sister was strangely silent, my mother was even more strangely talkative. She kissed me and smiled at me and spoke of a thousand arid one things of the elevated railroad they were extending, of my sister Ellen’s baby, of the awful weather, of guess whom she had run into at the library, of the good and bad habits of the boarders, of the difficulty they had had finding out when my train was to arrive — in short, of everything under the sun except my four years in the Northwest.

My mother was looking remarkably young and gay. She insisted her cold was much better, just seeing me had been the tonic she needed, so we ended up going out to lunch and taking in the town. Mother knew her Boston, and I had to admire everything, even the new bank building. After a while I was carried away by her gayety, but even so, I felt there was something forced and nervous about it.

There was a homecoming party for me. Boys and girls whose faces I vaguely remembered crowded into my mother’s living room. Someone played “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” on the piano.

A tall pale youth culled Dick invited me to dance. My sister served sherbet and small delicate cakes. I ate them greedily. The food was the only thing that seemed real to me.

Dick made me sit down next to him at the piano while he sang “Oh, You Great Big Beautiful Doll” in an exaggerated comic style, looking at me and grinning after every chorus. A din of chatter and gossip filled the room. I got up and walked out on the porch. I couldn’t stand so many people so close to me. I was overpowered by the noise, the perfume, the decorations, and by the glare of the elect ric lights. After the soft glow of candles, everything seemed harsh and artificially bright.

On the porch the air was cold and wet. It felt good. I strode into the drizzle. I turned my face up, and the rain caressed my cheeks. The subdued secret patter it made on the pavement soothed me.

“Kathy, what are you doing out here?”

Dick was standing on the porch, testing the rain with his outstretched hand. He drew me back under the eaves.

“Aren’t you enjoying the party?”

“Oh, yes, it’s nice,” I said.

“ I know how you feel. I like to get away from the crowd too.” He looked me over curiously. “You’re liable to catch cold. It’s raining, you know.”

He edged closer and put his hand on mine. “You’ll think I’m kidding, but it was quite a blow to my young life when you moved away.”

I drew back, feeling suddenly uncomfortable in my sister’s full-skirted party dress.

“You’re teasing,” I said, trying to match his gay air. “Aren’t you, Dick — it Dick?” Now I was really confused and hardly ready to resist when he took both my hands and began to speak earnestly and rapidly.

“Kathy, you have no idea how beautiful you look in that gown. I’m quite an expert on color harmony, and take it from me, chartreuse is the perfect, thing for your eyes and hair. I will always remember you as you are now.”

I wanted to say this is my sister’s dress, and I generally wear trousers, sometimes two pair if it’s cold enough, and this talk of color harmony is ridiculous, and you know you don’t mean a word of all that chatter, and please let go of my hands But a numb bewilderment was on me, and in a moment he was drawing me closer. When I saw that silly face bending down toward me, however, the spell broke. I laughed and pushed Dick away. I could see that he was as surprised as I was at my strength and roughness.

“Go in and play with the girls,”I said. I opened the screen door and walked upstairs. I was gleeful. In Alberta I had been delicate, even pampered. Sarah kept a continuous eye on me. Mike saw that I had nine hours’ sleep. Everybody knew I had to be careful because of my pleurisy. But down here in Boston I was almost indecently healthy and strong.

For the first time since I’d left, I allowed mymyself to think of Mike. There were no men like him in Boston. Tall, yes, but not solid. Brilliant, but not enduring. I sat on the bed in my sister’s room and smiled proudly. After a while, I cried.

The door opened softly, and my mother stole into the room. She put her arms around me. “I’m an old-fashioned woman, Katie. I believe a woman should stick by her husband. But this time it’s different. If your man wants you, let him come here and get you. It’s no blame I have for him. A man lives the life he has to. But I’m your mother. And I’m not letting you go North again to loneliness and the graves of your children!”

“But I have to go back. Right away.”

And it was true. I’d been seeing Mike as I’d seen him last, standing alone against the Northwest. I understood now. It was the country, the country I was homesick and longing for, that made him Sergeant Mike Flannigan. I’d been unjusl, I 'd been wrong. I knew it now, and I had to tell him. I had to explain, to get him to understand the things that had piled up in me. I had to loll him that after the children died I thought I couldn’t stand it, that

I had to get away.

He met mo at the train, He had put bells on the dogs. Wrapped in a buffalo robe was a little new Juno the Second, whose eyes were hardly open yet. And the big Juno, the team leader, almost broke the traces to get at me.

And now I was beside Mike in the cutler. Mike!

His voice was low and choked up. He’d start to say things, and then he’d stop and just look at me. Then I’d forget what I was saying and just look at him. I tried to tell him how wrong and confused I’d been about everything. But he wouldn’t let me. He kept kissing me, over and between and through all the words. He was so good to me and wonderful that it made me cry. I cried, too, because of his lonely nights with no children and no Kathy. My tears turned to sleet, and Mike had to stop and wipe my face.

“ Mike, promise me we’ll live together all our lives and never be away from each other.”

He held me. The reins dropped, and Juno had to pick her own way.

All of Boston now seemed unreal to me. After landscapes that. were trimmed and raked and pruned into existence, it was thrilling to skim across unbounded open country. The snow shone and sparkled. The sun struck here and there among the fine particles, touching them with cold fire. I didn’t think how beautiful it was. I thought how many times I had watched it before. And now for the first time it was familiar; I recognized it just as I recognized the way ihe air smelled.

Mike had been watching me, and now he said, “How does it seem to be home, Kathy?”

That’s it, it was home.

That, night, in Sawarage, I woke myself up to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, that Mike was really beside me. I kissed the pillow close up near his cheek because I didn’t want to wake him. He opened one eye and grinned at me.

“Don’t waste ‘em, kitten.”

37

AUGUST, 1914, and war. Mike got the news by telegraph. It seemed strange that guns we couldn’t hear and events we knew nothing of could reach into our remote settlement — but here and there men left their trap lines, sold their equipment, and rode the train into Edmonton.

It was by train that, we got our month-old newspapers. We read them and were shocked, as the rest of the world had been weeks before. The news we received by telegraph in cold, blunt statements made it hard to picture blocked roads of streaming refugees, and armies like juggernauts closing in. But these first war editions blazed with atrocities and published photographs of blurred dead bodies and emaciated living ones. There were fifteen or twenty people waiting their turn at each copy.

More deserted trap lines, more secondhand equipment to be bought cheap at the store.

By the end of winter I had delivered five wires, “Missing in action,” “Killed in action.” I took them on snowshoes into the village and twice off to lonely cabins. I never said anything. I always tried to. But when I handed over the envelope, a man died. There are no words against death. Death just is.

The world outside, the noisy quarreling world that sent us the wires of death, sent us a new death. Born in the dirt of European trenches, in the fall of 1918, the flu spread into the Canadian Northwest. And we died, again without doctors, serum, or help. Even the wild fores! creatures died. The hear was the only red-blooded animal to escape it. But then, as Mike says, nothing affects bears.

One evening Jonathan Forquet walked into the room, holding in his arms a solemn-eyed baby.

“ I come to my friends.” He said it half defiantly.

Jonathan was Jonathan. He had the same proud way about him.

“Is it your baby?” I asked, coming toward him. “Is Oh-Be-Joyful with you?”

He looked at me and answered slowly. “Can you not see that she is dead?”

Then I did see it. I saw it in the black eyes that looked hopelessly into my own. The lids were heavy. Jonathan had cried.

“The sickness?" I asked him. “The flu?”

“The sickness, it took her, Mamanowatum.”He lifted the baby toward me, and before I knew it I had her in my arms. Jonathan watched me as I held her.

“From eight sleeps away I bring you. Mamanowatum, she call her Kathy. She want this winter come show you girl child, come show you happiness. Now she no come never. Only I come, say 'keep baby.’ No want Mission for keep her. They not like me.”

Mike came over to me. “We’ll keep her, won’t we, Kathy?”

“Yes,”I said. “Of course.”

Jonathan nodded. “I come, bring furs once, twice, in the year. You sell. Feed, make clothes for girl child.” He hesitated. I knew there was something else.

He spoke in Free: “Mamanowatum—many winters we are together, always the canoe sings in the river and the paths we walk are of happiness.

You will say that to the girl child? You will tell her of the joyful heart of Mamanowatum!”

Mike patted him roughly on the shoulder. We stood in the doorway and watched him walk into the night. He was alone, as he had been before ho knew the gentleness and the love of Oh-Be-Joyful. The haloreached out after him, but the little fist closed on emptiness.

I turned to Mike. Oh-Be-Joyful, the girl with black stockings sitting primly in punishment ruw. I heard again the story of Fleet Foot, heard her chattering to Alary Aroon in Cree. I saw her laughing, scrubbing a pot with the same intensity with which she had clung to that pile of pelts, Jonathan’s present.

Mike crouched on his heels-and looked earnestly at the round copper face of the baby. “She’s a cute little mite.”He ran a finger lightly under her chin, and she dimpled all over. Alike grinned back, “Hello, Kathy.” He winked at me, “We can’t have two Kathies. Let’s call her Kate.”

Kate. This brown Indian baby had my name, perhaps part of my destiny. “My more-than-sister,“ Oh-Be-Joyful had called me. And her child was closer to me than my own sister’s. I murmured the name, “Kate.” I pictured Oh-Be-Joyful saying it, bending over her child, thinking of me, whispering my name. She lived in the wild world of brilliant summer colors, she walked through the clean pine woods of the North, among the cries, the calls, the flapping of wings, the swaying bush, surrounded by life, part of it, free in it; at the height of her happiness, her child in her arms, she had thought of me.

“Mike,” I said, “it’s very strange — and I want, to ery. But what does it all mean?”

“Well, there’s a pattern,” Mike said. “The bain is Kate and you are Katherine, and it’s right that you should have her.”

“A pattern?”

“Yes. I don’t mean the names exactly. But Oh-Be-Joyful was part of the pattern of your life, and things like that don’t just slop. Things from her life will come into yours, into ours, as long as we live.”

I knew what he meant by this pattern. Perhaps on another day I would laugh at this and consider it superstition, but this day, watching Qh-BeJoyful’s baby in Mike’s arms, I saw the pattern too.

(The End)