REINDEER FARM
The Indian, Usak, and the Kid were standing in the great enclosure where
three half-breed Eskimos were engaged in the operation of breaking young
buck reindeer to the sled work of the trail. They took no part in it. It
was the daily occupation in the springtime of the year. It began before
the break-up of winter, when it was conducted with heavily weighted
sleds, and, with the passing of the snow it was continued with the long
pole carryalls, which is the Eskimo means of transport over land in
summer. The carryall was in use now and it was an interesting struggle
between the skill of the squat, sturdy, brown-skinned breakers, and the
half-scared, half-angry fighting will of a finely grown buck deer whose
ragged coat of winter gave him the size of a three-year-old steer.
Haltered, and ranged along the rough-poled fence of the great corral
stood twenty or thirty young bucks awaiting their turn in the rawhide
harness, and they gazed round on the spectacle of their fighting brother
with eyes of mild wonder at the commotion he was creating. Otherwise
they seemed utterly unconcerned in their gentle submissiveness. They
were all man-handled and tame. They had been handled almost from their
birth, for the whole success of the farm depended on the turning out of
fully broken cattle, trained for the work of transport within the
Arctic, where the Eskimo estimate them above every other means of
traversing the vast spaces of snow and ice, or the barren, lichen-grown
territory of summer over which they were wont to roam.
The great deer was quieting down. His sense of the indignity of the
forked carryall resting on his high withers seemed to be passing. His
wild jumps and slashing forefeet were less violent, and his snortings of
fear and anger were replaced by meaningless shakings of the graceful
head on which his annual re-growth of antlers was only just beginning to
display itself. Finally, under the skilful handling of the breakers,
good-temper prevailed, and the beautiful creature was induced to move
forward dragging the boulder-weighted poles with their ends resting on
the ground.
“Him good buck,” Usak said approvingly, as the men led the now docile
creature round the circle of the breaking track.
“Yes.”
The Kid had nothing to add. Truth to tell for once she had little
interest in the work the result of which represented the livelihood, the
whole fortunes of them all. Her thoughts were far away, somewhere miles
along the broad course of the Hekor River. She was thinking of her
previous day’s adventure, and her pretty eyes reflected her thoughts.
Somehow her mood had lost its buoyancy. Somehow the years of happy life
on this far-off northern homestead seemed to have dropped away behind
her. Something had broken the spell of it. Something had robbed it of
half its simple, happy associations.
Gazing upon the mild-eyed creature now gracefully pacing the well-worn
track under the careful guidance of the dark-skinned men of the North,
she was thinking of a pair of clear-gazing, fearless honest eyes which
had looked into hers with a man’s kindly smile for something more weak
and tender than himself, for something that stirred his sense of
chivalry to its deepest. She understood nothing of his emotions, and
little enough of her own. She only remembered the smile and the
kindness, and the man whose outfit she had unfalteringly guided up the
open channel of the river where it skirted the deadly rapids. And
somehow, her adventure marked an epoch in her life which had completely
broken the hitherto monotonous continuity of it.
Bill Wilder. The man’s name was no less graven on her memory than was
the recollection of his great stature and the lean face which had so
re-assured her of the honesty and ability which old Ben Needham’s
warning had denied him. She remembered the half hour she had squatted in
company of these men, sharing in their rough, midday meal, and listening
to, and taking part, in their talk. It had been a thrilling excitement,
not one detail of which would she have missed for all the world. It had
been a deliriously happy time. She remembered how the man called Mike
had pressed her to say where she lived, and to tell them the name to
which she was born, and she remembered the sharp fashion in which, at
the first sign of reluctance on her part, remembering as she had Ben’s
warning, Bill Wilder had told him to mind his business.
Then had come her little moment of triumph when she had passed the
outfit up the open channel. How she had nursed it, and delivered her
orders to the men behind. How she had taken Wilder himself a passenger
in her pilot kyak, and left him wondering at her skill and knowledge.
Then had come the parting with her new friends, when the man had told
her in his quiet assured fashion that someday they would meet again when
his work was done. Someday he would come back, perhaps in two years, and
wait by the rapids till she appeared. And then on the impulse of the
moment she had said there would be no need for him to wait by the
rapids. All he had to do was to turn off into the mouth of the Caribou
River and pass some ten miles up its course.
She was wondering and dreaming now. Her wonder was if the man would
remember his promise, and her simply given invitation. And her dreaming
was of a steady pair of grey eyes that haunted her no matter where she
gazed and robbed her of all interest in the things which had never
before failed to hold her deepest concern.
“We mak fifty buck ready,” Usak went on, failing to realise the girl’s
abstraction. “Fifty good dam buck. An’ I mak north an’ mak plenty big
trade. Yes?” He shook his head, and his dark eyes, a shade more sunken
with the passing of years, but lacking nothing of the passionate fire of
his earlier days, took on a moody light. “Us mak no good plenty trade no
more. No. I go east, ’way nor-east plenty far. All time more far as I
go. What I mak? Fox? Yes. Beaver? Yes. Maybe I mak wolf bear. I mak
small truck. No seal. No ivory. No anything good. Now I mak none. Not
little bit. Him Euralian mak east. All time him go east, too. Him eat up
all fur. Eskimo all much scare. Him go all time farther. So I not mak
him.”
The man’s half angry protest impressed itself upon the girl. Her
pre-occupied gaze came back to his dark, saturnine face. An ironical
smile played for a moment in the blue of her eyes.
“Does it matter, Usak?” she asked. “Old Ben Needham has gone, an’ the
store’s closed down. If you made good trade I guess we’d be left with it
piling in our store.” She shook her head almost disconsolately. “Ther’s
only Placer for us now. We’ll need to make the trip once a year, and
trade the small truck we can scratch together. It’s that or—”
The girl broke off. Ben Needham had gone. Bill Wilder and his party had
vanished up the river. Quite suddenly the desolation of it all seemed
complete.
There was moisture in her eyes as she turned from the man’s dark face to
the familiar scenes about her. The wide Caribou River Valley was bright
green with a wealth of summer grass and tiny flowers which the spring
floods had left behind them. The river was shrunken now to its normal
bed in the heart of the valley, which was walled in by high shoulders
separated by nearly two miles of flat. So it went on for many miles;
sometimes narrowing, sometimes widening. Sometimes the valley was almost
barren of all but the Arctic lichens. Sometimes it was filled with
wind-swept pine bluffs, often dwarfed, but occasionally extensive and of
primordial characteristics. The farm was set in a deep shelter of a
bluff of the latter kind. The house lay behind them, nestling just
within great lank trees that in turn were sheltered by a granite spur of
the great walls which lined the course of the valley. It was a crude but
snug enough home. It was a structure that had grown as the mood and
ability of Usak, and the needs of those who had elected to share it with
him, had prompted.
It was seven years since the change had taken place. Before that, for
eight long years, it had been the home of the child Felice and her
Indian, self-appointed, guardian. Usak had been as good as his word.
Felice had been left to the care of Hesther and Jim McLeod while he went
on his mission of vengeance after he had been left wifeless, and Felice
had been left a helpless orphan. He had returned as he said he would. He
had returned to claim the orphaned child of his “good boss.”
The whiteman and his wife had been reluctant. They had realised their
duty. Usak was an Indian, and they felt that in giving the child into
his keeping they were committing a serious wrong.
But it so happened that with the return of Usak from his journey into
the great white void of the North, the story of which he refused to
reveal, Hesther’s first baby was about to be born. And the coming of
that new life pre-occupied both husband and wife to the exclusion of all
else, and helped to blind them to their sense of duty. So the Indian’s
appeal had double force. And finally they yielded, convinced of the
man’s honesty, convinced that in denying him they would have inflicted a
grievous wound on the already distraught creature.
So Usak had come into possession of the treasure he claimed as an offset
to the monstrous grief of his own personal loss, and he set about the
task of raising the child with the inimitable devotion of a
single-minded savage.
The man had laboured for her with every waking moment. He had laboured
to replace the mother woman who had nursed her, and the great white
father whom he had loved. He had laboured to build up about her the farm
which was to yield her that means of livelihood which his simple
understanding warned him that Marty, himself, would have desired for
her.
It had been a great struggle with his limited education and only his
savage mind to guide him in the barter which was the essence of the
success he desired. Then, too, with each passing year the depredations
of the invading Euralians spread wider and wider afield as the central
control, which apparently had always existed, seemed to lose its grip on
the rapidly increasing numbers of the foreign marauders. Futhermore, his
trade with the little people of the Arctic had in consequence receded
farther and farther, till, as he had just said, it had passed almost
beyond his reach.
So things had gone on till eight years had passed and the dark eyes of
the man saw the womanly development of the pretty white child. Then had
happened another one of those strokes of ill-fortune which so often
react in a direction quite undreamed.
Hesther and Jim McLeod had developed a family of three boys and three
girls in the course of the eight years. Trade was bad, and the threat of
closing down the store was always hanging over them. Then, one day, in
the depths of the terrible Arctic winter, the man was taken ill with
pneumonia, and, in a week, Hesther was left a widow with six small
children and no one to turn to for support and comfort, and with little
more in the world than the shelter of the store, and such food as it
provided, until the Fur Valley Company should remove her and replace her
dead husband with a new Factor.
The Company dealt fairly, if coldly, with her. Ben Needham was sent up
to replace the dead Jim McLeod at the opening of spring. And the widow
and her children were to be brought down to Dawson, and, forthwith sent
on to such destination as she desired. The Company gave her travelling
expenses, and a sum of money to help her along. And that was to be the
limit of its obligations.
But Hesther McLeod had definite ideas. Her cheerful optimism and gentle
philosophy never for a moment deserted her. During the dark months of
winter, when she was left with only the ghost of her dead, she strove
with all the calm she possessed to review the thing which life had done
to her. She was quite unblinded to the seriousness of her position. She
probed to the last detail all it meant to those lives belonging to her
which were only just beginning. And finally the decision she took had
nothing in it of the promptings of hard sense, but came from somewhere
deep down in a gentle, brave, motherly heart.
She would not quit the country in which had been consummated all the
joys of motherhood. Her children were of the North, and should be raised
men and women of the great wide country which had yielded her all the
real emotions of her life. She would stay. She would take the pittance
which the Company offered, but the North should remain her home. And
curiously enough the main thought prompting her heroic decision was the
memory of the white girl she had handed over to the care of the Indian,
Usak.
The rest had been easy to a creature of her simple practice. Usak was
forthwith consulted, and the loyal creature jumped at the idea that the
whitewoman and her children should make their home on the farm he was so
ardently labouring to build up for the daughter of his “good boss.”
In short order the three-roomed log shanty grew. It spread out in any
convenient direction under the man’s indefatigable labours, and the
mother’s domestic mind. A room here was added. A room there. And so it
went on, regardless of all proportion, but with keen regard for
necessity and convenience. And Hesther brought all her chattels with her
from the store, and her busy hands and invincible courage swiftly turned
the place into a real home for the children, and everything else
calculated for the well-being of the lives it was her cherished desire
to do her best for.
So in the course of years, sometimes under overwhelming difficulties,
Felice, who, from the start had been affectionately designated “the Kid”
had grown up to womanhood, taught to read and write and sew by Hesther,
and made adept in the laborious work of the farm and trail and river by
Usak.
And through every struggle, under the radiance of the mother’s courage
and sweetness of temper, and watched over by the fierce dark eyes of the
devoted Indian, it had always been a home of happiness and hope. And
this despite the fact that every factor to make for hope was steadily
diminishing.
The Indian was in the mood for plain speaking now. And the Kid, her mind
disturbed out of its usual calm by her recent adventure, was eagerly
responsive.
The Indian shook his head so that his lank hair swept the greasy collar
of his buckskin shirt.
“The good boss your father, him speak much wise. Him say—”
“I know,” the Kid broke in impulsively, and with some impatience. “Guess
you’ve told me before. ‘When the fox sheds his coat the winds blow
warm.’ We know about that, don’t we?” She smiled for all her real
distress. “But I’d say Nature’s mighty little to do with human trade.
When ther’s no food in the house we’ll have to go hungry, or live on
caribou meat. Say, can you see us sitting around with the wind whistling
through our bones? Does the notion tell you anything? It won’t blow
warmer because Mary Justicia, an’ Clarence, an’ Algernon, an’ Percy, an’
Gladys Anne, an’ Jane Constance are hungry. It won’t be so bad for
mother, an’ me, an’ you. We’re grown. And it won’t be the first time
we’ve been hungry. No. It’s no use. You and me, we’ll have to make
Placer, where the folks drink and gamble, and dance, most all the time,
and, when they get the chance, rob the folks who don’t know better.
We’ll have to make the river trail once a year and buy the truck we need
with the furs we can scrape together. It’s that or quit.”
For some moments the man’s resentful eyes watched the harnessing of a
fresh buck. The creature bellowed and pawed the ground with slashing,
wide-spreading hoofs.
“We mak ’em, yes,” he said, as the beast quietened down. Then he broke
into a sudden fierce expletive. It was the savage temper of the man as
he thought of the cause of all their woes. “Tcha!” he cried, and his
white, strong teeth bared. “They kill your father. They kill Pri-loo.
Now they kill up all trade—dead. I go all mad inside. I tak ’em in my
two hand, an’—an’ I choke ’em dis life out of ’em. I know. They mak it
so we all die dead. No pelts, no food, no deer. So we not wake up no
more. Your father—him live—plenty much gold. Oh, big plenty. Us rich. Us
not care for trade. Us buy ’em up all thing. Yes.” His dark eyes were on
the movements of the men with the deer. But he saw nothing. Only the
vision which his passionate heart conjured out of the back cells of
memory. “Bimeby,” he went on at last, in a tone that was ominously
quiet, “I mak one big trip. I go by the river so I come by the big
hills. Maybe I mak big trade that place.” His eyes shone with a fierce
smile. “Oh, yes, maybe. Then maybe I come back. An’ when I come back
then us break big trail an’ quit. I know him dis trail. Great big plenty
long trail. Us come by the big river an’ the big lak’. The good boss,
your father speak plenty him name. M’Kenzie. Oh, yes. M’Kenzie River.
Much heap fur. All fur. Seal, bear, beaver, silver fox. Much, oh much.
Black fox, too. All him fur. Plenty Eskimo. Plenty trader mans. Us not
mak him Placer. Oh, no. Plenty whiteman by Placer. Him see little
Felice, white girl Kid, him steal him. Oh, yes. Usak know. Him steal up
all child, too. So. Missis Hesther, too. They mak Felice to dance plenty
an’ drink the fire water. Not so Hesther woman. Him mak him work. All
time work. Him old. Not so as Felice. So I go by the trail. Bimeby I
come back. Then us mak big trail. Yes?”
In spite of herself the Kid was interested. But her interest was for
that part of the man’s planning which related to the mysterious journey
which the Indian declared his intention of taking. The talk of the
McKenzie was by no means new to her. She had heard it all before. It was
the dream place of the Indian’s mind, which the talk of her dead father
had inspired. She shook her head as her eyes followed the docile
movements of the newly broken buck.
“Why must you go up the river to the big hills?” she asked seriously.
“That’s new. The other isn’t.”
The man shrugged his angular shoulders.
“I just go. An’ I come back.”
“What for?”
The blue eyes were searching the dark face narrowly. But the man refused
to be drawn.
“It plenty good place by the hills. Maybe I get fur. Maybe—gold. I not
know. Sometime I dream dis thing. I go by the hills, an’ then I—come
back. I know. Oh, yes.”
“I see.”
The girl smiled, and the Indian responded for all his mood. This girl
was as the sun, moon, and stars of his life.
“Say, Usak,” she went on, with a little laugh, “maybe I guess about
this. You have a friend there by the hills. A woman eh? That so?”
“Maybe.”
The man’s eyes were sparkling as they grinned back into the Kid’s face.
But it was a different smile from that of the moment before.
“Then I don’t figger I better ask any more,” the girl said simply. “But
we’re not going to the McKenzie. We’re not going to quit here—yet. No.
We’re going to make such trade as maybe at Placer first. Later, if we
figger it’s too worrying to make Placer, then we’ll think of McKenzie,
an’ you I guess’ll be free to go right along an’ say good-bye to your
lady friend up in the hills. Let’s get this fixed right now. You guess
this farm is mine, my father started it for me. An’ you, big Indian that
you are, have done all you know to make it right for me. Well, I guess
it’s up to me to figger the thing I’m going to do. That’s all right.
I’ve figgered. So has our little mother. We’re goin’ to give this change
two summers’ trial. And after that, if things are still bad, why, we’ll
think about—McKenzie.”
The Kid’s manner was decided. Usak was an Indian, a man of extraordinary
capacity and wonderful devotion. But from her earliest days he had
taught Felice that the farm was hers and he was her servant. And the
child had grown to feel and know her authority, and the difference which
colour made between them. Whatever the man proposed, hers was the final
decision. And for all her real, deep regard for the man who had raised
her, she understood he was still her servant.
Now her decision was taken out of something that had no relation to the
welfare of those depending upon it. It had nothing to do with the
prosperity of the farm. It had nothing to do with wisdom or judgment. It
was inspired by one thing only. The man whom she had passed up the
rapids had said he would come back. And she had told him to seek her ten
miles up the Caribou River. Two summers. Yes. He must surely be back in
that time. If not—well, perhaps, the McKenzie would be preferable to the
Hekor if he had not returned in that time.
A shrill of childish voices broke upon the quiet of the sunlit corral,
and Usak turned as a troop of children came racing across to where they
were standing. Mary Justicia, by reason of her long bare legs and
superior age, led the way. And she was followed in due sequence of ages
by Clarence, Algernon, Percy, Gladys Anne, and the rear was brought up
by Jane Constance, a brownfaced, curly-headed girl of about seven years.
They were all bare-legged, and the boys were scarcely clad at all above
the buckskin of their breeches. But they were full to the brim of
reckless animal spirits and the perfect health provided by a life lived
almost entirely in the open.
“Kid! Ho, Kid! Kid! Kid! Kid!”
The name rang out in a chorus of summons ranging from the rough,
breaking voice of Clarence to the almost baby treble of Jane Constance.
The Kid swung about as the youthful avalanche swept down upon her, and,
in a moment, she was almost smothered by the struggling children
reaching to get hold of some part of her clothing. There could be no
mistake. Adoration was shining in every eye as the children reached her.
There was laughter and a babel of voices as they took possession of her
and started to drag her towards the house where dinner was waiting
ready.
Usak looked on without a word. He was more than content. The girl had
given him her decision as to the future, and though it clashed with his
own ideas it was her decision, and, therefore, would be obeyed. He was
as nearly happy as his fierce, passionate temper would permit. These
children in their amazing hero worship of their older sister, as they
considered her, had his entire approval. They were only little less to
him than the Kid. He was Indian and they were white. And the big heart
of the man thrilled at the thought that these helpless whites were no
less his charge than the grown woman-child of his “good boss.”
* * * * *
They were ranged about the rough table for their midday meal. The
step-ladder sequence of their ages and sizes was only broken by the
presence of the Kid, who sat at one end of it between Algernon, of the
red-head and freckles, and the grey-eyed Percy, who was the born trader
of the community. Hester McLeod, grey of hair for all her comparative
youth, smiling, small, and workworn sat at the head of the table between
the head and tail of her reckless brood. Mary Justicia was at her right,
a pretty, black-haired angular girl of nearly fifteen, ready to minister
to everyone’s wants, a sort of telephonic communication with the
cookstove, and Jane Constance, with her mass of brown curls, and a face
more than splashed with the stew she was devouring, on her left.
At the moment they were all hungrily devouring, and silence, only broken
by sounds of mastication, prevailed. Each child had a tin platter of
venison stew to consume, and a beaker of hot tea was set close to their
hands. They fed themselves with spoons as being the most convenient
weapons, and attacked the fare, which was more or less their daily menu,
with an appetite that was utterly unimpaired through monotony of diet.
The Kid looked up from her food. For a moment her fond eyes dwelt on the
unkempt ragamuffins gathered about the table. There was not one of the
six that was without individual interest for her. They often plagued
her, but right down to the generally incoherent Jane Constance they
looked to her in everything, from their games, to the needs of their
growing bodies. She loved them all for just what they were, unkempt,
often up to their eyes in dirt and mischief. But more than all she loved
the patient, mild-eyed woman at the head of the crazy table, whose
purpose in life seemed to be the whole and complete sacrifice of self.
Her gaze wandered over the mud-plastered walls of the living room of
this Indian-built shanty. Every crack in it, every uneven contour of the
green logs of which it was constructed, was known to her by heart. There
were no decorations. There were no other furnishings but the table, and
the benches on which the children sat for their food and lessons, and a
makeshift cupboard in which were stored groceries, and such domestic
articles as Hesther had been able to bring with her from the Fort. It
was all crude. It was all unlovely, except for the wealth of generous
humanity it sheltered. But every roughness it contained was bound up
with simple happiness for the girl, and the memory of long years of
childish delights.
“We’re going to give it two years’ trial, Mum,” she said, while the
children’s voices were held silent. “It’s the best we can do, I guess,
now old Ben’s pulled out. You’ll have to make out the best you know
while Usak and I beat down the river to Placer once a year. Maybe it
won’t be so bad for you now with Clarence and Alg nearly grown men, and
Mary fit to run the whole bunch herself. If things don’t get worse, and
we make good trade in Placer I guess we’ll scratch along right here till
the boys are full grown. Then we’ll see the thing best to be done. If
things get worse Usak wants to make McKenzie River. He’s crazy for the
McKenzie Valley. With him it’s the thing to fix everything right.”
The mild-eyed mother reached out with a handful of apron and wiped away
the lavish helping of stew which had embedded itself in Jane Constance’s
thick brown curls. The smears on her chubby face were hopeless. They
could remain for the wash tub afterwards.
“I guess it’s what you say, Kid,” she acquiesced. “The good God gave me
two hands and the will to work. But I guess he forgot about the means of
guessin’ right when things got awry. The twins are some men—now,” she
went on fondly, gazing with pride upon Clarence and Algernon, with his
fiery red-head, the possession of which was always a mystery to her
contented mind. “We’ll make out. Eh, Mary?” she cried, turning to the
dark-eyed girl who was her eldest child. “Things don’t figger to worry
you if you don’t worry them, I say. When do you pull out?”
“When the breaking’s through, and the deer are ready for the winter
trail. The season’s good with us if we could only get the pelts. We’ve
more deer to trade than we’ve ever had before.”
Percy looked up, his grey eyes alight.
“Why don’t we quit trade and chase up that gold Usak’s always yarning
about,” he said eagerly. “It’s yours, Kid. Leastways it was your paw’s.
We wouldn’t need to worry with furs then.”
The boy pushed his plate away. For all he was not yet twelve, gold held
a surpassing fascination for his alert, trading mind.
“I’m all for the gold, Mum,” he went on soberly. “An’ I’m real glad old
Ben’s gone. Ther’s no one around but ourselves now, when we find it.
Breeds don’t figger in it. When we get it we’ll divide it all up. Kid’ll
have most, ’cos it’s hers, anyway. The one who finds it’ll have next.
An’ Jane don’t need any. You see, she’s a fool kid, an’ would maybe try
to eat it. Guess I’m goin’ to find it.” The Kid laughed, and exchanged
meaning glances with the mother across the table.
“Can you beat him?” she cried, and all the children laughed with her.
“He’s arranged for the finder to have next most to me. Say Perse, Mum
had best read you out of the Testament. Ther’s a man in it they used to
call Judas. I guess you ought to know about him. Ther’s another feller,
but I don’t know about him. He was in another book. He was the same sort
of feller only not so bad. I think they called him Shylock. He’s in one
of old Ben Needham’s books, so you can’t read about him.”
“Don’t want to anyway,” retorted the unabashed Perse. “Soon as I’m as
big as Clarence an’ Red-head I’m goin’ out after that gold, an’ I’ll buy
you all a swell ranch an’ fixings, an’ give you all you want, an’ Mum
won’t have to work no more. I reckon Clarence an’ Red-head are kites.
Wish I was big as them.”
“Kite’s nothin’!” Clarence was without humour, and took his small
brother seriously. “You’ll do the chores same as us when you’re big as
us. Ther’ ain’t no gold ’cept in Usak’s head. Mum said the Euralians got
it years back. You’d do a heap better gettin’ after pelts same as
us—only we can’t get ’em. Gold—nothin’!” Perse thrust his empty plate
towards Mary Justicia who took it for replenishment, and he watched
while his mother wrung the small nose of Jane Constance which had got
mixed up with her stew.
“When I’m growed I won’t do a thing I can’t do,” he observed
graphically. “If ther’ ain’t pelts wot’s the use chasin’ ’em? You can’t
say ther’ ain’t gold till you chased it. I’m goin’ to chase that gold,”
he finished up stubbornly.
“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway what any of you are going to do in the
future,” the Kid said with finality. “Just now we’re kind of up against
it, and you’ve all got to help Mum all you know. Isn’t that so, Mum?”
Hesther beamed mildly round on the children, not one of whom she would
have been without for all the world.
“I guess that’s so,” she said. “We’re all goin’ to do our best, sure.
That’s what God set us to do. You see, kids, the folk who do the best
that’s in ’em mostly get the best of life. An’ the best of life don’t
always mean a heap of gold, an’ not even a heap of pelts. It mostly
means a happy heart, an’ a healthy body. And when you die it ain’t no
more uncomfortable or worrying than goin’ to sleep when you’re tired,
same as you do most every night when the flies an’ skitters’ll let you.
Now if you’re all through we’ll clean up. You boys see an’ pass Mary
Justicia the chattels, an’ fix ’em dry after she’s swabbed ’em clean,
while I huyk Jane Constance from under the stew that’s missed her mouth.
I guess Gladys Anne needs fixing some that way, too. Perse, you get me a
bucket o’ water an’ a swab. Maybe I won’t need soap—we ain’t got none to
spare.”