“You will learn.” He looked up at me, his face twitching, and said more
quickly, “I have seen you with that native girl. If you want to be
wise, marry her when I am dead, and live your life away here. She is a
natural woman. If you must be a fool, like your father, go back to the
world. You will find the false thing there.”
I had picked up my muzzle-loader, thinking he had done, and was going
out to the bush, but he stopped me, and his voice became nervous.
“If you ever meet with a man, a tall man, with loose white face--he
would be elderly now,”--father hesitated, then laughed wretchedly, and
almost shouted at me--“his name is Redpath. He has kept me here in
hiding all these years.”
I did not shoot any partridges that morning. By chance I met Akshelah,
and after we had been together a little while, I found that the morning
had somehow slipped away. She showed me how to sew with grass upon
buckskin, and all the time laughed at my clumsiness. The grass would
keep breaking; she declared that I strained too heavily upon it. Her
little brown fingers were so light that they might have sewn with
gossamers, but when I told her so she only pricked me saucily with her
needle.
Nearly every day Akshelah and I were together fishing or hunting. How
stern her face would become, and how resolute, as she struggled with
a wolf-like jack-fish, knee-deep in the yellow sands, and being drawn
deeper every minute! She came with me to shoot tree partridges, and
so sure was her eye, and so agile her every movement, that she would
catch the great stupid birds as they tumbled headlong out of the black
poplars. I was often at the tepee, and one midnight when the moon was
large I danced at the lodge with Akshelah that exhilarating dance of
friendship, which makes a man beside himself for the time with mad
strength and passion. The tribe became as my own by the rights of the
dance, and I was the son of the chief and the brother of each brave.
And yet nearer to me the cloud of sorrow gathered and darkened. In
spite of the skilled attention of our native Antoine, father weakened
fast, more quickly, perhaps, because he would not take to his bed, but
insisted upon working as he was able.
Factor MacCaskill came over one day, and when he left I met him along
the trail. He was a big, morose man, but his heart was sound.
“Rupe,” he said, “old man’s call is on the way. We’ll miss him
hereabouts.”
That same evening I was cutting rye-grass along the snake fence,
Akshelah near me hindering, when Antoine came running out of the
shadows to startle me with the message that my father had fallen down
unconscious. I ran back with him, and Akshelah sped to her own people
to summon them to the passing of the white man.
Father was stretched along his bed, his eyes shut, his face grey-white,
and I heard his hard breathing before I had entered the house.
The lamp was lighted. I sat by my father’s side, fanning the flies from
his weird face.
“No good, boy,” muttered Antoine. “The Spirit call him, an’ he not say,
‘I cannot.’ He go.”
I had no religion, beyond the native belief in the two great spirits,
Good and Evil, therefore I was relieved when there came against the
window the deep red glow of the death fires, and I heard the solemn
chant of my Indian friends beating upward. Round the house went the
Cree doctors in their official mummery, marching in a solemn circle,
making their incantations to keep the devils at bay, their voices
rising to a dreadful yell, then sinking abruptly into a mere shivering
whisper.
MacCaskill entered, and seated himself largely upon the chest in the
corner. He smoked all the time, but never spoke.
“Maidens!” called a deep voice, and straightway the clear sweet voices
of the maids ascended, singing the prayer of commendation to the
Spirit. I heard only one voice, the clearest and best, the voice of
Akshelah, and as I listened I forgot the presence, and began to dream
again.
A heavy hand came upon my shoulder.
“Stir yourself, Rupe; old man’s away.”
Antoine moved about slowly, setting the house in order. The death fires
were burning out, and the Indians departed in solemn file. Although
I had never been what is known as friendly with my father, I felt
unmistakably alone.
“Maybe ye don’t want to stop wi’ that,” went on the factor. “Come along
over to the Fort, Rupe Petrie.”