I know a lonely grave far north in Saskatchewan. It lies on a high bank,
facing a small lake, under a cluster of old jack-pines. There is no
cross on that grave, neither is there a name.
Four logs, nailed in a square and half-buried in the grey moss, mark the
spot where fifteen years ago two old Indians, man and wife, dug a hole
six by four and laid to rest a white woman, a mere girl, a bride of a
few months.
Fifteen years have passed. But after all these years her memory still
lingers with the few Indians who saw her come into the wilderness,
wither under the fierce blast of the Arctic winter and die as the snow
left the ground and spring came.
She was an American of gentle birth, refined and delicate. Her husband
brought her there in a spirit of adventure. He was a strong man, rough
and accustomed to the North. She loved him. She struggled bravely
through the winter, but the fierce Arctic climate, the utter solitude,
the coarse food—these she could not stand. At length, while the man was
away for several days tending his traps, she laid herself on the rude
cabin bunk and died, all alone.
There the Indians found her white and still, and buried her a few
hundred yards from the shack, on the edge of the lake.
The man came back later—then left at once. He is a squaw man
now—trapping and hunting in the neighborhood.
Each year his sleigh and his canoe pass along the lake, a stone’s throw
from where she lies under the jack-pines. Not once has he stopped even
to glance at the spot where she bravely lived with him and died alone.
You will find crosses, inscriptions, some kind of token of remembrance
on all the Indian graves. Her grave alone, in the Far North, bears
neither cross nor name—just four logs, nailed together in a square,
half-buried in the grey moss.
[Illustration: A squaw man—trapper and hunter]