Toward night she crept down to the settlement. Several of the Indian women would take her in, she knew. There was Noko sitting just outside her tent; she would not accept a cabin of logs or stone. She was making a cape of gulls' feathers, that she might sell to some of the traders, who often took curious Indian finery home with their furs. Her three sons were trappers. One had a wife and three children that the poor mother provided for, and when her brave came home, she was devoted to him, grateful for a pleasant word. What curious ideas these aborigines had of wedded love!
"Noko, will you take me in for the night, and give me some supper?" she asked, as she threw herself down beside the Indian woman, who, at forty, looked at least sixty, and though she had the face of her tribe, it was marked by a grave sort of pleasantness, and not the severity that generally characterized middle life.
"Has the Sieur gone to Tadoussac?"
"Not that I know of. But I have offended miladi. And your wigwam is always so clean, and there are no children."
The woman shook her head with a sort of remonstrance.
"You will have them of your own some day. When they are little, you will care for them. They will be no trouble. When they are older, you will be proud of them, and rejoice in their bravery. Then they go away, and forget."
She began to put up her work. "Are you in earnest?" she asked. "Do you need shelter?"
"Oh, the Gaudrions would take me in, but there is such a crowd, I am for a little quiet and solitude to-night."
"Thou shalt have it. The Sieur has been good to me. But it is hardly wise to quarrel with one's home."
"There was no quarrel. Miladi wanted me to do something that I could not. And you know I have no real claim upon them, Noko, I belong to Quebec, not to any person."