BLAKESON’S FERRY was a main-line depot. A small branch from here served a number of rural places, of which one was Nine Springs.
Blakeson’s had quite a historic past, if legendary lore might be believed. It was here, some fifty years ago, that an Englishman named Blakeson came to settle with a large family, consisting of nine sons and four daughters. The Salish Indians, resenting this invasion of their territory, immediately sought to wipe out the intruders, and several encounters followed, in each of which the intrepid settlers came off victorious, for every one of the family, down to the youngest child, was expert in the use of firearms.
Finally, feeling that the finger of fate was in it, the Indians desisted from aggressive warfare; then Blakeson, who was a man of business, approached them with offers of work, for which wages should be paid. But the lordly red man has a soul above toil, and the Salish tribe to a man would have turned their backs on the offer, but for the sight of the “wages,” which Blakeson proposed to pay in kind.
These took the form of gay red blankets, bright-hued cottons, gleaming knives, and other similar temptations to industry.
Even then the red man might have stood aside, and gone without these treasures which had labour for their price. But there were the red women to be considered; and the Salish squaws, driven to toil from babyhood, decided en masse that they might as well work for wages, when such were to be had, as work for no reward at all. So Blakeson got his labourers, who, although they were only women, proved quite as satisfactory as their men might have done, if work had not been an indignity which no red man would face.
But that was all over and past long ago, and there was only the name of Squawlands, by which the wide tract of cleared ground by the river was known, to remind one of the old story now.
Gertrude Lorimer thought of it, as she stood among a throng of other passengers waiting for the main-line cars to come along and stop. All the stories of the trials and tribulations of early settlers appealed to her by force of contrast between the past and the present. Present-day immigrants had only the forces of nature to repel and overcome, while if a solitary Indian did happen to appear on the scene, he was regarded very much as a curiosity and an object of charity, but certainly with no trepidation.
Then her attention was disagreeably recalled to the present by the jostling of a big fat man who was dressed like a miner, but who, when he apologized for his rudeness, spoke as a gentleman might have done.
Gertrude might have thought no more about the man and the incident but for the familiar and unpleasant leer which accompanied the courteously worded apology. Drawing herself up with a haughty movement, she turned away, just as a young man, dressed in similar fashion, exclaimed angrily, as he dragged at the fat man’s arm—
“Haven’t you the sense to know a lady when you see one?”