"But you can always pick up something at the Forts:" replied a former speaker; "the masters are not such bad men if we are really starving, and then there is the Mission: we are not often turned away from the Mission without a taste of something."
"All very good for you," said Michel's wife; "who like the white man and know how to take him, but my man will have nothing to say to him. The very sight of a pale face makes him feel bad, and sends him into one of his fits of rage and madness. Oh, it has been dreadful, dreadful," continued the poor woman, while her voice melted into a truly Indian wail, "for my children I kept alive, or else I would have thrown myself into the river many a time last year."
"Bah," said Peter, who being the brother of Michel, would, with true Indian pertinacity, take part with him whatever were his offences; and, moreover, looking with his native instinct upon woman as the "creature" of society, whose duty it was to endure uncomplaining, whatever her masters laid upon her. "Bah; you women are always grumbling and bewailing yourselves; for my part, if I have to starve a little, Kulu (the meat) is all the sweeter when it comes. I suppose Michel has killed enough to give you many a merry night, seated round the camp fire with some good fat ribs or a moose nose, and a fine kettle of tea; then you wrap yourself in your blanket, or light your pipe and feel like a 'big master.'"
Peter's picture of comfort and enjoyment pleased the Indians, and they laughed heartily and testified their approval, all but poor Accomba. She hung her head, and sadly fondled the baby at her breast. "You may laugh, boys," she said at length, "and you know what starving is as well as I do, though you are pretty well off now; it is not for myself I speak, I can bear that kind of thing as well as other women, but it comes hard for the children. Before Se Tene, my man, killed his last moose, we were starving for nearly two moons; a little dried fish and a rat or two, and now and then a rabbit, was we got: even the fish failed for some time, and there was hardly a duck or partridge to be seen. We had to eat two of the dogs at last, but, poor things, they had little flesh on their bones."
"Eh! eh! e—h!" exclaimed the Indians, who however undemonstrative under ordinary circumstances, can be full of sympathy where they can realize the affecting points of a story.
"And the children," asked one of the party, "I suppose the neighbours helped you a little with them?"
"One of my cousins took little Tetsi for a while," replied the poor woman, "and did what she could for him, but they were all short of game as we were, only their men went off after the deer, and plenty, of them got to the lakes for duck; but Michel,—"
"Well, what did he do? I suppose he was off with his gun the first of any of them?" said Peter. "I'll venture there shall not be a moose or deer within twenty miles, but Michel the Hunter shall smell him out."
"Yes, he went at last," sighed Accomba; "but my man has had one of his ugly fits upon him for all the winter; he would not hunt anywhere near the Fort, for fear of meeting a white face; and he vowed I was making friends with them, and bidding them welcome to the camp, and so he was afraid to leave it; and then at last, when I begged him to go and get food for his children, he swore at me and called me a bad name, and took up his gun to shoot me."
"Oh, I suppose he only said that in sport," said another of the party; and yet it was plain that Accomba's story had produced a great sensation among her auditors.