Rob went up to Jesse and shook him by the hand. “Good boy, Jess!” said he. “I’m glad you got him instead of myself. But why didn’t you tell us when we came into camp?”
“Moise said good hunters didn’t do that,” ventured John, who joined the conversation. “How about that, Alex?”
“Well,” said the older hunter, “you must remember that white men are different from Injuns. People who live as Injuns do get to be rather quiet. Now, suppose an Injun hunter has gone out after a moose, and has been gone maybe two or three days. He’ll probably not hunt until everything is gone in the lodge, and maybe neither he nor his family is going to eat much until he gets a moose. Well, by and by he comes home some evening, and throws aside the skin door of the lodge, and goes in and sits down. His wife helps him off with his moccasins and hands him a dry pair, and makes up the fire. He sits and smokes. No one asks him whether he has killed or not, and he doesn’t say whether he has killed, although they all may be very hungry. Now, his wife doesn’t know whether to get ready to cook or not, but she doesn’t ask her man. He sits there awhile; but, of course, he likes his family and doesn’t want them to be hungry. So after a while, very dignified, he’ll make some excuse so that his wife can tell what the result of the hunt has been. Maybe he’ll say carelessly that he has a little blood on his shirt, which ought to be washed off, or maybe he’ll say that if any one were walking a couple of miles down the river they might see a blazed trail out toward the hills. Then his wife will smile and hurry to put on the kettles. If it isn’t too far, she’ll take her pack-strap then and start out to bring in some of the meat. Every people, you see, will have different ways.”
“But the man who doesn’t kill something goes hungry, and his family, too?”
“Not in the least!” rejoined Alex, with some spirit. “There, too, the ‘First People’ are kinder than the whites who govern them now. Suppose in my village there are twenty lodges. Out of the twenty there will be maybe four or five good hunters, men who can go out and kill moose or bear. It gets to be so that they do most of the hunting, and if one of them brings in any meat all the village will have meat. Of course the good hunters don’t do any other kind of work very much.”
“That isn’t the way white people do,” asserted John; “they don’t divide up in business matters unless they have to.”
“Maybe not,” said Alex, “but it has always been different with my people in the north. If men did not divide meat with one another many people would starve. As it is, many starve in the far-off countries each winter. Sometimes we cannot get even rabbits. It may be far to the trading-post. The moose or the caribou may be many miles away, where no one can find them. A heavy storm may come, so no one can travel. Then if a man is fortunate and has meat he would be cruel if he did not divide. He knows that all the others would do as much with him. It is our custom.”