"May be it is the Okimow?"
No! the Okimow has a wife in the South with brown hair.
Ah well! Ah well! but it was different when she was young. Then every woman's skin was full of oil and there were many braves who loved her.
After she has been led into the open, and has had her picture taken with us, the great Okimow takes her back to her blankets and fills her lap with a heap of pungent tobacco. It will be many moons before our honourable great-grandmother requires a fresh supply. "An old straggler," that is what I call her, after the beggar-woman who asked Sir Walter Scott for alms.
The religion of the gentle Nazarene has cut the fighting sinews of the Indians. This was why the Christianized Hurons were brushed off the earth by the tigerish and unapproachable Iroquois. The Hurons became soft, and being soft, they became a prey. In some inexplicable way, we Anglo-Saxons have managed to keep our bumps of veneration and combativeness well partitioned or estranged and so keep mastery of the changeling tribes who permit them to commingle. This is why the Indians are a dying race in a new country. This is why our honourable great-grandmother whimpers for tobacco instead of hurling us over the bank and throwing her camp-fire on the top of us. I could almost find it in my heart to wish that she had.
CHAPTER XII
AT THE PARTING OF THE RIVERS
"Think o' the stories round the camp, the yarns along the track
O' Lesser Slave an' Herschel's Isle an' Flynn at Fond du Lac;
Of fur and gun, an' ranch, an' run, an' moose an' caribou,
An' bulldogs eatin' us to death!
Good-bye—Good-luck to you!"
Mirror Landing, where we leave the boat to make the portage to Soto Landing, is on the Lesser Slave River, at its confluence with the Athabasca. Its name has been well chosen, for the Lesser Slave River is a clear stream, and shows a kindly portrait to all who look therein. A telegraph office, an official residence, a stable, and storage sheds are the only buildings. What is to be done with the portaging party, whom we have met here and who go back to Athabasca Landing on our boat, is beyond a mere woman to say. Both parties must spend the night here; there is only one bunk to every twenty persons, and those who hold possession utterly refuse to sleep outside with the mosquitoes and bulldog flies. Once I read a story in the Talmud which I considered wholly fabulous. It was about a mosquito saving the life of David when Saul hunted him upon the mountains. I no longer doubt this story, my incredulity having vanished this day with my courage. A mosquito is big enough to do anything.