This freight master is a compelling man, and he says the shippers are expert sinners and a parcel of ignorant and makeshift people. It may be he is right: it is not for me to gainsay him, or to further discompose his temper, when all the evidence is so plainly visible.
After this discussion, I play with the other children who tumble about on the hillside. They all talk Cree, and some of them who have been to school talk French and English.
One little girl, with the fine insouciance of eight years, says there is no use praying Le Bon Dieu, for He doesn't understand Cree very well. She has repeated her prayer over and over but she has never had a soft-faced doll yet.
Solemn little mother! Her prayer, at any rate, is reasonably specific, and I can see how one of these days it is going to be answered.
It is good to rest in the shade of the trees while these copper-coloured babies jabber about me in soft Cree, and finger my hair and clothes. Truly, I am very fortunate and have much fulness of pleasure. I might be that same good girl whom an English playwright describes as having never compromised herself, and yet the wickedest child who ever was slapped could hardly have had a better time.
CHAPTER XIV
ON THE LESSER SLAVE RIVER
Gitchie Manito, the Mighty,
Mitchie Manito, the bad;
In the breast of every Redman,
In the dust of every dead man,
There's a tiny heap of Gitchie—
And a mighty mound of Mitchie—
There's the good and there's the bad.—CY WARMAN.
From Soto Landing, the Lesser Slave River bends its course to the north and west till it empties into Lesser Slave Lake at Sawridge. It is a small river, being about a hundred and fifty feet wide and about thirty deep. Owing to its sharp curving banks much care is required in its navigation. Its banks are heavily wooded and as we pass down its quiet reaches we seem to have sailed into a dreamful world, where just to breathe is a delight. I account it sinful to talk in these surroundings, but one may not hope to enjoy solitude for any considerable time in a country where women-travellers are sufficiently rare to arouse a raging curiosity in the breast of every male entity who comes within reach of her. People like these northmen, who live out of doors most of the year, are not easily bored. They are interested in things; they are perennially young, and this, I take it, is the secret of Pan.