Seeds of Pine

by Emily F. Murphy

Thus does Kitemakis, "the poor one," tell me the story of winter and summer and of the birth of the year.

And Kitemakis, who has "the young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks," advises me to hold no converse with left-handed people, for it is well known in these parts that such have communion with the devils.

I am bewared too, that if I have a bad dream, that is to say, if I dream of small-pox, or of white people, I must cut a lock from over my ear and burn it in the fire.

Also, Madam is instructed to throw away the wishbone of any bird she may eat in order that it may grow again and be food for other folk.

And Kitemakis tells me further that when Amisk, the beaver, dies his soul lives on. In the happy hunting grounds the beaver was a carpenter who, through some distemper of the mind, kept working while the moose were on the runway so that he frightened them away. This caused the chief hunter to become very angry and he said to the beaver, "Thou shalt built always, and men shall break down thy work and take thy pelt for covering. Also, thou shalt eat wood forever."

I cannot hear any more of these stories for my attention is drawn to a man who has come close to the ship in a small row-boat. The engine has stopped and a permit is handed to him over the side of the vessel. The man looks like a Scotchman, seems like an Irishman, but in reality is a German, an erstwhile soldier, who makes his livelihood in curing and smoking fish. He is indulging in a surly and wrong-headed paroxysm because Elise, his wife, is not on the boat. Elise went to the city to have her teeth filled and still lingers in the south. A certain rude fellow with a brass-throated laugh is suggesting of the soldier-fisherman that Elise may be appreciative of the change of society and that he is foolish to look for her under two months. "Better enjoy your permit before Elise gets home; that's my advice," enjoins the tormentor.

"About the viskey, not one tam I care," replies the irascible husband, "it's ma vife I vant. Ma vife she in Edmonton stays"—a praiseworthy choice on his part which, to our way of thinking, minifies the oft-urged but yet unproven claim that "A woman's only a woman, but a good cigar's a smoke."

As the man pushes off, Baldy, a pucker-faced fellow whose real name is Nathaniel, assures me that this German is considered "sorta queer" hereabouts, and that it is nothing short of flat irreverence for a man to speak so lightly about his permit in a land of such inordinate thirsts.

This matter of leaving home for the treatment of sore molars has suddenly become an important one in the north. Hitherto, the traders of the Hudson's Bay Company and the missionaries did not need to go to the city on business, or to see their mother-in-law; their errand was teeth. But this summer, the Company seems to have waxed over-wise, for the Inspector of Posts is bringing a dentist. It was only yesterday that a woman who [Transcriber's note: line possibly missing here] women alike consider this to be an ill courtesy and hold to the hope that the dentist may be drowned at Athabasca Landing. The woman who tells me of it believes when one gives nine-tenths of her time to the Company, the church, and the household it is not wicked to take one-tenth for herself. Indeed, there are times when she honestly desires to be wicked and to take several-tenths for herself. The whole arrangement she stigmatizes as a graceless one and a blot on the Company's escutcheon.

Still, there are drawbacks in being so far from a dentist. It was only yesterday that a woman who was using the river as her wash-pot, dropped her new set of teeth overboard. She had not been out for five years and made the trip with her husband and her two youngest sons at the cost of much time and money. However amusing the incident might be to thoughtless onlookers, at the bottom it was almost tragic, and she, at least, is hoping that the H. B. Co. dentist will meet no dire or untimely fate before reaching Grouard. This is a healthful-bodied, healthful-minded woman with a temperament that adjusts itself to life. She is proud of the fact that she is educating her five sons at home; that she cooks for the ten men engaged in her husband's saw-mill, and that she has twelve hundred cabbages in her garden. I am glad she wears a hoop of diamonds on her finger and that her fur wrap would cost a fortune in Paris. It means that her husband is no stingy, unappreciative curmudgeon and that all is well with her.