"Yes?" asked I, "and what did you say to him?"
"Oh! I told him he was a master-fool; that you were nothing but a great cross-examiner who had the misfortune to be born a woman."
And his reply.
"He said he did not understand me but he saw you laughed a great deal and showed your teeth. He says he would not beat you, but would be very mild and agreeable with you."
Now, I was not offended, for the proposal from this young Apollo of the forest only meant I was no longer regarded as a mysterious invader from another and strange land.
Why should he not propose? In this northern world distinctions fall away and all are equal. As a usual thing, the Indian regards a white woman impersonally or with a half-contemptuous indifference. To him, we are frail, die-away creatures deplorably deficient in energy, yet, strange to relate, wholly lacking in the spirit of obedience. Scores of ill-instructed novelists to the contrary, no Indian has ever assaulted a white woman. This is an amazing fact when one considers how, for nearly two centuries, the Indian has guided our women through the forests; piloted them down the rivers; and has cared for them in isolated outposts. The Indian has lived rough and lived hard, but, in this particular, he is morally the most immutable of all God's estimable menfolk.
When Prosper pleaded his case personally, he broke ice by requesting me to accept a pair of doe-skin gauntlets more beautiful than ordinary. In spite of my declining the gift, he asked "Will you marry with me?" assuring me, at the same time, that I was his saky hagen, or "one beloved." I would not have to travel far. He is one day from here if there be wind, but two days with no wind. He likes the noise I make in my throat when I laugh. The master explained to Prosper, "This is only a way she has of gargling her throat beautifully," a wicked cynicism which was lost on the bronze-faced tamer of horses in that gargling is, to him, an unknown and hence an incomprehensible practice. The master also advised Prosper to keep the gloves for, if I listened, he would indubitably need them later.
Prosper is a hardily-built man with admirable shoulders and a bearing like Thunder Cloud, the American Indian who was the model for Mr. G. A. Reid's picture entitled "The Coming of the White Man." Also, Prosper is daringly ugly. When I tell him I am already married, he says, "You need not go back. Your man can find many women by the great Saskatchewan River."
It may interest the curious to know that Prosper ultimately sold me the gauntlets for my man, and put away the money with an imperturbable serenity worthy the receiving-teller of a western bank.
... The sports were inaugurated by the slaughter of an ox for the benefit of the treaty Indians. It is foolish to shudder when we see the throat of a bullock cut. When a bird dips its long bill into the chalice of a flower it is doing precisely the same act.