“What I do now?” asked Jimmy Moosenose.
“First you must make a coffin.”
“There is no planks.”
“Oh, tear down the counter in the store!” cried Loseis with a burst of irritation. “Must I think of everything?”
“You tell me how big?” asked Jimmy, with another glance of sullen terror towards the inner room.
“Yes, I will measure,” said Loseis. “And the coffin must be covered all over with good black cloth from the store. Mary-Lou will put it on with tacks. And lined with white cloth. While you are making it I will go across the river, and dig the grave. We will bury him to-morrow.”
“That is well,” said Jimmy with a look of relief. “Then the people come back.”
“Ah, the people!” cried Loseis with a flash of angry scorn. “They are well-named Slaves!”
At the end of May in the latitude of Blackburn’s Post it does not become dark until nearly ten; and it was fully that hour before Loseis, having completed her task, returned dog-weary, across the river. During the balance of the night she sat wide-eyed and dry-eyed beside her dead, her hands in her lap, planning in her childlike and passionate way how best to conduct everything next day with dignity and honor.
At sun-up Jimmy Moosenose was despatched to the river shore to construct a raft, the light bark canoes that they possessed not being sufficient to ferry the coffin across. No flowers were available so early in the season, and Mary-Lou was set to work to twist a handsome wreath of the crisp green leaves of the high-bush cranberry. Neither Jimmy nor Mary-Lou could be induced to enter Blackburn’s room, so Loseis herself dragged the completed coffin in beside the bed; and she unaided, managed somehow to lift the body into it. In life Hector Blackburn had weighed more than two hundred pounds. It was Loseis, too, who nailed the lid on the coffin with an aim no better than any other woman’s. Those crookedly driven nails distressed her sorely.