"At last there was a man who was worse than any of the others. He followed me from place to place, and spoke bad against me, so that always I lost my job. He thought if he could starve me out I would go to him. I would sooner have jumped in the river. By and by I couldn't get any jobs in Prince George, and I go away.
"I am much sick of white men and white man's country. I think there is a curse on me that turns them into devils when they look at me. Often I see they do not act so bad to their own women as to me. So I think I go back to my mot'er's people. Maybe there is a place for me there. Maybe I am most red myself.
"So I make a long, long journey. I come to my mot'er's people at last. It is not good. There is nobody glad to see me. They are poor and sick and bad. They not like me because I am scold them because they are so dirty and lazy and foolish. They live beside a company post on the big river. When I was a little girl it was far off, and we never see a white man but the trader, but now the steamboat run on the river, and many white men are coming. There are surveyors measuring the land, and farmers ploughing it and growing wheat.
"It is moch bad for the red people. The young white men come around the tepees and flirt with the girls, and give whiskey to the boys. Our girls and our boys want to go with white men, and dress fine and not work at all. The boys learn to steal, and the girls are bad. The people live in houses with stoves to be warm, and they get the lung sickness. They try to be like white men, and they are nothing.
"My mot'er's husband is a bad man. He beat my mot'er and take a new wife. He hate me moch because he cannot look in my face. He speak bad of me to all the people. He is a chief man among those people, and all believe him and hate me.
"So they do not want me there. I feel bad. I think I doubly cursed because I cannot stay in any place nowhere. Only St. Jean Bateese, he is my friend. He remember the good time when the red men were free hunters. He feel bad like me to see the people dirty and lazy and sick. He feel much bad to see his children growing up and only badness waiting for them. When all are sleeping in the tepees we talk much together.
"By and by we make a plan. We say we take his children and my mot'er and my mot'er's children, and we travel far from the white men, and we teach the children how to live like our fathers lived without the white man and the white man's goods. My mot'er's husband, he not care if we go. He got a young wife now.
"All winter we are making ready, and when the ice go out in the spring we start up the river in three canoes. We travel many days on the big river. The weather is fine, and the children are happy to be travelling.
"One day Charley and I are hunting a bear on shore. He is wounded, and we follow him a long, long way up a mountain. He goes into a cave. We are much afraid to go after him, but we have followed far and there is no fresh meat, so we go in. We follow him under the mountain, and that is how we find this place. I am much glad when I see it. It is what we want. No white man will ever find us here, I say. Here is everything we need to live. We will live here and die here, and forget the white man. And me, I think then, I have found happiness."
Nahnya came to a conclusion, and there was a silence by the fire.